Cheap New GeForce 8800 GT Challenges $400 Cards

J. Dzhugashvili writes "What would you say to a video card that performs like a $400 GeForce 8800 GTS for $200-250? Say hello to the GeForce 8800 GT. The Tech Report has tested the new mid-range wonder in Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2, and BioShock. It found that the card keeps up with its $400 big brother overall while drawing significantly less power and — here's the kicker — generating slightly less noise."

Comments

$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

$200-250 is a crazy amount to pay for a video card. $400 is insanely expensive. How much disposable income to you have, anyways?

You want to impress me? Show me a $50-100 video card that can perform as well as a $200. $50 falls into something I call 'cheap'.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Aladrin]

All of today's $100 cards perform better than cards from 5 years ago. Happy?

The same complaint you've just made can be made for -all- computer components. The high-end ($400) stuff -is- insanely expensive, and only for the true die-hard hobbyists. The hobbyist ($200) stuff is for those that want to enjoy the sport, but can't afford to throw their money away. And the cheap stuff ($100) is for those that don't really care and the low-end stuff is good enough.

If you're not a gamer, you have -no- reason to buy a card at all. The onboard video is more than good enough. (I use an onboard Intel GMA 3000 on my Kubuntu box and it runs Compiz better than my ATI at work.)

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Pojut]

No weights involved, however it is not uncommon for professional gaming teams to hire ex-drill instructors.

It may seem simple, and is not a "sport" in the sense that it doesn't require physical stamina, however in the pro leagues it does require a significant amount of time to train. How do you train with a video game? Getting the timing of a weapon down just right in CS...knowing EXACTLY what units to use and where to use them depending on the type of attack/types of units your opponent is using...you get the idea. Basically, it requires you to know the game better than the people that made it. Not only that, but you must have the dexterity in your fingers to be able to control as well as possible (it is also not uncommon for pro gamers to play some form of instrument that requires dexterity, such as Saxophone or Guitar.)

Try playing SSBM or CS:S against someone who regularly plays in tournaments and trains on a daily basis...see how long you last.

And while you are laughing at them for being nerds, they are making a shitload of money for doing what essentially amounts to playing games for a living.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[krunk7]

I spend 250 dollars for a night out at a nice restaurant with my wife, especially if a nice bottle of wine is included.

Wh wouldn't I spend this on a one time purchase that will provide hours and hours of entertainment for up to 1.5 years?

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Pojut]

How do you figure they are wasting their lives?

They do their job, and in return they can pay their bills, put a roof over their head, and put food in the pantry...

Isn't that why you work?

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Emetophobe]

We're talking about high end cards here, not your run of the mill card for non-gamers. $200-300 is relatively cheap compared to the $550-800 price of the 8800 Ultra. Also, this is brand new tech, prices are always higher for early adopters. Expect this card to be worth $100 in a year or two.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[toleraen]

Because the sort of person that wants a $100 video card is the type of person who would get several nights out for $250 at what they perceive to be nice restaurants, including drinks.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

As apposed to... wasting your life drinking? Or watching Football games? Or wasting a life turning a wrench? What makes your 'life' so much better than what someone else defines as 'living'?

Everyone has something they enjoy doing in life. A person whose life revolves around Video Games is no better or worse than an athlete, sports nut or some slob that lives in a bar.

We all are slowly walking to our death and I'll be damned if I don't do what I find fun - and fuck you for passing judgment on me.

Signed
Gamer

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Surt]

Yeah, you're in the stratosphere with that night out budget. That's probably in the top 10% of American incomes.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Honey

What, you collect bees?

Kids

And raise goats?

I don't think these videocards are aimed at farmers.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Solandri]

All of today's $100 cards perform better than cards from 5 years ago. Happy?

The same complaint you've just made can be made for -all- computer components. The high-end ($400) stuff -is- insanely expensive, and only for the true die-hard hobbyists. The hobbyist ($200) stuff is for those that want to enjoy the sport, but can't afford to throw their money away. And the cheap stuff ($100) is for those that don't really care and the low-end stuff is good enough.

I think the OP was getting more at how the price strata of computer equipment has changed over the years.

CPUs: 5 years ago, ~$1k was top, ~$300 mid-line, ~$125 low-end. Today, same.
HD: 5 years ago, ~$700 was top, ~$200 mid-line, ~$80 low-end. Today, same, maybe a bit lower.
RAM: 5 years ago, ~$500 was top, ~$200 mid-line, ~$100 low-end. Today, same, maybe a bit lower.

Video: 5 years ago, ~$400 was top, ~$150 mid-line, ~$50 low-end. Today, it's gone up. ~$700 top, ~$300 mid-line, ~$100 low-end.

However, I would argue against the OP: From a market standpoint the reason video card pricing has increased is because the customers are more willing to spend more on a video card than the other components. Certainly GPUs have increased in complexity to where they've equaled or surpassed CPUs in circuits thus increasing manufacturing costs, but ATI and nVidia wouldn't have pushed GPUs to that point if the public weren't willing to buy them. It leaves the folks who can only afford a $150 video card feeling as if they have a smaller penis because the high-end is now $700 instead of $400. But as you point out, any low end card out today would smoke the high-end cards from 5 years ago.

Now if we can just get the game developers to write code which will run at acceptable FPS on mid- to low-end video hardware...

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Minwee]

I spend 250 dollars for a night out at a nice restaurant with my wife, especially if a nice bottle of wine is included.

Why wouldn't I spend this on a one time purchase that will provide hours and hours of entertainment for up to 1.5 years?

Well, for starters, there's the fact that you already spent it all for a night out at a nice restaurant.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Floydius]

I've thought about this myself, and you have a point. $200-300 is a lot to pay just for a graphics card. You definitely have to have some disposable income in order to afford this. Mainly because this graphics card will only help you if you've spent at bare minimum $600 (probably more like $1000) on other components. If you usually don't build your own computers, this discussion is likely uninteresting and irrelevant to you anyway.

However, the reason that this card is causing so much commotion is because a lot of people have been paying $500 or more for the top end cards during the last year or so. Why in the world would someone pay so much? As someone else commented, it's a matter of personal preference. In my personal situation, I don't own any consoles or play console games unless I'm at a friend's house. I do, however, frequently play PC games (on linux and xp, anyway; don't really game on the macbook). Aside from shooting things, I find it interesting to watch and experience the ways in which our games approach reality (visually and physics-wise) as hardware and software progress. For someone with that interest, having 60+ FPS at whatever resolution you're capable of displaying is important.

To give you an idea of what software these days is demanding and what the hardware can handle, I present my current rig. Nvidia 7800GT (purchased about 2 years ago on ebay in the $285-300 range), 2 gigs of DDR1 corsair, and an amd x2 4200 running at around 2.6ghz. The 7800Gt was launched 8/11/05, the ram (3500LL pro) was around october 2005 from what i can gather, and the cpu i think was from somewhere around May 2005 (i was a late buyer, but i didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just yet). Anyway, I say all that to say that this stuff is not brand new, but it isn't ancient either. It is capable of running almost anything on the source engine very smoothly at my current 1920x1080 resolution, but not with everything turned up to max levels. Even at medium details, it cannot run the UT3 demo smoothly at 1280x1024, forget anything higher. Same story with Bioshock and the Crysis demo.

So, in preparation for UT3's launch, I intended to build a new rig. But there are some big things happening with CPUs and GPUs that make building right now a poor idea. The first issue was that rumors were flying around about the G92 and have been for some time. It was generally believed that they would release the next GPU sometime in november (and there were many different rumors, some saying that it would be a 9800 top end card with a teraflop throughput and others stating that it was going to be a midrange card between the then-current top end 8800GTX and ultras and the lower end geforce8 series). This release has solved that question. It was indeed a mid-range card solution, but the performance at $200 - $250 was far better than expected. This morning there were none available at newegg, and a few were on backorder at zipzoomfly. Now there are some at newegg, and I suspect it will take about a weak for the prices to solidify until after thanksgiving, at which point they'll probably drop some. Anyone who had been reading anything about nvidia would have been foolish to buy a GTX or ultra within the last couple of months, and that is the very reason I did not even consider it. The second issue is that ATI is probably going to release their next GPU in the next couple of weeks. Of course no one knows for sure what that will be, but the smart bet right now is that it will try to compete with the 8800GT in the same performance/price range. We'll see there. My purchases before were always default NVIDIA because their linux support was so much better. However, ATI/AMD has recently made large strides to change that, so it has influenced me to wait before deciding this time. The third issue is that both AMD and Intel are scheduled to release their new CPUs this quarter. So all of these issues have made it a good choice to wait. Now that this GPU is out, a lot of people who would have been enticed to

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Kadin2048]

I think you're mistaking a "sport" for something "athletic."

Though I think 'professional gaming' is silly, there are lots of 'sports' that are not particularly athletic, and/or are more about use of certain specialized equipment than about innate physical characteristics. So that's not really a legitimate criticism.

There are almost purely athletic sports (running, perhaps, the most pure), and there are very skill-based sports (fishing, shooting, bowling, bocce, etc.), and of course a whole lot in between. Playing video games probably sets a new standard for sedentary sports, and in doing so says some unflattering things about our society, but there's nothing about it that inherently makes it 'not a sport' as a result.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[tehcrazybob]

This thread may be about video cards, but somehow it reminds me of all the audiophiles I've ever known...

Perhaps the two obsessions are superficially similar, but I suspect if you were to stop and think for a moment, you would find some significant differences. Primarily in that the video card obsession has extremely quantifiable, testable, measurable, and repeatable qualities. Audiophile psychosis, on the other hand, is basically spending huge sums of money for differences that can only be heard by the person who spent the money and which disappear as soon as someone brings up the idea of a scientifically valid test.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[acariquara]

Chess is an Olympic sport.

Nuff said.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Sloppy]

They ARE wasting their lives, they're just being paid to do it. You sound as if every bum on the street, prostitute, meth dealer, or prison inmate isn't wasting their lives because they get paid to do something vaguely resembling work.
...
You're better off keeping a real job

I think the confusion sets in, right here. How is a "real job" less life-wasting? Is there any employed person (whether they're a meth dealer or a doctor), who isn't "wasting their life?" You do work for someone else, and get paid. Then you come home and use the money to do something for yourself.

Re:$200-250 is NOT cheap!

[Kelbear]

It's advertising for games and gaming hardware. They're getting sponsored, that's how they're getting paid. Evidently somebody thinks that paying them is better than not paying them.

Entertainment and advertising have value to someone, not necessarily you or I, but much of the money moving through these sectors is coming from someone who does.

Also, not everyone can do something mentally or spiritually rewarding. Not everyone can be special. Shit, if anyone could make a living doing what they really wanted to do, our economy would consist of just one massive porn industry. But there's only so much room to be filled. Somebody has to lose, not all those kids will grow up to be a doctor, some of them will have to push the brooms, pump the gas, and flip the burgers for the doctor. They can all try to be a doctor, but there isn't room for all of them.

Usefulness and Art are subjective measures from disputable value systems. A poor artist may have a real fulfilling job, but he could end up fucking his family over by wasting his lucrative job as a stock broker/movie star/CPA. Heck, sometimes a job is just a job, and is just the stepping stone to a happy home life filled with whatever that person wants to fill it with. It'd be neat if everyone could have a job they loved, just like it'd be neat if everyone was rich and well-fed, but unfortunately that's not the case.

Kicker

[HateBreeder]

I would say the kicker is that it draws significantly less power, rather than producing little noise.

Obviously, the fan is making the noise, not the chip.
I bet you could probably find a 8800GTX with some high-end silent cooling rig.

Re:Kicker

[Joce640k]

Half the price and almost the same frame rate is irrelevent?

Weird.

Help me understand.

[IndustrialComplex]

I can understand if this card were released by a competitor, but why would Nvidia release a card that competes with their top of the line at such a low price? Who wouldn't want the cheaper card?

The only thing I can think of is that the production costs were higher for the GTS, resulting in less profit per card...

Can anyone clue me in?

Re:Help me understand.

[Lord Ender]

The GTS was to get money from early adopters, and remains on the market to squeeze money out of people who make purchasing decisions based on emotional ("I have the best!") rather than financial considerations. Everyone other serious game will henceforth buy the GT.

Re:Help me understand.

[Joce640k]

Because the "competitor" is two weeks away from a major new product launch.

Re:Help me understand.

[MarcoAtWork]

but why would Nvidia release a card that competes with their top of the line at such a low price?

do you really think that the 8800gtx will still be nvidia's top-of-the-line card come Christmas?

Re:Help me understand.

[TellarHK]

That's a really good question. The GTS production costs were certainly higher, as it's a dual-slot card that uses more components, material and a larger die size, but as a GTS 640MB owner I'm feeling somewhat kicked in the sac. Yes, I'm fully aware that newer cards come out every few months, but it seems a little bit of a slap in the face when something comes out cheaper, arguably faster, and more manageable than your $400 piece of gear -without- a credible marketplace threat.

It's hard to imagine they're more per unit on the GT than the GTS, but sales volume will definitely make up for any shortcomings in that area. I have to hope that there's still some compelling reason why a user might decide to buy a GTS instead of a pair of GT's for SLI mode, particularly while motherboard support for PCIe's latest version has yet to really penetrate the market. I -think- my X38 based board has it, but since it's not an nVidia board and they haven't opened SLI up to other makers, it's largely useless.

However, this would be an excellent time for nVidia to start letting Intel use SLI on chipsets. They're going to get steamrolled by ATI in a generation or two if the AMD/ATI partnership continues to open up specifications, release better drivers, and jack up performance.

Re:Help me understand.

[TellarHK]

I would have initially assumed that nVidia, fearing a threat from ATI, would have taken a different route to try and get the big bucks. Drop the price on existing cards by a hundred bucks or so, use the NV92 used for the 8800GT as the 8850GT in order to differentiate the price features, and charge a premium price for it in the $350 range.

This way, early adopters don't feel like they got screwed into mild feature obsolecense by a card that costs half as much, people wanting the upgrades see more reason to buy the 8850GT because "Hey, it's a xx50 model - new features and still cheaper than the one I already bought!" without the lingering ball-ache of a $150 price drop - and, you've still got cards that devastate the existing ATI lineup with the potential to say "Well, screw ATI, now we're releasing the 8850GTS and GTX with more RAM, more monster cooling and both higher and lower prices." if ATI/AMD comes out with something that actually competes, unlike the 2900HD.

However, I do believe that nVidia is going to take a few pretty big steps in regards to more powerful cards before Christmas. The only real question is how much more power, and how much will they cost? The GTS and GTX models that are out now still dominate and command a high price that's out of reach for a lot of people. Are they just going to drop both the existing models like a hot potato as soon as new ones come out, or multi-tier with them some how?

Re:Help me understand.

[krelian]

I bought a 8800 GTS 320MB about year after it came out, I don't consider it being an early adopter. Now, Nvidia brings a better card for a lower price. That's very different from the usual price drop on older cards.

Re:Help me understand.

[vux984]

However, this would be an excellent time for nVidia to start letting Intel use SLI on chipsets.

Meh, I'm unconvinced SLI is anything more than markting hot-rods to idiots. I think this is like the dual 3dfx Voodoo Monster II all over again. If the next generation cards can do in a single slot what todays cards need two or more in SLI for, then 99% of consumers will just wait for the next card, and only the twits who need/want the bragging rights of an SLI unit will go for it.

I doubt any games are ever going to require an SLI setup.

In any case think back to the 3dfx monster stuff and recall how that panned out. Instead of everyone needing an array of video cards to run the latest games the entire dual card thing was rendered obsolete because a single next gen card could beat a dual monster setup for half the price.

And look at whats happening in CPU's... virtually nobody has a quad socket motherboard; and even dual sockets are a rare niche product. Yet we've had support for it on the desktop since 2000. But instead the trend has been to multi-core cpu's. The cost benefit just isn't there for multiple socket cpus or multiple card video solutions. However, if they can do "SLI on a single board"... that will be your next generation solution.

My 0.02 on the subject...

Re:Help me understand.

[heinousjay]

If you're looking for sympathy, you replied to the wrong dude. You made your purchase, and you get value for it. Maybe not what you expected, but caveat emptor.

Re:Help me understand.

[darkwhite]

Yes, I'm fully aware that newer cards come out every few months, but it seems a little bit of a slap in the face when something comes out cheaper, arguably faster, and more manageable than your $400 piece of gear -without- a credible marketplace threat. Let me get this straight. You're complaining about nVidia releasing a new, cheaper, cooler, faster card not because ATI is about to cut its throat but simply because it wants to serve its customers better and push the envelope further???

Do you realize what the alternative is?

Re:Help me understand.

[bigstrat2003]

Well, the GTS isn't the "best", so that wouldn't be a consideration. There is another reason though. I already have an 8800 GTS, so if I want to ever go SLI, I'll be getting another of the same card I have already. Not that I wouldn't like to get a GT for cheaper, but a second GTS would still be cheaper than two GTs.

Who the heck is buying these cards?

[Rogerborg]

Even at 'only' $250, it's that or a Wii. And the Wii is a stable platform, whereas your cutting edge premium card is going to look overpriced and behind the curve tomorrow - ask all the people who just ordered $400 8800 GTS cards how that feels.

Come on, own up: who's buying these console-priced cards, and why?

Re:Who the heck is buying these cards?

[werdnam]

I can't tell whether you actually want an answer or not, but I'll bite: The set of games for the Wii and the set of games for the PC are not the same set. Therefore, if you want good performance on a game that is exclusive to the PC (or, even if it's not exclusive, you prefer the PC control scheme, or the fact that PC graphics can outdo those on a console (especially the Wii)), then you need a decent graphics card.

Re:Who the heck is buying these cards?

[Mantrid]

Because some people want to play more than mini-games and Mario?

Re:Who the heck is buying these cards?

[king-manic]

Even at 'only' $250, it's that or a Wii. And the Wii is a stable platform, whereas your cutting edge premium card is going to look overpriced and behind the curve tomorrow - ask all the people who just ordered $400 8800 GTS cards how that feels.

Come on, own up: who's buying these console-priced cards, and why? It's a question of what you enjoy. My rig is a year old and runs all the latest game at "medium" settings very well. FPS are the only ones that require savagely expensive systems. Zelda/Wii sports/Resident evil 4 have provided less fun then warcraft 3. I spend more time in oblivion then in those 3 as well. The wii is a social console. It's great for company sort of ho hum solo. If it's not your then it isn't that valuable to you at any price.

Re:Who the heck is buying these cards?

[m4g02]

Even at 'only' $250, it's that or a Wii. And the Wii is a stable platform, whereas your cutting edge premium card is going to look overpriced and behind the curve tomorrow

Don't get me wrong, Wii is a nice little console, but it looked behind the curve in its launch date, and it looks behind the curve today. I don't understand why fanboys have to troll everything; we are comparing PC video cards here, why are you talking about the Wii?

A year ago I bought this laptop with a GeForce 7900 and have been playing Oblivion, Bioshock and Team Fortress 2, this games wouls never run on the Wii; it looks great, have high FPS, and it's one year old. You are just trolling.

Re:Who the heck is buying these cards?

[Endo13]

Not really.

There's basically two kinds of people who buy $400 graphics cards. People who have so much money it's chump change, and people for whom PC gaming is their big hobby. For either of those groups, it's really not that much money. Think about it. The best gaming rig in the world still won't top $10K (and that's going REALLY off-the-wall extreme) which is peanuts compared to some hobbies. And you can build a really good gaming rig that has pretty much all of the best-of-the-best including a $400 graphics card for $2,500 which is on the low end of what most people spend on their hobby in a year these days.

And then there's the rest of us who like PC gaming for various reasons - some perhaps because it's "more extreme" than console gaming, but mostly just because we want to play games not available on consoles or because we vastly prefer the control systems available for PC. We're the ones who wait to buy a new graphics card until it's like the third generation back and selling for $75, but still quite capable of playing all the latest and greatest PC games (albeit in some cases not quite at maximum settings, which by the way still look nicer than console games). We're the group who build our gaming rig for a tidy $500 (or less), which is right around the price of some consoles these days. And our PCs not only play many games consoles cannot, they also do nifty things like open web browsers and word processors in 1 or 2 seconds instead of 20 and such.

Yup

[dazedNconfuzed]

New incarnation of given technology cheaper than older incarnation of same technology, film at 11...

Re:Yup

[RightSaidFred99]

The news is that this is a leap forward in price/performance. There have only been a few comparable video card releases in history. Typically, it goes "you pay $500 for a high end card, then it goes to $450, then $400, etc...". This is a card that costs $250 (or less) that is almost as fast as a card that costs $400 or more.

In other words, if you play PC games at 1600x1200 or above, this is the only choice that you really have now - nothing else makes sense unless you're playing on a 30" monitor or want to throw away money.

Worth upgrading my GeForce 7950 on my box?

[antdude]

OK. After playing Crysis single player demo, I only got 9-10 FPS average (0 FPS minimum!) with high settings (I refuse to go lower, did turn off motion blur which drove me nuts) according to the two batch benchmark files. I just upgraded my system last December 2006 too! That video card was expensive (almost 300 bucks) enough! :(

My current computer specifications can be found here:
http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt (I do not like to and want to OC; doesn't help when I have physical disabilities since I can't open my case to reset CMOS, fiddle with the hardwares, etc.). I use the latest NVIDIA drivers (including betas), 1280x1024 native resolution on my 19" LCD monitor (helps to use lower native resolutions since I don't need larger one :)), no FSAA if FPS is needed, and 16X anisotropic (no anisostropic didn't even help for Crysis).

Is it worth getting a newer video card (e.g., 8800) to help the newer games' FPS like Crysis, World in Conflict, C&C3 (not too choppy like the first two), etc.? I do not want to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc. at this time. I am not sure where's the bottleneck is. Video card? My CPU? Something else?

Thank you in advance. :)

Re:half price

[Endo13]

Actually, the 8800 cards are just for playing games. Really. video/graphics/animation pros get something like this or a FireGL.

Maybe so

[jayhawk88]

But does the $250 card make people online you will never meet in real life think that your penis is gigantic like the $400 card does?

Overkill?

[lymond01]

I run TF2 in 1680x1050 with a GeForce 6800GS Overclocked-out-of-the-box. Never skips, never gets busy, no artifacts. My processor is a single core Athlon (somewhere in the 3.2 GHz range). 2 GB of memory. It's not a "new" box by any means, but I haven't found a game that doesn't run on full (except FEAR with some of the most advanced features) graphics.

Re:Overkill?

[Itchyeyes]

TF2 is a great game, but come on... you can't seriously use it as a benchmark for graphical performance. I doubt you're even running Episode 2 on full settings with that card and still getting decent frame rates. And if you can't find any games that make your graphics card chug, World in Conflict, UT3, COD4, and Crysis all have demos out now. Try running any of those games and then come back and tell us that a 6800GS is all you need with a straight face.

Can you Luddites find a new site please?

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, what is it with the technology haters on Slashdot? This is a tech site and yes, there are people out there whole like having cutting edge tech for various reasons. Maybe they are just gamers with lots of money. Maybe they like having graphics that totally stomps on anything a Wii can do. Maybe they have a high end PC anyhow for other work, and as such a good card is worth it. Maybe the games they want to play are only for computer (like say World of Warcraft). Maybe they don't game, maybe they use them for 3D visualization like, say research with insects (just helped a professor at work buy one for that reason). Maybe they use them for GPGPU related things.

Quit hating just because you can't afford the newest toys. If someone can and if that's what they want, then great. You should be happy because guess what? That's where the Wii graphics come from. Lower end graphics come from higher end graphics. It costs a lot of money to develop new technology like this, and the high end is where the development cost gets reimbursed. You get the cheap, good graphics in the Wii precisely because ATi has done so much high end development and it has filtered down.

And

[Sycraft-fu]

The people who buy lower end should be real thankful there is a high end. That's where the lower end comes from. nVidia can afford to sell the 8600 for $100 precisely because they paid the R&D costs with the expensive 8800s. The lower end is as cheap and as good as it is precisely because there's a high end.

Nice looking card

[Emetophobe]

Here are the main benefits I see with this card:

1. Single slot cooler instead of a dual slot like all the other high end cards made over the last 2 years
2. One 6 pin power connection instead of two like all the other high end G80 cards
3. Power consumption. According to the article (yes I read it), Nvidia rates the power consumption of the 8800GT at 110 watts.
4. Supports PCI Express 2.0 (backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.1)
5. Relatively cheap. I always found $200-300 to be the best price range for a video card (the high end G80 cards on the other hand cost $500-800)

Re:half price

[TellarHK]

I've gotta disagree with that. You want a card with a good memory setup for things like Photoshop, just because you're working with such huge data structures on your screen. You don't want $20 cards, but a $50 card will likely do the trick.

I worked at a newspaper for a while, and they had a number of Pagemaker 7.5 machines running with some really lousy on-board graphics that were sold as "High-Spec" by the con artist offering tech support for the place for years previously. It took me bringing in my old GeForce 4 MX and dropping it into my workstation for the publisher to realize he'd been scammed, and order three more cards from Newegg to go into all the production machines. The speed increase working with these cards was gigantic - it felt to the production manager like she'd been given a whole new computer on her desk. $150 later, and speeds flipping between pages of broadsheet layout went from 20 seconds to instantaneous on three boxes, probably saving several work hours per week.

Re:Money, nerds whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fun part is that neither does trolling.

Re:Money, nerds whatever.

[Yosho]

I wasn't laughing at them. I was laughing at calling it a "sport" - I laugh the same way at golfers who call their game a 'sport'(Tiger Woods makes more taking a dump than all video sportsman combined). At least the golfers have to walk - a little.

The dictionary says, among other things, that a "sport" is a: 3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime..

Golf and video games both easily fit into that definition.

It's pretty funny that you're insulting golf, though. I'm guessing that you haven't golfed much, or, if you have played at all, you haven't tried to actually compete -- you'll find that playing golf well takes a fair amount of physical coordination and fitness. Similarly, the best video game players need both physical coordination and quick reflexes. That's not the same as the pure muscle strength that many sports require, but they're still far from purely mental activities.

Does it have dual link dvi HDCP? 8800 GTX did not!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Well considering that i recently found out that my $600 geforce 8800 GTX card, does not support HDCP over dual link, which means i can not watch HD-DVD or Bluray on my pc... I'm a little pissed off at nvidia. Especially since the cheaper GTS version does support HDCP through dual link.

Which really boils down to one thing.... and its not entirely nvidia's fault. Its this entire HDCP DRM encryption mentality. This is EXACTLY what happens to consumers when these huge corporations impose such unfriendly, incompatible schemes on us. I paid for the best video card at the time, and it was $600, Nvidia said it supported HDCP and was ready for Vista. BOTH... were lies.

Re:Money, nerds whatever.

[Machtyn]

You've obviously have never played the sport of golf. Get off your buttocks and take a "strolling" round of this, ahem, non-sport of golf. (A good walk ruined, penned Mark Twain.)

Tiger Woods doesn't hit 300+ yard tee shots because he was simply walking a fairway for 72 holes a day. He also doesn't make the majority of his money off of the game/sport of golf.

Likewise, professional gamers do train for their "sport" and, if they are lucky, they earn most of their money from endorsements.

Re:price != quality

[Bacon Bits]

No, the difference is that the 8800 GTS is 90nm, and the 8800 GT is 65nm.

The Anantech review details things much, much better (unsurprisingly).

Sports vs. Games

[TheCrayfish]

Perhaps this quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway can help clear this up: "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

$200? Where?

[bogie]

The cheapest you can buy this for is $260 not including shipping at Newegg. I don't know where he got that 200-249 range from, but the range I'm seeing is $260-$290.

So much for the return of the midrange. Midrange being the $150 card. Today's $150 card ie the 8600gts is a joke for DX10 and the newest games. No wonder the PC gaming industry is in the shitter and losing out to consoles. You need to spend almost $300 on a video card just to stay current.

When fast new systems with Dual Core cpus, 1GB of memory, and 19" LCDs, cost $500-$600 who in their right mind thinks spending $250 on a gpu isn't a ripoff?

Re:Installing in a Mac Pro?

[petermgreen]

How hard would it be to install this on a Pro? I hear that EFI makes this impossible.
Afaict you can put a card with a PC bios in and it will work in windows but it won't work in the bootloader or OS-X.

why buy a desktop machine that's upgradable if you can't upgrade it?

Lets see, the mac pro is the cheapest mac (the xserve can do some of theese things too but it is even more expensive than the mac pro) that

* supports a matched pair of monitors of your choice (the mini doesn't support multiple monitors at all, the imac has one of it's two monitor outputs hardwired to the built in monitor)
* supports more than two monitors
* supports monitors requring dual link DVI
* supports more than 4GB of ram
* supports more than one internal hard drive
* supports more than two cores
* has expansion slots to add additional interfaces

Double Precision Floating Point Support?

[Brit_in_the_USA]

It was rumored pre-release that he G92 may have double precision floating point support. Is there any confirmation or firm denial of this?
(the reviews I have seen have been far less technical on new chip features than in previous graphics card launches).

Re:Money, nerds whatever.

[ImpShial]

I know women who make a shitload of money taking off their clohes - I pity them.

Why would you pity them? Most professional (professional being the key word here) strippers/dancers/prostitutes know that what they do is a form of entertainment. And I really wouldn't pity them, as they have A LOT more power and control over the men & women who are watching them to feed their inner animal.

Many women I have spoken to who peddle flesh for a living know that they call the shots, and quite a few of them make a very respectable living.

Now, I feel bad for women who feel that they have no choice but to prostitute themselves, but I do not pity them. It's not the oldest profession for no reason. Women have been doing it for thousands of years, and making money doing it.

Yes, they can be exploited, and that is a true tragedy. but I do not Pity them. When it comes to sex, the females truly have power.