Slashdot Mirror
Nvidia 6600 Series Examined
DrunkenTerror writes "Yesterday at QuakeCon, Nvidia debuted their new affordable GPU mentioned a few days ago on Slashdot. Dubbed the GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT, they differ from their higher-end brethren by having only 8 pixel pipes (unlike the 12 & 16 of the 6800 line), and appear to be limited to 128MB of RAM. Both GPUs support Shader Model 3.0. The 6600 GT sports fast GDDR3 RAM, while the 6600 appears to use plain-jane DDR. The GT also supports the oft-recently-discussed SLI, which could 'enable millions of users to experience the power of two GPUs in their system.' The best part, however, may be the price/performance. With a suggested street price of US$199, the 6600 GT runs at a steady 42 FPS in Doom 3, at high-quality 1600*1200." Reader aceh0 adds a few links: "Nvidia is announcing their NV4x Sub $200 Level graphics hardware today with the GeForce 6600 Series. The 6600 Series is feature complete with the 6800s and the differences come in the number of pipelines and memory configuration. SLI has trickled down to the 6600GT as well. Coverage is available at Neoseeker, Tech Report and PC Perspective as well as other sites."
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/2004080 6105201.html
"GeForce 6600 GT cards come with a 500 MHz clock and memory rate, 128-bit (GDDR3, 128 MB) and will cost $200-230, GeForce 6600 with 128-bit bus (GDDR, 128 MB) will cost $150. According to preliminary results and unconfirmed tests GeForce 6600 GT performs 20% better than RADEON 9800XT. "
TruePunk | Games
Now we just need a motherboard with 2 PCIe 16X slots. Some of Intel's new server-class motherboards have it but they cost around $500.
It is limited to 256MB, but most manufactures will be shipping 128mb versions.
It should be noted that these cards will initially only arrive with PCI Express support. Given the fact that most people have only AGP ports, this is a barrier to adoption. It has been reported that AGP versions will follow.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Something is wrong with your system.
... unless you are running a 1GHz processor or something I suggest completely uninstalling all ATI drivers, etc, and then re-installing them after a couple of reboots.
My 128MB 9500 does better than that
I read online that Half Life 2 will be in ATI's favour though.
But yeah, ~50fps in Doom 3 at 1280x1024 at high settings is quite a compelling reason to buy a $200 graphics card.
Please learn about current computer technologies before posting on Slashdot again. Please. You look like a complete retard with that posting.
FYI PCI Express has 8GB/s of bandwidth to the graphics card.
**I.E. I noticed a bigger jump in performance by upgrading my mainboard, cpu, and memory while retaining my relatively mediocre (but fully DirectX 9 compliant) graphics card,**
and which card is that and what were your previous specs before that?
with games like doom3 graphics card is the dominant bottleneck.
in fact I would say _just_the_opposite_, that the latest cpu no longer helps you as much as it used to before(in pre 1.5ghz days).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Without mentioning system specs, this is a pointless post. Are we talking some guys coming from 800MHz P3s or do y'all have 2.4GHz machines?
I'd suspect that your original CPU was somewhat lacking; 2-2.5GHz seems to be the the low end of what you can get away with for a respectable gaming machine these days. Once you reach this point, you're going to see a big difference jumping from your 5200 to a 5900.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
No sir... at least with the first iteration of cards. That is, of course, unless you have a PCI Express port on your motherboard. AGP versions will follow, but I haven't found out how long it will take.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Even the high-end cards in this generation can be fanless. BFG has a water-cooled version of the 6800 Ultra.
PCI Express is not PCI. The bandwidth is completely different. PCI is 133MB/s. PCI Express is 200MB/s per x1. PCI Express graphics cards can be x16. Check the ASUS P5AD4 Premium motherboard for a look at some of the new connectors. Thunder
No
The chip is native PCI Express. NVidia apparently is betting on the success of a second chip that they made for AGPPCI Express translation. The chip can operate in both directions and thus older GPUs can use this chip to work with PCI Express boards and this new 6600 GPU can use this same chip in the other direction to work with AGP boards. I wonder how much of a slowdown this chip brings though.
Morphing Software
Good theory but this is a WHOLE new chip that has only 8 pipes. The production costs of the bigger chip would be prohibitive to sell a product at the target price. ATI will respond in kind within the next 6 weeks.
Cheers,
_GP_
there's a chart on this page. the NV43 is a discrete chip with a different manufacturing process and a vastly different transistor count. the entire 6800 series is based on the NV40 core so the ability to mod it may be feasible.
The reports say that the chip only has 142 million transistors compared to the 220M the 6800 brings to the party.
In other words, there will be no other pipes.
I must admit, I agree with some other posters that your situation just shouldn't be right.. I'm running 1024x with "high" graphics on a MUCH lesser graphics card (2500+ and a 9500 Pro).
But, instead of having an FPS pissing contest, lemme offer a couple tips: Install the beta 4.9 catalysts, they're manditory for acceptable ATI Doom3 preformance.
THEN, do a search for Doom 3 tweaks. There's an astonishing array of things you can modify to GREATLY improve preformance, most importantly including a number of changes to the Doom 3 config file.. Additionally, unpacking the pak's with WinRar helps a lot too. Anandtech has some good links / guides to these tweaks. DO check it out, DO use them.
Before installing the 4.9 cat's and doing a ton of these tweaks I was eeking out around 11 FPS (fo' real, brotha) if I dared up my graphics to the level I have them at now... Afterwards, I virtually never drop below 30 (Keeping in mind that I'm really pushing the settings higher than would seem reasonable with my gear, this is exceptional).
DO IT!
It may seem absurd, but there are legitimate reasons why 3D cards need a higher framerate to represent the same smooth motion of 24fps movies.
I've explained this before, and I'll do it again. Television and video have motion blur-- the effect of the capture device essentially "averaging" the motion that occurred across the duration of capturing that frame.
Video cards generate a crisp, instantaneous frame that represents only the precise instant the frame was rendered, not the whole time the "shutter" was open.
At a *bare minimum* producing motion that looks as smooth as blurred 24fps requires double that. (You have to have two frames for your eye to blur between) To do it as well as a film camera requires even more, since their motion blur is effectively an infinite number of samples averaged together over the duration the shutter was open. I'd guess you could get a reasonable approximation at 3x the framerate.
TV and Movies are also filmed with the 24fps limitation in mind-- good cinematographers are well aware of the limits and know how to avoid situations that would result in jerky movement.
This has already been done for the 6800 series!
Wonder if it's been tested on the 6600 yet?
Pipeline mod app
The support for Linux is what is going to keep me buy Nvidia cards for the foreseeable future. Ati driver support is BAAAAAAAAAAD under Linux (I have a laptop with an Ati card running Linux). Nvidia gives soooooo much information! Their readme file that comes with the driver explains every option that you can put in the XFree86 or xorg config file and talks about setting up TV out and Dual Head displays. The Ati site does nothing more than say "yes, we can do TV out and dual heads" and then never explains how!!! Nvidia has done a great job embracing Linux, and I'm going to reward them with my $$ :)
Space for rent, inquire within
From the article:
Can I mix and match?
No. NVIDIA doesn't support SLI on two different models or from different vendors. SLI supports configurations with the same model (i.e. 6800 Ultra) from the same vendor (Vendor XYZ)
What cards can work together in an SLI configuration?
All PCI Express based GeForce 6800 Ultra, GeForce 6800 GT, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400 boards support SLI technology. Boards must be the exact same model number and from the same vendor - for example, two GeForce 6800 Ultras from Vendor XYZ. For Quadro boards, they should be identical model numbers, for example Quadro FX 3400.
Also-
What motherboards will work with SLI technology?
SLI technology requires a PCI Express motherboard. Current configurations support motherboards with two x16 physical connectors. The graphics cards plug into these connectors. The cards can work with whatever routing because x16 PCI Express connectors can auto-negotiate down to x8, or x4 electrical.
Note that you have to have at least 2 PCI-e slots with x16 connectors...