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GeForce 8800GTX Benchmarked
An anonymous reader writes "The card does not launch for another week, but DailyTech already has benchmarks of the new GeForce 8800GTX on its website. The new card is the flagship GPU to replace GeForce 7900, and according to the benchmarks has no problem embarrassing the Radeon X1950 XTX either. According to the article, 'The GeForce 8800GTX used for testing is equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 video memory on a 384-bit memory bus as previously reported. Core and memory clocks are set at 575 MHz and 900 MHz respectively.'"
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Wow... this thing could run like... two Vistas... maybe
Oh your god! 92% more FPS than ATI's current flagship! Both in HL2 and in Quake 4! "Only" 54% better 3Dmark06 score though. This card is crazy ;P I wish I could afford a truck full of these. Or maybe just one. Hmm and a new CPU... And more RAM... And some huge disks in RAID-5... Damn.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
But will the 8600 GT be in a good price range? The 8200? This will matter to a lot more people.
More power is never, worse, though...unless you are trying to reduce power consumption...
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
When will we see the 8950GTX?
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
I just bought a new system with current gen components, and its already outdated now.
Is that both the launch cards will be expensive. nVidia's usual form is to launch high end only with a new major numerical generation (this being the GeForce 8 series). The high end one will be $600 or more, the next one down probably $300-400. You'll have to wait a few months on a more midrange card to come out.
Makes sense too, new chip and such yields are likely to be a bit low at first so you need to drop it in the expensive stuff. After you've done some work, you release some lower cards.
If you want a midrange card, we'll I'd probably be eying the 7600GT. They are good performers and not bad as it is, once this launch is underway I'd expect their price to drop even further.
That looks... expensive.
Does it do DirectX 10? If so, how well? I mean the target market here is the high end gamer thus the interest is going to be on having something that supports the latest, greatest. The game development community seems to be going bonkers over DX10 so it's something to consider before you get a card.
I'm planning on getting a high-end graphics card here soon but I'm going to hold off until Vista is out and running for a bit to evaluate and make sure I get one with good DX10 support. No sense in spending money on a new generation of hardware if it doesn't support the new generation of software fully.
I'm no hardware techie, but I do so enjoy playing a good game --- "when I have time" (yeah...).
Everytime Microsoft releases a new version of DirectX it has some new sweet feature that everyone wants but none of the current cards on the market support it.
Microsoft has also said DirectX 10 and Vista will not be backward compatible with previous versions of DirectX. (Or has this changed, as I recall Vista wouldn't support applications built for previous OS's too - seems they changed their tune on that one. Then again they've really yanked everything from the OS that was originally going to set it aside as a truly new OS, but I digress...)
So, basically, what I'm getting at is why? Why would I want this (obviously hawt) card, when chances are in 4-6 months (If they don't kick back the release data again, har) DirectX 10 will be out and have some new fancy feature this card won't support?
Of course, I could be missing something and maybe the card does support DX10 - feel free to tell me I'm a toad for even asking.
The article doesn't say it, but it appears from a quick web search that this is the 1st of the cards that will support DirectX 10.
Now to get things straight, I'm not bashing Nvidia here or criticizing AMD ATI as I own products from both and am very impressed.
Ok, on to the meat of the topic. I read about this card on Tom's Hardware about a month ago and was very impressed. The specs Nvidia gave Tom's for the 8800GTX was 768mb of GDDR4 memory, 128 pixle pipelines, dual 384 bit memory busses (768 bit total), 4 RAMDAC cores at 450mhz and 2 G80 cores at 550 mhz with the memory at 1000mhz (2000mhz for DDR). The card probably won't have a aftermarket cooling solution for sometime as the user can only apply one HSF to one G80 core. Also I understand the G80 is a 75nm chip instead of a 90nm chip. This provides reduced power consumption.
Now what I'd like to see happen is AMD get on-board with ATI and do there magic on the operations per clock view of a VGA and help ATI churn out some killer VGA's that are smaller and cheaper yet rival monsters like the 8800 GTX.
Overall, both companies are kings in there own rights, for now anyway. AMD holds ground in the CPU market like none other and Nvidia churns out next gen products at better prices and performances. Who knows what these guys have in store for us, but one thing is certain only user demands and time will tell us what the next gen VGA will be.
...until they reach the 5 digit numbers. My guess is BFG is already drooling over what's just over the horizon.
BFG 10K, anyone?
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I agree that people should respect laws and contracts better than that, and I see how not doing so hurts all the honest ones, but what are those embargoes good for, anyway?
Is it just nVidia's PR department trying to coordinate press coverage for maximum effect? What's in it for the reporters? What does it accomplish?
Want a tissue?
That's no moon... Seriously, it looks like a (bad) replica of a star destroyer or something.
All your base are belong to Wii.
and that would be (drumroll).........cost! Okay, so this is a what percent improvement over the previous generation? Who (besides high end gamers and developers) will be able to even notice a difference? Finally, what possible motivation would they have for purchasing a card that is likely going to be more expensive than their entire current computer (monitor inclusive if you have a CRT)...?
[/rant]
Just another nameless binary in a crowd of 1's and 0's
If you compare these results with the 8800GTX/1900XTX benchmarks from other reviewers. Seems the 8800GTX is a bit higher than average as well as 1900XTX lower, but still this card is a beaset
What impressed me most is the fact that a review site didn't feel the need to lay out 20 pages of crap to give an overall idea of how the card ran. Two thumbs up for that alone...
So then the question is: How does this compare to AMD/ATI's R600 which is due out in some sort of final form somewhere between later this month and early january.
Comparing the 8800 to a x1950 is like comparing a 7800 to an x850 (granted this demonstrates it will at least for a brief period be the fastest card on the market, both in DX9.0c and being the only DX10 card out there that as well). But ATI have had their next gen card in the pipe for a while so presumably we'll see it fairly soon, and it's likely significantly faster than the x1950 series (I've heard estimates from 2-4 times as fast, including an estimate in that range from a former ATI employee, but I have no idea how likely that is to be accurate). How that would compare to the 8800 I'm not sure, but I bet they'll be fairly stiff competition.
Fortunately this can kickstart some life back into the high end computer business, which at the moment has been from what I've seen largely dead waiting on the release of SM4.0 hardware. Sure CPU's are nice and all, but why would anyone have gone out and bought the fastest card on the market for the last 3 or 4 months knowing full well that there is a whole new *featureset* in the immediate future (as opposed to the constant faster version of the same thing, which is unavoidable, radically new features, such as the geometry shader, and the whole new driver model with vista etc... and that sort of thing only comes around every couple of years).
Yes, it is crazy. Pacman, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, galaxian, Tempest, Defender, and PC favorites like MULE, Tetris, etc. all ran on machines with less than 1/10 of 1% the processing capability of this card.
It feels like it's all been done, because for the most part, that's true. Adding 37% more shiny crap to the same old game doesn't make it better, it just means it has more shiny crap and you are going to spend a fortune on new hardware just to play the same old game concept.
I wish the industry would let go of this obsession for photorealism (at the expense of gameplay dynamics) for a bit and realize that fun isn't something that can be tacked on to a game by adding more processing power. Some of the great games were great because of the focus on challenging gameplay, not visuals. And even on visually splendid games (HL2 comes to mind), the dynamics of the game and the story are foremost... graphics are secondary.
Looks like a gorgeous card with blazing speeds for all you gamers out there. But for those like me who run Maya, I'll be content sticking with my ATI FireGL v7350. Now yes, I like you all have seen those reviews out there that say the GeForces can run Maya faster than ATI, but that's bullshit. I've done rendering with both setups on identical systems and pound for pound the ATI annhilates the Nvidia.
This sig will self destruct in 5 seconds.
Where are the remaining 27 pages of the article?
And where are the adds?
Did I time travel 4 years in the past? What year is it!
But it should push down the prices for the 7000 line, which is nice since I don't pay more than $100 for a video card (7600GS is the best at the moment).
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Does that thing have TWO PCI-E power jacks?
Yeah, its DX10 compatible. Daily Tech overview of G80
It's a power hungry for my psu - but I think with some jumper cables I can hook it up to the service panel in the basement. It will add some clutter down there, but at least when winter comes I can put my wet shoes next to the computer instead of the furnace.
Thinking about upgrading my DX2-100.
Actually the power consumption numbers they gave were for complete systems. They were just there to give an idea of how it stacked up, power wise, to the competitor's current flagship.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
Which is *exactly* why I had a nice multiplayer game of Total Annihilation just 2 days ago.
UT GOTYE also still gets a workout.
Man, if I can just find some talking points, I'm about ready to start writing my own letters. I really do hate to think that the abilities one of the most decent cards in recent history might be imprisoned within closed code. That would suck so hard it'd catch tachyons.
Yep, I agree with this comment completely. Great games come from great ideas implemented well - not the graphics obsession (up to a base level of course). I've played what feels like so many single player orientated games lately where the story line and plot falls on it's bum due to lack of detail and forethought. Whereas games like Galatic Civilizations 2 just keep me coming back despite the slightly rough edges to the game - it's got a killer AI and the games usually develop nicely. Half Life 1 had okay graphics for it's time, but it was the attention to detail which really impressed me (though face huggers jumping at me in dark vents did get a bit old after the thousandth time).
Honestly, I wonder how well they underclock.. would *love* to have something that does as well as a formerly midrange 7?00 card, but without the heat, and power requirements... I like my SFF (now going on 3 years old, and getting ready for a current generation setup), but I can't stand the noise, I want decent gaming, and a *QUIET* computer
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
"It's never the things that happen to us that upset us, it's our view of them." -Epictetus
This is just the trailer for the actual article. Coming soon to a website near you!
My computer is 2 months old with a 7900GT. I was going to get a second one for SLI, now I wonder if I should put that money towards a 8800GTS when they come out.
Or be sane and wait until there is a game I want to play that actually stresses out my computer.... but that... would be... exercising... so much restraint...
Sometimes my arms bend back.
too bad the cooler looks like may aunt's hair dryer.
Ah yes... but can it be ion cooled? http://inventgeek.com/Projects/IonCooler/Overview. aspx
On the contrary, there are games that take new technology like this and do things that simply were never possible before with old games. You make a blanket statement that new games are all gloss and no substance, which is simply not true. Splinter Cell is one of the most amazing games I have ever played, gameplay wise, and if it weren't for the tech in the generation it came out in, it wouldn't have been possible. Gears of War is another game I'm looking forward to, as it will probably be another one of those "Wow, the $400 I spent on this 360 are worth it, right now" games like Splinter Cell was when I bought it on my Xbox, and like Soul Calibur was when I bought my Dreamcast, and like Mario 64 was on the N64, and so on. Sure there's a lot of games that are all gloss and no substance, but every generation has that "Wow" game that makes you amazed at how far gaming has come, in terms of both gameplay and glitz.
This card is a poster child of Gluttony, Greed, Envy & Lust. That pretty much constitutes a majority of deadly sins, there. I'd think twice about what exactly it is that you're doing in trying to find out more information about this card.
You definitely don't want to be anywhere near one of these things if the apoclypse starts.
On a personal note, this card outperforms my development server in clock speed, memory and power consumption.
Now I'm not saying I'm humble or meek or anything but seriously... G80 IS THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST!!!!11!!1
Amen to that. At this point in time, you're right - adding 37% more graphical glitz is just that, glitz. I think right now, if this tech is gonna go anywhere, it's offloading physics processing so the CPU can spend more time doing decent AI. HL2 isn't photo realistic, but it's a damn better game than it's nearest neighbour, Doom 3, which used all it's graphical prowess to render several thousand miles of poorly-lit corridor.
Right now I'm playing Cave Story and Bontago, both freeware games, while waiting on the Wii. My Intel Core Duo with 2 Gigs of RAM and 512MB NVidia graphics card has been bored while I've been entertained. You claim that graphics are secondary - I say that gameplay is primary, story is secondary, graphics are tertiary.
Even if you underclocked this thing you'd have enough performance to load two copies of Half Life 2 at once and still have enough memory left over to play Solitaire!
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
That's because Dailytech is a news site rather than a review site ;)
It's not exactly rocket surgery.
I don't upgrade my graphics haardware until something *realy* worth having it turns up, and that's rare.
It seems to me that the current corporate games industry has one simple model for game developement:
1: create or more often buy new game concept.
2: release version after version with tiny improvements and graphical tweaks to re-sell the same game again and again until people get sick of it.
3: goto 1
And they can spend years stuck on (2)
Whereas ID software, to name one good example, produce wonders each time they released a new game, making new hardware worthwhile (right up till doom 3 that is, what a pile).
Alas, they are a rare exception.
I also still play TA, and will be upgrading hardware for supreme commander when it arrives, or a while after if it really needs it.
Before that my last upgrade was over two years ago, and I'm still happy with what I have.
These new cards look nice, but if pretty was all I cared about then my pc costs would always be through the roof.
But will it run Neverwinter Nights 2 above 20 FPS? ;)
Shouldn't they implement something like SpeedStep, but for the GPU? It would be killer to have one of these if they only drew minimal power when not using them for anything other than XGL or AeroGlass.
Dvorak on Doomtech
I like id software games, but one could argue they also follow the pattern you outlined. How many games did they release on the quake 2 and quake 3 engines which were similar? What about the doom 3 engine? What is different between Doom 3 and Quake 4 aside from the tone and a few bad guys? How about Quake 3 vs RTCW vs ET? They added objectives to ET...
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Video cards are getting absurd, but this really ties it up. At over 300watts and this size, I've officially built a desktop gaming PC that's smaller and uses less power than this card alone.. and that was only 3 years ago! There's so many parallel, custom instruction set processors on this it's truly a rendering farm stuffed onto one piece of silicon. I can't decide whether that's irresponsible or appropriate, but I do know no system I've built would even fit this card, let alone power it, let alone be tolerable sitting next to me (vacuum cleaner anyone?). I'll wait for the single slot edition, thanks... .
This is why I support the rapid and unfettered advancement of computer graphics, because only once we have reached the photo-realistic apogee of game visuals, then the games industry will need to focus more on other elements such as gameplay, story and characterisation to set titles apart from others. Shinier graphics are here to stay, and I'd rather get this obsession out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible than drawing it out in '5 extra frames per second' increments.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I think i just creamed my little white panties.
My computer has only 512mb ram(with 32mb shared for video).
I know it's unfashionable to pile on Sony anymore, but for the PS2 and XBox there was a 3-6 month window before PC graphics caught up. I do believe that is what drove some of the early adapters, that something so powerful wasn't available in any other form.
The Nvidia card that is said to be equivalent to the one in the PS3 is the 7900, which was launched in March.
The PS3 has been delayed so much that they are now launching AFTER the graphics card that they are equivalent to has been superseded. That's not a good thing when you're selling your console at a premium.
Eventually there will be a watered down G80 based card that will be passively cooled. For instance, Gigabyte released a few "Silent Pipe" cards based on some G7x cards.
Journal
This is why I support the rapid and unfettered advancement of computer graphics, because only once we have reached the photo-realistic apogee of game visuals, then the games industry will need to focus more on other elements such as gameplay, story and characterisation to set titles apart from others.
So assuming we had infinite graphics power, adding a mountain of development time required to achieve photo-realism would create more "gameplay, story and characterisation"? More likely it'll be even more rehashes of old ideas because the per-game cost is so high noone can afford a failure. Only major studios could create a game that'd rate "fair" or better in graphics on game reviews. It might be pretty, but don't pretend you'll have a large selection. We're a long way from the way Star Trek programs their holodeck...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm a great nvidia fan, I think they do great things. I can only hope that a heatpipe version comes along aswell as the hairdrier version.
800 Pixels, Manchester creative web design
I think a good question to ask is why there's an open source Radeon 9800 driver that can run Doom 3 despite ATi not providing any specs, yet the open nv driver can barely run xcompmgr on a 7800GTX.
Radeon X1950 XTX
Idle: 184
Load: 308
GeForce 8800GTX
Idle: 229
Load: 321
Damn. 300 watts just for a single video card. And now read this part:
Having two SLI bridge connectors onboard may possibly allow users to equip systems with three G80 GeForce 8800 series graphics cards. With two SLI bridge connectors, three cards can be connected without any troubles.
One full megawatt just for running your video cards. It requires two slots and two power connectors.
My 6600gt already uses a power connector, which i found scary when i bought.
I want a video card that:
-Powers up from its slot instead from the power supply
-Plays current generation games fine at 1024x768.
Is this too much to ask?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
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I doubt these will run cooler, the 7900GTX has ~290 million transistors, while the new 8800GTX will have ~700 million transistors. The 8800 will also require two PCI-E connectors or 4 molex connectors, so I think lower power consumption is out of the question. Two of these babies in SLI will require 8 molex connectors!
Now I can play Deus Ex: Invisible War at ~50 FPS...
Said the anonymous coward who thinks that he knows my hardware setup without my even telling him. I like how you just psychically KNOW that I must not know what I'm talking about based on your meager, barely interesting little experience with your own crappy card.
I have a GeForce4 Ti 4200 overclocked almost to 4600 speeds. I've had it for a long time. I've been able to run most games at 1024 x 768 resolution with medium graphics settings for years and years now. So what's the problem? The version of hardware pixel shaders that it supports. If you think I'm somehow mistaken (which I doubt, since you're just the type to blurt out things that make no damn sense without any care as to facts), then why don't you waste time researching the card yourself? Or better yet, just trust me when I tell you that I installed the latest Vista beta and the card would not work with Aero. And yes, I spent lot of time on google determining why and if there is a workaround. I even looked into ways of flashing the rom on the card to trick it into supporting a higher version of shaders. I'm so far ahead of you on this, and on probably every other single aspect of life, that it's not even funny. Moe-ron.
You must be off your feed, Doom III was an awesome SciFi horror game. The lighting & graphics, sound and monsters popping up in your face made this a must have game. Open a door and the holy shit make the hair stand up on the back of your neck monster in your face fright was intense.
Maybe, but that's assuming that development costs will still be a barrier in a situation where such 'perfect' graphics are deeply entrenched and commonplace. One would think that by such a time there would be significant improvements in AI, procedural generation and other such 'time-saving' techniques that would take most of the leg work out of graphical tasks. Also, once there is little room to improve graphically, engine licensors might focus on 'usability' and automation issues to give them a selling point.
Look at sound. Sound in games has pretty much hit its ceiling - high quality, digital surround sound. Back in the days of low-quality beeps and chirps you might have said that, in the future, only a few huge developers would be able to implement 'real-life' sound and music in games, yet the reality is quite the opposite. Now a guy in a basement with some tracking software and a few samples could achieve practically as much as a developer in a studio. He might not have access to a full orchestra in a sound stage but how long are real orchestras going to be necessary? This is perhaps not the best comparison, but you see my point.
What with all the numerous engines available out there on the Internet for free, somebody could currently develop a visually-competent game without hardly getting their feet wet in graphics work. I can't see this as getting anything but better as we progress. Also add community projects such as texture and model repositories and an enthusiast can knock together a reasonable world without spending lots of money or time.
In the 'photo-realistic' future, a single room in a game might contain billions of polygons (or the equivalent method of representing 3d structures) and massively high-resolution textures, but the need to actually compose those polygons or pixels as a developer will likely be severely reduced, if not completely gone. It's not too outlandish to picture a program that can churn out a complex and realistic sofa from your input of 'sofa' and perhaps a few other parameters such as 'style', 'size' and 'colour'. The sofa will also be given all of the necessary physical attributes - flammability, weight, strength, etc. - for use by the physics engine. If you don't fancy that, you could hop onto a model website where there are thousands of similar sofas, uploaded for free by hobbyists, for you to use.
So, once it's that easy to churn out a gorgeous, furnished room that looks like a real movie set, you can't fall back on that gorgeous, furnished room to solely carry your game. You need to populate that room with interesting characters, give that room an interesting purpose.
I'm not denying that I'm perhaps a little wishful in my vision of the future, but I don't think that once we reach the graphical apex that the barrier of entry to those graphics will be as high as you believe, infact I think it will be lower than it is today.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
But if you could see (and shoot at the same time) I assure you that you'd agree the graphics are impressive.
everything in moderation
You seem to be conflating "number of molex connectors" and "number of transistors" with "power consumption" and "need for active vooling." There is no defeinite implication of increase in power from more transistors or more molex connectors.
everything in moderation
So who cares then? Oh, yeah -- you do:
Moderate this up if you have the moral fiber and intestinal fortitude to show something worth-while about this pathetic breach of confidentiality.
Pathetic indeed.
everything in moderation
What games actually need this kind of power to run? And at what point does realism start detracting from the enjoyment of the gameplay? What I mean is, two games that I have played before (World of Warcraft, UT2004) are fun precisely because they are so cartoonish. And finally, what kind of power supply could even hope to run two of these doing SLI?
You don't need to underclock for quiet - I recommend Zalman HSFs and a decent, quiet power supply.
Here's what I'm using -
Video card - 7900GT (vmodded to 1.35v, 650Mhz core clock.. Can't recall mem frequency offhand), with the zalman vf900 cooler - never gets above 50C. (Ran 95+C on stock HSF). That is with the zalman vf900 fan turned all the way down. (This hsf really impressed me, dropped max temp about 40C and almost completely eliminated gpu fan noise)
CPU - X2 3800 @ 2.4GHz, 1.55 vcore - Runs less than 58C, with both cores 100%. Again, zalman fan is turned almost all the way down. (Note that the cpu fan has a duct to receive outside air, this made a big difference) -- Very quiet HSF, and the new Zalman CPU HSF looks even better.
(No I don't work for Zalman, but their products do work very well for me)
Power supply - Silverstone ST50EF - Runs very stable, effecient, nice and quiet. (The PSU fan usually only turns on if I am doing intensive things... And even then it is almost inaudible.)
I also have one 120mm case fan, on a very low speed.
The computer is almost completely silent.
So if 1 video card requires 1 molex connector, and the other video card requires 4 molex connectors, that doesn't lead to the obvious assumption that the card with 4 molex connectors uses more power? Interesting..
Unfortunately, I'm using a SFF Shuttle case, that doesn't have enough extra room next to the video card slot...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info