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Nvidia Launches New Affordable GPU
mikemuch writes "Today Nvidia unveiled a new low-cost, high-power graphics processor SKU. ExtremeTech's Jason Cross has done all the benchmarking, and concludes ' This makes for an impressive bargain and a huge step up from the generic GeForce 6800. The big question: How will this fare against ATI's similarly priced X1000 series card, the Radeon X1600 XT?'"
Pretty decent review here I read earlier:
nVidia 6800GS
The real sweet spot for graphics is in the $250 to $300 price range.
We have no idea what the heck is going on here.
The big question: How will this fare against ATI's similarly priced X1000 series card, the Radeon X1600 XT? In short, we don't know.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
http://theinquirer.net/?article=27493
Nice of them to cut the price. I would like them to keep the SKU so I didn't have to keep up with anotherone: Although I suppose if they hadn't rebadged it, everyone who bought the 6800 would be pissed at the price cut.
Nvidia is really the only way to go for 3D in linux. If you really only need 2D, I've heard good things about the old Matrox cards, but good luck finding one.
TODO: Something witty here...
You can probably get that previously $400 GeForce 4 card now for around $80. Probably would be more than enough for most people.
Review of GeForce 6800 GS and ATI Radeon X1600 XT
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODgy
If you're confused about what to buy, you should check out this site:
http://www.gpureview.com/database.php
Specifically, the "Compare Cards" feature on the left. I just upgraded my ATI 9600XT to a nVidia 6600GT AGP (because I'm not yet ready to drop a grand on an all new PCIe 64-Bit system), and that site helped me decide what was "enough" of an upgrade for how much money I was willing to spend.
Why do this I wondered? The problem was in government contracts. After you'd paid back the design costs addition computers could be pumped out at a cheaper price while still both making a profit and remaining competitive. The fly in this ointment is that the government, who often bought quantities of the earlier models where cost was not the first concern (when has cost ever been a concern to governments spending tax money?). I was told that the government contracts stipulated that if you ever lower the price on something you've sold them you have to rebate them the entire difference on every system delivered. Of course that would bankrupt any company, so they resorted to this rather transparent subterfuge.
Perhaps some form of that's what's happening here as well.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's a Dual-GPU version of the 6600 available from Gigabyte. The problem mostly comes down to power consumption and heat.
That's more or less why SLI and X-fire are multiple-card solutions as opposed to expandable single-card solutions - it's that or have a single card with a heatsink so heavy it breaks the PCB.
It's Stock Keeping Unit
Per instruction executed, GPUs are actually much more efficient than modern CPUs. The Pentium IV averages about 8 nJ/instruction, while the NVIDIA 7800 GTX averages about 0.9 nJ/instruction. The difference is that while the clock is slower on a GPU, there are many more cores executing in parallel - the 7800 for instance has over 30. So GPUs are getting a lot of performance for a little power (per core), which adds up to a lot of power. They're still not running into the same hotspot problems as CPUs because things are a bit slower and a bit more distributed.
Too bad you make no mention of the lackluster performance of the ATI drivers for Linux, it seriously sucks compared to the Windows drivers. Sure you get hardware accellerated 3D with the drivers, but it's laughable how they perform.
I really wanted to keep my 9800 Pro, but this GeForce 6600GT just performs worlds better in 3D under Linux, and it performs just about equally in Windows. Plus the drivers are a bit of a PITA under Linux, imho, but that's just me.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Um, been done many times before. Not only do you have SLI, which combines two cards, but there are several "SLI on a single card" monsters with two geForce 6600s or 6800s on a single card. The first dual GPU card was way back in the day, I think it was an ATI Rage. Also, Creative makes high end workstation graphics, and they have a non-SLI dual GPU card. Are you talking dual core? Well, it will probably be done soon enough, the problem is that the software support for multiple GPUs is really crappy (SLI is really not that practical for everyday use). Now, at least with PCIe, the hardware restrictions imposed by AGP are gone. I would expect to see something within six months, probably from SiS. It might take a little while longer for nVidia and ATI to come out with a dual core card, although I'm sure it will perform better.