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ATI Announces 512MB Graphics Card
Annoyed.Gamer writes "Today ATI announced their first 512MB graphics card, the X800 XL 512MB. I have some systems that don't have more than 512MB of system memory, much less on a graphics card. According to AnandTech, the 512MB card can't outperform its 256MB counterpart and costs 50% more. ATI's favorite Half Life 2 showed the only real performance increase in the entire article. Overall a disappointment, especially because ATI for some reason didn't outfit their highest end GPUs with 512MBs, only the mid-range X800 XL."
I'd be thrilled just to have my ALL-IN-WONDER® 9800 Pro not be so damn fragile. Often it comes up with bars and artifacts and I keep rebooting until it behaves. I've tried all the driver and firmware updates and fiddled with AGP volage settings to no avail. Graphics benchmarks all pass with flying colors (no pun intended) then the PC crashes when I start up some games. Meanwhile, a $37 graphics car (with a $10 rebate) from Circuit City is 100% reliable (except I can't watch TV on it.) Time for ATI/Nvidia race to focus on quality rather than quantity.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But it's only going to outperform in a situation that requires more memory. Having extra memory that goes unused doesn't make a difference.
To be the master of the obvious, of course there will be no, or limited, benefit of that much memory on your video card.
The reason is obvious: game designers target the prevalent market. Given that there are a limited number (zero) of users with 512MB of onboard memory, few video game makers are going to require 512MB of simultaneous textures (or even 256MB, and to a degree not even 128MB). Doom 3 may, as the article states, have 500MB of textures, but I highly doubt they are used simultaneously.
This is just another card for people with the money to say "just in case...".
I agree, it's about as useful as a humvee in the city.
I might aggree with you except if I'm going to sink money into a new graphics card it might as well be pci express so I can use it when I build a new computer. But the computer I have right now just has AGP, and I'm sure by the time I'm ready to build a new computer anything I got today would be somwhat outdated anyway. I think what I'm trying to say is that unless you can afford to keep up with the gfx card market, what's the point? Just find something reliable and decent and stick with it. The market is just changing too rapidly...at least for my budget.
Why can't more people think like the parent?? I really, really don't get it. While I like my games to look good, I am really fine with my system as it is. Are you ready for this, everyone? It's a 1.4 Ghz AMD, 512 MB DDR and a (gasp) GeForce 4 MMX 440! It ran Doom3 and HL2 quite well. Sure, I didn't get the full effects of the games, but I still played them quite nicely performance-wise.
On a side note, my office computer is a Dual 2.8 Ghz P4 machine, and I don't see a difference in normal day-today office stuff. Hell, my olf 400 Mhz. G3 laptop is just as capable as my Office machine for 95% of the work that I do. All those guys out there dropping $500 every 6 months on new cards are not showing their muscle under the hood, but rather their lack of brains. Or their large quantity of spending cash, due to the fact that they still live at home. (I'm totally getting flamed for that last comment, but that's cool)
If you want to complain, do so to the people who actually buy the cards at $500 or so. The cards wouldn't be selling for that much if there wasn't an enthusiast market out there to pay such prices.
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
Sometimes software comes out which is "too slow", or "bloated", and doesn't become popular.
For instance, the Lotus Smartsuite products were way ahead of Microsoft's Office suite when they were released, but the entire package was took about 25 1.4MB floppies, I think, and then would hardly run on the typical system at the time. A couple of years ago I was looking for some clip-art and loaded it from CD. On modern hardware, the package was quite pleasant to use.
There were some bugs in SmartSuite, and Microsoft did a number on compatibility at the API level, but I think overall it was the bloatware aspect that hurt it the most. A few years later the package seems rather spritely and compact.
Hardware suffers from the opposite problem. The attitude "Why would I need that much?", which hardware vendors play into by offering products with overkill specs in the wrong areas. Since they can't double processor speed, doubling the amount of RAM is the next best thing, right?
No, the next best thing would be to offer rock-solid reliability in the hardware and drivers. Make it cheaper. Ship the source for your drivers. I want it to work, and if it doesn't work I want there to be a way to fix it.
I know that's not how the video card business works. If you're not at the cutting edge, you're an also-ran. I just wish it weren't that way.
Sorry for rambling. To tie it all together, I think vendors get caught up in having features their marketing department can brag about, rather than delivering products their customers can use most effectively.
sigs, as if you care.
No, it does not. It shows the limitations of a benchmark which is focused solely on frames-per-second performance.
The effects of texture thrashing will be perceptible (and distracting) at times to the human player, but they won't do much at all to effect such a benchmark.
It's a noticeable flaw, every 30 seconds. Doesn't matter if all you care about is "frames per second."
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
That's why you don't try to stay up. I upgrade my graphics every two to four years. When I do go looking for a new card, I look at the information for currently available cards and pick the best performance/price ratio card that's in the upper end performance wise.
Thus, if ATI is currently behind Nvidia, they have pressure to release a new card or drop prices (or both), otherwise they'll lose marketshare. Then Nvidia is behind, so they look to do the same. Thus you get frequent releases.
Then you just keep ahold of your current card until it doesn't do what you want it to. Then you upgrade.
Not many people buy a new $300-400 card every 6 months, but those that can afford to, well, they're an excellent money source for the companies.
I don't read AC A human right
I am sure I am way in the minority, but my Windows system is an Athlon 900 (slot), 512 SDRAM, Win98, and an ATI-AIW32MB video card. It plays all my games fine (except the latest Ghost Recon, which locks up on occasion). But my Windows machine only gets booted for that, or if I have to burn a DVD. My Linux machine is a 1.3 Duron, 512 SDRAM, and a 16MB video card. It does everything well (except games, which is what the Windows box is for).
I am not playing the "my computer is crappier than yours" game, but I am amazed at what people will spend to play games. Sure, I wanted to get HL2, but didn't because at the time I would have had to buy a new $300 video card. Now they are cheaper, but I still haven't shelled out for the game. I can wait. I waited several years for HL, and am glad I did. The video card required to play it was cheap, there were walkthroughs on the net for when I got stuck, and there were even several level-mods out there for after I finished it. Hell, I still play Quake MegaTF every once in a while because it is fun. I just don't get the massive investment that people put into game playing. Think about how much you have spent on games, including hardware, in the last year.
I am not really complaining, because it is the gaming enthusiasts that are driving the technology, which is in turn driving down prices of older cards.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Here's the deal. You don't show up on the spreadsheets, so you "don't exist" to them.
A sale is quantifiable on the sheet. A lost sale is an abstract concept that requires human intelligence to comprehend and take into account.
So time and money "wasted" on coding drivers looks like a pure expense with no payback to the bean counters who think the computer has all the answers.
This is the sort of shit that happens when you abrogate your rightful place as the thinking componant of the system to a slice of rock.
I don't mean to imply that the bean counters are dumber than rocks, mind you. I mean to state it flat out.
KFG
Shhhhh!
We should thank these people that are willing to pay for the bleeding edge graphics performance. They enable us to pay bottom dollar for yesterdays technology that performs 90% as well.
You do not have to understand a performance enthusiast to benefit from their pocketbook.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
I for one have learned over the past many years not to ask the question: "What would you ever need all that for?" when it comes to computers.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
According to AnandTech, the 512MB card can't outperform its 256MB counterpart and costs 50% more.
Can that have anything to do with texture resolution not being there yet? They'll no doubt be there in the future though, so I can only see this as the first 512 MB card with more to come. I don't think it's really "bad", just a little bit ahead of its time.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Don't you hate slashdot when stuff starts repeating or REALLY old news get pitched as new stuff? And then you wonder why people don't really respect slashdot ...
"Think about how Windows 3.1 managed to do it with maybe 50 windows at a time on a system with 4 megs of system ram, and barely enough video ram to store a frame buffer.
As far as I am concerned, "windowing technology" hasn't much advanced since Win 3.1."
It has advanced quite a bit, however you may not know where to look to see it. Compare how much programs in 3.1 did versus what they do now. Word didn't offer spell checking, grammar checking, and hosts of other goodies. Visual Studio didn't even exist (sic?).
Offloading graphical capabilities to the video card allows the windowing system to feel and act more responsivly. The RAM which used to be used for windowing can now be freed up, and used for other tasks. Things like the spell checking, speech recognition, compiling (especially compiling), graphical editing...
Also, compositing reduces the stress on your CPU immensely, and gives you a large amount of "free" capabilities. For instance, composited windows can be zoomed up or down with almost no work done by your CPU. Window transparency occurs seamlessly, and window refresh times are practically nil.
There is a good reason why you havn't noticed these benefits. You have to have a good eye to even see it. I would not have noticed myself if I hadn't been running a good graphics card on veritably ancient hardware (Nvidia 5800 on a Pentium 1.8 with 256 RAM, with all the bells and whistles on... plus I run KDE ;)
Furthermore, many of the features I noted above are just beginning (except in the case of Macs) to be implemented in windowing systems. So, a good reason why you havn't seen the advancement is because you are living it.
The future of window compositing looks even cooler. Pixel shaded desktops with real-time lighting & particle generators, true 3d effects (wobbly windows is an example), amongst other things which havn't even been considered yet. Granted, large portions of the above are eye-candy, but even eye-candy can be but to good use when applied creatively.
I hope this was enlightening :)
What costs are there to justify?
Do you have children? Or a wife? If not, you surely know people that do. How do you justify the expense of caring for them and paying all their bills and things that they need? That's mighty expensive. More expensive in a given week than a simple videocard.
Oh, I see - you can justify it because what YOU spend YOUR money on is far more significant and important than what anyone ELSE spends THEIR money on. Kind of like how people with a spouse and/or children feel that they deserve tax credits and rebates because those evil single people who don't choose to breed a litter and "play house" are able to spend their hard earned money on things they enjoy - and they should have to pay through the nose for your jealousy?
Seriously, $500 for a card is nothing for some people. I spent $500 on a card the year before HL2 came out (because it was slotted to come out that year, until it was rescheduled a week AFTER the due date). I probably wouldn't spend that on a card again, but it was no big deal. And no, I'm not uber rich or anything. I just don't have any debt or insanely expensive responsibilities, by choice.
So by your logic, I should be fine driving a Saab, if a Saab is good enough for *you*. And I should be fine living in a dinky little studio apartment, because a dinky studio apartment is good enough for *you*. And I shouldn't bother with 5.1 Surround Sound, because two-speaker stereo is good enough for *you*. And basic cable should be find for me, because *you* have no need for expanded cable? And I should be fine on dial-up, because it's good enough for *you*?
As you said yourself "Sure, I didn't get the full effects of the games...".
Yeah, well - some of us WANT the full effects of the games. Just because a game can be played with all of the effects turned down and running at 600x800 doesn't mean everyone *wants* to. And if some jackass with a backwards cap and a fake gold chain around his neck can spend thousands of dollars suping up his retarded car, which I have no interest in, what's wrong with me spending money on the things I *am* interested in? Especially considering the depreciation rate of a vehical.
Anyway, I won't ever spend $500 on another video card. I did that once and it was fine. But I bought that specifically for a specific game that I was impatient for and wanted to play with great effects urgently. In the future, I probably wouldn't spend more than $300 on a videocard (and that's about as much as I've ever spent except for that one incident).
The problem is that with most hardware, it runs beautifully if you buy at the price point. All components can be purchased that will be powerful enough to run every modern game (at the time you're buying the parts) in absolute full-glory... EXCEPT the videocard. If you buy your videocard at the price-break-point, it will usually NOT run the latest games in their absolute fullest glory. And that is where the difference lays. That's why some people will spend more on a video card than they would on the motherboard, CPU, RAM, sound card, CD drive and chassis combined.
Haha, yeah. It's funny, Nvidia's stuff is the only thing to ever blue screen any of my win2k machines. The ATIs have always given me a little warning by shitting all over themselves and giving me time to close down and reboot the machine.
I wonder if AGP drivers are a variable which effects the stability and performance of various cards differently. There are always people who swear up and down that they have better experience with one brand or the other, and they certainly seem sincere...
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Although at first sight this card may have no use, think about Apple's Quartz technology that uses the graphics card video memory to hold all viewable window elements so that they can be rendered quickly and efficiently without requiring that data be paged in and out to real memory. With the new Longhorn graphics technology being announced this week, it's probably an emerging market that ATI want to take full advantage of. Plus the scientific applications stand to benefit (but I noticed somebody already mentioned this).
There are already cards with a lot of onboard memory made for these sorts of applications. Both NVIDIA and ATI have been making workstation class cards for ages that come with loads of onboard memory.
This card is supposed to be a gamers card as its optimized for such things. Workstation cards are the opposite, most of them perform poorly on games even though their specs may lead one to believe otherwise.
Do you think companies like ATI have the same people working on a card design with 512MB of ram, and on coding drivers?
.like the GP, who probably had a bad experience some number of years ago and has never bothered to reconsider his opinion.
No, although they'd better be working in tandem.
These things work in parallel, they could be producing a new board design every day and still have the driver team working on the drivers for the same amount of time.
"Could" is something very different from "do." You have left one vital parameter out of your equation:
The budget.
They only have as many people working on a given task as managment has arranged to pay for and assigned to the duty. And the driver division is often viewed as operating at a loss because there are different people working on it, who do not produce anything that visibly brings in money, like the hardware does.
You should sit in on a budget meeting of company that's going to hell. It can be very instructive.
Besides that, ATI has put a lot of focus on their driver design over the last couple of years. . .
Because they didn't for some years before that and tarnished their reputation. That's a critical point.
. .
Exactly. They pissed of an actual customer, who they had already spent hundreds of dollars in acquiring. He's gone away now. He's not coming back. All over a sloppy driver that shouldn't have been, and needn't have been (see your own argument) sloppy. Lost customers always hurt a company more than customers never obtained in the first place.
Especially when you factor in the rule of 200. That is that every person has direct, personal influence over the buying decisions of about 200 other people. And that rule was formulated in the preinternet days.
KFG
Most people do think like that. But the extreme gamers are then ones who bring the prices down for the rest of us. Please let them continue...