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Tom's Hardware: Win, Lose or Ti - 21 GeForce Titan Tests
msolnik writes "Got a huge wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket? Why not spend it on a fancy new video card... Uncle Tom has reviewed 21 different cards so you can make a well educated decision. This is by far the most best Geforce comparison out there. A definate read for all you hardcore graphics guys."
I'd rather have the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV. Sure, it might not have the performance of some of the GeForce3, but for Video capture and playback, it is great (even under linux soon, given the track record of the All-In-Wonders of the past). Of course, there isn't really any card I know of with *good*, well supported TV-out (yeah, there are tricks to use the framebuffer and unhooking the monitor, but that's ugly).
nVidia isn't the only game in town, particularly not for those of use who do video playback and editing more than play games.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The article whines a lot about inadequate tv-out capabilities for these cards. Call me crazy, but why would somebody blow the big bucks on something so high-powered as a Titanium, and then hook it up to a crummy TV? Seems like anybody who'd buy these things would rather use a big quality monitor instead. Even if you're going to use one of the nice big plasma flat panels from Pioneer or Sony, they come with VGA inputs anyway. You certainly wouldn't want to use TV outputs. What am I missing here?
What's your damage, Heather?
I suppose the Quake 3 numbers are some indication of OpenGL performance for these mass karket cards, but I was curious how these stacked up against the traditional high end OpenGL cards (Oxygen, FireGL, etc. or even a whole SGI system) so that a price/performance comparison could be made. If CPU's are any indication, the market size for these cards could drive their performance to almost acceptable levels in more professional OpenGL applications and certainly at a lot less cost.
Any references?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
First, some of us haave the money for the card, but not for the Trinitron 22" Monitor.
If you don't have the money for a decent monitor, why would you blow $300 on a video card?That's like getting a 2ghz P4 or Athlon, but stifling it with 64mb ram. You don't blow your whole wad on a single component, you spread it around so you can get a decent system.
Second, Do you prefer you DVDs on TV (with armchair and Family) or on Monitor (on the bed with a coke) ?
I prefer them on TV, and that's why I use a DVD player. PC's don't have remotes, and I don't want to have to get up and go to the PC every time I want to pause or jump around to different features. (Then again, I like watching every extra feature on a DVD, and most people probably don't.)
What's your damage, Heather?
Technological superiority? Try fraud. They name their boards the "Ti500" when it has the regular Ti, and NOT the Ti500 chip, then call their Ti500 board the "Ti550". If I was reviewing that, I'd certainly point that out a little more plainly than as a "technological superiority" attempt.
I find it pretty interesting that some of these cards (according to the review) are being bundled with LCD shutter glasses... the glasses are synchronized with the screen to darken the screen over one eye while your monitor displays the view for your other eye. Refresh that at 120Hz, provide a slightly parallaxed view for each eye, presto, it's better than Jaws 3D.
I used to work with these things a while back... it's ok as long as you don't move much, but if you like to move your head around you'll get headaches pretty quick, since the view doesn't change based on where you're sitting. We used head-tracking to accomplish this, but none of that stuff here. Another problem is screen distortion, which doesn't mean much when you're playing Quake, but if you're thinking of a really nice interface for Blender or Maya, this can make a big difference in being able to actually point the mouse where you think it's pointing.
Without calibration to your personal interocular distance and eye-to-screen distance, and good correction for screen distortion, you can use these for max 30 minutes before getting eyestrain or just a plain headache. Add poor head-tracking and you can get seasick, too!
Last thing: there is more than depth cues to seeing 3D: good lighting and shadow effects, _accurate_ perspective views, and use of color all come into play. These glasses are a lot of fun, and if a lot of folks have them then maybe the state of the art will go forward a bit.
The cheapest 22" monitor I found was $528. The Sony Trinitrons are upwards of $1K.
Pricewatch shows 21" Sony Trinitrons for $650 from fly-by-night guys, and CDW has them for $799. I got my used one for $300 from a CAD shop that was switching over to big LCD's.
But all of this is irrelevant, though - what I was asking is, why do people want a TV-out on a high-end video card? If you're putting together a machine to play DVD's and Bleem, you certainly don't need a Geforce Ti. Like you said, an AIW Radeon goes for $150, and that's more than good enough. This particular article was talking about $300 cards that don't even do video capture. For those cards, a TV out is almost useless.
What's your damage, Heather?
I have a 2+ year old (in tech terms) ATI Rage 128 based card (AIW-128) running under XP and with the newest ATI drivers and the games I've played with it (most recently the Medal of Honor demo), performance is just fine by my eyes @ 1024x768 and 16 bit color.
I've seen nVidia GeForce2 cards going for $100 but I just don't see the point. There was a time when moving from a 2D card to a 3D card like the orginal Voodoo was really worth the $300 or so it cost -- performance and quality skyrocketed. Similarly the move from the voodoo I to the II, and from the II to that card's next generation (the ATI 128).
Past that point, unless you have some specific non-gaming application that really needs the 3D performance it seems like kind of a waste. 3D performance has been pushed beyond the point where it matters, even for gaming and the features being added seem trivial -- just TV out?
All new cards it seem should come not only with good 3D, but video in and out, TV tuners, and the ability to do hardware MPEG2 compression of full-frame video at zero cost to the CPU. At that point the video card arms race would make more sense..
what I was asking is, why do people want a TV-out on a high-end video card?
;-)
You might be asking, but you're obviously not listening
For those cards, a TV out is almost useless.
That's clearly false.
0.02
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
to get me a most bestest video card for crissmas. Geforce am a very goodest chipset for me to play em my bestest games.
For Great Justice!
I am planning on using the TV out on my Geforce 2 MX400 to watch DVD's on my couch. The "Computer DVD does not have a remote" thing is so much of an excuse. I bought a TV card that came with a remote for 30 bucks (as soon as I get my rebate back...:) Pinnacle Studio TV Pro, dbx Stereo TV and FM radio, $49.99 at CompUSA and a $20 dollar rebate.....no brainer there! :)). The remote that comes with this card is nice and it will work, for the meantime. It works off of the serial port which means you should be able ot hack something together for Linux or any other OS to make it work (execute keyboard macro when it recieves a certain code on the serial port). I do want to get a wireless (RF ONLY) keyboard for surfing the net on TV from the recliner built into my couch. I plan on using TV out for visualizations too(xtace on Linux, Winamp on Windows). If you use the Nvidia drivers for Linux, you can get the TV out to work pretty easily, although I have yet to get the cable I need for it. That said, any self respecting geek questioning the inclusion of a thing like TV out on a video card has GOT to be on drugs. It's just cool!
One other thing: Your DAMN STRAIGHT this crap should work. It ain't hard! At least TV has a standard! Unlike some things on computers like MUSIC! MP3, OGG, MP3Pro, Real Audio, WMA which one is THE standard? I know default is MP3, but it's not a standard, to me, until it's the only thing used or even talked about, then we'll have a new standard for digital music. MP3 is close but we still hack and work on OGG right? Computers now have so many so called standards that, to me, nothing is standard anymore. This is, to me, the main reason some people never buy computers because there's so many frickin choices that they have no idea if this one will play the game they want or do what they want at an acceptable speed. This is why MACS are good for newbies cuz there's fewer choices (decent Apple built-in audio, Geforce 2 MX currently the default) and other things Apple does right. I don't own an Apple and I am not saying they are better then PC's. Sometimes they are not. But at least you can buy a Mac and count on it being able to run about any game you buy for the Mac. PC's it's a friggin crapshoot.
Gorkman
That flaimbait, i'll bite:
If you read the article you would have seen a reference to this article at THG:
it resolves the Quake 3 "issue;"
also
offers SmoothVision FSAA; and, enables 16tap anisotropic filtering. On top of that, it improves performance.
in the conclusion it states:
Nvidia also has some work to do in regard to FSAA
My primary system is a Pentium I 233MMX, 64 MB RAM, Linux 2.4.14 box. It's based on a Baby AT format case, so any processor upgrades are a case + motherboard + processor deal, and I've been just too damn lazy & cheap to bother.
The graphics card built with this system was a Matrox Mill II - so no 3D acceleration to speak of.
Playing Quake and Quake 2 on this system was Just Fine, but anything more modern was just not possible. I tried playing the Quake 3 demo, but was getting something on the order of 1 FPM, so I've been pretty well shut out of all the 3D stuff.
Then the other day, I noticed that the price on an XTacy GeForce MX400 PCI card (no AGP!) was like $150 CAN - so what the hell, I bought it.
It turned out to be DOA (system would not POST) so I exchanged it for the only other PCI card they had in stock, an XTacy MX200 card (which was like $120 CAN)
They also happened to have Quake3 (in the tin box, no less) SoF, and Descent3, all the Loki ports, in the bargin bin for like $10 each, so I got those too.
Stick in the card, grab NVidia's drivers, configure XFree to use them, fire up Q3 - and bam! Playable! Just like that.
Things get a little choppy if more than about 10 people are in a room shooting at each other, and SoF and Descent3 (played in 800x600 with full textures) will "skip" once and a while, but for the most part, the game experience has been just fine.
Interestingly enough, when I turned on the frame rate display on Q3, I was getting anywhere from 10 fps to about 27 fps, with an average of about 15 - and the play experience is just fine. Faster framerates would be nice, but this IS old hardware, and really, it'd just be gravy. I don't particularly find myself wishing that the framerate was higher than it is - in fact, before I turned on the fps display, I thought I was making 30 fps. To see the average was about half that was a real suprise.
I can't help but wonder if the processor or bus is the bottleneck, or if the MX400 card had've worked the display might be a touch faster - but it doesn't really matter. The MX200 is "good enough".
So overall, I'm a happy camper.
.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
And if you read this article (read through it now, dont just "skim"), you'll see that the tom-foolery that ATI has pulled with their mip-mapping in Quake3 has nothing to do with FSAA, and everything to do with cheating the user.
There's still not much out there that actually uses the vertex shader capability in the GeForce 3, anyway. NVidia's chameleon demo is beautiful, but that's about the only impressive vertex shader app. So the GeForce 2 technology is good enough for most gamers right now.
NVidia does a great job; their boards work well, the drivers are reasonably solid, and their ELSA business unit, which sells boards, offers a six-year warranty, rare in this industry. And they support OpenGL seriously. Now that they have the price down to a more affordable level, go for it.
I went that route, but I think you're right.
Look at a 19" monitor from a couple of feet away.
Look at a 33" TV from 10 feet away.
About the same angle (field of view) in your eyes. Hellaciously more pixels on the 19". Better sound with a good pair of headphones and a 19".
A TV tuner on your video card makes having a TV obsolete. (And the rest of your computer can then obsolete your VCR and DVD-player.)