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Positive Reviews For Nvidia' GeForce 6800 Ultra
Sander Sassen writes "Following months of heated discussion and rumors about the performance of Nvidia' new NV4x architecture, today their new graphics cards based on this architecture got an official introduction. Hardware Analysis posted their first looks at the new GeForce 6800 Ultra and takes it for a spin with all of the latest DirectX 9.0 game titles. The results speak for themselves, the GeForce 6800 Ultra is the new king of the hill, beating ATI's fastest by over 100% in almost every benchmark." Reader egarland adds "Revews are up on Firing Squad, Toms Hardware, Anandtech and Hot Hardware." Update: 04/14 16:54 GMT by T : Neophytus writes "HardOCP have their real life gameplay review available."
In a word, "Wow."
I mean, who'd have thunk it that the 6800 would still have life? Maybe ATI can counter with a Radeon All-In-Wonder Xtravaganza 6502!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Did anyone else notice the size of the die rivals even that of the Pentium 4 EE? This thing is frickin' huge!
They are comparing the latest nVidia GPU to the 9800XT, which is several months old. When ATI's next-gen chip comes out (two weeks?), only then will we be able to see who holds the GPU Speed crown.
It seems they forgot to take the card out of its case. Wait no thats just the huge fan/heatsink combo
I have a mini-pc you insensitive clod!
Okay so it's fast.. no question.. Amazing feature set as well..
but it requires a 480 watt power supply
and 2 power connections... And it also has what looks to be a vacuum cleaner tied to it..
I currently use a shuttle skn41g2 for my main box.. I love the sff pc's. This won't work in that.. It would make the includied power supply very sad.
My HTPC box uses an antec sonata with a fanless radeon 9000, and ultra quiet everything else.. Forget using this in a quiet pc as well
I don't care for nvidia's trend towards hideously loud, bulky, power hungry video cards.. They might perform well, but for normal use, i'd prefer something smaller and quieter.. and for god's sake, give me an external power supply.. heh
I am really quite impressed with the performance of the 6800. Across the board, the 6800 is nearly twice the performance of the current top of the line cards. Going from 4x2 pipes to 16x1 was definitely worth it for nVidia, as their shading performance is simply astounding! Halo actually runs incredibly well on the 6800, getting 2x-3x current performance.
:-)
Now, as DooM 3 is supposedly being released with the 6800, can we expect DooM in mid-may? This is truly an incredible day for PC gaming as we will have cinematic computing in the near future.
I'm giddy.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Ok this card has great specs etc etc etc. Did you look at the thing it's taking up at least 1 PCI slot for the fan and another for it's intake to the fan. This thing should have just come with water cooling out the back. Granted it's specs look great I do have to ask will it drive that IBM T221 LCD display that hits 204DPI at 22" thats about the only thing I can think of that realy would do the card justice.
No sir I dont like it.
0wn3d!
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Man .. There has been many generations of video cards now .. but the prices doesnt seem to come down that much ..
I must admit, after looking at the benchmarks from Tom's and Anand's earlier this morning, I am *very* impressed by the results of this chipset. I still have concerns about the cooling and power requirements, as well as the image quality, but that may be partly related to my newfound ATI fanboy-dom.
Speaking of which, I can't wait to see what the boys from Canada have coming next week. 16 pipelines? Mmmm....
It's great to see competition in this space -- to see a market with solid competitors duking it out. Now, if standards were a little more solid and stable, we'd get to see even more action and get even more benefit as consumers.
...that is, until ATI releases their next card too.
I wouldn't expect a new card NOT to beat out the current cards. ATI and Nvidia have played this catchup game with each other for years.
People who can afford to buy these kind of things should give money to charity.
No seriously, this thing costs more than a new full fledged computer.
"
This thing requires a 480 watt power supply, minimum. That's too much. I am currently responsible for a large number of servers that don't have larger than 400 watt power supplies each.
It's not hard to see why the U.S. has to violently defend our oil interests when we have video cards wastefully burning through electricity like there's no tomorrow.
I'm all for advances in processor technology, just not when it comes with a high energy consumption price.
I once heard that by leaving a computer with a measely 150 watt power supply (minute by today's standards) on 24 hours a day like most people do, it consumes more energy than the common refrigerator.
August will be two years since I got my 9700 and it took this long for Nvidia to kick ass again. But the damn thing is still a two-slot cooling pig. 2 molex connectors and huge wattage draw. Its screams overclocked-to-the-max just to compete like the NV30. I'm waiting for the r420( which should have low-k, lower wattage, but no ps3?) to make a comparison, but we finally have some cards a 9700 owner could consider as a generational upgrade (the 9800 was barely a refresh if you ask me)
From the article:
/., but how does this become "beating ATI's fastest by over 100% in almost every benchmark"??
To measure how well both cards perform with actual gameplay we used Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 and Halo and Far Cry. For both versions of Unreal Tournament we've used the built-in benchmark, which consists of a flyby and a botmatch. We've omitted the flyby scores as they doesn't tell us much about performance during actual gameplay, just how fast the graphics card is able to render the flyby. With UT2003 the lead the GeForce 6800 Ultra takes over the Radeon 9800 XT is less impressive, at a 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions it is only 6% faster. At 1600x1200 however the GeForce 6800 Ultra pulls away and clocks in 21% faster. With UT2004 the difference is much bigger, starting off at 10% at 1024x768 up to 65% faster at 1600x1200. What is also noteworthy is the fact that the performance of the Radeon 9800 XT drops at higher resolutions whereas that of the GeForce 6800 Ultra stays at about the same level.
I know this is
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
This sounds great - what is it worth the price?
At least the other cards will be cheaper now
Also - doesn't this chip set have new DRM tech?
I am not going to buy it if it is reporting eveything I do
A quick look at the benchmarks will reveal that this card is about twice as fast as the current 5950. Priced at $400, the 6800 should drive down the price of the 5950 cards to a sub-$200 level. This is excellent news for gamers!
The results speak for themselves, the GeForce 6800 Ultra is the new king of the hill, beating ATI's fastest by over 100% in almost every benchmark.
i wonder how long it will take Ati to release a press release about an upcoming card. They have already talked about enabling pipelines in previous video cards.
But where do I put this thing? That's not a heatsink, that's the kitchen sink!
ATI's next-gen offering is to be launched about the same time as nVidia's GeForce 6800, and we haven't seen reviews from it yet.
I'd wait until the Radeon X800 benchmarks are out before crowning a new king. For all we know ATI's new offering will beat the new GeForce.
When ATI was better, nvidia said "Don't look at benchmark scores", oh, accusing benchmark developers of being bias torwardxs ati and so on.. how the tone has changed now.. ;)
that just because ATI caught them with their pants down, that kind of attitude makes me not want an nvidia chip even if it's much faster!
I heard from a confidental source that the next NVidia card was going to be called the Super GEForce 95050++ Hyper-titanium Happy Extreme-platinum Ultra MK-II Enhanced V2.2 Omicron version. Keep your eyes open.
Will Doom 3 run faster than 10 fps on it?
nVidia mine as well get into the case and CPU fan/heatsink business! Look at that thing!
Hell, with something that big they should just build freezer around the card.
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
Especially if you want to play Far Cry with pixel shader 2.0.
all of the latest DirectX 9.0 game titles
;)
what, both of them?
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'm here all week. Available for weddings, bahmitzvahs and light-hearted funerals.
i don't do sigs. oops.
... but what am I going to have to PAY for this beautiful monster?
It's big (2 slots), it probably runs VERY VERY hot, takes two power connectors... but it seems to trump EVERYTHING else so far, and not by small amounts!
Reviews! not Revews. (My typo. Sorry)
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I think the submitter must be something of an Nvidia fan. :) Most people wouldn't ridiculously compare a new next-gen card to today's months-old cards, not even mentioning that ATI has a new one due out in weeks. But he sure did mention an over 100% speed increase over those old cards, didn't he?
Personally I don't get the fanboy rivalries--I have a Radeon in my laptop and a Geforce in my desktop, and that's just what I happened to buy at the time, no fanboy adherism going on.
I'm all set. I have an Antec TrueControl 550 Watt PSU.
Listen to my experimental-industrial-techno!
here.
those benchmarks don't look too impressive to me, and the hugeass heatsink/fan combo is still there! not to mention that it requires *two* molexes?
Nvidia is really starting to fall behind...
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
I'm curious as to whether or not this means there will be a new low-end NVIDIA card. Yeah, the 6800 is nice, but I'm more interested in the cards that I can actually afford.
The hottest debate in the gaming world...
Honestly I have owned both nVidia cards and ATi cards, I am currently using an Ati 9600XT, upgraded from a GeForce 2 Ti, and I'm not that impressed with the ATi cards.
I'm glad nVidia came out with something newer and better and hopefully this new card won't have all that confusion over flip chip versions and whatnot like the 5700 did.
nVidia's driver support is better too. This new card should also be PCX or soon will be.
I can imagine this card coming out with a nearly 500 to 600 dollar price tag to start...
You know you are cool when your video card costs more then most entry level PCs, right?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Ahh! When did Tom's do away with the Q3 benchmarks?
It's still the only game that can push the hardware to its limits reliably. All those other games tend to have bottlenecks that are algorithm/code related rather than hardware related (like the scripting engine in UT).
Too bad, I found Quake3 to be one of the most accurate because it ran at such a low level and could pretty push the hardware. It's not like those other games are using the hardware shaders yet anyway (or are they?).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
There is another review up at hexus.net. It looks good, but takes a pretty good performance nose dive with certain features enabled, and the 9800XT beat it in some cases. And like some others have said, 2 molex connectors for power... don't they think its getting a bit stupid now!
in other news ID Software announce that DoomIII will
run at 30@fps on the new Nvidia 6800
Strong points of new Nvidia card:
:)
-Obscene performance boosts, on a scale I've never seen before
-fancy new effects
-massively improved image quality
-heatsink fan still pretty quiet
-basically free 4xFSAA and 8x ANISO
Weaker points of new Nvidia card:
-Expensive
-it seems that shader precision is still not as pretty as ATI's, though that may be fixed by game patches
-takes up 2 slots with the tall heatsink
-480W recommended PSU
-video processing engine isn't implemented in software yet
I don't really object to the power requirements. This thing is more complicated, bigger, and has more transistors than a P4 Extreme Edition. It consumes about 110W, of which 2/3 is the GPU die's power draw. It is certainly NOT unreasonable to require a big power supply with this thing. It seems as though ATI's solution will have a power supply recommendation as well. Simply put, if you're gonna improve performance by such a margin by means other than smaller manufacturing, you're going to increase power consumption. Get over it.
This thing isn't meant for SFF PCs or laptops, though I'm sure the architecture will be ported to a laptop chip eventually. As for the 2-slot size, well...It consumes 110W! To put this in perspective, it consumes more than any non-overclocked desktop CPU today! Think of how big your Athlon64/P4EE heatsink/fan is, then you'll realise that 2 slots aren't really that big of a problem.
My own personal reason for wanting this thing: It can play any current game at 1600x1200 with 4XFSAA and 8x anistropic filtering at a good framerate, and is the only card that can claim to do this right now
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
...so it's even sillier that the submitter would say that. But, hey, it's healthy fanboyism I guess.
Here's what the Register says:
ATI will ship its much-anticipated R420 chip later this month as the Radeon X800 Pro. The part's 26 April debut will be followed a month later by the Radeon X800 XT on 31 May.
So claims Anandtech, citing unnamed vendor sources and a glance at ATI's roadmap.
If the date is accurate, it puts ATI just 13 days behind Nvidia's NV40 launch on 13 April. NV40 will surface as the GeForce 6800 and is likely to form the basis for other series 6000 GeForce parts. Note the lack of the 'FX' branding - Nvidia has dropped it, Anandtech claims.
The X800 Pro will ship with 256MB of GDDR 3 graphics RAM across a 256-bit memory bus, but a revised version with 512MB of memory is expected later this year. The report also forecasts the arrival of an X800 SE, which supports 128MB of vanilla DDR SDRAM.
The R420 is an AGP 8x part - the native PCI Express version, the R423, will launch on 14 June, the report claims. It too will be offered as the Radeon X800. Both versions are expected to clock at around 500MHz with 1GHz memory clock frequencies. They feature eight-stage pipelines with six vertex shaders.
Expect to see Radeon X600 and X300 products in due course, we're told, as the RV380 and RV370 parts come on stream. These represent ATI's first 110nm parts.
Meanwhile, ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP is due for an update, apparently, in a few months' time. The revision, codenamed 'RS350', will support Intel's LGA775 CPU interface.
Further down the line, late in Q3, ATI will offer three new Pentium 4 chipsets, currently dubbed the RS400, RC400 and RU400. The first provides PCI Express graphics and non-graphics add-in card buses, along with a dual-channel memory controller. The other two will offer single-channel memory support, while the latter will not support external graphics cards.
AMD isn't being left out, courtesy of RS480 and RX480 chipsets, the first with integrated graphics the second without it. ®
Here's a little more info from Rage3d:
Only weeks before the release, ATI Technologies decided to boost performance of its next-generation code-named R420 processor by increasing the number of pixel pipelines inside the chip. Industry source told X-bit labs that the story is not about redesign, but about enabling "big guns" that were "hidden" inside the chip from the very beginning.
ATI Technologies' chip known as R420 will be called RADEON X800 PRO and is likely to be launched on the 26th of April, 2004. Higher-speed flavour of the R420 - the RADEON X800 XT - is expected to debut on the 31st of May, 2004, if the assumptions posted earlier this week are correct. PCI Express x16 solution powered by the R423 architecture will see the light of the day on the 14th of June. ATI on Tuesday began marketing campaign on its web-site to support the launch of the new graphics architecture.
What with the license changes for XFree86, the various new X implementations, changing distros, etc. has NVidia come out and said which one their drivers will work with?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
From the article:
"What is also noteworthy is the fact that the performance of the Radeon 9800 XT drops at higher resolutions whereas that of the GeForce 6800 Ultra stays at about the same level."
Wouldn't that mean that the limiting factor for fps is NOT the card but some other thing (processor, memory bandwidth) ?
I mean i know they used this hardaware for the test:
"The system we used consists of a Pentium 4 3.2GHz EE processor, EpoX? 4PCA3+ i875P chipset motherboard, 1GB of Crucial DDR400 memory and two Western Digital WD740GD Raptors in raid0"
Which is no POS sistem, but still, they should have done some test with the processor and memory overclocked to check if there were really other HW limitations in the Scores.
The card performances sound promising, however comparing a next gen card with it's competitors out-dated models isn't too significative. I've always prefered Nvidia cards for their respectable performances and their annoyances-free install under linux, but they announced not so long ago that their first PCI Express cards would use a PCI Express to AGP bridge and this is where i think Nvidia is going to shoot themselves in the foot and come tumbling down that hill.
ATI OTHO will be using a native PCI Express solution for their RV423 chipset, the pci express version of the RV420. Until we see ATI's X800 card and also both companies' PCI Express solutions perform, no one owns that hill. An early fanatical reaction towards any graphic card at this point is a foolish reaction and an uneducated one IMHO.
We got caught cheating again, and yet again we are very far behind ATI!
I wish that people that pretend to be computer experts would do the teeniest bit of research.
How about this gem: First introduced in 1995, Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface (API) was designed to make life easier for developers by providing a standard platform for Windows-based PCs. Before the arrival of DirectX, developers had to program their software titles to take advantage of features found in individual hardware components. With the wealth of devices on the market, this could become a tedious, time-consuming process.
I'm glad he cleared that up for us. Because this little known company called SGI didn't develop OpenGL back in 1992. In fact, were it not for MS, we would still be in the computer graphics dark ages.
I'm not trying to troll here. I am just pissed that people pretend to be experts when they don't have a clues what they are talking about.
ATI is supposed to announce the 420 soon. They've had some time to redesign too. I switched to ATI in the last round of upgrades and was very happy. I'll need a good reason to switch back. So far I have good reason but ATI could take it away with a decent new product.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
um, yeah.
Yeah, but when the BitBoys finish their Glaze3D vidcard, it'll blow away both nVidia and ATI in DNF.
When you're running 480 FUCKING WATTS through your circuitry, you can do anything, boy.
Let's get this out of the way:
-"Who needs this? My Voodoo 3 runs Q3A just fine!"
-"Does it have Linux support?"
-"nVidia pwnz ATi!!11one!111~"
Now that that's over with...
I agree with a lot of the comments here: I really dislike nVidia's tendancy towards massive, bulky, noisy, power-hog GPUs. And while the 6800's performance is nothing short of jaw-dropping, I'll bet ATi's solution will be far more eloquent, smaller, with lower power requirements and less noise.
Either way, though, this is good for consumers -- it'll be nice to have some actual competition in the GPU arena again.
which is "almost over 100% faster".
Where there is a will, there is a way!
There's a very limited number of gamers that will buy this card - you literally have to build a whole new PC around it considering the power requirements and the slot hoggishness. I wont be buying one. My 9500 Pro Oc'ed to 300/300 with a 3000+ AMD *STILL* plays anything without problems ( at least any I can see )
Even if ATi does come out with a card that beats it, I wont be buying one of those either. Gaming is only *part* of what I use computers for. These days at age 40 I cant compete with the twitchy youngsters anyways :D
I care a lot more these days about how well my data is protected and how good the whole experience is, not how many fps I get in some game.
Perhaps when these cards come out, i'll finally be able to afford a 9800XT (or similar Nvidia card - i'm an ATi guy).
After reading Anand's article, I'm left thinking that while nice, these benchmarks aren't super-impressive.
I mean, they're good, but I get the feeling that a bunch of marketing weasels at ATI are breathing a big sigh of relief right about now.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
This would be very sweet for PVR crowd. Just take a future low-cost NV4x card and plug it into a cheap, small system. You should have more than enough power to encode TV broadcasts into MPEG4 format in real-time.
Actually they'll need all that horsepower for running Longhorn.
Which actually brings me to a good question: Graphics cards have been improving in fast-3d-rendering performance, but are often not that great at crisp 2d rendering (compare an NVidia card to a Matrox and see what I mean).
How well does this one do at 2d rendering? I do play 3d games a lot but that doesn't mean I want my web-browsing and other non-3d activities to be sub-par
Only weeks before the release, ATI Technologies decided to boost performance of its next-generation code-named R420 processor by increasing the number of pixel pipelines inside the chip. Industry source told X-bit labs that the story is not about redesign, but about enabling "big guns" that were "hidden" inside the chip from the very beginning.
Yes, this was after the leaked information of the N40 having 16 pipes. It's called an "Oh sh*t!" response.
Check out the horizontal stabilizer on this F-15C, specifically the left stabilizer, just beneath the "LN" markings on the tail. GeForce 6800 Ultra looks much better than 5950 Ultra here, although in this case we've got to give the AA edge to ATI. The RADEON 9800 XT does a better job of removing the jaggies, and doesn't have the weird swirly marks found on the tail of the F-15C on both NVIDIA cards.
With the new ATI card coming out in a few weeks that will match and/or better the specs of this vacuum cleaner of a card, why bother?
Remember, ATI started this with the 9700 with the power connectors. I didn't hear any whining then about the extra power.
Stop being so biased.
Power supply power ratings are what they are capable of, not how much they draw if plugged in.
And the average refigerater uses more than 150 watts a day.
Try using google next time to inform yourself beforehand rather than posting nonsense.
Dear Sir,
We at Mastercard do not appreciate that you are using our wonderful ad lines to mock our business. We are aware that we do apply massive charges, but to bring that to the forefront is immature and irresponsible.
Please have your lawyers contact us so we may discuss a settlement which you can pay directly to us at your earliest convenience.
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Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Yet this vidcard still won't be able to run Duke Nukem Forever!
What does Bill Gates have to do with a video card article? Let's not get predictable here.
So does nvidia recommend any power supply brands to be used with this card? I would think they would almost have to recommend something as the power usage requirements might scare a lot of people away from buying the card just because they don't think (or know) if the one they have will work.
While this is impressive, I expect the architecture to hit a high point when they release a version based off 90nm processing and a NATIVE PCI-Express connection. None of this custom bridge crap. The drivers will also be more mature by then and any unforseen performance bottlenecks should be alleviated.
Neither ATi nor Nvidia is being conservative on power or heat with their high end graphics cards. Arguing over this is point is moot because you're simply not going to get performance any other way. The solution, if you really want it, is to have less powerful processors with less transistors. I'm not opposed to that since I use a 100% fanless desktop (external power supply, too), but that's just me.
No.
If you're playing some suspenseful, quiet game where you're listening for enemy footsteps in the hallway beside you, I wouldn't want to hear "VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR", would you?
Are the drivers compatible with the orginal Theif?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!!!
Maybe this'll force the price of all the other cards in the market down low enough to where I can soup up my computer on the cheap. Those 5900's are looking pretty nice right about now...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Did Toms Hardware test what happens when the fan fails? I bet it bursts into flames like the first Athlons did. AMD learned well, but nVidia seem to be following the Intel Presshot philosophy.
Remember when ATI was kicking NVidia's butt last year, and NVidia kept telling everyone not to rely on benchmark scores because they're biased?
Wonder how long it will be before they advertise these benchmark scores...
I now fully expect to have to build my next PC around a video card, with the rest of the hardware being peripheral to the VPU and its board/heatsink.
Crazy.
I bet in a few generations more, home PCs will have fans so big, you'll be able to drive them around the house and mow the lawn, too!
"almost" means "many of, but not all."
Congratulations on finding the games section where it didn't womp the best ATI card until you get into the higher resolution ranges.
However, you'll notice on the preceeding pages, "over 100% better" was a very common occurance in areas like shaders and lighting and whatnot.
Pointing out areas where the GeForce doesn't beat the ATI at 100% does exactly nothing to diminish the point of the article submitter.
This is why he said "almost every" and not "all."
Ben
Work Safe Porn
so I'd much rather get an extra CPU. If I were to game 8 hrs a day, then it might be different. Even then, ATI or the older NV3 is just fine. I still get more RAM before throwing down more money for better graphics.
When in doubt, mod +1 funny and pray
You are making us 30 year olds look old and bitter. Or maybe it's just you.
btw your favorite favorite turn based strategy game is?
"and these are just the bare essentials that only even begin to describe the chip. [an error occurred while processing this directive]".
@sshatrack
Is slashdot trying to water down the /. effect, is there enough of us to take out all 4 sites from one article?
Jonathanjk.com
You obviously have never played a first person shooter getting at 30 and then again at 70-80 or so have you? There is a HUGE difference. The framerates are also averages. Would you rather have an average of 30 (which means you could dip down into the teens at times) or an average of 100 (that never dips lower than 40 or so?) Check google or search slashdot and you'll find articles explaining all about human abilities and the truth and myth about framerates.
Because a GPU is much more specialized to perform certain operations and a CPU is not.
GeForce 6800 Ultra is the new king of the hill, beating ATI's fastest by over 100% in almost every benchmark.
That would mean the 6800 doubled the 9800's performance in each benchmark... Not true...
For UT2004, it only beat it by 20fps on average. And that's still in the 80+fps range.
Sure it doubled some benchmark ratings here and there, but that's not nearly "almost every benchmark." Doesn't anyone moderate how people post the story?
...why didn't they release the real Ultra?
The "Ultra" released today is looking like it's really the normal 6800 from it's device ID, clockspeeds, and a few other oddities.
It's a great card, no doubt about it, but I'm really curious why they decided to hold back or if they just didn't have any choice.
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
When was the last time you played a videogame? Go turn the frequency on your monitor as low as it can go play GTA:Vice City which limits the frame rate to 30 fps and then go play unreal at 100, you will notice things seem clearer moving fast in unreal than vice city. Just because you can only see about 30 fps doesnt mean that the human eye is like a camera, we see things very asychronously and our brains arent totally like a clocked GPU. And anyone who used to have an n64 should know that playing Goldeneye when the frame rate in multiplayer lurched from 60 to 30 everything got shitty. More fps = clarity
"It seems as though ATI's solution will have a power supply recommendation as well. Simply put, if you're gonna improve performance by such a margin by means other than smaller manufacturing, you're going to increase power consumption. Get over it."
Ummm...no. "get over it" in the commercial market is defined as people not buying your product.
If the customer wants "Get over it" to be defined as elegent solutions, instead of brute force, then that's the way it will be defined. No if's, and's, or but's.
3DFX didn't learn, and apparently Nvidia hasn't either. So continue to excuse the lazy way out, you'll get what you deserve. The rest of us will have vidio cards that don't resemble vacuum cleaners, and keep us from going deaf.
I see a lot of posts on the fact that the 6800 Ultra requires a 480W power supply. However, if you read Tech Report's review, you'll notice that the card's actual power consumption isn't much more than the previous generation of cards. In fact, its idle power consumption is actually lower than the 9800 XT.
...is getting 500fps in Quake representative of the card in any actual operation? It's like comparing a jumbojet and an F-16 with no load, when you want to do passenger traffic (read: textures, shading, antialiasing, anisotropic filtering).
That the F-16 would be better at everything with no load doesn't matter. Perhaps the games are limiting it. So what? If you're not going to play those games, what are you going to do with it? Play Quake 3? If you're waiting for future games to see what it "really" can do, just wait. There'll be a new and better card by then.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The top-of-the-line card is always cool to drool over, and a few people with too much money will undoubtedly run out and buy this monster. However the mid-range and budget derivatives are generally much more interesting. (compare the number of GF5600/RA9600 cards sold to the number of GF5950/RA9800 sold)
They made this haul ass by doubling the number of pipes, but the first thing they are going to do when they put out a mid-range card is to halve, or quarter the number of pipes. How much has been done to refine this card, and how much impact will the new design have for those of us with $150 to spend on a video card?
careful...don't fall off your horse
I was one of the lucky 250 people that got to be at the GeForce 6800 release in San Francisco. They held a LAN party of 250 people, including some tournaments of UT2k4 and BF:Vietnam. I made the Quarterfinals (top 8) of the UT2k4 and got to actually play on the new video card. All I can say is - wow. I own a 9800 XT so I'm not too shabby, but I took this card to the next level - the ability this card has is just unthinkable in a lot of ways if you're a graphic programmer like me.
-Shader 3.0 Compatible (Farcry had a demo at the show of a patch they have coming out that will upgrade the game to Shader 3.0. It's by far the biggest improve in a game I've ever seen as I actually got to play it).
-14983 3DMARK SCORE! If you know anything about 3dmark, you'd scream in joy at that one.
-Other game companies were there like Everquest2, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and of course, the new nvidia chick Nula with per-pixel lighted hair that has 2 million vectors rendered in real time...
All I have to say is wow.
(But wait for PCI express before you buy one)
Master of Orion 1 and 2 (3 sucks!!!) Been playing 1 mostly recently.. Actually I'm 23, so I'm making alot more people look old and bitter... Sorry...
Forgive me for not being on the inside of the video card circle here.. but they've announced it an have reference boards available.
How long do these things usually take before an actual consumer-purchasable card (retail? direct?) is available?
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
That's my question. I doubt the answer will ever be positive, so I am not interested.
There you are, staring at me again.
Free video card with purchase of heatsink!
This is getting rediculous. I predict the next-gen video cards will come in its own self-contained box compelete with power supply and AC cord. It will be the size of an Xbox and sound like a jet engine. You will be able to heat a small home with it which will be usefull since it will draw so much power you wont be able turn on anything else.
Using the gpu as a second processor would definatly be awsome, but your comment about 100fps being a waste is silly.
Computer generated frames per second is a completely different thing than film frames per second. Most of your dvds are 23.9 frames per second and you can view even the biggest action scenes with no issues.
Try playing even quake2 multiplayer at 30fps and you will get a headache. It might be okay single player because there is much less action going on. But once you have 50-100 entities flying around think players blasting each other with various weapons that have visible paths, each visible bullet is an entity that needs its projectile path calculated and rendered, thats alot of work if have a card that can only draw at 30fps.
A video card only capabable of drawing at 30fps is limited to CALCULATING and rendering 30 frames every second with a given complexity. If you add more entities and exceed that complexity, you can't calculate 30fps anymore and movements won't be calculated and displayed quickly enough to gaurentee smooth gameplay.
The more fps you can calculate and render in a second the more complex of a scene you can render in real time. In unreal tournament 2003, if you have a card that can do 40fps when your in a game by yourself standing still and then you hop on a 30 player server, you will not have smooth gameplay, because 40fps just isn't good enough, because your framerate will drop considerably when the complexity increases.
Also, 30fps != 30hz, 60fps != 60hz, and lastly, 100fps != 100hz. The monitor refresh rate has absolutly nothing to do with the performance of your video card. It may affect how you see the results of your video card though.
I also concur with your guess as to what the target market is, the main target market is gamers who spend their life playing first person shooters who want the best and fastest gameplay. Other markets obviously include 3d modelers like you mentioned and many others.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
The point is you DON'T NEED to render at 70 fps to look good.. Why don't you focus on getting a MINIMUM of 30? I mean it shouldn't be too hard to drop detail on fast moving sections if the hardware doesn't keep up, I highly doubt the player is really going to notice a detail drop when ACTUALLY running through the game and Killing stuff. When they slow down more detail makes sense. Instead the games just demand fast hardware to run and the gamers brag about how "fast" their hardware is, instead of saying yeah I can play the game. That's good enough. Yes pretty games look nice, but there should be more to the game then pretty graphics. And for what it's worth I played First person shooters till DoomII / Descent II. Then I gave them up as a waste of time... After all they really are all the same....
Last time I played a video Game? Yesterday.. Master of Orion I (a real video game!) Last time I played a First Person Shooter? about 2 weeks ago. First Person Shooter played? Descent II. Difference between older First Person Shooters and new ones? Pretty Graphics... Sufficent to drop $$$ on game? NOPE! Reason your games look better at 100? You used the monitor/LCD/your eye to blur fast moving things. Simple solution: Decrease your detail level or Resolution. Effect is the same...
Let's see.
You call Doom3 vaporware.
You make inacurate statements about the perceptive capabilities of the human eye and frame rates.
You state that a cheap card is fine enough for what you do, as if that's all that matters to everyone else.
You insinuate that non-strategy games are for the less intelligent and that you're somehow better than Action/FPS game players because you play turn based strategy games.
You again imply that what matters to you is what should matter most to everyone else.
So just how many people were you looking to piss off and have jump down your throat?
For a lot of people computer hardware is a hobbyist kind of thing. Like the guy who works on his car's engine in his spare time and spares no expense on keeping it top of the line even though he may never need the extra power he labors over. It's just that - a hobby. So why don't you piss off.
http://www.coaleducation.org/Ky_Coal_Facts/electri city/average_cost.htm
.07 = $91.98 to run 150 Watts all year 24/7.
a rticle439 755.eceU SD&c= 0
The power ratings are based on an hour. ie 150 watt rating is 150 watts used in an hour. 150 * 24 = 3600 watts a day * 365 = 131400 watts a year. divide by 1000(1 kilowatt) = 1314 kilowatts. * kilowatts per hour rate(in my case 7 cents a kilowatt) = 1314 *
As for Sweden:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/
http://finance.yahoo.com/m5?a=1&s=SEK&t=
your kilowatt per hour converts to... 7 cents per kwh. I think I'll stay put.
You're a towel.
Which sites are for Nvidia fanboys, ATI fanboys, and which sites are unbiased?
Hardcore gamers don't want to decrease detail to gain speed, they want a faster video card that can display the detail they want at the framerate they want.
The reason games look better at an average fps of 100 is that they can actually fully calculate and display the scene as it was ment to look and can handle the complexities of the scene while keeping the framerate at an average of 100fps instead of periodicly dropping below 30 and making the game run like shit.
Games are getting more and more complex. In order to combat increasing complexity you need a video card that can handle the complexity.
I would advise you to stop trolling about not needing new games, not needing 100fps, and not needing new video cards before you get schooled by someone who is way more advanced than I am in graphics.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
The 6800 ultra appears, at least in the benchmarks I read (hardocp and hardwareanalysis) to beat out a radeon 9800xt by 25-50%. :)
I doubt ATI would put out a next-gen card that couldn't beat their own current top of the line card by at least 50%..
So let's wait until their cards are revealed, I for one don't think nVIDIA can expect to be performance king for long
Or the Rage XL AGP card? Or a Matrox?
You act like don't have low cost, low power options for non-gaming use.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Agreed.. If your GPU only gets 30 fps standing still with no action on the screen your screwed.. But the important thing here is you should never drop below 30fps (say 60fps for a typical LCD).. Having 100 fps at maximum complexity is wasteful. And insisting on having your detail/resolution set to high and complaining the game is slow is silly too.. Do you need pretty graphics to kill people? not really so shouldn't games dynamically decrease detail to unsure playable game conditions (>30hz, preferably >=60hz)... And actually your wrong.. A monitor that refreshes at 60hz can not show frames that change faster then 60 times per a second. So if your "frame rate" is 100fps your skipping [on average] 40 frames on the display. Thus your EYE has no chance to see those frames. Therefore there was no reason to RENDER those frames. Should have just skipped them.... Thus, with a properly designed GPU and Game, you didn't need as fast of a GPU.. [Granted gamers typically don't like LCD's!) I guess for the fanatic gamer they have a CRT that may sync at 120hz, so it MAY benefit them to have 100 fps...
Too bad NVIDIA needs a freekin big fan in order to beat ATI.
I could find that the ATI XT card had 256 MB of RAM, could anyone find out how much the NVIDIA 6800 has?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Film doesn't display 30 (or 24, or whatever) frames per second; it displays frames of 1/30th of a second, or 1/24th of a second, or whatever.
BIG difference from rendering, which displays a frame as an instant snapshot in time.
In other words, if you're filming a man running, each frame will show that man for 1/30th or 1/24th or whatever of a second; you get motion blur and what not.
Rendering a frame of a man running, however, gives you a still image of a man in a ridiculous pose.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Neat, but at this point I think I'm going to wait for PCI-E to become common on motherboards before I upgrade. Bandwidth is starting to be an issue with just regular PCI, I'd prefer to get something that isn't going to be just a throw away item in a few short months.
So long as you have a quality graphics card, it really doesn't matter who's chipset is powering it. For example, even though NVidia has a poor rep, there are still high quality cards out there.
So the question becomes... Why don't the 3D designers etc, implement a motion blur. It should actually make things easier to render since by definition there isn't as much detail... I guess you'd need to calculate the direction of the blur, and such, but you don't need the full 3d render to get a pretty good blur....
"I highly doubt the player is really going to notice a detail drop when ACTUALLY running through the game and Killing stuff."
Uhhh, its very easy to notice, but you never even bother to try becuase you're still playing Descent 2. Granted, Descent 2 was a great game and I would love to see a modern version of Descent.
Basically your arguement is that all the eye candy should just be dropped to bare blocky polygons because you don't like the current games? Your post has nothing to do with the technology of frame rates and refresh rates but everything to do with your opinion on what makes a good game. Kind of off topic for a thread about a new video card don't you think? Bordering on flame bait I would say.
Agreed I am biased.. But see my other posts abouts more useful ways to use the technology... Summary: Implement Motion blur (instead of letting the monitor/eye do it for you) Focus on a minimum frame rate (Drop frames or detail only as a last resort!!) Never waste GPU time rendering frames above the minimum in your display chain: (Monitor Refresh rate, Human Eye's ability to see, etc)
Uhm, yeah...
You see, some people like playing games on their computer. Games that require hardware 3-D acceleration.
If you're concerned about 2-D graphics, go get a card that's tailored to your needs. If you think faster video cards are pointless, then don't click "Read More". Don't post flamebait comments to a story about a card obviously intended for gamers.
Stick to nethack.
Why do you play computer games at all then? Do you need a computer to plot galactic conquest? Why don't you just sell your computer and use a pen and paper or just your imagination?
Oh and do some research...just a quick google search on "how many frames per second can an eye see" produced many links. Here is just one:
http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html
You should go ahead and implement a motion blur then. If you can't, then go hunker down and quit complaining about the latest and greatest technology not being needed because your favorite game is descent 2.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
A $600 card that requires a 480 watt power supply? Can you say "overkill"?
Something in that will have to be redesigned before people will consider buying it.
While some hardcore gamers wouldn't mind throwing that kinda cash at a vid card right now, most people won't. Of course, these cards are intended for general consumers once they get about a year old or in the $100-$299 price range, but the 480 watt power supply is like $20 extra per month on your electric bill if you're using it a lot!
That'll be quite a shocker when people figure out that their brand new video card is spiking their elec. bill.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
These kinds of comments are a little silly. Sure a 100 fps score in Q3A or whatever is not useful. It's a BENCHMARK though - a number that indicates performance. This means that in something that is twice as complex as the benchmark, you'll get 50 fps. Three times as complex and you'll get 33 fps. If your card can't do 100 fps in Q3A, you're not going to be able to play the higher detail games at any decent speed.
A cheap ass $60 video card works fine for 90% of what I do. The only time I needed anything fancy was for 3-d modeling of my house.... Of course I play games that actually make you think... Turn Based Strategy all the way man....
Then don't buy a more expensive card. I didn't either... This is called choice and the new card is called progress of hardware...
necessitates rendering multiple in-between frames per output frame.
How many? Oh about 5 is usually enough information pump an algorithm with what can't be determined by averaging.
And then you need to render at 150 FPS, and, OH WAIT. There you go, you still need that fast video card.
Why not let the eyes do the motion blur like real life? Just updating the screen as fast as possible seems to be the simplest policy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
They tried. 3dFX bet the farm on their t-buffer hardware, pointing out that 30 frames-per-second, rendered to include motion blur and what not, would provide better (or, more-film-like, which is the same thing to most people) image quality than rendering 100 static frames per second would.
The Consumer Public, however, voted with their wallets, and opted for raw frame rate, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And MS itself competes. Game on the PC or the X-box, the consumer chooses! Windows XP Home, Windows XP professional. What more could you want?
This troll brough to you buy a linux lover
Oh and to remain on topic. WOW that is ONE BIG FAN. Nice but ehm, don't high class boards with 64 bit pci have the first PCI slot setup to operate at a higher speed then the other slots? My opteron board certainly does.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The MSRP is $499us for the 6800 Ultra.
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
Ahh well this is nice to see - a new generation of graphics card that will now allow me to play practically any of my games at up to 1600x1200 without gameplay-affecting slowdown. So far, so good.
;)
I am genuinely happy that Nvidia have released a product that can perform 'significantly' better than their currently available flagship card. As ATi are going to retaliate with their own card, this can only be a good thing and I hope they do actually keep this large performance jump up for the next generation(s).
One thing to note in some benchmarks which I've seen so far, are that some of the results give the maximum framerate of a game. I'd be more happy reading either an average or Minimum framerate achievable, as in a frenetic multiplayer game you are going to be usually rendering a lot more stuff than in a single player. The minimum framerate is what I'll be watching out for as that is where the most frustration will come from - nothing quite so annoying as experiencing slowdown when something critical happens, or if you are in the middle of a hellishly large battle (which happens quite a bit in UT2004 Onslaught, for example).
Unfortunately I won't be able to use this card in my Shuttle. The card is too big and too power-hungry. As someone else says, noise isn't exactly a problem as you would generally get this card to play fancy loud games on anyway.
And recommending a 480w power supply? Hmm. Oh well, wish I was a hardware site journalist under NDA, I'd have had time to buy some shares in Enermax
Your right, you should always compare the current nVidia chip to the theoretical non existent ATI chip that your brothers friends cousin heard about. Only then can you have an unbiased comparison.
The X800 is due out in a couple of weeks, moron! Jeesh.
Having 100fps at maximum complexity will give you some piece of mind that when someone comes running at you with a chainsaw your graphics card won't suddenly drop to 10fps. Its more likely to drop to 50-70fps instead.
Yes you do need pretty graphics to kill people. If you are shooting at a guy that is across a field and your in 640x480 with ultra minimum detail, all you will see is a block if your lucky, a little speck that looks like a rock if you are unlucky.
Proceed to bump the resolution up to 1280x1024 with max details and all of a suddon you will notice you can make out a figure across the field, you can probably even see where his head (or other vulnerable spot) is. You can take aim much easier than if you were saving fps and going to the rock bottom low of detail.
You are right about not being able to actually see more than 60fps on a 60hz monitor but you are still wrong in saying there is no reason to render the extra frames.
In your previous post it seemed you were claiming that 60hz is the exact same as 60fps generated by the video card. It isn't. Even though your eye isn't seeing those extra frames not being displayed, the likliness of a missed frame is very low if your videocard framerate is higher than your monitor refresh rate.
For example if your video card is putting out 60fps and your monitor is running at 60hz, there is a high liklihood that somewhere along the line your video card will drop below 60fps, and you will be displaying the same frame in more than one monitor refresh cycle, now THAT is wasteful.
Generating too many frames per second will make for smoother gameplay, generating not enough, well, you should know what happens.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
How does the X800 being released by the end of the month magically become "theoretical non existent ATI chip that your brothers friends cousin heard about?"
The depths some Nvidia fanboys will go amazes even me...the fanboyism post was right. Have fun with your inferior anti-aliasing.
I'm sorry, but nobody's going to buy this card. If the physical requirements weren't off-putting enough, the underwhelming performance should be.
The best buy right now is the $220 ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Performance is within 10% of the $400 ATI Radeon 9800 XT (which was never really good value for money).
A brand new $600 NVIDIA card that only has 1.5 times the performance of a $200 card is not going to sell very well.
It would take more processing power to figure out what detail level to drop to, and what detail to raise to than to actually just draw the frame at the set detail level.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
That's just stupid. He's talking about Windows drivers. You know, Windows, the OS that still has over ninety percent market share?
Slashdot may be a generally pro-Linux community, but you still have to assume someone's talking about Windows, rather than unsupported drivers tossed out for the Linux crowd to complain about.
What you claim he said:
"All he said was that Microsoft provided a platform for Windows."
What he said:
"Before the arrival of DirectX, developers had to program their software titles to take advantage of features found in individual hardware components."
He didn't just say that Microsoft provided a platform for Windows, he said that before Microsoft provided their platform, developers had to write directly to the graphics drivers. This is untrue: although some programmers did write directly to hardware-specific interfaces like 3dfx's glide, they didn't have to. The availability of OpenGL for Windows predates DirectX, and the availability of OpenGL in general (remember, he said "developers", not "Windows developers") predates DirectX by years.
For a quick reference, check out this Byte article, which discusses both the already existing OpenGL, "available on Unix, Windows NT and 95, and the Mac", and the soon-to-be-released Direct3D, "scheduled to ship in the second quarter".
1. The power consumptions of the last generation nvidia and ati cards are indeed very similar. Please don't say ATI's cards consume less power
:(
Comparison 1
Comparison 2
2. The ATI Radeon X800s will require two power rails also. So stop dreaming about a "power efficient" part and buy a new PSU
ATI needs extra power too
That said, I'm no fanboy of nVidia or ATI though. The new GF 6800U is still occupying one extra PCI slot and blowing a whole lot of hot air inside the case. Imagine someone put another 100W+ Prescott next to it. I just feel uncomfortable for a GFX card to dissipate so much of heat right next to the CPU. But well... ATI is gonna do that too (except for the two-slot thing)
If there's any reason I'd look forward towards the X800s, I hope they won't require two slots - that is just inelegant. But based on the two molex connectors on the X800s, and the power consumption of their older parts, I won't hold any hope that ATI would "save power".
Essentially, he's saying "here in Sweden our refrigerators have a constant power usage. Haha."
Then you, the parent, missed that, and ran through the actual calculation for a refrigerator, and compared the electricity costs in the U.S. and Sweden. Pointless. It might have been worthwhile attached to the great-grandparent, but not where you put it.
With a scantily-clad eight-armed gold chrome robot female with a minotaur head in a fur miniskirt riding a rocket surfboard made of ice crystals on a rainbow out of the mouth of a volcano, followed by a swarm of mutant dragonflies with lasers instead of eyes, and ornate knives for wings.
There will be at least 50 stickers on the box, all proclaiming unintelligible things that make you slightly uneasy, like "GOLDEN SAMPLE," "Rotated-grid baby-inhaling anti-establishment engine," "RADIKAL(tm) Three-phase 220v 3D kiloamp power siphon," and "High-velocity pixel exploitation."
Ha ha, I see some moderator out there already spent 600 hundred bucks on a piece of crap video card that became outdated 6 months later, and is now taking it out on us lowly AC's. What a moran!
Ebert's review of Maxivision48.
Article with details on MaxiVision48 with some pictures of the difference it makes on page 11.
- Steve
I look at these benchmarks and find myself looking at my GeForce256 and wondering if I really need to upgrade. I mean, it has 32MB of DDR RAM, it's got a GPU (first one, by definition)and it works at all the resolutions (1024x768) I need it too...
You do realize that one of the benefits of going to digital cinema is the boost in framerate right?
Film at 24fps produces some odd effects if the camera pans too quickly or the action is too fast. Directors must constantly be aware of these restrictions and work around them.
So no, 24fps isn't good enough for movies either.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Looks like the astroturffing campaign has started.
At least one of them. I've read/skimmed most, and several of them mention how (a) it's actually significantly *cooler* than the 5950 Ultra (the previous high end card); (b) it's not very loud (not silent, but not disturbing either); (c) it only draws 10-30W more than aforementioned 5950 Ultra (this figure varied from review to review).
Though you are right, using it in an SFF wouldn't be a great idea. Can't have everything.
(And several of the sites mention how it worked flawlessly with a 400W PSU, and the 480W is just there to be certain it'll work, as several PSU makers have a tendency to overrate them.)
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
You are right, like music they should be free!
TechReport.com consistently has the most thorough, careful, credible, and insightful hardware reviews. Here's their excellent review of the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, which should have been included at the top with the others.
Direct3D is a subset of DirectX. Thus, D3D is DirectX but DirectX is not necessarily D3D.
Even OpenGL windows games use DirectX (think sound, control, etc.).
Blame MS for blurring the distinction.
What is this card's OpenGL performance?
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Trust me, after the Radeon 8500 fiasco (remember the first pre catalyst drivers? 6013 i think?) i never want to touch a brand new card again. I'd rather have solid drivers with a slightly older card.
Never, ever touch the bleeding edge. You know why they call it that? Because you will cry tears of blood when your game locks up every 30 minutes. Leave this crappy card to the experts.
With the "release now, deal with issues and patch later" mentality of the video card/gaming industry, i say stay the hell away. Good benchmarks or not.
PS : Don't consider 3DMark as a good source of information for a card that's running ForceWare, i'm sure there are still some "speed hacks" in there.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
They don't have an official driver for that combination yet, but you can get an unofficial one that will build on AMD64 with a 2.6 kernel here. I'm currently using it for a Tyan s2885 and it works quite nicely. The performance isn't what I'd expect, but hopefully that will be fixed with the upcoming Detonator/Forceware 6xxx.
RAMDACS are SOOO CRT. Its really bad (especially for Matrox) that even the cheapest taiwan card with a DVI-D out will look as good on my LCD than a 2000$ quatro xxx (ok, there are dual and quad link issues for ultrahigh-res, but that doesnt matter that much).
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Even though I have used the Radeon for most of my recent PC gaming life, I'm actually pretty glad this happened... even though it's going to require me to suck up my pride and tell my friends that nVidia finally got one over Ati. Haha.
idSoftware, as you may or may not know, is shipping an nVidia card (probably GeForce, most likely) in a bundle package with Doom 3, and just given that fact, makes me want a GeForce again.
Also, this could be essential to more games being ported to Linux, as nVidia has always been good with support and drivers for it. As I said earlier, I love ATI and my Radeon 9600 xt video card, but when it comes to running on Linux, they just... can't.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Why is everyone so fixated on the two slot requirement? This is a Gamer's video card. Anyone who buys a $499USD card is going to put it into a decent motherboard. How many decent motherboards don't have everything and the kitchen sink included on board.. LAN, USB2, SATA, audio, and often FW. If you are really hardcore, you'd want to put in an nice, modern (more efficient) audio card.. but I don't see too many gamers crying because they can only access 4 of their 5 pci slots.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Does anybody know if the build-in video processor (that can do mpeg 2 and mpeg 4 compression) is likely to be available in Linux? Toms Hardware mentions that recent Nvidia cards also has had a video processor. Are these supported in Linux?
DirectX has multiple components:
DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectInput, and DirectPlay.
OpenGL is only a graphics API - before DirectX, using a gamepad or such would require each game to have its own gamepad driver or some obscene higher level kludge. DirectSound and DirectInput are INFINITELY better than what came before... *shudder*
I just woke up from sleeping off yesterday's GeForce LAN where nVidia released the 6800, and I happened to win a 6800 Ultra. During the LAN was a presentation for the press and the gamers present at the LAN, and all I can say is you should have been there. If for nothing else, just to see the demos of the Unreal 3 and other engines. One of the most impressive demos was Nalu (the mermaid). All her hair is rendered in real time by the 6800.
How is this post, chock full of wrong claims, +5 Informative? Did the mods misread the option as MIS-informative? Or do they just assume any post made with a confident writing style just must be right?
See the other reply to understand why this is off by more than 10x (fridges average 60-70W, not 700-750W) and results in a very wrong (by ~2x) conclusion (a basic PC running a word processor will use about 60-70W, about the same as a decent modern fridge).
I know this will be modded down because, as we all know, thou shalt not question mods, but I hate to see misinformation moderated up to max score, where it's sure to be preserved as a nugget of incorrect knowledge in google's cache and the wayback machine for years to come.
everything in moderation
Sorry, can't get worked up over another 2D card.
Yes, 2D. For those of us who use Free Software everything from Nvidia is just another 2D card. Same for ATI's newest products.
At least we get good 3D support for one generation old ATI boards, which are very affordable by the time the Windows kids have ran off to chase the next shiny thing and the XFree/X.org folks have stabilized the drivers.
Democrat delenda est
I'm not sure why we've been seeing the 6800 with those huge double slot vacuum-cleaner sized heatsinks. I was at the Nvidia NV40 launch last night, and their Press Kit CD contained this picture, among others:
Picture of a single-slot GeForce 6800 Ultra
-Tom
snarf
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Man... I really don't know where you took those numbers from but let's just say I can guess (and your fingers probably smell now
I've been playing with a great little Amp-meter, and since it goes from 0 to 4500 W, I've really plugged it everywhere around the house.
So let me give some real numbers
AMD2400+ using a 400W Power supply, +6 IDE HD
running 100% CPU Load = 301W
running < 2% CPU Load = 266W
:
30 year old GE double door large format fridge
comppressor runnig = 330W
comppressor off = 0W (Duhh!)
Please note that I haven't checked the power consumption of a brand new equivalently sized fridge, but I'm guessing that with the improved insulation it's probably lower that my 330W, 30 year old fridge.
Murphy(c)
P.S. The PC power consumption is only for the PC, and not for CRTs, loudpseakers, toasters and whatnots.
Its about time. Gainward made a dual DVI GF4, but the only NV3x card offering that was (IIRC) a 5700 or 5800 Ultra -- the wierd one just before the 5900 series.
I looked at the benchmarks and did the math. Here are my results: 3DMark2003 = +97% +105% +119% (+107% avg) 3DMark2001 = +25% AquaMark3 = +31% Unreal 2003 Botmatch = +6% +6% +21% (11% avg) Unreal 2004 Botmatch = +10% +33% +65% (36% avg) Halo: Combat Evolved = +81% +119% +135% (112% avg) Far Cry = +29% +56% +62% (49% avg) If we average the benchmarks run at different resolutions, we see that only 2 out of 7 benchmarks were over 100% improvement. How is 2 out of 7 (28%) equivalent to "...beating ATI's fastest by over 100% in almost every benchmark."? Also, wasn't Halo first optimized and released for the Xbox (which has a GeForce 3MX GPU). Isn't it a little ironic that Halo is the ONLY game tested that sees any remarkable improvement. Don't get me wrong, this card is very impressive and deserves to be crowned the king (for now). We'll see in a couple weeks after ATI responds. This article is overhyped though.
... I mean, I have to restart every now and then for updates and stuff. Occasionally I pass out in the warm glow of automatic weapons fire...
BTW, Project IGI has fairly good graphics - even though it uses a Framerate cap of 30 FPS. The only reason that it still looks good at such a low framerate is because it is steady value that does not flail around various values between adjecent frames.
Have you played a semi-modern First Person shooter at 640x480 on a 19" monitor? At this configuration, you *WILL* notice staircase effects found on contrasting edges, even on a flyby animation running at a steady 75 FPS. When you increase the resolution, the staircasing is still present but is harder to notice.
Usually, I either choose a resolution that is relativly high for the game (which some games aren't designed to do - objects on the screen require squinting at 1-inch away), or max out any detail setting available (including FSAA). This is the only way to confortably look at a game without having my eyes get snagged on an "edge" instead of an enemy.
Decreasing detail levels from the default isn't any better for improving framerate. By switching the display from what is intended to a more blurry state, you will get distracted by the extremely-low quality of the images.
One of the benefits of PCI Express is that it can run around 5 metres or so.
Given the nasty big heatsink on this puppy, I expect within a year we'll be able to buy external PCI Express gfx cards.
Independent power and cooling from the CPU box - makes sense. Plus, you could potentially daisy chain them for alternate scanline rendering or fancier models of distributed rendering.
Da Blog
From the hardwareanalysis site:
"The video processor is also fully compatible with and able to accelerate the decoding of Microsoft' WMV9 media format."
What's going on? Is WMV9 a standard format, or they're trying to push DRM?
Excuse me.. can some one help me decide if I need to buy this for playing my everday game of solitaire and minesweeper ?
i went to the geforce lan yesterday, what i saw at the announcement blew my mind... the new unreal engine (v3) beat what i have seen of hl2 easily
some people might like to hear that there was a slide with large text reading "512mb ddr3" and the nvida tech guru saying the word summer
But in reality, they're more expensive.
It's like television monitors that are monitors only -- they don't contain audio speakers. I wish there were more models like that, because I never use a television's internal speakers -- I always disable the TV's internal speakers and connect the TV to my stereo system. In theory such models should be cheaper, since they don't contain and audio amplifier or speakers, but in reality they're always more expensive.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Why are you spelling it with an upper-case "M"?
id Software doesn't spell it that way.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I still wont buy the nvidia cards for a while, they need to prove to me that they are no longer using their so called "optimizations" still, everyone thought they were gone in the 43* drives, but then POOF they reappear in the 53* drivers. When i play a game i want to see ALL of the scenes, ALL of the lighting and ALL of the shodows.
I know, other companies cheat, but when ATI got caught - they stopped - NVIDIA conitued to do it and deny they were doing it.
I love my Ti4200 and ti4600 ULTRA and i love my radeon 9700PRO - my next purchase will likely be the 9800 AIW.
Until NVIDIA stops the lying and acting as if we are all sheep and will by their cards because it is faster - i wont.
I guess this compares to AMD and INTEL - NVIDIA being INTEL in trying to make people think that more speed is what is needed - where as ATI is like AMD - the speeds maybe slower - but they are more efficient at what they do and most of the time come out on top anyways.
P.S - Sad review - comparing the new card to something so old.
He didn't just say that Microsoft provided a platform for Windows, he said that before Microsoft provided their platform, developers had to write directly to the graphics drivers.
No, he didn't. Read it and learn to comprehend. It says before DirectX, developers had to write directly to "individual hardware components."
This is 100% true. We're not talking about Direct3D here, we're talking about DirectX. I guess you didn't know, but DirectX is more than just a graphics library, it's a multimedia library that encompasses sound, networking, input, and more. People had to write to these themselves back in the day--particularly sound, which was always a hassle.
And despite OpenGL, people still used normal SVGA writes and not OpenGL, because back then most people didn't have 3D cards. Was WarCraft II using OpenGL? What about Descent? Or the first version of Quake? Next.
You don't need to link to some Byte article--I was around when DirectX 1.0 came out (which sucked until a few versions later...in the meantime, people just kept making DOS games).
It's amusing to me that you're uninformed post suddenly meant that people modded mine down as "Overrated"--so that they couldn't be meta-modded back. Yawn. It's just a result of people being so desperate to bash Microsoft in any way possible that they won't even admit that most Windows developers use DirectX, and few use OpenGL. Regardless of which is the better technology (even Carmack has changed his mind about Direct3D since his infamous criticisms), nothing about what was said is incorrect--you just want to score bonus points with the anti-"M$" mods.
It says before DirectX, developers had to write directly to "individual hardware components."
This is 100% true.
You're wrong. (By the way, note that I'm using the contraction for "you are" in the correct sense, not in your ironic, "you're uninformed post" sense)
Did Civilization II use DirectX? No. Did it write directly to your video card or ethernet card? No.
How about CivNET? Did it use DirectPlay? No. Did it write directly to your ethernet card? No.
Feel free to continue to accuse everyone who disagrees with you of bias and comprehension problems, though. Trying to put words in our mouths like "you didn't know, but DirectX is more than just a graphics library" and "they won't even admit that most Windows developers use DirectX, and few use OpenGL" is good too; that's much easier than answering the claims people actually make. Plus, as long as you're concerned about mod points, perhaps you'll get lucky and encounter moderators who have never heard of "ad hominem attacks" and "straw men arguments" before.
You probably won't, though. After all, if you're 100% right and you keep getting refuted and modded down anyway, it must be because everyone here is wearing blinders!
Did Civilization II use DirectX? No. Did it write directly to your video card or ethernet card? No.
I meant to write "video card or sound card" here; when a later CivII version added network play IIRC they did use DirectPlay to do it. I'll get the best oral surgeons working on that foot extraction operation right away.
I like *BIG* monitors. (21 inches or bigger.) Last year I bought a nice used 21" CRT for only $120 at PC expo! Now I'm not stupid... I recognize that LCD monitors are better, and I'd be willing to pay a premium of about $250 for LCD over CRT. But so far the best deal I've seen on a *BIG* LCD monitor is $1025 -- that's a $905 premium!! I suspect I'm going to be using analog CRTs for four or five more years, and I hope the video cards continue to support them!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
most rendering is done with the CPU, not the CPU from my understanding
That's because with AGP it's such a PITA to pull large volumes of data back from the GPU up to the CPU. AGP is effectively a one-way route. And PCI is skewed toward downstream, and has limited bandwidth anyway.
PCI Express is bi-symmetrical along the bus. CPUGPU(s) can communicate at will. This is an important new thing. You will be able to offload large arrays to the GPU for vector and matrix processing, then get the results back. You would have to go back to the 1980s Amiga/Atari for examples of mainstream chipsets that integrated their GPUs and CPUs in such a fashion.
Da Blog
30 fps in camera-shot or pre-rendered films is very different from computer-generated output. Movie camera's shutter is open for some time, adding blur. Pre-rendered films simulate this by adding "temporal anti-aliasing" to remove the unnatural sharpness of computer imagery, essentially blending consecutive frames together into ~30 fps.
60 fps (or 60 Hz) is about minimum for sharp computer imagery (FPS games) to look like naturally smooth motion. Anything less, and they don't blend enough in the watcher's eye.
Of course, it the *minimum* framerate that has to be 60 fps.
Because the hardware hasn't been there, I've often settled for 40 fps, but I have certainly noticed it.
BTW, this had nothing to do with FSAA (spatial AA) nor AF (non-uniform texture sampling).
Feel free to continue to accuse everyone who disagrees with you of bias and comprehension problems, though.
Huh? Explain how I am wrong.
The statement was that before DirectX, individual hardware was written to. This is absolutely true. Networking, sound, input, and other devices were written to via hardware. 99% of the time, so was video.
DirectX--since you apparently refuse to accept this--covers all those areas. 3D cards eventually came out, and OpenGL came out, but that only handled video. There was still hardware that was written to directly. DirectX came out, and a few versions later, people started using it for everything.
No, Civilization II was not written for DirectX, but Civ II came out when what, 1.0 was out?
You're mindless blinders are making you look insane. Take them off and admit you were wrong! I'm not even sure what you're arguing anymore. Are you saying developers DIDN'T write to individual hardware before DirectX? Did games not have sound, networking, input, and more before 1996?
Your entire post was over irrelevant issues like typos and moderation. Meanwhile, the point still stands--before DirectX took over, developers wrote to individual hardware components. Next.
Actually, if you look at power consumption measurements, this card isn't the leech it looks like.
0 414/gef orce_6800-19.html
The two molex connectors require a seperate cable each, hence the requirement for a 480W PSU, as large PSUs usually come with more cables that the small ones.
As an example, I have a 250W generic PSU running a AMD-box, this has only two cables, each with two connectors (one has a floppy power cable), but my main box has a 350W Chieftek PSU with 5 seperate cables. If I didn't already have 7 IDE units in it and if my PSU efficiency is pretty high (I have no idea how good it is, but it hasn't crashed on me yet), I'd be set for a 6800 Ultra. Oh, and if I sold my ass on the street to get the $ i need to actually buy the card.
Take a look at Tom's article on this:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2004
[quote]
Basically, ATi's Radeon 9800XT and NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5950 have very similar power requirements, although the ATi card proves to be just a touch more economical. The GeForce 6800 Ultra, on the other hand, obviously enjoys taking a good swig from the power socket, but less than one might originally expect upon seeing the dual aux power connectors. In the end, the new card draws about 24 Watts more than its predecessor. Adjusted for the 69% efficiency of our power supply unit, that would make it 17 Watts more than the GeForce FX 5950, even though the new card uses more power-efficient GDDR3 memory.
[/quote]
A in-game test of overall system power consumption (same system for all tests, obviously):
6800 Ultra - 288W
5950 Ultra - 264W
9800 XT - 261W
Assuming these numbers are valid in general, a ~ 30W increase isn't much in my book.