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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."
If you want to use Linux , don't buy ATI. ,if you want to have good cross platform support Again Nvidia , If you want a fancy 3D mark score then ATI is a good option .
Nvidia's 2d quality is excellent these days (under Linux and OS X at least , not sure about Windows ) and certainly on par with ATI, it does not really compare to Matrox cards (in my opinion) though.
Looking at recent benchmarks , if you want the best performance then you should go with Nvidia
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Yea, who cares if there's ghosting on all of your text and everything looks like a blurry mess? Oh wait... I DO. I've always been a fan of nvidia because of their driver performance and stability, but their cards have always been known for their substandard 2d visual clarity. The fact that it's 2005, and 3d is king... That's the problem. It's allowed nvidia to be wildly successful while completely ignoring a very important aspect of the end-user experience. You've never had a problem? Well, you've probably never consciously experienced true 2d clarity. Like all the deaf people out there who think 128kbps mp3s don't sound tinny, you need to open your eyes...
What kind of people honestly go out and spend almost 1,000$ USD on a card every year?
Me. But it's more like $500+ twice a year.
New cards make the games I play (basically just WoW and occasionally CS:Source now) run more smoothly and let me crank up the resolution to my LCD's native res (1900x1200) with all the eye candy on without turning into a slideshow. Other than that, I don't really think about it that much.
My gaming PC is on about a (unintentional, I just get the itch about the same time) 6 month upgrade cycle. I figure it ends up costing me somewhere in the neighborhood of $2k/yr to keep it up (since cases, power supplies, displays, and hard drives live through several cycles), which isn't too terribly bad compared to many other hobbies and the hand-me-downs make for nice boxes for me to actually do work on. The video cards end up being the majority of that price, which is fine since they have the biggest impact on the performance of the games.
Once a machine falls off the end of the ol' upgrade queue (I have 4 right now including my Powerbook, that's enough...) I usually end up packing it up and shipping it off to someone I know who needs a computer.
Game... blouses.
My conclusion is that ATI still can't figure drivers out. I have a 9700 pro and the drivers have been a constant pain in the ass to me. My system is rock solid stable and passes any test I can find to throw at it, yet catalyst control center bluescreened it. Without CCC the drivers work, mostly. My next card will be an nvidia simply because ATI still can't get drivers right. (the linux drivers worked better than the windows driver, how weird)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
In point of fact the low quality of their filters continue to affect 2D performance when using an analog connection. Even more so when using the DVI to VGA dongle as they don't make these themsevles are of the cheapest supplier variety most of the time.
And the low quality of ATI's drivers continue to affect 2D performance, 3D performance, stability and user sanity. Great image quality though. When the drivers on my laptop crash every few hours and drop back to VGA mode with a cute little error message, I always take several minutes to admire the lovingly rendered 8bit 640x480 desktop before rebooting! Beat that Nvidia!
And before you call me a fanboy, consider this. If you have a laptop with an ATI chipset, ATI won't let you install their generic drivers. You have to get an update from your laptop manufacturer. Who almost certainly haven't deemed it necessary to provide them. This makes ATI the Slashcrap award winner for retarded, customer shafting business practice.
Don't worry though - you can download some hacked drivers instead. I don't know about you, but using hacked video drivers on my work laptop always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
And this is just on Windows.