Affordable DX10 - GeForce 8600 GTS and 8600 GT

mikemuch writes "While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card, Nvidia today already released its affordable SKUs, in descending price and performance order the GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8600 GT, and 8500 GT. The GTS costs $200-230, the GT from $150-170, and the 8500 reaching down to the $90 range. The architecture for the new GPUs is the same as for the 8800 line, but with lower clocks and fewer stream processors."

Comments

ATi ain't far behind

[Anonymous Coward]

While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card...

Don't worry - ATi will be announcing (if not launching) their new R600 range next week. I wouldn't buy anything until we see how that goes.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy now. You know nVidia's drivers will work, and ATI's will just be a pile of crap that crashes randomly.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[darien]

But Nvidia's drivers don't work, at least not on Vista. Google confirms it.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Zantetsuken]

thats a kind of a moot point, because pretty much nobody's drivers work in Vista...

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[clintre]

Actually my ATI 1900 drivers work fine in both 64 and 32 bit versions of Vista. Are they perfectly optimized yet no, but I get almost identical fps marks in the many games I play. I have yet to crash. Not to say that others have not had issues, but I have not. I update my drivers regularly since they are still evolving for vista.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it!

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[kakalaky]

My 7900gt works fine under Vista. What's your point?

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Anonymous Coward]

My 8800gs DOESN'T work fine under XP x64. Why? You tell me, I'm sure someone can, it's /.!

Windows XP x64, Service Pack 1 (I know, I know, I'm lazy)
8800gs, most recent drivers
2 monitors:

• Sony WEGA LCD TV running via DVI to VGA
• Some off-brand LCD monitor running via DVI to DVI.

I tried putting my monitor to the left of my TV, it would force the TV to be primary, and my monitor to have a shitty 1024x768 resolution. Move it to the right and my TV won't display at all (too high a resolution, I think). It won't let me choose individual resolutions and unless I have both screens displaying the same thing (which I don't want), I can't get the TV to display at all! /. Help!

--beckerist

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Kamokazi]

May was the last date I heard, but they did announce the name for the new cards. The HD 2900 XT will be the high end card, followed by similarly named 2600 and 2400 variants. No prices or specific date. More info: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/13/amd-names-names -r600-now-the-ati-radeon-hd-2900-xt/

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[lattyware]

I must say, I will *allways* buy nVidia until ATI shape up their Linux drivers. Twinview makes dual monitors as easy in Linux as anywhere else, and that is something valuable to me. But still, ATI cards *are* important - hopefully they mean nVidia will drop the price. But until then I am happy with my passive 7600GS.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[jasonmicron]

What in the hell are you babbling about? There are drivers available on NVIDIA's website. I've been running Vista on my 8800 for about 30 days now and I have had no problems.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[postmortem]

obviously you don't have ati card, so you can't tell of progress

New ATi Catalyst Control Ceneter Linux Edition is nice.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[InsaneProcessor]

Try XP 32. All works fine there. The 64bit version is just server 2003 64bit kernel. It is not really designed to be used on the desktop or as game or media machine. Only 32 bit XP is good for that. Besided that, there isn't any performance benifit for 64 bit yet.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Nvidia's proprietary hardware. Where's the FreeBSD/amd64 driver?

Glass

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Afrosheen]

See how that goes? Look at the last 8 years of bad drivers and crappy Linux support for clues.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[afedaken]

Oddly, as a windows user, I'm inclined in the opposite direction. The current vista drivers are so bad, that this (8800GTX) may well be the very last NVidia product I ever purchase. :-)

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Chandon Seldon]

I have both Nvidia and ATI cards in Ubuntu desktops, and unless serious progress has been made in the past week the ATI drivers are *way* behind. They don't even provide 3D acceleration for a second logged in user.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[Tsagadai]

Another reason why I'm not going to buy vista.

too many models and lines

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish there was an easier way to judge the speed of one Nvidia card against another just by looking at the name. I can never tell.

Are these faster than my 7800GS? Would they be faster than a 7800GT? Who can fucking tell?

Re:too many models and lines

[jandrese]

Maybe you could try looking at the benchmarks? The answer is yes BTW, but the question you should be asking is "How much faster are these than my current card?".

Re:too many models and lines

[nanoflower]

I'm sure the cards are much faster than my current card. That's because my current card is a TI 4200 so just about any new card will be faster. ;) At least a few companies are supposed to be releasing some of these models in AGP forms so I may upgrade to one of them.

Re:too many models and lines

[MMC Monster]

Yes, look at the benchmarks. But (unfortunately) benchmarks only typically look at a few cards, and not the entire lineup. How much faster are these than my NVidia 6200?

Is there a site that lists every single NVidia card in the various form factors (AGP8x, PCI-E, etc.), and run the same benchmarks on them? Why can't they do this as part of their naming scheme? (ie: a 6600 being an average of 10% faster than a 6000 on a combination of all the benchmarks).

Re:too many models and lines

[jandrese]

Assuming your CPU is around the same vintage as your graphics card, upgrading to a (mythical at this point) AGP version of an 8600 may not be the best idea. Chances are the card would starve waiting for the processor and you'd basically be wasting money. You'd probably be better off upgrading the CPU, Memory, and Motherboard while you're at it to switch to PCI-Express before you upgrade to a modern video card. This isn't as expensive as it sounds, you could easily get a decent performer for $600 or so (Intel Core2 type processor, $100 motherboard, 2GB of memory or so) by reusing most of the components (HDD, Optical Drives, Power supply (unless you skimped originally), case, monitor, keyboard, mouse) from your old system. Of all of that the Power Supply is the most iffy, but if you bought something decent you'll probably be fine.

Re:too many models and lines

[jandrese]

While that sounds great in theory, there are too many factors that go into the performance of a card to really roll it all into one number. Differences in Direct X and OpenGL performance alone would confuse things, not to mention the differences in feature support. Even if they were to do that, in a few generations you would have incredibly unweildy product numbers. Just looking at the performance difference between a Geforce 256 and a Geforce 8800GTX should show how crazy large the numbers would get. Plus, it would encourage AMD and other rivals to adopt a similar looking naming scheme, but use a different way to calculate it that gives them bigger numbers, which would encourage nVidia to cheat on their own numbers, and in the end you have stuff that's no better than the fairly arbitrary numbers they use now. At least with the current numbers you know what generation of the chip is on the board and know what it will support. So if you know you need Shader Model 2.0 support you should stay away from GeForce 5xxx series cards for instance.

Re:too many models and lines

[Sinbios]

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

I'm sure those will appear on there eventually.

Re:too many models and lines

[TypoNAM]

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php is your friend. Allows you to select any ATI and nVidia card known and compare them side by side. Somebody back about four years ago here on slashdot pointed me in the right direction to that site and have been using it since. :)

Re:too many models and lines

[Alastor187]

I think when used correctly price can be a fairly good indicator of performance. Look at the manufacture retail price for different cards. The highest priced cards offer the most performance, likewise the lower priced cards over less performance. In some cases this works between manufactures. NVIDIA and ATI typically offer the same performance for about the same price. They are obviously competing so it is never exact, but I have never seen one severely undercut the other. I guess it makes sense, we want performance so that is what they charge us for.

Re:too many models and lines

[jasonmicron]

There is a way to tell. All you have to know about the numbers is the higher the number the better the performance. The 7800 cards are the 7-series video chips. The 8800 cards are the 8-series chips. The next generation of Nvidia cards will be 9800 9-series chips.

Inside each of those series the same rule applies: The higher the number, generally the better performing card. The 7900 line performs better than the 7800 line; the 8800 line performs better than the 8600 line; and so on.

The letters could be a little confusing to be sure. All you have to know is (from weakest to strongest) GS --> GT --> GTS --> GTX.

_______________________________________
So with that in mind: A 7600GT is worse than a 7900GT. A 7900 GT is worse than the 7900 GTX. The 8800 GTS is one step down from the 8800 GTX.

There are some exceptions out there (the 7950 DX/2 for instance) but for the most part if you follow those steps you will at least have some idea of which way is up in Nvidia land.

Re:too many models and lines

[djtachyon]

Tom's Hardware has a great chart system: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

Re:too many models and lines

[yodleboy]

sad but true. there have been too many changes lately and i'm going to have to buy/build a new PC to handle Crysis. my athlon64 3200/1gb ram/6600gt combo is starting to show it's age on some of the newer games. After pricing CoreDuo/Mobo/Videocard/new sound card that effing works in vista the cost to buy a pc with a warranty at best buy is too damn close. bleh. must play crysis though. and STALKER doesn't run for shit either on my current rig.

Re:too many models and lines

[Danny Rathjens]

Tom's hardware has the same feature. In addition to the various benchmarks, they also have a price/performance ratio which is pretty interesting:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

Re:too many models and lines

[MMC Monster]

Thanks. Looks like a great tool.

Re:too many models and lines

[aztracker1]

Funny thing, I recently put Vista on my wife's PC (she likes the shiny graphics)... I spent about 3 hours, but finally got sound drivers to work, only to discover the left channel hadn't been working for about a week before the upgrade... So I got an X-Fi card for about $80, and honestly was surprised how much better it sounds than the onboard audio in my machine.. may have to invest in one for myself...

Just put together a brand new machine back in January, I went with dual 7800GS cards in SLI... It is runs everything I use it for nicely for now, and when I upgrade the media center machine, and my kid's machine later in the year, will probably go to a single 8800GT, and reuse the 7800GS cards for the other two... the most advanced game my son and wife play are EQ2, and the 700GS in my wife's works fine, actually the ATI 9600GT in my son's computer does surprisingly well, but I've since banned any new ATI cards from the house after a few driver issues a couple years ago.

Re:too many models and lines

[init100]

You'd probably be better off upgrading the CPU, Memory, and Motherboard while you're at it to switch to PCI-Express before you upgrade to a modern video card. This isn't as expensive as it sounds, you could easily get a decent performer for $600 or so (Intel Core2 type processor, $100 motherboard, 2GB of memory or so) by reusing most of the components (HDD, Optical Drives, Power supply (unless you skimped originally), case, monitor, keyboard, mouse) from your old system.

I'm planning on doing exactly this very soon. I have an Athlon XP 2800+ today with 1 GiB DDR SDRAM and a Geforce 6600 AGP8X, and since I've had it for three years (built it in march 2004), I'm looking at an upgrade. One matter that made the issue more pressing is the fact that the chipset cooler have almost fallen off, not that it seem to have made much of a difference as the rig is still stable as ever.

I'm well aware that I've reached the end of the road with AGP, especially since I use a socket A processor. If I need a new motherboard I can just as well get a PCI Express one. I'm looking at getting a reasonably priced Core 2 Duo, probably an E6320 or an E6420 (which are released on april 22:nd), along with 2 GiB of DDR2 (probably 667 MHz to account for the coming FSB1333 update) and one of the cheaper Geforce 8 cards (anything is faster than my current card, might as well get a cheapo 8500GT, which has the nice feature of passive cooling and just 40W power consumption).

Re:too many models and lines

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd take those Tomshardware VGA charts with a grain of salt- their SLI performance listing is still broken.

Here's a useful chart showing the general hierarchy of videocards, also from tomsharware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/09/the_best_ga ming_video_cards_for_the_money/page7.html

Re:too many models and lines

[Anonymous Coward]

be very careful when doing this though, often price and *scarcity* are related as well (i.e, trying to purchase something that has been generally discontinued by the manufacturer). There is often a large price *premium* when you're trying to buy old legacy hardware.

For example, you don't want to be stuck buying a $1004.00 Pentium-D Extreme Edition processor http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80833
  when a $180 Core2 Duo can easily beat the snot out of it.

Re:too many models and lines

[XO]

A 6200 is considered absolute garbage by current standards. Note that these reviewers consider the X1650, which is at least somewhat better than a 6200, as "unusable".

Unless you're happy sticking to old-time video resolutions, a 6200 is worthless. I know, I'm using one right now. We're equipped here with the following video on computers that I'm responsible for:

NV 7600GS
NV 6200
NV 6150 Mobile
ATI 9600
ATI 9550
ATI 7000 (computer not used for 3d at all, but I couldn't find anything cheaper than $20 when I needed a video card for it)

7600 = w00t

everything else = sux

Re:too many models and lines

[XO]

...EAX doesn't work in Vista, and Creative says it probably never will.. so, serious gaming audio is pretty much SOL until DX10 audio supporting stuff comes out. If. ever.

Re:too many models and lines

[koreaman]

What about comparing across two series? A 7600 vs. a 6800, for example.

Re:too many models and lines

[jasonmicron]

The higher the number, the better the chip. The higher numbered series is the better one (and is a huge leap in technology).

Re:too many models and lines

[jasonmicron]

Let me also say that the first number in the line is the chip series number.
The 7 in 7800 means that it is a 7-series chip.
The 6 in 6800 means that it is a 6-series chip.
The 8 in 8600 means that it is an 8-series chip.
And so on.

Re:too many models and lines

[koreaman]

Are you trying to tell me that a 7200 is better than a 6800 Ultra? Ridiculous.

Re:too many models and lines

[jasonmicron]

I said it was a general rule so that someone that doesn't know how to read the model numbers could get a basic idea of what they are looking at.

So, yea.

Re:too many models and lines

[koreaman]

Allow me to politely point out that you are wrong.

Yay! DX10!

[malevolentjelly]

It's about time! I can't wait to play... .... ....... ...wait... nevermind. There are no DX10 games.

Re:Yay! DX10!

[Anonymous Coward]

And....no drivers for the only OS that supports it. Everybody wins!

Re:Yay! DX10!

[kestasjk]

This is about Aero; now that there are some moderately priced DX10 cards out there Aero isn't just for rich gamers.

Re:Yay! DX10!

[malevolentjelly]

This is about Aero; now that there are some moderately priced DX10 cards out there Aero isn't just for rich gamers. Aero runs fine on my GeForce 6200. So, I guess it's also for people with $30 graphics cards. It's not the resource hog people seem to think it is- I found it used minimally more CPU and memory than Vista basic when you have a sufficient, $30 graphics card.

Re:Yay! DX10!

[ichigo 2.0]

Aero is based on DX9. Any DX9-capable card is able to run it adequately.

Re:Yay! DX10!

[Bibz]

My ATI Radeon 9600 from 2 year old laptop can run Aero just fine...

Re:Yay! DX10!

[kestasjk]

I stand corrected

Re:Yay! DX10!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have the decency and good grace to admit that you were mistaken??
Are you sure that you're on the right site?

Re:Yay! DX10!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong for two reasons:
* Aero is based on Windows Presentation Foundation
* On Vista, there is no native pre-DX10. All previous versions are emulated via DX10-calls.

You are, however, right: A DX9-capable cards suffices to render Aero, as it uses only the features of DX10 already provided by DX9.

Re:Yay! DX10!

[julesh]

On Vista, there is no native pre-DX10. All previous versions are emulated via DX10-calls.

You are, however, right: A DX9-capable cards suffices to render Aero, as it uses only the features of DX10 already provided by DX9.

Actually, it's not so much emulation: all recent DirectX implementations *include* the interfaces of previous versions. DirectX10 includes DirectX9 and DirectX8.

Linux Drivers?

[ilovegeorgebush]

Are these DX-10 only or do they still support OpenGL?...I ask because i'm about to build a new PC and I want NVidia not ATI under GNU/Linux.

Re:Linux Drivers?

[Wesley Felter]

They also support OpenGL and Linux (using proprietary drivers).

Re:Linux Drivers?

[ilovegeorgebush]

Thank you.

Re:Linux Drivers?

[Knifa]

Why would you buy a 8x-series card to use it in Linux?

Seems a waste of money to me.

Re:Linux Drivers?

[Ramble]

At the moment it may be but remember Wine will one day support DX10, and if you're big on DX9/OpenGL gaming right now the 8000 series is the fastest around.

Also, since these are just big stream processors and nVidia's GPGPU libraries are coming on nicely you'll soon be able to use them for other things, like Folding@Home. Or something like a specially built compiler (which would be great for Gentoo users).

Re:Linux Drivers?

[kazade84]

Just some enlightening information: D3D and OpenGL are APIs that allow programmers to use the features that a graphics card is capable of. If a graphics card is capable of a new feature it is made available by extending the APIs of OpenGL and D3D. OpenGL does keep up to date with these new features via extensions. Whereas Direct3D have regular (annual?) full releases. D3D10 features such as geometry shaders ARE available in OpenGL via extensions. These extensions are normally first created by a member of the Architecture Review Board (e.g nVidia) and are given a name containing the creator (e.g. GL_NV_texture_rectangle, NV = nVidia) then when these extensions become more standardized (used by a few members of the ARB) they are named with EXT for extension, and finally when accepted by the Architecture Review Board they are named with ARB. At this stage they are official extensions, then normally with the next release they are moved into the core of OpenGL. This is where people get confused and say "OpenGL is so far behind D3D", what they don't realize is that OpenGL has the extensions mechanism. You tend to find people use the D3D version as a label for a cards feature-set for 2 reasons: 1. There normally isn't an official OpenGL version with new features till a while after the release (extensions don't contribute to a version number) 2. Windows users wouldn't even know what OpenGL is, whereas M$ use DX versions as a selling point 3. Most game developers (unfortunately for us non-windows users) use DX and label their games with it Anyway back to the point in hand, OpenGL is used on far more platforms than D3D and so graphics manufacturers will not stop supporting it doing so would stop all of these platforms (including linux and OSX) using new 3D features. Disclaimer - All of the above is they way I believe that OpenGL/D3D releases work, I don't know what has changed since OpenGL was taken over by the Khronos group or whatever. If I'm wrong about anything correct me!

Re:Linux Drivers?

[init100]

You may not be aware of that those new features of Direct3D 10 are supposed to be in the next revsion of OpenGL, known by the code name Mount Evans, which is due out the coming autumn.

In addition, they will probably also be available as extensions to the current OpenGL version (2.1) if they aren't already.

Re:Linux Drivers?

[init100]

This is where people get confused and say "OpenGL is so far behind D3D", what they don't realize is that OpenGL has the extensions mechanism.

I agree, many people are confused by this, and claim that OpenGL is old and stale, since it does not include all those new wonderful features. What they don't realize is that OpenGL has the extension mechanism, and in addition, that DirectX does not have such a mechanism. To be able to use new features on a graphics card, the specification and implementation of DirectX has to be updated by Microsoft, while for OpenGL it suffices that the card driver provides those new features as extensions.

It would be quite fun if game developers would switch to OpenGL with those Direct3D 10-like extensions, rather than write their games for DirectX 10. One reason could be to tap into the market of all those that intend to remain on XP for quite some time. Then people would get Direct3D 10 features on XP provided by Microsoft's worst (only?) competitor in the 3D API segment, and thus lose one of the big selling points of Vista. And all just for stubbornly refusing to release Direct3D 10 for Windows XP to force gamers onto Vista.

And as a side effect, games would probably work better in Linux too, as Wine wouldn't have to map Direct3D calls to OpenGL calls. Even porting might become feasible. But I guess I'm just dreaming...:)

Re:Linux Drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

CUDA is only hardware accelerated by cards in this series. http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html

DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we still designing GPUs for Windows? It's like the Slashdot crowd hates Microsoft for everything but still clings to them for their computer games. Screw DX10, ask for Open GL 3.0 already!

Re:DX10? What?

[Aladrin]

Jeez, that's a silly question.

Because that's where the money is.

If developers, even a few, thought they could make more money on Linux than Windows, or even turn a hefty enough profit by supporting both, they'd do it.

Thanks for companies like Introversion, Transgaming, and Codeweavers, and of course all the developers of Wine, Linux gaming is more popular than ever. Thanks to people like the folks behind Ogre3D, Newton, ODE, OpenAL, etc Cross-OS gaming is easier than ever.

I think this puts us right on the cusp of seeing a big change in Linux gaming. (And Mac OSX gaming, too.) But until then, Windows is -the- PC gaming OS and that's where hardware and software creators will be making their investments.

Now, I know the usual argument is that OpenGL is already cross-platform and should be supported. And I agree to a point... But ATI's OpenGL support has apparently always sucked, and you don't create a game that will suck for half the market if there's an easy alternative. (DirectX.) (Disclaimer: I have no first-hand experience with ATI cards. I've stuck with nVidia since Voodoo died.)

Re:DX10? What?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I'm doing my part. I only buy games that will run on linux. That's right, I said BUY.
Money talks.
Being all evangelical doesn't help if you are only interested in free as in beer. Developers need paid. I have over the last 6 months paid the equivalent cost of Vista Home in donations to various OSS projects. Do the same and Linux may move out of the basements of the world and maybe developers will port TO DX10 instead of the other way around.

Re:DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

That will never happen... too many sheep.

Re:DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I too only buy games that run on linux but my machine with a NVidia card constantly freezes. I can sys-req out and restart X (which freezes consuming 100% CPU) but it happens too often for the machine to be usable. It's a longstanding and widely reported bug that remains unfixed, possibly something to do with image copying code. My games collection is therefore rather small, consisting as it does of one game that I can't play.

Re:DX10? What?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I segfault occasionally in UT2004, but other than that have had no problems.
Fedora Core 6
Nvidia Geforce 6600GT PCI-e Driver version 1.0.9755
Asus A8N-SLI Premium

Not top-o-the line, but good enough for everything I have tried thus far.

Re:DX10? What?

[drinkypoo]

ATI's OpenGL support has apparently always sucked, and you don't create a game that will suck for half the market if there's an easy alternative. (DirectX.) (Disclaimer: I have no first-hand experience with ATI cards. I've stuck with nVidia since Voodoo died.)

I don't think you really understand. ATI's everything support has always sucked. It's not just OpenGL. ATI can't write a stable driver for any amount of money. But then, they don't have to, because people keep buying their crap.

The hardware seems to actually be quite good. But it's no use if you can't use it.

My next-to-last ATI was a Rage card. For each type of Rage, there are actually numerous parts. It always caused me problems. So then I bought lots of nVidia stuff, but eventually I decided to try ATI again. Various people told me that they had fixed driver problems and such. So I bought a 9600XT. Downloaded the latest drivers including catalyst control center, rebooted, and bluescreened. Rebooted in safe mode - no bluescreen. Reboot? Bluescreen. Reboot in safe mode, remove catalyst control center but not the driver, and reboot. No bluescreen! Unfortunately you couldn't change all settings and whatnot without CCC. I've since sold that system, and will be avoiding ATI like the plague it is once more.

Re:DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, that's a silly reply.

By your logic nobody would ever switch to Linux or Mac simply because "that's not where the money is".

Windows is a problem for everything, including games. If you'd rather take it in the ass simply to play your stupid games, go ahead.

Re:DX10? What?

[Rolgar]

While I as a Linux user would like to agree, it's probably significantly cheaper for us to get our OpenGL cards as an DirectX card that also supports OpenGL. Since nVidia cards sell 10-50 times as many as OpenGL only cards would sell (currently, if Linux and OSX had 50% of the market, the cards might sell evenly), OpenGL users get the benefits of getting our cards at the price of a DirectX card. An OpenGL only card would probably need to cost 3-10 times as much as the same DirectX/OpenGL combo card to cover the additional expense of developing a niche card that would have a significantly smaller market. Until a significant market for OpenGL only cards comes along, we'll continue to be stuck with combo cards. But thats OK with me, we've got millions of Windows games paying more than their share to have our OpenGL tech tacked on their cards, which keeps our cost low.

Re:DX10? What?

[TheNetAvenger]

Why are we still designing GPUs for Windows? It's like the Slashdot crowd hates Microsoft for everything but still clings to them for their computer games. Screw DX10, ask for Open GL 3.0 already!


Ok, go look up the technologies, you really need to educate yourself on what, why and when.

The first thing is that OpenGL doesn't support features DX10 does.

The second thing is concepts from the architecture of these cards are not completely exclusive to DX10 or Windows, many of the features can be modified to work well in native and OpenGL environments. (Although as we move to multi-core GPUs, the OS will need to have a basic understanding of GPU scheduling, and right now Vista is the only OS that does this.)

The third thing is the design of this generation of cards was done by Microsoft. Go look at the XBox360 and you will see the same technology in the MS/ATI developed GPU. So whether you hate MS or not, this progression of technology is very much pushed and even partially funded by them.

Also if you look back at the original XBox and the money NVidia got in the development of the GPU with MS, a lot of that technology set the stage for the last generation of GPUs. For example the XBox's GPU was feature comparable to the Geforce3 Ti, and that was all the way back in 1999/2000. NVidia and MS ended up fighting over production costs, but what most people don't realize is that NVidia got a lot of Money from MS up front to develop the technologies that they later put into their Geforce3 Ti, and Geforce 4 line of video cards, which helped them take and hold the market while ATI flopped like a fish.

So ya, MS technologies are pushing what goes into the Video cards, but these are also the 'newest' technologies for GPUs, not just what MS wants.

You will also start to see dual/multi core GPUs and other technologies that are a part of the MS DX10 technologies pushing ATI/NVidia hardware.

DX10 right now is just the only technology that effectively is designed for and uses these new GPU concepts effectively. From native support for multi-core GPUs to GPU scheduling (pre-emptive multitasking video) to even the full set of non-Video APIs that allow the GPUs to handle physics, which is a part of DX10 and something ATI will be using to showcase their new line of GPUs.

Re:DX10? What?

[init100]

Do the same and Linux may move out of the basements of the world

I run Linux and my apartment is on the top floor, you insensitive clod!

Re:DX10? What?

[init100]

Actually, I doubt that any graphics card of today support either OpenGL or Direct3D directly in hardware. They may be designed to conform to certain Direct3D and/or OpenGL feature sets, but both Direct3D and OpenGL compatibility are probably provided by the card driver. There is no reason why an OpenGL-only card could not have a Direct3D driver written for it, just like there is no reason why one couldn't write an OpenGL driver for a Direct3D-only card.

Re:DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for companies like Introversion, Transgaming, and Codeweavers, and of course all the developers of Wine, Linux gaming is more popular than ever.

Isn't that an argument against porting to Linux? After all, if someone will emulate your game anyway, why bother porting?

Now, I know the usual argument is that OpenGL is already cross-platform and should be supported.

But people who program for DirectX can get the Xbox360 platform for free. I suspect that demographic buys more games than the Linux+OSX one.

Games will be developed for Linux when a sufficent amount of linux users will buy Linux-based games, and boycott Windows-based one.

Re:DX10? What?

[aztracker1]

I had similar issues, but the conflict was the ATI driver vs. The motherboard's drivers.. it was a SFF PC, so out went the ATI, my son got a nice ATI 9600Pro, and I haven't bought any ATI based video cards since.. oops, I did get one for my G4, but ATI was the only one available, and in stock... Just the same, I try to avoid them...

Re:DX10? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a few comments earlier in the thread regarding the capability of GL to do dx10 things

the short answer is with extensions GL can have support for anything, without waiting for the next official release, where as there is no way to add any extra features to an existing version of DX, and as such to take advantage of anything else you have to wait for microsoft to directly support it.

Re:DX10? What?

[Moondevil]

That is not that easy.

With OpenGL extensions it means that each manufacturer will add its own extension until the OpenGL review board standardizes on a common one.

With DX version x, all manufacturers will have the same capabilities.

Please note that we (developers) don't want to code the same algorithm n times, just of different extensions.

Re:DX10? What?

[TheNetAvenger]

the short answer is with extensions GL can have support for anything, without waiting for the next official release

Partially true in theory; however, there are a few exceptions to this.

Notably OS level GPU Scheduling, OS level GPU RAM Virtualization, and non-graphic Physics APIs, although the later could be addressed, but are outside OpenGL. (Originally, people didn't 'get' why Vista was needed for DX10, maybe now people are figuring it out.)

You also then have to deal with the standard fragmenting by going with OEM variations and at that point why even have a standard hardware agnostic API?

obligatory print version

[Laebshade]

Obligatory print version. No pictures, but who needs those?

That said, while I'm not sure how these cards will perform, I have been using their big brother for a while. I've had a Leadtek 8800GTS (640mb) for a few months now, and it runs great. It would probably run better if I was using WinXP instead of Vista, but I'm happy with it.

Re:obligatory print version

[BoberFett]

Compared to their big brothers these new cards are highly castrated. These cards have 32 shader units to the 96 and 128 found on the 8800 GTS and GTX respectively, and the memory interface is only 128bit, while it's 320 and 384 on the GTS 640 and GTX. From the benchmarks I've been seeing, these cards aren't anything to get excited about. By the time DX10 games see the light of day we'll probably see far more powerful cards for less money. Anybody buying to play right now would be better off sticking with the high end last generation cards, or bite the bullet and get an 8800.

Re:obligatory print version

[Aladrin]

Oh really? Did you bother to look at the numbers of the old cards before you said that? The 7800GTX has 24 (!) shader units. That's better than 32 how?

From: http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article .asp?article=articles/archive/c0508/12c08/12c08.as p&guid=

Okay, the 8500 (the $100 model) only has 16. But how does that compare to the 7800GTX I paid $500 for? The $200 8600 has 32, and all the other specs are higher also.

It makes -no- sense to buy a 7800 once the 8500 and 8600 are released.

Re:obligatory print version

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

I've never paid more than $40 for a graphics card, and I've never found a game I couldn't play comfortably (high res, good frame rates). I buy a new $30-40 card every couple of years. Is there really any benefit to spending $500 on a card? I doubt I spent that much on my entire current PC.

Re:obligatory print version

[Andrzej Sawicki]

It makes -no- sense to buy a 7800 once the 8500 and 8600 are released.

I beg to differ. Think cheap upgrades. These "old" cards are a long way ahead of most current games' needs, as long as you run at a low resolution (up to 1280x1024, if I read the charts correctly), and the prices for the 7 series will "probably" fall, "probably" pretty soon.

Re:obligatory print version

[Aladrin]

Bragging rights. And the tech demos were fun for about 5 minutes.

Notice I'm not defending my purchase at all. I was only marginally impressed with that card over my previous $150 card. That's not a real good feeling, I can tell ya. I'll probably be buying one of the $200 8600's shortly after they come out. And only that because I'm going to be putting together a new system.

Re:obligatory print version

[BoberFett]

The 8800 is a new architecture. You can't do a straight shader to shader comparison. If you did, then the 8800 GTX with it's 128 units should be six times as powerful as your 24 shader card. It's not. When comparing apples to apples, the 8800 to the 8600/8500, you can see that the hardware simply isn't going to hold up to increasingly demanding games when it has 1/3 the memory throughput and 1/4 or 1/8 the number of shaders. Look at the benchmarks that are coming out, they don't lie. The 7900s are as powerful as the 8500/8600, and depending on the game and resolution sometimes even come out quite a bit ahead.

Re:obligatory print version

[Anonymous Coward]

GF 7800 GTX 24 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders, total 32.
GF 8600 32 UNIFIED shaders - these can act as either pixel or vertex shaders.

So they have the same number of shaders, but the 8600 can dynamically reassign them based on what the game needs - a little better but not worth upgrading over.
The GF 7800 GTX also has more memory bandwidth, which can make quite a big difference.

Still, you're quite right, the 7800 GTX is now officially dead at retail (or being sold for less than the 8600). It's still a kickass card and one which I'd probably be using for the next 2 years if I had one - of course, I'd never spend $500 on a card because I know that mid- and low-end cards are much better value if you have a little patience :)

Re:obligatory print version

[Chandon Seldon]

I've never paid more than $40 for a graphics card, and I've never found a game I couldn't play comfortably (high res, good frame rates).

Bullshit. Either that, or you only play games that are really old.

Take any game on a recent graphics card benchmark, and you'll discover that in order to get it running at a high resolution (high resolution today would be modes like 1920x1200) with decent framerates you really do need a card that costs more than $40. Even to run smoothly at a moderate resolution like 1400x1050 takes a $150 card.

Re:obligatory print version

[aztracker1]

Yeah, looks like it really doesn't do much better than my 7900GS's do... (for some reason was thinking 7800GT/GS, but is 7900GS)... I went with the GS because it was quite a bit less than the GT, and much less heat... the two GS's for SLI were still far less than either 8800 when they came out... Will probably split them up, one for the MCE upgrade, one for my son, though he's actually okay with the ATI 9600 pro he's been using for a while now.

Re:obligatory print version

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

Are you being paid by nVidia or ATI? No, I can't run at 1920x1200, but that is extreme. I'm talking more like 1280x1024. But then again, I don't really get off on going around telling people how high my frame rates and resolution are. I haven't bought any brand new games recently, but as I said I never paid more than $40 for a video card and I have always been able to play current games (ie new games available when I bought the card) on them.

Re:obligatory print version

[Tsagadai]

I'll give you one reason and one reason only, Power. These cards are one of the best performance per watt cards recently. They literally beat the pants off all the other cards. I'm getting one because I don't want to spend $300 on a PSU.

Re:obligatory print version

[Chandon Seldon]

I have no idea why people on Slashdot hype your point of view so strongly. It might be to make up for the fact that you really want to get a decent graphics card, but you just can't handle the idea of spending $200 "just" on entertainment.

Yes, most games probably will run on a cheap graphics card. At least at low resolution, with most of the graphics options turned off. All of these games will run better on a nicer card. In order to see games as the developers intended (i.e. shadows on in Doom III, HDR lighting in Oblivion) you really need to have a card that would have been in the $200+ bracket when the game came out.

I'm sure that you'll respond disagreeing with me - whatever, you can have crappy looking games if you want. For me, games are more enjoyable with the visual experience that the developers spent so much effort creating.

For anyone who is actually considering buying a card - see if you can find a way to see the difference on real computers with real games before you buy. Based on my experience actually using cards at the different levels for many years, you'll see a *huge* jump from a sub-$100 card to a $150 card, a significant jump from a $150 card to a $250 card, and a minor jump from a $250 card to a $400 card (unless you're playing on a silly 30" display - then it's a major jump again).

Re:obligatory print version

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

I have no idea why you are hyping your point of view so strongly. Maybe it's because you really want to spend less on a graphics card, but you just can't handle the idea of spending less than $200.

I have no problem spending money on entertainment. However, I beleive that most people will get the same level of entertainment out of a game at a slightly lower resolution and with some of the textures turned down. I like to play games for the game, not the graphics. To me, a good game is still a good game even if all of the shadows and smoke etc aren't rendered to perfection. I'm sure that for some people the extra eye candy worth the extra money. I also think that some people just get off on saying they spent X amount of money on their video card regardless of whether it actually increases their enjoyment of the games.

I figure it's like audiophiles. Some people feel like they need to spend thousands of dollars and have their audio system precisely engineered for their room. Personally, I've heard some of these systems and they sound good, but I am just as happy listening to my music in my car or on my relatively inexpensive surround sound system at home. I have no problem with other people spending as much as they want on audio equipment or gaming systems. I just don't get a proportional amount of extra enjoyment by spending more so why do it?

Re:obligatory print version

[Chandon Seldon]

I have no idea why you are hyping your point of view so strongly.

For the same reason I don't lend my Season 2 DVDs of a TV show to someone before I've lent them Season 1. For the same reason I won't let someone watch the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time on a 13" TV if they have access to a 60" TV with decent speakers.

Sure, for some games the visual presentation isn't the point. If you want to play Counterstrike: Source on a $150 Dell, that's not my problem - you're not going to miss anything that you can't experience later if you decide to upgrade. For some games though, the ability to create atmosphere is a key element to the game, and you can only get the full effect if you play through it the first time on a decent system.

My best example is probably Doom III. Lots of people said that Doom III sucked, the flashlight mechanic was lame, and the game play was boring and repetitive. Later, they would reveal that they tried to play it in a well-lit room with glare on their monitor, with shadows turned off so they could get a decent frame rate, and with frequent distractions so they couldn't get immersed. The whole point of the game was the horror movie atmosphere it created, obviously the game was going to suck if you didn't let it do that.

Even for Doom III, the difference between playing it on a $90 GeForce 6600 and a $500 GeForce 8800 GTX today isn't that big a deal. Either is enough to display the graphical quality the game needs to create its atmosphere. But if you try to play a game like that on a card that *can't* display shadows and "Medium" textures, you're not just wasting the money the game cost, you're wasting your opportunity to ever play that game for the first time the way the developers intended.

Re:obligatory print version

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

Well, I may have discovered your problem. Where are you buying these cards? A quick google search turned up a 256 MB GeForce 6600 for $40 and the 320MB 8800 for less than $300. The 640MB 8800 was around $350.

Re:obligatory print version

[Chandon Seldon]

If the 6600 is really available for $40 now, that's not bad. I wouldn't recommend that for this year's games, but for years-old games like Doom III it'd be fine. As for your 8800 prices, I was aware of those. I still doubt you'll find a "GeForce 8800 GTX" (the card I mentioned) for less than $500 new.

Another review at anandtech

[bad_fx]

There's another look at these cards at anandtech, here: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2970

I usually find their reviews to be the best around. Always very detailed, and from what I've seen always right on the money. (They seem impressed, but their bottom line seems to be that, for now, you're better of sticking with a 7600GT, 7900GS or X1950XT if you already have one.)

Re:Another review at anandtech

[owlstead]

...skim...skim...skim...ah:

Two full dual-link DVI ports on a $150 card is a very nice addition. With the move from analog to digital displays, seeing a reduction in maximum resolution on budget parts because of single-link bandwidth limitations, while not devastating, isn't desirable. There are tradeoffs in moving from analog to digital display hardware, and now an additional issue has a resolution. Now we just need to see display makers crank up pixel density and improve color space without reducing response time and this old Sony GDM-F520 can finally rest in peace.

Well, that and the improved support for high definition codecs and HDMI does it for me. If they make reasonably priced OEM products with dual DVI, many OEMs would be happy as well; there are not that many motherboards out there with dual screen support. Sometimes (say, 99% of the times) the reviewers forget, it is not always the graphics performance that people are after.

Now for the monitor makers: I want those 4:3 20" screens with 30 bit color space and 2000:1500 resolutions already. Non-degrading OLED's if anywhere possible. Ok, time to stay of the booze, I am nightdreaming again.

Re:Another review at anandtech

[Anonymous Coward]

I got two 3840x2400 22" 16:9 LCDs. Is that OK with you?

In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[SQL Error]

The 8600GTS delivers 40% of the performance of the 320MB 8800GTS for 70% of the price.

The 8600GT outperforms a 7600GT - but is priced like a 7900GT.

Re:In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[wcbarksdale]

Thank you for explaining some letters and numbers I don't understand in terms of some other letters and numbers I don't understand.

Re:In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[aliquis]

I don't know if this is exactly true but this was the case for the geforce 6-series:

Ultra - Fully working and enabled gpu, fastest clockrate.
GT - Fully working and enabled gpu, not as high clock as Ultra.
GS - Partly disabled gpu.
GTO - Partly disabled gpu, lower clockrate than GS. /NU - The normal version is also called NU, Partly disabled and slower than GTO.
LE - Even more disabled gpu.
XT - As disabled as LE but with 128-bit memories.

XT was higher clocked than LE thought, but I think LE is still better.

So it goes like:

XT LE normal/NU GTO GS GT Ultra

I think once in the days there was a GTS to, I think it was higher than GT =P

I guess Geforce 8600, 8610, 8620, 8630 and so on would have made to much sense...

Re:In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[aliquis]

Uhm, did my / make NU go up there? Guess I should have previewed :)

Should have been:
Ultra - Fully working and enabled gpu, fastest clockrate.
GT - Fully working and enabled gpu, not as high clock as Ultra.
GS - Partly disabled gpu.
GTO - Partly disabled gpu, lower clockrate than GS.
NU/nothing - The normal version is also called NU, Partly disabled and slower than GTO.
LE - Even more disabled gpu.
XT - As disabled as LE but with 128-bit memories.

Re:In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[Darkforge]

So what's "GTS"?

Re:In Short: Bandwidth-Starved and Overpriced

[aka1nas]

In the current generation of Nvidia parts, the GTS moniker is the model right below the GTX. There is a general order for those suffixes, but not all of them are used in a given generation. I.E. High-end Only Suffixes: Ultra GX2(Dual GPU card) GTX GTS Mid-range/budget suffixes: GT GS Vanilla/NU/no suffix Utter Crap: Usually castrated version of better cards that show up later in that generation's lifecycle or after they become obselete XT SE LE On the ATI Side: High End Only Suffixes: XTX PE High-end/Midrange suffixes: XT Mid-range/budget suffixes: XL Pro GT

What about power consumption?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these new cards also need their own dedicated nuclear plant to run, and a 50 Amps/rail dual rail power supply?

Don't care

[Opportunist]

As long as there is no stable, useful and fast system supporting DX10, there's no point buying a card supporting it.

Re:Don't care

[dave562]

And by the time games are coming out that require DX10, these cards will be so out of date it won't even be funny... unless you're the guy laughing at your friend who went out and spent a chunk of change on a card that doesn't really have any support just because he wanted to have the biggest ePeen on the block.

Re:Don't care

[drinkypoo]

As long as there is no stable, useful and fast system supporting DX10, there's no point buying a card supporting it.

What if Microsoft held a war... and nobody came?

This is pretty hilarious shit. Obviously no one gives a shit about Vista, or there'd be tons of DX10 hardware with working drivers already. It's clear that no one with lots of money is beating anyone up about this.

Re:Don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

These are "midrange" cards, which means they're still pretty expensive but they certainly aren't electronic penis enhancements.

Buying these for DX10 support would indeed be stupid (they even warn against this in TFA). I got a GF 5200, which was in the first generation to support DX9. It supported it but was so slow that it couldn't play any DX9 games for shit anyway! Didn't bother me that much because it only cost 50 quid and was a huge step up from the voodoo 3 it replaced, but I could have got a GF 440 with similar performance for even less cash.

That said I think I'll buy one of these. I'm a huge Total Annihilation fan and my current PC has no chance of playing Supreme Commander, the benchmarks show that these cards can handle it very well. I'd get the ATi card that spanks them in the benchmarks, except for the ATi linux driver situation...

Re:Don't care

[vux984]

Yes, there is no compelling reason to upgrade to DX10 today just to get DX10.

But to paraphrase your comment: As long you are buying a new video card, there's no point buying a card that doesn't support it.

If your still using a 5000 or 6000 series unit, an upgrade might well be in order. If you are buying a new mobo to upgrade cpu's and your existing card is AGP a new card is mandatory... for me, I think the sweet spot is the 320MB 8800GTS, but for someone on a tighter bugdet the new 8600 might be a better value than a 7600.

cheers

Re:Don't care

[Opportunist]

All true. But DX10 support is certainly no purchase directing feature. If card A doesn't support it but is otherwise identical with card B, but 50 bucks cheaper, card A is gonna be my choice.

I've seen far too many "Vista ready" and "Vista certified" products that were anything but that to believe that spin anymore.

Re:Don't care

[SleepyHappyDoc]

This is kinda the spot that I'm in. I'm running a 6200 AGP with 128MB right now, so pretty much any card on the market will be an improvement. I don't run a lot of graphically demanding stuff, but, then, if you'd asked me five year ago, I didn't have Google Earth and I'd have said I didn't need a GPU at all. The 8600GT looks like a nice card to grab to segue my way into PCI-e cards with something that will probably passably handle most things I throw at it for the next couple years. I'm not expecting monster performance, just better than what I have for the near future. If my needs don't change (watching the specs for Star Trek Online pretty closely), it should do what I need it to do until they come out with AGPCI-ex32 cards for me to switch to.

Re:Don't care

[Wesley Felter]

You know, you can use these cards with DX9 under XP. Just because the card supports DX10 doesn't force you to use it.

Re:Don't care

[aztracker1]

I think you mean AGPCI-ex64 or AGPCI-ex128.. Of course then you'll need one of those new fangled 1400W Power Supplies.. ;)

Drivers, drivers, drivers

[dreamchaser]

The current Forceware drivers for Vista are the buggiest, worst performaing drivers that Nvidia has ever put out. Take a look at their forums sometime; they are trying very hard to alienate their customers.

It doesn't matter how great these cards sound on paper. Without at least decent drivers they are worthless.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

They work great on XP. I think Vista's your problem :D

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[bulled]

That is what one gets when you push to the newest MS OS. However the 8800GT cards run great under linux (with the non-free drivers) and under XP and the games I play haven't looked better. The drivers for XP and linux are, in my experience, very stable.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is shit right now, if you haven't noticed. Use XP or Ubuntu.

I laugh at you if you're actually using it.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[dreamchaser]

I run them on XP as well, yes, and Linux. I referenced Vista because the topic is DX 10 related, and the cards are built for DX 10.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[drinkypoo]

Take a look at their forums sometime; they are trying very hard to alienate their customers.

It's just that what with the AMD-ATI merger, ATI has more press than nVidia. They thought they'd try to be like ATI by putting out drivers that don't work.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers

[Butisol]

I wish I could mod you up man. You are right. Without reliable drivers these things are merely expensive paperweights.

They support OpenGL just fine

[Sycraft-fu]

nVidia would be fools not to as many games need GL and gaming is probably their biggest market. What they mean by "DirectX 10" is feature set basically. OpenGL doesn't really keep up to date with cards very well so features are usually expressed in terms of DX versions. For example DX 7 means you have at least fixed function T&L, DX 8 means semi-programmable shaders, DX 9 fully programmable and things like that. DX 10 specifies a bunch of new stuff, the Wikipedia entry on it is pretty good if you are interested.

As a practical matter it isn't real useful for end users at this point as nothing really supports it. However it may be of interest to programmers since DX 10 cards take shader programmability to a whole new level. It specifies a unified shader interface, and nVidia has chosen to unify the shader hardware as well (ATi says they have done the same). Thus effectively a DX10 card can be looked at as a stream processor, with a whole lot of units. Various things, like folding, are likely to be able to be designed to run in part on the GPU for massive speed gains. nVidia has a whole deal for helping that called CUDA.

But yes, GL support is there, I can confirm it. I have an 8800 and I play GL games all the time. They work great.

Re:They support OpenGL just fine

[init100]

What they mean by "DirectX 10" is feature set basically. OpenGL doesn't really keep up to date with cards very well so features are usually expressed in terms of DX versions.

Exactly. Many (most?) of the new features of new graphics cards are available in OpenGL as extensions provided by the card driver GL implementation, but it would be unwieldy to list all those GL extensions supported by the card, so a Direct3D version number does fine instead. :)

But yes, GL support is there, I can confirm it. I have an 8800 and I play GL games all the time. They work great.

That's nice to know, since I'm probably going to get one of these cards very soon. And you know what? These Direct3D 10 features that these cards support will probably end up in OpenGL too, both as extensions and in a new revision of OpenGL specification itself (the latter is due out the coming autumn). The Wikipedia page on OpenGL has more details.

SKUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did consumers start referring to offerings as "SKUs"? We have enough acronyms to confuse things already, there's no need for terms like this in summaries.

-UAA (Users Against Acronyms)

Re:SKUs?

[Captain Pedantic]

We're not consumers, but customers. But to keep us on the edge and because we love TLAs, lets call the next thing we're expected to buy SKUs. Just to keep us on the bleeding edge, and to alienate the other guys.

not objective

[Anonymous Coward]

The Benchmarks say one thing but the actual games (which is why most not all but most people buy these cards) show that the X1950 Pro wins most of the time. What do they actually talk about though at every possible point? How badly the X1650 XT performs.

Please. This is all bull.

Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

Why would we want DX10? It only runs under Vista at this time, and there's no way any serious gamer is going to switch to Vista. It's too fucking unstable, slow and DRM ladened to the point that you can't manipulate files without waiting for days to finish.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/16/vista_fore nsics_2/

days to delete files? lucky vista didn't corrupt the drive? looking for drm bits on every file access? good god, what kind of fucked up shit is this?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who want to play Crysis may have no choice about it... though I can see them releasing a DX9 patch shortly after they realize there's not enough of a market to justify DX10.

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

Or wait until dx10 is emulated under Wine.

I for one will not allow a game to drive a bad purchase decision (like Vista).

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

According to Crytek, Crysis will be supported on Windows XP...
http://www.crytek.com/games/index.php?px=xsis

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

And CryEngine already supports DX9.

http://www.crytek.com/technology/index.php?sx=eng2

Re:Who cares?

[brunascle]

looks like that's a project in this year's Summer of Code for Wine: http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode (scroll to the bottom)

Re:Who cares?

[benzapp]

It's too fucking unstable, slow and DRM ladened to the point that you can't manipulate files without waiting for days to finish.

I think this is highly subjective and system dependent. I run 64-bit Vista on my desktop and 32-bit Vista on my laptop and they both work well, although the 64-bit version is clearly superior.

Now, both machines have dual core processors and at least 1 gig of ram. So, maybe that's it.

And, by the way, your ridiculous inclusion of the curse "fuck" so many times does nothing but highlight the fact you are an immature child (whether in reality, or at heart).

Seriously, an operating system release is just not worth invoking such strong emotions.

Re:Who cares?

[JonXP]

Unstable? Slow? DRM Laden?

Firstly, I don't know where you get your mythological stability numbers, but I'm going on two months with no reboot (and even then it was for a third party unsigned driver installation), and the speed is just fine. The overall OS is much faster at the expense of a couple FPS in games. Whoop-di-do.

Finally, everyone has complained and complained about the DRM in Vista. I hate to tell you, but I haven't encountered it in anything except files I've purchased from iTunes. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but from the way folks were talking the mere fact that you had audio files on your system was enough to get Vista to lock it down and start DRMing them. Doesn't happen.

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

[i]And, by the way, your ridiculous inclusion of the curse "fuck" so many times does nothing but highlight the fact you are an immature child (whether in reality, or at heart).[/i]

Actually, that would be my military background showing through you stupid fucking wanker.

Dual core, couple a gig - and I'm sure that the forensics folks have you beat hands down.

I for one have tried it on a dual core athlon 64, with 4GB of RAM, and approximately 6 terabytes of disk, with hundreds of thousands of files (web and media).

That install lasted approximately 3 days before I went back to Windows XP pro for my gaming.
The files are back on an OpenSolaris file server running zfs.

I destroyed that copy of Vista, and mailed it back to MS, asking that they take care of their trash.

Re:Who cares?

[Belial6]

"Seriously, an operating system release is just not worth invoking such strong emotions."

I have to disagree with this. Many, many people's lives and careers are intimately tied to their ability to use a computer. Given that MS is a monopoly, and for all intents and purposes hundreds of millions of people will have no other choice but to spend many hours a day interacting with MS's OS, it is absolutely fair to have it invoke very strong emotions. If you had said the same about a game console, where there are really three good choices, and millions of peoples livelihoods didn't depend on it, I would agree with you. We are not talking about that though. We are talking about something that is as much a part of our infrastructure as telephones, electricity, and gasoline. If the electric company sent out a memo tomorrow that told us they were going to seriously increase the cost of electricity, everyone would have to upgrade their breaker boxes, and a bunch of your existing electric uses will be incompatible with their new system, you can bet that people would be swearing. At this point Windows is a utility and will cause just as much frustration when MS does bad things to the customers.

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

Maybe you ought to redo your userid to JonVista then...

You sir, have been lucky so far.

Beware, you will get bitten, and when you do - well - we tried to warn you.

Re:Who cares?

[GuyverDH]

Flamebait? There's zero flamebait here - just facts...

If there's any baiting going on, it's being done by Microsoft.

Bait and switch....

Show a glorious heavenly experience OS commercial....
Provide an infamous depths of hell experience to the users on install.... (when you can install it)

Re:Who cares?

[JonXP]

Been JonXP since '96. Has nothing to do with Microsoft. I'll be glad when all this is done with and those jokes can finally stop.

Re:Who cares?

[init100]

Why would we want DX10? It only runs under Vista at this time

The same feature set is due to appear in the next revision* of OpenGL, and drivers supporting that version will certainly be available on Linux and Windows XP too.

*= Those features might already be available in OpenGL as extensions to the current version, but I don't have such a card yet, so I can't check if they are.

Re:Who cares?

[MaineCoon]

DX10 itself - if it existed apart from Vista - is a clean break in an API that has had additions made to it repeatedly, and built up too much legacy.

To be DX10 compatible, graphics cards are moving to a more generic architecture - dropping specialized vertex and pixel shaders for fully programmable, generic stream processors. So the DX10 migration is both a clean break for both the API and the cards themselves, a chance to ditch legacy. It is possible for the cards to have simply moved to this new system, without any change to the API, but without the changes with DX10 (and the fresh start there), there wouldn't have been as much motivation to make the change.

I'm not a fan of the way DX10 is handled (Vista-only, that is), but it is a good change. I was very skeptical at first (about DX10 itself) until I started doing a lot more research. Working in the games industry I also have easy access to the GDC presentations, which helped me understand more of what can be done with these new generations of cards.

One of the new features added in DX10, and provided via the stream processors on new cards, is geometry 'shaders' - geometry processing and procedural geometry generation on the GPU. Some games have shown examples of the difference of scenes between DX9 and DX10 versions of an engine, and DX10 scenes have a lot more detail and usually a further clip plane. This is because, with DX10, things like procedurally generated trees can be done in parallel in the multiple (128 on a 8800 GTX) stream processors, rather than doing them serially on the main CPU. Shadow map generation can be done entirely on the GPU now. This can be done much faster in stream processor, and more can be done in parallel, than could be done on the CPU (which would then have to send the data across the bus to the GPU). You've probably seen what normal mapping looks like; geometry shaders can replace normal mapping with true geometric extrusion/morphing.

The stream processors on these new generation of cards are fully programmable... we may see hardware accelerated physics support via our graphics cards in the not too distant future.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

There seem to be quite a few improvements in DX10 to DX9, but I am the most excited about geometry shaders. The implications for gaming are profound - from replacing normal mapping with true extrusion, morphable and destructable terrain, trees and plants will actually be able to grow right before your eyes. I won't be surprised to see one of the first applications being waves that actually roll and crash on the shoreline. Procedurally generated content will mean not only reduced resource footprints on your HD, but reduced bus activity and more CPU time being freed up - instead of sending full mesh data across the bus, you only need to describe the minimal amount of data needed to build your mesh, instead of the whole mesh itself.

Plus, with the addition of output buffers from the geometry shader, you will see a lot more applications able to take advantage of the GPU as an extra processor.

It's a *product*, not a SKU

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is with people calling a product a Stock Keeping Unithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Keeping_Uni t? It's a physical item, not a freaking number.

Re:It's a *product*, not a SKU

[__aaclcg7560]

It's marketing shorthand for a product. In companies where products are physically manufactured, this term gets tossed around a lot.

Re:It's a *product*, not a SKU

[Aladrin]

You apparently haven't worked retail.

Yes, it's a Stock Keeping Unit. When a manager wants to talk about the variety on his shelf, he talks about the number of SKUs on it. Each SKU is a different item in the computer, but may be VERY close to another product in actuality. Yellow Rubberbands vs Red Rubberbands, for instance.

Like it or not, sometimes the real world carries over into our little tech paradise and we have to understand their terms. Even worse, sometimes we start using them ourselves! Oh noes!

Re:It's a *product*, not a SKU

[julesh]

Actually, the problem is that SKU has two definitions, only one of which is included in the article you linked to. The one being used here is the original one; the meaning of a number to identify a product came later. Think about it. It's a Stock Keeping Unit, right? In what way is the number a unit? It isn't. An SKU is a product. The name makes no sense if you're talking about a code for a product, and this sense (which is, admittedly, now more common than the original) is a corruption of the meaning of the term. See definitions here and here among others.

So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Moryath]

The Radeon X1950 beats the NVidia cards in every single test save for the "synthetic" crapmark test that has nothing to do with reality.

Yet their final page says you should buy the NVidia rather than the X1950?

Somebody's been paid off. This wasn't an article, it's a fucking stealth ad. They have no integrity.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Lord Crc]

The Radeon X1950 beats the NVidia cards in every single test save for the "synthetic" crapmark test that has nothing to do with reality.

Interesting, that's not what I've been seeing in tests. In fact, in most tests it seems the 8800 GTX beats the X1950 XTX with a comfortable margin. Here's one review that goes through a number of games: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8 800-games.html

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Zantetsuken]

yes, but does ATI have any cards such as the 7950GX2 which has 2 cards bundled together on one PCIX slot - allowing for a total maximum of 4 cards (quad-sli)???

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[QuesarVII]

You mean PCIe right? PCIX is regular pci, only 64bit and running at either 66, 100, or 133MHz. I've seen people confused by this a lot lately...

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[gripen40k]

I think the bigger question is 'does ATI need a 7950gx2', when they could just come out with a better card?

And really, how well is that nVidia card doing in sales anyway?

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Holmwood]

The Radeon X1950 beats the NVidia cards in every single test save for the "synthetic" crapmark test that has nothing to do with reality.

Interesting, that's not what I've been seeing in tests. In fact, in most tests it seems the 8800 GTX beats the X1950 XTX

In context, it's clear the GP was referring to the NVidia cards that were reviewed by the article. And he's mostly right. In only one (of many) actual gaming benchmark did any of the Nvidia cards reviewed outperform the X1950.

Where I believe the GP is mistaken is in his conclusions about the article. The article itself says, in conclusion:

The 256MB version of the Radeon X1950 Pro is faster in most games, and by a pretty good margin, too.

The article notes, correctly I think, that the X1650XT is not a good card for gamers to buy. It notes that the 1950 won't do DirectX10, and the budget NVidia cards may not be fast enough to do it well either.

However, it's also instructive to have a look at this review at Hard OCP. There, in two demanding games (Oblivion and STALKER), the 8600 GTS appears to win handily over the 1950XT. If those benchmarks are accurate, it suggests the ExtremeTech article may draw conclusions that are too favorable to the X1950.

Ah well, interesting times for all gfx card consumers!

Holmwood

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This slashdot article is talking about how the new Nvidia midrange cards compare to the existing ATI midrange card: the X1950 Pro. These cards retail for $200 to $230. In the /. linked article ATIs midrange card beats Nvidias new midrange cards in almost every test they ran. Its safe to assume the GP was refering to the tests in the /. linked article.

The xbitlabs.com article you linked compares the Nvidia extreme highend card (8800 GTX) to the ATI X1950 XTX. In this catagory Nividia wins. Im not that surprised considering that the Nvidia card costs $600 - 700 while the ATI card used to cost $400 (it doesnt seem to be for sale anymore since Newegg has zero in stock). ATI doesn't seem to have a card that can match Nvidia in the high end but that's not what the /. article is talking about.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[gripen40k]

Actually, he's talking about the affordable nVidia cards, and the tests that were done in TFA. Also, you see that given the price of the X1950 XTX (a smooth 400$), it doesn't even compare to the 500$ (min) you would have to throw down for a 8800 GTX. I would expect for 100$ more I would be getting that much more in graphics performance!

And the GP is right in saying that the review is a little bias, the ATI card clearly outperforms the nVidia ones. But, and there's always a but, the ATI one doesn't support DX10 features and ATI is supposed to release a new card lineup in the near future that should support it. Should be interesting...

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[bumptehjambox]

Meh, you're all missing a key point. The 8800 GTS 640MB ($370) is a better deal than the x1950 XTX because of how good the 16xQ-AA setting looks. x1950 XTX only has up to 8x unless you add another, therefore- it fails.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Lord Crc]

In context, it's clear the GP was referring to the NVidia cards that were reviewed by the article.

I realized this the second I hit submit (even after previewing). I tried to post a reply explaining that I'm a moron, but it seems to have been ignored :)

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Dread Pirate Skippy]

Yes, built by Sapphire. Info here.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[jahurska]

Notice also that the 8600 GTS is compared against X1950 Pro which is a sub-$200 card currently, lowest price I have seen was $175. And 8600 GT is compared against X1650 XT, which is sub-$150 card. MSRP of 8600 GTS and 8600 GT according to the article is $239 and $199 respectively. Better price wise comparison would be 8600 GTS against X1950XT 256Mb and 8600 GT against X1950 Pro. Also the article does not compare these cards against the NVidia's older generation cards, like 7950GT which is around the same price point than 8600 GTS.

Of course the DX10 technology affects cost, but either way it would be more fair comparison if the cards around the same price point were compared as it would show how much DX9 performance you are sacrificing to have DX10 hardware. As these cards are on the cast of affordable gamer cards, the bang-per-buck performance is what most gamers want to know.

Also comparison against the 8800 GTS card would've been helpful as the 8800 GTS has attained the $300 price point.

Tom's hardware has IMHO better review about these cards. I would suggest that everyone interested about these cards check that review also.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/17/geforce_860 0/

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[MikShapi]

I also got the impression that sane people compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges.

If you have 400$ and give them to ATI, you get a 1950XTX.
If you have 400$ and give them to nVIDIA you get an 8800, possibly the lower-RAM (320MB) version.

You're much better off with the 8800, it tears the ATI card a new one.

Now if you have 200$ to spend, that's a whole different ballpark there.
Giving them to nVidia will net you something that is, in most benchmarks, ALMOST on-par with the 400$ ATI card. *AND* is DX10, for whenever DX10 games come along, months, maybe a year from now.
I won't even mention ATI's 200$ card.

This is all, however, very temporary. We're comparing an 8th-gen (geforce-count) nVidia card to a 7th-get ATI one. ATI has an 8th-get card that's going to be announced very-very-soon(tm). THEN we'll perhaps be able to tell which of them better deserves our coin.

On a sidenote, low-end cards are typically announced last. I suspect the 8500 will give performance on-par with 7th-gen midrange cards (read: Still Smokin fast in most available games by most people's standards, even if they have to tone down an eyecandy knob or two). And it's sitting smack at the bottom of the pile, at 90$.

If, say, ATI releases their 600$ 8800-equivalent bunker-buster next week, and takes another 4 months to chug out it's low-end, nVidia is going to be doing a milk-run (as it's been doing since day 1 of the 8X00 card), and again you're best off getting an 8500 for a while.

You can always stick it back out on ebay later, lose (or gain) a whopping 15$ in the deal, and buy ATI's thing if the R600 humanely-priced lines turn out to be so much better. I've just sold off my 8800 (bought it just to complete Gothic III, have no intention on letting it depreciate in price while it's in my computer), and am seriously thinking of getting me one of those 90$ 8500GT's.

My 2 cents.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[GeorgR.]

i still think that cr@pmark is a good way to compare cards to each other - and/or make sure that a setup you have is on par (performance wise) with what others have. If you only get 50% of the score someone else has...then you know something is screwed with your system.

AGP Version...

[__aaclcg7560]

Will these cards be out in an AGP version? I was planning to get an Sapphire ATI X1650PRO 512MB AGP video card. If nVidia has an affordable DirectX 10 video card coming out soon, I might wait.

Re:AGP Version...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be very surprised. There were no AGP versions of the 7xxx series after all.

Re:AGP Version...

[Zantetsuken]

Probably not - IMHO AGP users were lucky to get 79xx versions in AGP, which may be the last new model agp card made...

Re:AGP Version...

[tehmadscientist]

I agree...I'm actually surprised there are so many 7xxx AGP card out. Ill be absolutely shocked if they release an 8xxx AGP card. Especially with the coming of Vista and its hunger for power/resources, i cant see agp staying around much longer.

Re:AGP Version...

[Glonoinha]

You mean like this one?
7600GT AGP

I'm considering getting one, get another year out of my AGP system - and if the lower end 8xxx series comes out in AGP with a reasonable power requirement I may have to get it instead.

MOD PARENT UP.

[Winckle]

I'm glad you pointed this out Anonymous, it grinds my gears as well. Some nerds thought the acronym sounded cool, but you are quite right.

Content?

[BagOBones]

I wouldn't worry about ATI/AMD not having DX10 hardware until their is content and a significant number of users that can use it.

1. You need a Game that supports DirectX 10, how many have been released so far?
2. You need the user to be running Windows Vista to have support for DirectX 10
3. The user needs to have also purchase a DirectX 10 graphics card to complete the loop.

It is the chicken and the egg, and history hasn't been kind to the early adopters of graphics cards that are the FIRST to implement a new API.

Re:Content?

[n0w0rries]

I'm perfectly happy sticking with XP until...

1) There's a moderately priced, high performance DX10 video card available ($200-$250)
2) There's a way to address the DRM laden Vista (either a hack/patch/new version)
3) There's a DX10 game that I have to have that doesn't include spyware, adware, or malware.

The only way to convince big corporations that their new direction sucks is to vote with your wallet. Don't buy whatever crap they want to shove in your face. I play bf2 a lot, but didn't buy bf2142. Why? Because they never fixed the bugs in bf2, and they charge full price for a game with ads in it.

Re:Content?

[drsmithy]

2) There's a way to address the DRM laden Vista (either a hack/patch/new version)

What, exactly, are you trying to "address" ?

Let me get this straight.

[Glytch]

DirectX 10 only works under Vista.

The biggest reason to get these cards over other existing ones is for DirectX 10.

The drivers for these cards don't work under Vista.

Huh.

Re:Let me get this straight.

[Aadain2001]

The biggest reason to get these cards over other existing ones is for DirectX 10.

I disagree completely. DX10 is a non-issue right now because there are no games to take advantage of it. However, the new processing unit design (no pixel and vertex processors, but a unified processor) greatly increases performance of current games, sometimes significantly. That's a pretty damn good reason for getting these cards (at least from Nvidia right now).

Re:Let me get this straight.

[Anpheus]

I disagree completely. There are many choices available from both AMD and nVidia that would be otherwise good upgrades-except for DirectX 10. That's a pretty big issue. Yeah, you'll be fine playing all the current games, and maybe new games for a year or so. But in a year and a half to two years, it won't matter how good the card you bought is, and it is possible to spend $350+ on a card that doesn't support DX10, because you not only won't be able to play that game at full settings in two years (hey, that's a given) but you won't be able to play it with many of the settings at all! DirectX 10 is just a prerequisite for a new computer just to future-proof it.

Re:Let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Custard]

DirectX 10 is just a prerequisite for a new computer just to future-proof it.

Buying a graphics card today does not mean you will be future-proofed for tomorrow.

In 9 months or so when DX10 games come out, chances are they'll need better-than-8800 graphics to run at max settings.

If there are no games out now that justify a high-end purchase for you, then get a cheaper mid-range card and save the rest of your money for a better card in 9 months.

Re:Let me get this straight.

[rrhal]

I agree - DX10 is still on the horizon. Once its here (i.e. there are games you can buy that you want to play that use DX10) the graphics cards will be better and cheaper. Maybe the drivers will get fixed by then too.

More opinions!

[Vigile]

Here are some links to other interesting reviews of these products:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=3 92 tested under Vista 64-bit and shows the 8600 GTS behind the aging ATI X1950 Pro
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM yNCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== tested under XP and shows better performance on the 8600 GTS
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8409 tested under XP but not a lot of newer games

It goes basically like this

[Sycraft-fu]

The first number is the major generation of hardware. So these are the 8000 series cards, the 8th generation of GeForce hardware. All other things being equal, a new generation card of a similar number performs better than an older one. So a 7600GT should outperform a 6600GT and an 8600GT should outperform a 7600GT. However the primary reason to look at new major version numbers is new features. In this case, 8 series cards support DirectX 10, 7 series are DirectX 9.0c.

The second number is the minor version and generally increasing numbers indicate increasing speed. Usually, they indicate the amount of processing hardware so an 8800 has more pixel pipelines and shaders and such than an 8600. Then there's the letters. GTX > GTS > GT, not sure how it goes after that. Again, speed related.

What it really comes down to though is you need to look at benchmarks. There's no one magic metric for cards, they'll be better at some things worse at others. You need to see how it performs on the stuff you are doing to make the determination.

old $150 x1950 pro outdoes new $200 8600 gts

[guidryp]

So in short, you pay more and get less performance in hopes that someday, you will need DX10.

It seems nice of Nvidia to leave ATI/AMD a chance to beat them squarely in the $200 bracket by showing up with more memory bandwidth.

8600 is ok but hardly anything to get excited about. More about features than performance or bang/buck.

Mobile 8000

[nevermore94]

Does anyone who follows this stuff have any idea how long until the 8000 series makes it to a mobile version for gaming laptops?

Mod this guy up

[Anonymous Coward]

At last a website that allows you to compare video cards with useful information!

Pot & Kettle

[Nom du Keyboard]

While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card,

And while Nvidia still hasn't released working Vista drivers...

I would Mod the article submitter Troll -1 over the wording in this article.

Re:Pot & Kettle

[will_die]

new non-beta drivers out today, so far they have fixed the problems I was having. They are on the nvidia site.

Why would I want one?

[teflaime]

I, among others, have yet to see a convincing arguement to buy a DX-10 capable video card. I'm not upgrading to Vista, until they remove their DRM supportive crap and their awful driver signing nonsense. I'll switch to an over-priced Mac first.
I don't play FPS, which is most likely to be the biggest genre that actually thinks it needs DX-10.
My next logical upgrade will be to dual SLIs, unless I can't use dual monitors with them (I know some people who said they've had trouble with SLI and dual monitors, but I haven't researched it much because I'm not upgrading right now).

Re:Why would I want one?

[Rolgar]

Although I've been a historically Windows user who has switched to Linux, I would say that if the value of the Mac machine has more value than the DRM infested Vista, I would say that the Mac is not overpriced, since the Mac is more powerful than Vista, since it will use the DRM cycles to do something else and will do what you want. In fact, if Vista has less value for you, I would say that it is the one that is over priced.

Re:Why would I want one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things to note here: First off, every single DX10 feature of the card can already be accessed with OpenGL. If Vista flops (or should I say, doesn't unflop?) and Microsoft doesn't budge on their phony "it's impossible to run DX10 on XP" stance, game developers will hopefully move to OpenGL and start using these features. Secondly, you can't run dual monitors with an SLI setup. You'd have to buy a third card to do so, and obviously you wouldn't be able to stretch games across both monitors.

Re:Why would I want one?

[teflaime]

Now that they have switched to Intel hardware, Macs shouldn't cost $1000 more than the equivlent windows machine, but they still do. Apple has always overpriced their hardware and they continue to do so because they can get away with it, as their core user base is used to paying that much for their hardware. In truth, if companies would make more Linux version of software, I would only buy a Mac if I needed to do certain kinds of video editing (because it is still several thousand dollars cheaper than an Avid system). But, there are actually applications that I want that they don't have good Linux versions for (and I want to use the apps, not spend months getting WINE working correctly), that they do make Mac versions of.

Re:Why would I want one?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM taking up cycles...

god you zealots come up with the stupidest shit

Re:Why would I want one?

[mollymoo]

Now that they have switched to Intel hardware, Macs shouldn't cost $1000 more than the equivlent windows machine, but they still do.

That's a popular opinion, but is quite simply not true. Go price up an equivalent (I mean equivalent - comparable CPU, GPU, screen, dimensions, mass, battery life, features - everything as close as possible) and you'll find you're completely and utterly wrong. I've never found a difference of more than $200 when trying to price up Windows equivalents to Macs. Sure, you can buy a Windows laptop for $1000 less than a Mac with a similar CPU, but that Windows machine will have an inferior GPU, inferior screen, will be larger, weigh more, have poorer battery life, no built-in webcam, no gigabit ethernet, no Firewire, no Bluetooth...

But the x1950 still isn't DX 10...

[Kamokazi]

Which in most cases for gamers, doesn't usually matter-in most cases, the more powerful hardware is better than weaker hardware with new tech. However, with the way M$ is pushing Vista upgrading, how long will it be before there are less impressive games that require DX10 to run, and potentially DX10 hardware? Or what about DX10 games like Crysis? Maybe that will push performance past non DX10 cards. It's hard to say untill we can test things like that.

ISA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but is this card available in ISA format?

Re:ISA

[Cowclops]

Yes, but is this card available in ISA format?

No, its going to be VLB only.

Re:ISA

[__aaclcg7560]

It's hard finding good 8-bit video cards these days. :P

Re:ISA

[modicr]

Hello!

BTW, ISA is still supported in Vista/Longhorn:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/bus/PCI/ISA-b us.mspx

Cheers, Roman

I'm using them

[Lazerf4rt]

Those links are about 5 months old. I bought Vista with the BFG 8800GTS OC 320MB last weekend, and everything is running smoothly. Got the Aero effects and ran some DX10-only demos. So far so good.

Open Source Drivers

[Britz]

I am pretty happy with my Radeon 9550. It has a fairly small passive cooler, so I guess it doesn't produce so much heat and I have

Open

Source

3D

Drivers

I was/am looking at a 7600GT (the version from MSI has a passive cooler that covers the whole front of the card, which was tested to be more effective than the heat pipe solutions), but opens source is so damn convenient, since you don't have to compile extra proprietary modules (it worked pretty well back when I used Nvidia with Debian, but it was always a pita).

Please, please, p l e a s e AMD or Nvidia open up those damn specs.

Re:Open Source Drivers

[kilo242]

If I recall correctly, ATI/Nvidia can't open their newest specs because of patents and deals with other companies that state they cannot release the specs to the public. The only reason the lower end cards and Intel graphics have open drivers is that the technology is old enough to either not be covered by these deals, or else they're so old that the the drivers aren't considered to be competitive trade secrets anymore. Although this is just what I remember.

For future reviewers...

[Duncan3]

Please fill in the following for before writing any reviews:

DX9 support: [ ]
DX10 support: [ ]
Wattage: ______
Wattage: ______ (the real number this time)
Plays a game my 4 year old card cannot play just fine [ ]

Since there is currently no game you can check off that last box for, and the wattages are complete shit, we can all just completely IGNORE ATI and nVidia until they get a F'ing clue about making cards for anything but 40 year old virgins still living in their parents basements.

.

Re:For future reviewers...

[Nemetroid]

Actually, there are a couple of games my GeForce 6800 has a hard time to handle, even with the lowest settings. Think Supreme Commander.

Re:For future reviewers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Company of Heroes, Prey, Oblivion. Basically, any game made in the last 3 years. Good luck playing Prey on your Radeon 9800 Pro.

Re:For future reviewers...

[tygerstripes]

for anything but 40 year old virgins still living in their parents basements

Hi, welcome to Slashdot.

Life imitating business.

[kinglink]

Parent is 100 percent right, however marketing and business tend to think in SKU terms for a variety of reasons.

Apparently like all other acronyms someone outside of the original world heard it and thought it was cool and made them sound like they were part of the industry and it propagates from there.

Personally SKU has a lot of useful connotations, the best I can think of is "Total versions of a product" which in most businesses is important, but like I said the parent is right, this is part of the over use of it by people trying to be "hip".

No news of DX10 on XP?

[Sparr0]

Everyone keeps calling these "DX10" cards, despite that being a misnomer. They are SM4 cards, and DX10 happens to be the first version of DX to support SM4. OpenGL also supports the new shaders (and has for longer). When are we going to start hearing about developers switching to OGL to get geometry shaders (which produce some sick effects) in WinXP, still the most popular gaming OS?

Cards for non-gamers

[Kadin2048]

Something that I've wondered about for a while is when the graphics card manufacturers will wake up and realize that there are more markets for GPUs out there besides gamers. Sure, that may be a big market, but I think they could make a bundle selling semi-specialized cards for other niche markets. In particular, it wouldn't take much to produce home-theater/video versions of cards: basically take a medium-range card with hardware MPEG-2/4 decompression, scaling, and deinterlace, and put some standard video outputs on it -- say HDMI, Component, and VGA (that way you could get to DVI easily using an HDMI adapter, and you can get to S-Video or Composite by combining the component signals).

I know HTPCs have been "this year! no, really, this year!" for a while now, but I think one of the things that's holding them back is the hardware configuration. If somebody made an inexpensive card specifically designed to go into a HTPC and interface easily with most people's televisions, and play back good-quality compressed video at a variety of resolutions, I think they'd be onto something.

Re:Cards for non-gamers

[Chandon Seldon]

In particular, it wouldn't take much to produce home-theater/video versions of cards: basically take a medium-range card with hardware MPEG-2/4 decompression, scaling, and deinterlace, and put some standard video outputs on it -- say HDMI, Component, and VGA (that way you could get to DVI easily using an HDMI adapter, and you can get to S-Video or Composite by combining the component signals).

That stuff all largely exists. It's just that gamer gear gets the marketing hype.

Re:Cards for non-gamers

[malevolentjelly]

You should see what Intel is working on for the DX10 generation- much more geared to what you're talking about. You're not the only one. :)

yay abuse of moderation

[drinkypoo]

Well, I've been letting them go, but this one is too obviously done by some Microsoft fanboy. This is not a troll. I never troll. If I said something, it was either sarcastic and said for effect (and I generally provide plenty of context) or I fucking meant it. Clearly no one is motivated to go to Vista unless Microsoft has made some kind of sleazy deal with them.

Re:yay abuse of moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, your post was not a troll. There is no surge of upgrades to Vista, and it seems like it will enter people's homes and businesses when they would get a new computer anyway. The Wow campaign failed, in other words.

Posting anonymously, since posting "I agree"-type replies to posts moderated as Troll will sometimes render the reply with a Troll moderation too, and I don't want to take the karma hit.

Re:yay abuse of moderation

[Opportunist]

Not taken as a trolling comment. I have to agree, I noticed the same.

I am in contact with a good portion of the local dealers of computer hard- and software. The general consensus is that people do anything but break down their doors for Vista. If they buy it, it's usually bought with a new computer. Actually the campaign did more ill than good. It made it very "uncool" to go Vista, 'cause such a huge hype has been created around it while the reports are pretty bland. The hefty price tag and not being able to "try" it before buying it (ya know, the "trials" that you get from .torrents) didn't help either.

Generally, there are 4 groups of people who could buy it:

First, the companies. They get whatever their contractor supplies, and they generally get computers with system, not when the system comes out (far from it, they need finished systems not bananaware) but when the life cycle dictates it.

Then the clueless users. They, too, get their system with the hardware. Preinstalled. Because it's simpler, easier and less hassle. I know people who still run 98 because they upgrade every 7 years or so and back then their system came with 98, so why bother buying something else? It "works"...

Then, the wannabe gurus. The people who buy whatever is "hip". Well, Vista could have fit that demographics, but the marketing blew it. Big time. Vista is anything but "hip".

And finally the people with a clue. They'd buy it if it offered any measurable benefit. But it doesn't. Aero is fluff. The added security isn't secure. The promised file system didn't make it. What's left?

There's already a joke circulating how to upgrade to Vista for free:
1. Download a window manager that mimics Aero (optional).
2. Remove half your ram.
3. Clock your CPU down a few notches.

Sadly, it's not that far from reality.

Figures...

[ErnieD]

...they come out with these just after I buy a new 7900GS, thinking that a DX10 card was going to be out of my price range for a long while....sigh.

Re:Figures...

[aztracker1]

Well, the 7900GS (I am running two) from what I've seen slightly outperforms these new 8600 models, and there really won't be any DX10 games (Vista Only) that will make it worthwhile for at least a year or so... I wouldn't worry too much. ;)

Re:Figures...

[ErnieD]

True, and I'm extremely happy with the card I got, just seems like every time I build myself a new system, something new & cool comes out 2 weeks later. :)

Thus is life though...

Why would I want one?-Research.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I, among others, have yet to see a convincing arguement to buy a DX-10 capable video card"

Oh, yea of little experience.

HD content

[scottnews]

The only real interesting thing about this series is the ability to do 100% offload of HD content. It looks like it could make playing BluRay and HD DVD movies on a midrange PC possible.

Re:HD content

[scottnews]

forgot a link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/G84_G86/ 4

So how much did ATI pay them for CableCard?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another thing ATI does better.

Good time to build a system

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting to get together specs to build my next gaming (and general use) machine, and I've discovered a few things. It does seem to be a good time to build for a few reasons:
--New Vid cards from both ATI and Nvidia
--Intel is supposed to add new CPUs and drop prices on 4/22 (See articles here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=PlF&q=inte l+core+2+duo+e6420&btnG=Search)
--WinXP is still available.
I'm NOT going to buy Vista due to all the problems I'm reading about. XP seems to be faster for gaming so until they de-crapify Vista it's off my list. I'd like to be able to use a gaming only version of linux, but those don't seem to be ready for prime time (yet...please keep working on them!). I'm looking at buying the Intel Core 2 Duo E6420, probably a Radeon vid card, and some sort of middle of the road ASUS mobo (maybe the P5N-E). I'm also trying to keep the system cost around 1K. For some reason it seems much more difficult this time to build my system than it was before, but the choices are becoming clearer. Given that my current system has some serious heat issues and an AGP mobo, it is time.

8800 drivers still useless

[Edward Kmett]

Nice. I just wish they would make the drivers for the 8800 which I already paid them for work right.

At the moment, every time my machine reboots or goes to sleep my video color settings go entirely out of whack. Hue gets pegged at over 100%, and I have to go into the nvidia control panel, and drag it to zero, run the display optimization wizard, exit out, try a video a second time, and maybe repeat the process.

If I add a second monitor it gets even worse.

And I'm not even running Vista.

No thanks, I'll wait for Intel.

[Ant P.]

...and their recently announced "serious competition" to nv/ati.

nVidia likes to use their blob drivers to force a hardware upgrade treadmill, by dropping support for older cards at the same time they implement features. The "open source" driver is an insult - last time I tried it it couldn't even do the 2D stuff correctly.
ATi cards aren't much better. ATi's software is a joke and I wouldn't touch it if they paid me to take the hardware. The open driver on my 9250 works, but having to choose between a usable X desktop or an unusably slow GLX desktop is just stupid. The DRI site claims they're working on this issue, but from what I've seen on their site development moves at a geological pace.
I've also got a few Matrox cards lying around, but nobody cares about those in a desktop PC anyway.

Re: AGP Version ... PCI version

[modicr]

Hello!

And what about PCI version - will be there DX10 PCI graphics card?
BTW, I've just bought Vista Ready DX9 Geforce 6200 256 MB DDR2 on PCI bus:
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/graphic-cards/pny-verto-ge force-6-6200-pci/1046235/

PCI ATI Radeon X1300 and even X1550 are also available:
http://www.visiontek.com/products/cards/retail/x15 50_PCI.html

Regards, Roman