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NVIDIA Quad SLI Disappoints
Vigile writes "While the death of PC gaming might be exaggerated, it's hard not to see the issues gamers have with the platform. A genre that used to dominate innovation in the field now requires a $1200 piece of graphics technology just to participate, and that's just plain bad for the consumer. NVIDIA's SLI technology was supposed to get a boost today by going from two GPUs to four GPUs with the introduction of Quad SLI but both PC Perspective and HardOCP seem to think that NVIDIA drastically missed the mark by pushing an incredibly expensive upgrade that really does nothing for real-world game play and performance. If PC gamers are left with these options to save them from consoles, do they even have a chance?"
You don't need to spend 1200 dollars to be competitive.
9600 GTs went on sale for 130 bucks recently and they can play crysis at a modest detail level.
A decent gaming machine isn't expensive nowadays:
$100 processor
$100 mobo
$50 case
$150-200 videocard
$70 RAM
$50 PS
Bam you got yourself a gaming rig.
~600 bucks and that's not including the corners you can cut with upgrading.
Beaten by ATI Radeon: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce9800-gx2.html
"If you have a 30-inch monitor that supports 2560x1600 resolution, then your choice is clear: ATI 4-way CrossFireX
outperforms the similar solution from Nvidia or runs at comparable speed offering acceptable gaming performance
in such titles as Battlefield 2142, BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and ompany
of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI platform, however, leads in Call of Duty 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of
Chernobyl and Tomb Raider: Legend. In other games, both quad-GPU configurations either work incorrectly or
cannot provide acceptable performance in 2560x1600 resolution.
So, the total score would be 5:3 in favor of AMD/ATI that offer better compatibility, scalability and fewer technical
issues for the users."
___
So, beaten by Quad Radeon in some games.
However, anyone willing to bet on the Linux 3D performance on Radeon? I'm not...
The 360 and PS3 are a bit slower with a little lower settings than my 18-month old mid price PC. The PC was a $500 upgrade of my 4 year old system (which was in turn a $500 upgrade of my 6 year old system, etc), and is about 1/2 the speed it would be if I spent $180 to put in an 8800GT. On my PC, Oblivion has 16x more pixels in each texture than on my 360 and PS3, draw distance is much higher than on my 360 or PS3, resolution is 1600x1200 (vs 720p or 1080p on the consoles, I'm not sure which mode they render in Oblivion), and I'm forcing AA and HDR to be on. The framerates are about the same between the systems, with a slight edge going to my PC, especially outside.
I alternate between the three systems. I'm currently in a 360 kick, and honestly when I'm console gaming it's almost always 360, but I'm sure I'll swing back to the PC within a few weeks now that I have it set up to output to my 52" LCD. PC Gamers with high end systems will always have a graphical advantage over consoles and midrange systems will have the advantage through 3/4 of the console product cycle. The important difference to me isn't graphics; it's games. Mass Effect was the original game that started my recent console binge, and then I played a bunch of rather low quality but still fun games like Halo 3 and Gears of War and then a lot of Oblivion on each system, just to compare them. Good PC games tend to beat good console games for quality of writing and nuance of gameplay, but at least half the time I just want a popcorn blockbuster game where I sit back and watch 1-dimensional characters do something simple. I'd hate to give up either type of gaming permanently.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
While NTSC technically does render 525 scanlines, only about 486* of them may actually be visible - the rest are used for the vertical blanking interval (which includes stuff like closed captioning), and some of the "visible" ones might get covered up by the frame around an old TV's CRT; thus, the vertical resolution is really only 480. Horizontal resolution, however, is somewhat indeterminate - I've seen numerous values, including 640, 704, and 720.
(* - this is the number Wikipedia quotes, and it mostly agrees with numbers I've seen elsewhere)
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
What is it with all this BS about the PC dying as a gaming rig? What the hell are you doing to jack the price of a PC up to $1,000 ?? ... under $500USD Shall we? ($474.42 total infact before shipping.)
Consoles are the ones that are aging. The prices keep going up while PC gaming prices keep going down. I play all my games at max graphics thusfar and still no problems, and my Monitor on my rig was the most expensive part at $300 (22inch widescreen).
Lets build a gaming rig to connect to your big living room TV for
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161220Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 - PRICE: $124.99
http://www.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingItem.aspx?ItemList=N82E16823126174&MainItemList=N82E16823126174Logitec wireless KB/Mouse Cordless Standard Desktop EX110 - PRICE: $29.99