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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."
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.
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've had an MSI K7N2-L motherboard which has the Nforce2 chipset for over a year now. It's rock solid with no problems.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
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" ----------
Two people have had some issues with the nVidia IDE drivers, at least one person fixed it by using a generic IDE driver.
huh? the prices _do_ come down.
the prices of _new_ cards are always at the maximum that somebody would pay for them.
if you want a cheap card, buy a cheap card(that same cheap card would have cost hundreds of dollars few years back).
the way i see it there's few categories that have been for years: 1. ultra cheaps at 30-50$ 2. entry level gaming cards at 100$ 3. medium level gaming cards 200-300 and then the 4. high end gaming cards at insane 400-500$. all that changes over the years is which speed cards belong where.
there comes new cheap cards occasionally, but usually they base heavily on yesterdays high end chips.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"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
Retail availability for the nVidia card is around April 26th. So, in fact, it's not King of the Hill yet :-)
Dinivin
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.
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)
Perhaps the survey you are referring to was measuring energy consumption of a mini-fridge for a single 12 oz.can of beer (served ice cold), but the common refridgerator, and I mean modern, not the one's from the 70s and 80s, as they improve with time, but the modern fridge draws about 700 - 750W. This is about double that of a computer loaded with hardware doing average browsing or word processing. The ratio is less when UT2004 is activated (W00T).
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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".
Bad news for you, the ATI X800 will require 2 molex connectors too.
ATI needs extra power too