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512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra Reviewed
Timmus writes "If you thought the $500 GeForce 6800 Ultra and $550 Radeon X850 XT PE were excessive, wait until you see nVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB: it officially retails for $999.99! Firingsquad has a review of the card manufactured by BFG. They ran tests with 6 different configurations (including a pair of 512MB cards running in SLI) with widescreen benchmarks at 1980x1200 as well."
Then buy a PS3.
A grand for a video card? A grand? All I can say is some folks have more dollars than sense, but that's just MHO.
A mirror of the print version is here and a mirror of the full article is here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Do you now buy the computer as something to run the graphics card on, rather than vice-versa?
a complete waste of money. For an extra $500 you get maybe 1 or 2 fps. What I find strange is that firingsquad is split over whether or not readers should buy it. The whole review seems to be a better benchmark of how much of an industry shill firingsquad is than the graphics card itself.
Well for Longhorn and Quake4 I think this is now the minimum? Or is it 2 of these in an SLI setup?
I'm still saving up for the 4way multi-core CPU minimum requirement =/
Actually the market for the "size of my video card reflects the size of my penis" niche is bigger than you would expect.
That means it's only $2000 for the _graphics cards_ in a top of the line SLI rig... this month.
This card costs $999 with 512MB DDR3, someone tell me how much the Xbox 360 comes with?
See where I'm going with this? Just how big of a loss are Sony and MS willing to take with their consoles this time around? I mean either way the consumer wins out big.
Even by the time winter rolls around you're not going to see this card or it's 256MB version for $50.
-- taking over the world, we are.
No one needs that much graphics processing... *looks at Longhorn* Nevermind.
MadOgre.com
So for that price, I can buy 3 PS3s, or a PS3 with a large TV, or a PS3 with LOTS of titles.
I have a geforce4ti, and wonder why will I need more GPU power anyway. HL2 and doom3 run fine, and seem to need more memory and cpu bandwidths than triangle-pushers.
Theres a major lackage of a physics processor right now. Given the nice placement of GPU cards... on a high bandwidth bus of the northbridge, I'd say put the physics chip on the video card. Otherwise on a PCIX card.
Anyone care to comment where a card like this Geforce will be REQUIRED?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The price tags just dont justify what you get in return. So in order to make the "bling ding" cards attractive, they quietly drop support for "obsolete" hardware, that is, you don't see any bug fixes or software features being added in ATI's catylyst set for the 9x00 series anymore.
On top of that, those "obsolete" cards haven't gotten any cheaper as new products usurp them. The 9800 I saw on the shelf last weekend still cost as much as when I bought mine a year ago.
So far all signs point to the next gen of consoles being pretty much on par, visually, with the greatest crap that ATI and nVidia churn out.
It's really hard to see the point of PC gaming anymore. What's it got that consoles dont? Online gaming with annoying mouthy 14 year olds? Check. Overpriced titles, and half-baked content delivery mechanisms? Check. Half finished products that require patches and updates to work correctly? Check.
For what this card costs, I could get a jillion-inch widescreen high-def DLP set to hook my PS3 and XBox 360's up to.
Just posting to keep the "pc gamer" vs "console gamer" wars going strong. It's fun to watch dweebs and simps fight.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Except for scientific aplications and video work, what can use this?
I seriously doubt that scientists would use these cards. The "performance" level drivers tend to intentionally make various minute errors to make things run as fast as possible. In most scientific applications, precision is a requirement.
As for video work, I'm not sure that anyone would bother with spending TOO much on a card. The drivers tend to be very one way, making the return of the image very slow. Since there's a hugh bottleneck in the AGP transfer rates, you might as well use the extra time to render a better quality image. No super-pricey card needed. Now if NVidia released a card with high AGP retrieval speed...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The idea is that anyone with enough money to buy one or two of these 512MB cards is also planning to use a nice display. Thankfully, BFG had the foresight to employ two, dual-link DVI connectors, each of which supports resolutions up to 2048x1536 at 85Hz. You'll get away with up to 1920x 1080 at 60 Hz using the single-link port featured on 256MB Ultra cards. But if you really want to go big, Apple's 30-inch Cinema HD display, for instance, requires a dual-link DVI output for operation (BFG's product manager makes the clarification that the 30-inch Cinema HD is not supported in SLI mode, though). Previously, this was a feature only available on high-end Quadro cards, so including it with the GeForce 6800 Ultra is a big deal for graphics professionals.
I don't think the 30-inch Cinema HD display is supported in this over-priced cards dual-link mode either. According to Apple, the optimum resolution of the 30-inch HD display is 2560 x 1600 pixels. The let's-drop-a-grand card supports a maximum of 2048 x 1536 (according to the article). Do the people who spend the money on these things expect blurriness?
All I can say is that for a grand, this card better blow me and make me toast in the morning.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It's not 1000 dollars! It's only $999.99!
.99 marketing trick actually work on anyone anymore? I'd love to stop seeing .99 on price tags.
Does that goofy
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Hard Drive? Your first computer had a hard drive? man.. you were lucky.. I remember switching discs to play Bards Tale on a C64...
Game Developers.
If you are starting a new, state of the art game now: by the time you get it out the door, this level of video card will be standard built into motherboards. Almost Every PC game company in the world will need a few of these for testing, if nothing else.
I read the article, the card didn't do that great against ASUS's 256mb card, and in fact, in most of the tests the Asus 256mb card did better. ATI got blown away in pretty much all the tests.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
Disks? Your first computer had a disk drive? man.. you were lucky.. I remember switching tapes to play Elite on my BBC Micro.
Actually the market for the "size of my video card reflects the size of my penis" niche is bigger than you would expect
Which is why I'm still running a full length CGA card.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
It is very well possible that these GPUs have more processing power than any desktop CPU currently sold, although it is somewhat specialized. This power is one reason why Apple made a developer-accessible API that taps into GPU processing power for image and video manipulation.
Can't they at least sneak an Apple ][ or C64 onto the chipset just to shut the old timers up?! Well, of course it has more X than your first computer did. It's got your first computer in it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Punch hole card tray? Your first computer had a Punch hole card tray? man.. you were lucky.. I remember having to get data off the 802.11g network on an Athlon 64 FX55 machine.
I think the really interesting question is: Didn't FSAA come a little late to the scene, considering the ridiculous resolutions we can now play our game at?
Every where you go you'll see websites benchmarking at 1900x1200 4xFSAA 16-tap and I'll just go... what the hell?
Anti-Aliasing made a hell of a lot more sense to me back at 320x200 to 800x600... but maybe that's just me. I'm sure we'll have 16x FSAA at 8192x6160 too, and everyone will say it's da bomb! "How can you play without anti-aliasing? Don't you stop and look at the jaggies? <picks up magnifying glass to point them out>"
Oh, well... and don't get me started on the fact that none of the big sites regularly review cards between different generations. When I upgrade I want to know the difference from where I am now, not the 2-5fps different between cards with the same basic hardware but different logos stamped on.
Alright.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Back in my day, we had punch cards. And they weren't those fancy paper ones. Ours where made out of stone. If we made a mistake, you just didn't fill out another one. You had to walk 2 miles uphill to the rock quarry and cut another one. Kids these days.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Also, scientific (and other "technical") graphics cards aim to render images perfectly, instead of "as fast as possible with some unoticeable-at-1000fps glitches" as with consumer cards. High-end cards can cost tens of thousands, and are mostly useless for gaming.
Damn ricers.
Not content to read punch cards.
Honestly, what is it with you guys and your "CRT Displays"?
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Now, I drive a big block Chevy. I understand the need for more power and performance than sanity admits. But, with this card, are you actually getting more performance? I know I am with my engine mods. Or is this just a big dick exercise in marketing?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Overpriced Titles? Perhaps on games with monthly fees, but compare any brand new FPS or Strategy game with stuff on consoles. They're generally $40-$50 instead of $60-$70 (canadian currency).
As for the hardware behind it. You just gotta be smart about what you buy & when. You say the 9800 you saw last weekend cost as much as when you bought it a year ago? Don't you think that's a good indicator of the quality of the card. You hit the sweet spot in the market. Why aren't you happy about that? Buying one now may not be the best idea, nor would going out & buying this $999 behemoth. In 6 months though, you'll probably find another gem to last you ages at a good price.
What do people not get? Seriously, it's not the amount of VRAM that is included in the card, but the speed of the GPU. I'd rather spend that grand on two equally powerful cards, or a dual GPU card.
Hard drive!? I had to use audio tapes and a tape recorder for my first computer's mass storage! The computer (a Sinclair ZX-81) had 1K of RAM which was shared between video memory and main memory.
And I had to walk uphill to school both ways.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
From TFA:
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
This new card is for a small market segment I like to call "suckers". ATI, nVidia, and the publishers of games know this. New games are and will continue to be accessable to anyone who's willing to spend about $1000 every 2 years on computer parts. Why not put out a card for those with more money than sense?
PC gaming may die off, but it'll be cheap off the shelf PC equivilents that resemble the PS3 or 360 that'll kill it. All they need is MS Office 360 edition and the like. Next gen systems are a software DVD and some compatible usb mice and keyboards away from being home computers anyway.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
You can pay an extra $500 for the card, and there is ZERO performance advantage WHATSOEVER.
None.
Zero, zilch, nada.
Their only note is "well, with all that RAM, perhaps tomorrow's games will take advantage of it!"
Thing is, in 1 year, you'll be able to get a card with 512 MB of RAM, which is 2x as fast as this card, for $399. In 2 years, that same card will be $199. So there is ZERO advantage to getting it now, because nothing can use it, and by the time technology *can* use it, it will be old hat.
82% Rating? These guys are on the take.
Right, they're killing it... Sure. Whatever you say.
It might be a pain on the wallet if any titles actually required anything that expensive. But they don't and never will, because, well, a game wouldn't sell if most people couldn't afford the hardware to run it.
No, what they're doing is capitalizing on the people that for one reason or another just absolutely must have the latest, greatest, and most (expensive), despite all sensibility.
This is the same type that buys Rolexes, when a Timex would do just about as well... Do you accuse Rolex, Ferrari, and other luxury manufactuers of killing their respective markets? No, that would be stupid. If anything, the advancements made by high end stuff will eventually trickle down to regular bums.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The only reason I can justify buying a 512mb video card for gaming (the workstation benefits should be far greater, but this is not a workstation card) is to run Doom 3 at the ultra setting without SLI. The textures in ultra mode are larger than 256mb, so a card without that much memory gets drastic performance penalties. If firingsquad wanted to show off the capabilities of the card, they should have shown that in Doom 3, at ultra graphics settings, with one card, the performance gain for the 512mb card should actually be something to talk about.
Nonetheless, even if you justified buying the card on the grounds that you don't need SLI, chances are you still have to upgrade your motherboard to PCI-E, and you still spend $1000 on video cards without the gain in performance achieved with two graphics processors.
But hey, at least you're ready for Half-Life 3.
One thousands dollars for +5 fps? I'm buying two.
I've been suckered into buying a few expensive gaming graphics cards in the past, but never again, I think. I spent $300 on a Radeon 9800 around when Doom 3 came out, and since then I've played only two games: Doom 3 and Half Life 2.
PC gaming is dead, and I can't say I'm sad about it. Buying a $300 console every five years certainly beats blowing $1000 on PC upgrades every two years. Especially when the consoles have, from a somewhat objective point of view, many times the number of critically acclaimed titles released in a year that the PC has.
Additionally, because the reasons given above negate the main reason I've used x86 machines, I've decided to make my next computer a Mac. I wonder if Microsoft, in luring developers away from the PC and to the Xbox, is just going to make it easier for the geek population to move from Windows to Mac OS or Linux?
"On top of that, those "obsolete" cards haven't gotten any cheaper as new products usurp them. The 9800 I saw on the shelf last weekend still cost as much as when I bought mine a year ago.
"
I've got a Riva TNT2 that still runs the latest drivers as this new $1k card. Still gets performance enhancements from newer drivers too. Not as often, but its not uncommon to see a few more fps after the occasional driver upgrade.
As for prices coming down, Nvidea GeForce FX 5200 AGP8X 128MB DDR is $60 on froogle. I'd say thats came down.
As for PC > Console argument, I'll ignore the HIGHLY important input argument (hrm, 80hz badly shaped ps2 controller whos battery life is unknown, or wired 8 button mouse that updates at 1000hz. Wonder which will be more precise. Alright fine, I didn't ignore it, I can't help myself.)
More importantly though, What about custom content? I can think of only two games that have ever dominated the player market. QuakeWorld Team Fortress, and HalfLife CounterStrike. Neither would be possible on a console that assumes the end user is too stupid to make his own content (Game logic(mods), Sounds, Graphics, etc. All stuff customized regularly in a pc game).
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Hell, my cell phone has more memory the hard drive on my first computer. The first hard drives were around 5 MB. And I remember thinking at the time "When the hell am I going to need that much memory?"
Enter... Porn.
What does it mean if you're running dual video cards in SLI?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
All I can say is some folks have more dollars than sense, but that's just MHO.
I remember when the "high end" cards were priced around $200, and that wasn't very long ago at all.
From the article:
It employs the same six-pin power input you'd expect on any other high-end PCI Express graphics card, and the board sports a very similar active cooler for its graphics processor.
I also remember when graphics cards didn't require a loud, whining fan to keep from catching on fire, not to mention a secondary power connector direct from the PSU.
What really gets me, though, is how normal firingsquad tries to make it sound. It employs the same six pin power connector and "active cooler" you'd expect. No, I don't expect that. It's bizarre. It's wrong.
Gaming isn't about faster and faster hardware performance. It's about games.
As far as I can tell, the only way out of this mess is to buy used hardware and games two or three years after they're released. By that time, the bugs are ironed out and your friends have already emptied their wallets figuring out what's worth playing.
How about a keyboard and a mouse? and how about the ability to download and play any game you like without the need for a modchip.
How about the ability for the rest of the family to watch tv whilst you play your video games?
The industry will charge based on what the market will bear.
No one needs a PC running at 1Ghz just for word processing, e-mail, and web browsing. But, the dirty little secret that people are afraid to admit is this... It's the gamming industry that is pushing the home PC market in regards to technology!!! Don't be surprised to see a 3 grand video card in the future.
PC gaming is like Golf. Its membership ranges from the casual player to the richest of wealthy elites. Thus, expect the market to price equipment (hardware) accordingly.
Life is not for the lazy.
A GeForce 5200 is 60$ for a reason. That POS may support DX9 features in hardware, but the GeForce ti4400 will outperform it even when emulating those features via cool drivers. I want to get a GeForce 5900XT, because those guys should be roughly 150$ CDN right now. I'd love to buy a GeForce 4 Ti4800 or 4400, on the premise they'd be about 100$ CDN or 80$ CDN. The lowest priced card I can find that will perform better than a GeForce 5900XT or Ti4800 is a GeForce 6600GT. They are 300$ CDN for the AGP versions.
Everything lower than that, well, they don't perform as well. Yes, they have a checkbox that indicates they have the features, but when you benchmark them, you see that they don't push as many pixels, etc.
PC gaming, thanks to CPU pricing and performance ratios, is entirely about the video card. At this point, a GeForce 5900XT will do you for every game. You can run Doom 3 with decent quality settings on any PC, pretty much, that you can afford. For less that 1,000$ CDN, you can have an entire system that does this, plus more.
But you can't buy affordable cards that perform decently. The bare minimum you can buy is something like the 6600GT. There is nothing between 60$ and 300$ that will perform AT ALL.
(Yes, I'm discounting ATI; ATI does not have functioning drivers under Linux 64-bit, nor under the latest rev of the kernel 32-bit, nor do they work correctly on Windows! Don't make the mistake I did in buying a Radeon 8500 a few years back, get nVidia...)
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There are many gaming areas in which the PC still wipes the floor with consoles. Currently, anything requiring a mouse is inaccessible on a console: RPGs (the D&D kind, not the interactive story-book kind) and real-time strategies come to mind. I also find playing any FPS on a console painful at best, and I know I'm not the only one (I couldn't really stand Halo until I played it on the PC).
In addition, other people here have noted that anything with user-created content won't work very well on consoles, at least as they currently are. Counter Strike, for example, lets you customize all sorts of aspects of the game. Another example is Neverwinter Nights: the included campaigns are all right, but where it really shines is in the custom content community.
I could see consoles overcoming the former limitation, but not the latter.
And incidentally, I can still play most new games on my 4 year old PC (Doom 3 being a possible exception---I haven't tried. I can play Half Life 2).
So you can tow the "consoles have replaced PC gaming" line, as many people here do, but the fact is, the PC still beats the pants off of the console in a few key markets. Your opinion on the subject merely reflects which sorts of games you're interested in (in fact, I have no real desire for any console, and wouldn't want to go without my PC for gaming).
I've come for the woman, and your head.
So this means I just plug this card in to an old 486 and I can run Windows Longhorn right on my graphics card's GPU and RAM, right?
Seriously though, it would be neat if you could boot an operating system on a GPU and have it run without a main CPU installed on your motherboard.
-- Marcio
Once you reach a certain point in just about any product category, you're usually paying two or three times as much money for a product only a few percent better. The performance difference between a $100,000 sports car and a $300,000 sports car isn't that great, certainly not 3x as much. When people have that much money to pay, they're almost always doing it to impress people. A $1,000 graphics card isn't for people who need more processing, it's for people who want to brag about having a $1,000 graphics card
Cards like this are made for a few reasons. The first is that they're making the chips that will be in the consumer level systems in a year or two. This lets them build and test the product and drivers now instead of waiting until it's cheap.
The second, and most important, is that development houses need the hardware of the future. They don't care if it needs a small bar fridge attached to make it work - the consumer product will cost $200 in a year and will be what their customers will buy.
Then there's PR. It's why car companies sponsor Rally teams who use their cars. It says something that the fastest video card in the world is an nVidia, even if only for a week until ATI claims it, and so on.
I think you'll find that these cards are loss leaders - 512MB of the fastest ram, a smoking GPU, etc, likely cost much more than $1000. When the timing isn't as critical and any ram can be used - and likely comes on 1/4 as many chips, and when the GPU yields are better than the single-digits everything starts at, the card will start to sell, but as an already known product line that has stable (we hope) drivers and games written for them.
I had begged and whined and whined and begged for my parents to buy that for me, a 9 year old would-be 1337 h4xx04. So marks the first step in my disillusionment.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?