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Dual GeForce 7800 GT SLI Single Card Performance
Maximus writes "Asus is this first board partner out of the block with a single board, dual
GPU design based on NVIDIA's
GeForce 7800 GT graphics chip. The
Asus Extreme N7800 GT DUAL essentially takes a dual board SLI setup and
packs it all into a single PCI Express based card.
HotHardware has a performance preview posted that shows this card can even
compete in some cases with an GeForce 7800 GTX SLI setup, due to improved
latency characteristics with respect to inter-GPU transactions, that are
inherent to a single board design . This board is a bit pricey though for
sure so only gaming speed freaks need apply."
So basically you don't need a dual-socket board to take advantage of the SLI performances anymore.
Does it have twice the fans and heatsinks? How could you get it to stay cool with twice the card in one spot?
when and where can i buy a quad GPU board.... will it support a gpu cluster! I am sure moshe will be ready to port his codes to support this one
I want one! Christmas is only in two and a half months...
"This board is a bit pricey though for sure so only gaming speed freaks need apply."
I'm really, really curious about the high-end sales for ATI and nVidia. What kind of people honestly go out and spend almost 1,000$ USD on a card every year? What benefits are there? Despite the fact that these hot, sexy cards come out, I don't see any real push to get software out that uses them. Windows Vista isn't out. Linux still doesn't have X rendering done via OpenGL. Mac OS X is the only OS that uses 3D everywhere.
Beyond that, what games push the card? WoW? Doom 3? Half-life 2? Add in Far Cry and UT, and that's pretty much it for 3D games. If you spend that same amount of money on any console, you can buy more than double those number of games.
What niche does this represent? I'm really curious as to the people that buy this kind of stuff.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What about a Dual GeForce 7800 GT SLI Single Card SLI configuration? 4 gpu's for the price of two! [goes into blissful fantacy]
Now they need to figure out how to get two of these things working together in SLI.. or what about *four* of them in gigabyte's crazy quad mb:
i ndex.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20051004/
sweeeeeeet.
This card doesn't need external power! It runs a fusion reactor off its own heat!
"HotHardware has a performance preview posted..." It's going to be a hot piece of hardware indeed... Have we come to the point yet where a graphics card draw more power than the actual computer?
Zere vere zwei peanuts valking down der Straße, and von vas assaulted...peanut
The Radeon 9200 in the Mac Mini should be anough for anybody.
Not looking to create a flamewar between ATI and Nvidia folks here. I am currently putting together my parts list for a new PC and am down to deciding what to do about a VGA card. The two options on the table at the moment, are: - Nvidia 7800 GT (probably going with Albatron as it is the best price) - ATI X1800XL (would most likely be Sapphire) My question is with regard to.... 2D quality...SUPRISE! Back around 3 or so years ago when I was upgrading my PC it was a toss between a Geforce 4400Ti and a Radeon 9700 Pro. I initially bought the Geforce and was horrified by the 2D quality. The store was kind enough to allow me to switch over to the Radeon 9700 Pro which has been serving me well ever since. I know ATI has always had superior 2D quality in the past but is this still the case? Has Nvidia improved in this area? Thanks and I look forward to your objective and knowledgeable opinions!
as much as you guys hate microsoft, they are going to be driving higher performance graphic cards with the release of Vista.
Most of you people already know this, but... Ill explain a little further. Air can only hold so much heat easily, so if it produces too much heat with respect to time, you'll need a fancy system to carry away all the excess heat. You cant just speed it up, or the air wont absorb enough heat in the time allowed before it gets jetted out the back. You might just need something with a better heat capacity, thats compressible, to create a normal compression cooling cycle. Or you could get "water cooling" but water-cooling isnt nessecarily the way to go for such high heat dissipation (per unit time) requirements.
4 GPU SLI goodness ?!?
I mean, this card can be relinked to another identical one or not ?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
HotHardware reviewed it. I'll just buy a cooler video card that they don't review so that I don't need to worry about extra cooling fans.
I'll wait for a review from these guys: http://www.coolhardware.co.uk/
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
now to put four of them on gigabyte's new quad sli motherboard and force nvidia to write drivers under gunpoint mwahahahhahaha! it's the perfect plan! okay so maybe that is like the lamest thing ever, but i know some /.'ers just got an erection...
has anyone else noticed that this ships with an external power supply? This might then be a decent card for systems with only a 350/400 watt SMPS.
A single Dual 7800 GT Card costs MORE than TWICE a true TWO-Card 7800 GT SLI Setup.
So your 4 GPU setup would end up costing alot more than "the price of two!"
Besides, you can't run these cards in "SLI" mode again. This card is it, you can't add another.
Wake up from your fantacy!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Barcharts pie graphs and numbers.
Yes! Numbers!
High prices! Pretty pictures!
The Geforce 7800 GTX (Nvidia's top end card) gets only 30-40 FPS with everything turned on high. That's pretty low for something that's suppose to be Nvidia's flagship card. That's where SLI comes in.
Of course, you could turn down the visuals down a notch. But I tried playing on my friend's computer (who happens to be one of those hardcore gamers) and the experience just isn't the same compared to my Radeon 9800 Pro. The graphics are on a whole another level.
I tend to only build a new box every 2-3 years. I go bleeding edge on most every component, and my system can run every new title at high settings damn near until the time I usually end up building a new one 2-3 years later. The bonus is that I don't usually have to open my system up for anything but cleaning the whole time.
You can still buy a perfectly good solution in the form of earlier generation adapters, like Radeon 9800Pro. They are quite cheap now. What amazes me that all the hardware sites foam about the latest and greates nVidia and ATI have to offer, but what I would like to see is how much it actually benefits me if I get a new adapter.
...do we need all this power? :)
I am wondering why someone should buy the latest ultra-pc card when no game actually uses all his power...?
Computer Games
How come nobody thought of a
BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THEM???
It's first OFF the block...
It's first OUT OF the gate.
Beyond that, what games push the card? WoW? Doom 3? Half-life 2? Add in Far Cry and UT, and that's pretty much it for 3D games.
It's absolutely all about games sure. Doom 3, Half Life 2, Far Cry and even the modest graphics of WoW will push any single card currently on the market at moderately high resolutions if (and that's the kicker, if) you have the quality turned up.
It's fair to say people don't actually set the high detail options though, they just set the in-game quality to 'High' and leave it at whatever that is. However, you can make them look noticeably much better, specifically you can really improving texture quality and remove jagged edges (both on items and objects, and inside partically transparent textures) - by turning on the appropriate opions in your graphics card control panel. They almost always need to be manually turned on, as games almost never take advantage of them, or make them accessible or activatable in-game.
My single 7800 GT (256MB VRAM) actually stuggles at the high end at 1280x1024 in some areas in all of the aforementioned titles, when I crank up the detail (this is why I got an SLI board), the GTX is a bit better, but I imagine a single one of those would struggle too (and the same for the new ATI's) - especially a game like BattleField 2. For example, if you have AA (e.g. at full 4x or 6x, or higher) and Ansitropic Filtering at 16x (where you can really see a noticeable improvement in games like HL2) and things like options to take care of transparent textures (this usualy applies to grass, trees, fences, and grid-like flooring) performance takes a BIG hit.
So it's not just crazy guys running at ultra high penis-extending resolutions (which is also increasingly becoming an issue for regular players, with really cheap high resolution widescreen TFT displays from Dell, etc) it's people running at modest, standard desktop resolutions (like 1024x768, 1280x1024) but who just want to have better quality in game rendering.
Some games benifit more than others and in different ways. HL2 benifits from Ansiotropic filtering (a lot), Doom 3 is really intensive in some areas with real time lighting (but who's texture quality is otherwise poor really), BattleField 2 particularly benifits from smoothing out textures (with all the trees, grass and fences around). Something like WoW doesn't benifit much from 16x Ansiotropic filtering or AA above 4x, because things are simple to begin with but it's still a bit better as texture quality is improved.
Most new games look great to most people at the default High settings of course (usually without Ansiotropic Filtering on and often with AA off entirely), it's only when you turn some of the quality options up you realise that how much better things can actually be rendered.
If you spend that same amount of money on any console, you can buy more than double those number of games.
You left out a lot of very popular main stream 3D games (just off the top of my head games like BF2, EQ2, SWG, L2, JointOps will all also tax existing sytems with the options cranked up), and then there are upcoming games, like QW:ET and U3 are certainly going to require all new hardware, or top end SLI setups that use the very highest end cards currently avalible - if you intend to play them with high quality textures and edge smoothing.
Even the upcoming Quake IV will solidly test all systems I'd imagine (given it's just Doom 3 with the lights on and more bad guys moving around at once). I played the new Call of Duty 2 demo this week, it's another that is crying out for an SLI setup (or a card like this). It even has a menu option for SLI support, so apparently the developers realise this too. Half Life 2 texture quality, with Doom 3 lighting in large MMO / multiplayer environment is the next step.
To some extent EQ2 actually lets you do this if
I build quiet PC's with fanless video cards. One of mine has a Matrox G550, another has an nVidia Quadro4 550XGL. I run these at 1600x1200 analog to a Samsung 213t LCD display, and Samsung includes an "auto pattern" program that displays a black/white checkerboard pattern that is optimal for tuning the LCD a/d clock to the card.
The nVidia display for this is dead sharp and visually quiet, indistinguishable from DVI. The Matrox isn't generally bad, but this kind of display shows a lot of scanning flicker, which I surmise is indicative of clock jitter or less crisp D/A's. There's just no comparison of the analog video quality, nVidia is way superior.
Maybe quadro4's (which are intended for engineers and CAD) have better DACs and clocks than their consumer cards, who knows? And you could argue that this isn't a fair test, but IMO it's fair enough; they were both nearly the last generation of mainstream fanless cards from these manufacturers, and the nVidias are cheaper on eBay. Besides video quality, the nVidia smokes the Matrox on 2D and 3D speed, and the Matrox can't even do DVI at 1600x1200.
If you would argue that a better choice would be a Parahelia, I might agree (though it's way more $$) but then you should probably compare to a modern nVidia and Matrox loses badly again on performance and doesn't play nice with Linux.
IMO Matrox hasn't been competitive for years and the reputed superiority of Matrox analog quality is just an outdated myth.
lol
In my personal experience with NVIDIA cards from GeForce 2 Pro to GeForce 4 Ti4200 and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AIW (128 MB), I would have to pick NVIDIA cards.
1. Linux support. ATI's driver in Linux = horrible and harder to set up compared to NVIDIA's.
2. In Windows, NVIDIA's drivers and software seems to be less buggy than ATI. I use the All-In-Wonder software (MMC), and it is VERY buggy. Sometimes driver don't work like video out to my TV. I have to reboot to make it work. I know NVIDIA doesn't make TV tuner software and stuff, but the bugs bother me.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The card offers an humongous amount of horsepower, yet the vast majority of people have monitors that can do 1280x1024 (most mid-sized LCDs out there) or 1600x1200 (most CRT's). So most of the power your card can produce above what a mid-range last-generation card (or high-range 2-gen-old card) can produce is largely unused.
... 40% FROM THE LEFT EDGE AND 60% FROM THE RIGHT (OR OTHERWISE ADJUSTABLE) OF THE DISPLAY. IT'S OUTRIGHT A NEUCANSE! TIA.
All of these new cards will give more than playable rates at either of these resolutions on most modern games without breaking a sweat, the heavier game engines requiring you to drop a notch or two on the FSAA or AF.
In fact, even my trusty OEM Radeon 9700 Pro bought December 2002 for 270$ does that just fine.
But where is all that horsepower needed? The answer is obvious, and yet promptly ignored. All these cards have two outputs (at least). Which can very well work simultaneously in a game, thank you very much. If one LCD can't go over 1280x1024, why not have two?
I run a two-monitor setup on my Rad (Dual Samsung 172X's). Both nVidia and ATI drivers support spanning (turning all outputs into one virtual very large screen). Three problems arise that require attention for this to work in gaming:
1. The game must support using SPAN. Many games (UT2k4, NWN, Fable, etc.) support this reasonably.
2. Unrelated to Issue #1 above, the game must support *weird* aspect ratios. Contrary to popular belief, unlike 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 - the 1280x1024 res, what our modern LCD's do best is not 4x3. It is 5x4. Do the math. The next 4x3 notch is 1280x960. The 5x4 aspect ratio aside, dual monitors give some very new AR's altogether - 8x3 for two 4x3 monitors, or 10x4 AR for two 1280's side by side. Fable, for example, while putting the rendered picture within my virtual 10x4 display area neatly, promptly puts the (quite essential) dialog subs and game choices outside the viewable area because it is unfamiliar with this aspect raito.
3. Not a showstopper, but very easy to work around if only the game devs would give it one ounce of thought:
Most action in almost any type of game (bar, perhaps, RTS's) happens dead in the center of your display. Which is good if you're playing with three displays, all important stuff happening flat in the center of your middle one, but with the simple solution 90% of people can affort and implement - purchase an additional monitor and hook it up to their existing dual-head-supporting graphics card - all the action happens right on top of the split between the two monitors. Things like your character in NWN (which properly gets split by 2cm (if you're lucky and chose your monitors wisely - 5cm if you're not) of space in the middle, looking somewhat 'fat') to that little pixel marking the business end of my sniper rifle in UT. VERY annoying (though I got used to it, to an extent, and it's very much worth the wider viewport).
GAME DEVELOPERS, PLEASE, PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE, PUT AN OPTION IN THE CONFIG TO OFFCENTER THE GAME HAPPENINGS SO THE CENTER OF THE GAME IS
Those issues aside (and with some, at least the former two issues definitely are), two monitors and a 2560x1024 resolution would give even the newest GPU (with FSAA, AF and shadow rendering cranked up to max of course) a very decent workout, and put all that unuseable horsepower on the fringes of the useable realm.
My two cents.
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I wonder if you can run 2 of these in sli for quad cores, if not i wonder if asus will revise the card to do so
Voodoo 5 6000 with quad GPU weren't sold in retails in shrink wrapped box.
But some where produced for AAlchemy graphic station.
There're still some in circulation, from time to time they show up on ebay, and, thanks to community efforts like those for AgminMerlin drivers, you even have a recent WindowsXP-compatible driver.
AAlchemy even has 8x way multi VSA-100 configuration PCI boards.
I just find I ironic that once every body (specially nVidia fans) was making fun of Voodoo 5 multichip-with-external-power-supply card.
And now this, a multi-chip-with-external-power-supply is considered the last "killer card to have".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Better software design is the problem here. Ok so mabie sometimes when I do a add or some such because I'm an ameture freelance graphics/adds/poster wonk, having my software tools have a tad more zing would be awsome. I would much rather have my software have better design though. For insance I am going back to basics on programing. I would like to know is with threading, and the capacity to turn a major portions of a program into different objects wich enhances performances, makes it less crashy, and just plain more fun to use: WHAT IN THE COLDEST HELL IS WRONG HERE! Christ, I loaded Adobe Photoshop 3.1 to do some touches to a model, and my GPU worked just fine ( a Nvidea of some kind) sent it to my BeBox for post production work (aka make sure it didn't look wrong) and it's a POS 2x processing with a POS intergrated card---worked like a champ.
definately go for nvidia. its much high quality both 3d and 2d. I think ati also have good quality dacs etc.. but the primary reason why ati have been faster has been because they concentrated on 15/16bit color, even limiting to max 24bit, so as to maximize their performace. Whereas nvidia has stuck with full 32bit since the riva & tnt
so ati is much lower quality really, and possibly faster in some contrived tests that are designed to switch to multipass when run on nvidia so they slow down heaps!!1! i say ati and their kickbacks suck!
Java2D is now OpenGL accelerated under mustang.
Glitz provides support for hardware acceleration too.
So, usage of OpenGL is increasing...
Where's the FreeBSD/amd64 driver? I'm still waiting. Oh wait, I bought an ATI card because stupid nvidia won't release the specs for their proprietary shit.