The NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Series

An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has posted their evaluation of the new GeForce 7900 technology. They fully cover widescreen gaming this time around too. 'NVIDIA has worked hard to try and produce a more powerful, albeit power-efficient GPU in the 7900 GTX and GT, and they've succeeded. They run cooler; are smaller, have less transistors, and they don't make you stuff cotton in your ears. The 7900 GTX and GT are just more efficient while being lightning fast.'"

Comments

Re:XBOX 360

[Knight Thrasher]

PCs already surpass the XBox 360 in graphics. It's just the nature of the console beast. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to be able to afford a 360 myself, but in terms of raw power, computers win every time. Now, simplicity and ease of use...

Re:Hurray, Another "Review"

[shaka999]

Maybe you should try some decaf or something. So your using a product outside its target market and now your whining because your not getting the info you need. Face it 99.5% (prove me wrong :) ) of people who buy these use them for games. Get over it.

Re:Hurray, Another "Review"

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"What about a simple program that loads up the card with as much data as possible as quickly as possible?"

And let's say such a review exists and was posted as an article to Slashdot. Then someone who is looking at the card for gaming purposes would post a similarly tired comment as yours and say, "Yes but what kind of frame rate can I get in Quake IV?"

Face it: you're in a minority. Stop crying about it.

Less vs Fewer

[onkelonkel]

Fewer is used for things you can count one by one (things that are numbered). Less is used for amounts that can be measured but not counted. There are fewer cars on the street. There is less gin in my glass.

Except on slashhdot, where the two words are interchangeable.

Re:XBOX 360

[Austerity Empowers]

PCs have had better graphics than the XBox 360 for several years. Consoles always lag.

Who cares, really

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I get tired of the constant barrage of newer and faster video cards on a 6 month cycle. Most people can't afford $700 for the latest video card, so its like 12 months before these video cards become feasible for the average user to consider in their new system, and by then a newer faster $700 video card has already come out.

The problem is, with each generation of video card, full of hype and claims of high performance, wait 6 months and a video game is usually released where it cripples the card. I have an x700 video card and, while not the x800, it was still in a generation of video cards that can play the newest games at the highest resolutions with the best quality settings. Playing F.E.A.R I can barely get 30 fps out of the card with minimum to medium quality settings, that on a video card not more then a year old.

Video cards are one of those products that are sold for way too much money when it is first released. I mean, nVidia and ATI may think it is necessary to jack up the cost to cover R&D investment, but how much R&D is really going on? With the 7900, nVidia just looked to shrink some of the components and optimize existing architecture, something they have been doing consistently with the Geforce lineup. Are they spending billions in R&D, or just millions? Do they need to sell new cards for $700, or perhaps can we start seeing a price war that will drive down costs of new products to reasonable prices.

In any case, so what, nVidia has a new lineup of video cards. Add that to the list of literally hundreds of available video cards on the market, with 16 versions of every model and generation by 16 different companies, the video card market has become muddy and overly complicated and I just don't care when something new enters the market now because it won't run the games well that I want to play 6 months from now, and I don't have $700 burning a hole in my pocket every 6 months to buy the next latest and greatest.

Re:Who cares, really

[ArsonSmith]

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism. It is consumers that set the price. NVIDIA just asks, "Who will pay this much for this card?" Once sales drop they drop the price and again ask, "who will now pay this lower price?"

At some point the Video cards will hit a price point that you find worth your money.

Re:Who cares, really

[Slime-dogg]

They price cards at what the market will bear. There are people who will drop $700 on a new graphics card. nVidia prices accordingly. After a while, those prices get into the $100-$150 range. Other people, who are a bit more economical, pick them up at that price. It seems a little silly to complain about a company that is trying to make money. I mean... after all, that is what they should be doing, right?

Re:So look up the card for your job

[TubeSteak]

You used to be able to cheat by flashing the BIOS of the regular cards with the BIOS of the Quadros.

The bold could have even more fun by soldering/breaking the SMD-resistors on the PCB. Ditto for ATI cards.

I don't know if this applies to the lastest gen of graphics card, but it is/was a cheap and easy way to get the pro driver/bios optimizations without the extra on-card features.

Re:XBOX 360

[alc6379]

Geez. That's something you're going to have to get used to.

Have you ever played Battlefield 2?

NON-skippable EA splash logo.
NON-skippable DICE logo
...and then there's like 3 skippable movies.

I don't like spam in emails, I don't like obnoxious ads on web pages. What makes them think I want to sit there and endure a company's spam when I just want to hop in for a quick game.