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Nvidia Launches 8800 Series, First of the DirectX 10 Cards
mikemuch writes "The new top-end GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS from Nvidia launched today, and Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has done two articles: an analysis of the new GPU's architecture, and a benchmark article on PNY's 8800 GTX. The GPU uses a unified scalar-based hardware architecture rather than dedicated pixel pipelines, and the card sets the bar higher yet again for PC graphics." Relatedly an anonymous reader writes "The world and his dog has been reviewing the NVIDIA 8800 series of graphics cards. There is coverage over at bit-tech, which has some really in-depth gameplay evaluations; TrustedReviews, which has a take on the card for the slightly less technical reader; and TechReport, which is insanely detailed on the architecture. The verdict: superfast, but don't bother if you have less than a 24" display."
It's actually pretty surprising that the DX10-compatible 8800 runs $450-$600 given it's brand new and has huge performance gains over NVidia's current cards. I don't understand why someone would say only buy it if you have a 24" monitor though ... it seems like buying a single 8800 would be just as good (and cheaper) than buying a couple 7800's ...
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I heard somewhere that this will be one of the only supported video cards in Duke Nukem Forever.
*ducks*
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
Hot Hardware has another review
NVIDIA has officially launched their new high-end 3D Graphics card that has full support for DX10 and Shader Model 4.0. The GeForce 8800 series is fully tested and showcased at HotHardware and its performance is nothing short of impressive. With up to 128 Stream Processors under its hood, up to 86GB/s of memory bandwidth at its disposal and comprised of a whopping 681 million transistors, it's no wonder the new GPU rips up the benchmarks like no tomorrow. NVIDIA is also launching a new enthusiast line of motherboard chipsets in support of Intel's Core 2 Duo/Quad and AMD Athlon 64 processors. NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI and nForce 680a SLI motherboard chipsets will also allow a pair of these monster graphics cards to run in tandem for nearly double the performance and the new chipset offers a ton of integrated features, like Gigabit Ethernet Link Teaming etc.
... does it run Linux?
Seriously... when are the Linux drivers expected?
Ignore this signature. By order.
So this will benefit my 13' projected monitor running at 1024 x 768 resolution (60 Hz refresh), and not my 20" CRT running at 1600 x 1200 resolution (100 Hz refresh)?
You don't say...
Seriously.. last i checked certification for logo testing and DX 10 required DRM... not just DRM but enough lockdown to get hollywood to sign off on it.
They kept changing the standards over and over.. so the question is exactly what is required in terms of integrated DRM.
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What they're saying is that if you're only ever going to go up to 1600x1200, this is just going to waste drawing more frames than your monitor can ever display. Right now it looks like the only thing that could strain this card is one of those huge Apple LCDs.
...something that can run Vista Aero with 5 stars!!!
TFA didn't seem to mention anything about this though. Can anyone comment?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Any coincidence that they launch the first DX10 card the same day that Vista goes gold?
No. M$ doesn't release its products until they go bismuth (to treat typical symptoms of M$' early adopters), which is still 4 release candidates away.
Latewire
Just play Ultima IX on 1028x768 mode without any of the fixes or patches. I do believe the 8800 will have met its match. (never met a configuration that could run it over 10fps, except my friends old 650Mhz PIII with some VooDoo card or another, ran it at 19fps)
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Er.. link here: http://www.bootdaily.com/index.php?option=com_cont ent&task=view&id=178&Itemid=56
Just because you have a DirectX 10 capable card doesn't mean you need DirectX 10. Most of those games/benchmarks are against DirectX 9, and the rest are against OpenGL. It will be a few years before most games require DirectX 10.
At least the Xbox 360 was released before it was obsolete. The PS3 graphics processor is similar to the 7800 GTX if I remember correctly. When the PS3 releases people won't be saying "Buy the PS3 for the greatest graphical experience", instead they'll say "Buy the PS3 for the greatest graphical experience, expect for the PC you could have bought last week". The PS3 will probably be about as powerful as the 8600 when it's released.
I know I sound very offtopic bringing this up, but many PC gamers also play console games. They will want to compare console graphics to PC graphics.
Stop that.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=3 19
e rt&pid=5
This review looks at gaming and such too, but also touches on the NVIDIA CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), that NVIDIA is hoping will get super computing into mainstream pricing. What thermal dynamics programmer would love to access 128 1.35 GHz processors for $600?
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=319&type=exp
Q: Do the new GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS GPUs support SLI technology?
A: Yes. All GeForce 8800 GPUs support NVIDIA SLI technology.
Apparently Neverwinter Nights 2 has some sort of problem in it is *very* slow for some people with reasonably fast PCs. I've tried it and it also runs almost unbearably slow with things set to medium everything and a couple of lows (1024, no AA) on a 7800.
:)
20fps with your 7800GTX in NWN2 is certainly not acceptable
You know, I remember being impressed that Duke Nukem 3d ran at 640x480. The point where you need 1902x1200 AND anti-aliasing is the point where you're just doing it to make fun of the people without a Geforce 8800.
It's been a long time.
In their rush to get a chunk of the big Windows market share, vendors put their weight behind DirectX, without noticing that it was a typical Microsoft attempt to commoditise the market by preventing vendors from differentiating themselves easily. Now GPU vendors just have to try to release the fastest card they can that conforms to the Microsoft API, rather than adding new, innovative, features. I doubt something like S3 texture compression would survive if it were added now; only OpenGL programmers would be able to use it, and they don't seem to make up much of the games market.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It depends on the game. In the [H]ardOCP review, this appears to be the first card that can do Oblivion with maxed in-game settings (the grass has been the problem area in the past, even with top-of-the-line cards) at very high resolutions and high AA settings while retaining solid framerates - the settings they considered ideal in their testing were 8x AA at 1600x1200 and 4x AA at 1920x1200. That would be impressive for a SLI setup, let alone a single card.
:)
How worthwhile that is depends, of course, on just how killer a person wants their gaming rig to be (I can't imagine ever buying a $600 graphics card myself). But, given that the performance seems to exceed that of any other graphics card (or any two, for that matter), it's pretty clearly the card to get to ensure maximum gaming PC penis size.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Sun GDM-5410"
HorizSync 30-122
VertRefresh 48-160
Modeline "2048x1536@72" 472.89 2048 2080 3872 3904 1536 1565 1584 1613
EndSection
'The old that is strong does not wither' :)
Dual power connectors, yeeeha! Video card manufacturers really aren't doing much about idle power consumption. 66 watts at idle just to display a static frame buffer. I can't imagine what will happen running Vista w/ Aero glass. I bet people's power consumption numbers will double.
Don't forget general-purpose GPU computing. For those highly parallelizable applications that do not need to conform to the full IEEE-754 floating point specs, this card is a dream come true.
Oh please!
It's called the CAPS structure, and DirectX has had it for as many versions as I can remember. You check to see what Capabilites the card supports and decided what features you'll use. The OpenGL extensions are the same damned thing, except there you enumerate a big string list, while on the DirectX side you have all extensions visible and most available in software emulation mode, with the CAPS structure telling you what was hardware accelerated.
Besides, how do you think pixel shaders and vertex shaders got to where they are today? It certainly wasn't because graphics card manufacturers decided to write extensions to OpenGL for the hell of it... It was DirectX specs that pushed them forward. And it's those same DirectX specs that allow developers to write games in parallel with the hardware development cycle, so that when the latest card comes out, there are already games ready to use it.
If developers had to wait for a card to come out with some OpenGL extension before being able to experiment, understand, and then use it (and only on one brand of card), do you think anything would be adopted in any reasonable amount of time?
I by no means love DirectX, it's got it's issues... but the OpenGL extension concept is in NO WAY helping innovation in the hardware arena.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Looks like DirectX 10 functionality - unified (geometry) shader and like will be available in in the NVIDIA drivers very soon. Seems the entry points for new OpenGL extensions are already present in the driver nvoglnt.dll (96.89), includinga tebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=014831
GL_NV_geometry_shader4
GL_NV_gpu_program4
GL_NV_gpu_shader4
and new Cg profiles
All we need now is header file
Chances are, for OpenGL directX 10-like functionality will be here before VISTA. Another one for swith to OpenGL from DirectX. Also it will be at least couple of years before majority of the gamers switch to VISTA, but with OpenGL developers can utilize latest GPU to their full potential on the Windows XP.
More about it in this thread form OpenGL.org:
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/ultim