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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 hardly need to spend $1200 to save your rig from the years-old consoles. Quad SLI is nvidia's top offering, not entry level PC gaming. A $200 card (and a $300 core 2 duo) can easily trounce anything the xbox 360 or ps3 can do.
This is a very narrow view of gaming. There is more to success than graphics. Themes, genres, plot, interface and repeat playing all affect how popular a game can be. While most of these points are available on any platform the PC still has an edge on interface. Keyboards, mice and flightsticks all offer a more advance UI than thumb levers.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
What on earth has Quad-SLI got to do with 'saving us from consoles' ?
You don't even need a single top-end card to provide an alternative to a console, let alone *four* top-end cards.
As someone still quite enjoying PC gaming, I've got to take issue with "now requires a $1200 piece of graphics technology just to participate". You can play modern games on some very inexpensive hardware just fine. Yes, you *can* spend $1200 on graphics alone, easily, but the vast majority of us, I think, realize the futility of it.
Tech like quad-SLI is there for people with more money than sense, or at least more money than they know what to do with- and at that point, fine, if they want to spend that money and basically support the graphics companies' development costs, let them. The rest of us can continue as we have, working with normally-priced hardware that does everything we need it to. No, we can't play the latest games at 200 FPS on a 30" monitor with everything turned on- but then again, most of us don't even *have* 30" monitors, so... who cares?
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
1200 dollar card to participate? IS the poster really that stupid?
I have a 150 dollar card I bout 2 years ago and it runs everything pretty damn well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No matter how much cheaper and prettier consoles get, they still won't be fully fledged computers that you can do with as you will.
With only consoles as viable games platforms, the modding scene will essentially die. Seeing as this is the primary source of independent games these days, then expect the standard of games to plummet as publishers have no real incentive to produce quality.
Furthermore, console makers have this tendency to lock you into their proprietary games networks, and unlike the PC it is not possible to get around this.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Actually, most console versions of PC games have watered down poly counts and lower resolution textures. They've been able to get away with sub par graphics for years because standard def TV is only 640x480 at 24 FPS. Compare that to people running PC games on wide screens at 2048x1024 and pushing 60+fps.
As HD TV penetration rises, consoles will have to package more hardware to push the same picture quality. And thus the reason why we're seeing console going for $400-600 instead of $100-200.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I have to call B.S. on the article summary. The problem with PC's and gaming aren't because of these ridiculous high end graphics cards. Those are for the morons (like me) who like spend 3x the money to get a 20% boost increase. It has always been like this. I can't think of any games that require cards like these. If there are, the creators of that game are pretty dumb if they want it to sell. The real problem is the crappy Intel graphics cards that are put into many of the mainstream store-bought computers. The people who buy those computers will get screwed in terms of what games they can play. I think it's silly to say that the high-end graphics card is problem. That's like saying "Microsoft just released a new, more powerful, XBox-Super-Elite 360 for twice the cost, but it only adds 10% more detail to all your games. The original 360 is doomed!" No, stupid, you just keeping playing your games on your regular 360 and don't buy something you don't need.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
How about a bus that allows mice, trackballs, and other attachments to be hung on it. Then, put some more oomph in the console in memory and allow basic applications. With the new displays being sold, you could have your PC migrate to the console.
I do not see that coming. What I see coming is the PC, the console, the DVR, the DVD Player, etc all melting into an appliance that provides everything that the normal family wants/needs. It will feed multiple displays (with slots or bus attachments available to allow more displays to be hooked up and used by different people for different tasks simultaneously.) The funny part is that MS's *new* OS might be able to accomplish exactly this. It is modular, so you only need to load what you are going to use. It is multi-user, so it can accommodate multiple simultaneous users with different interface requirements, and it can be run without a GUI, which allows it to be used on a screen, a LED display, a console display, a PIP display, etc. MS wants the entertainment market. The thing they are missing is an OS flexible enough to scale from the entry to the high end. This is that potential (if you believe all the hype).
Will the console kill the PC? Nah. They will merge. Another product will emerge that will be some combination of the concepts of the two (not necessarily the best of each). And each one will keep on going as a part of the chain, or an independent component, whatever the individual consumer wants.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations.
There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles.
=Smidge=
The summary assumes that it's the graphics cards that cause the disappointment with current PC games.
I couldn't disagree more. What's causing this gamer to be fed up isn't graphics quality, it's game quality. From the plethora of patches, bugs, crashes and incompatabilities that plague PC games, to the sheer fact that most games are just badly done reshashes of successful predecessors.
I'd gladly take NWN2 with less fancy graphics if in return it wouldn't be a constantly crashing piece of apeshit, for example. I put down most MMORPGs after an hour or so not because the graphics weren't good enough, but because the gameplay is highly repetitive and I've seen it all before.
On the other hand, GTA didn't have the best graphics of its days, but it was addictive because it had great gameplay with good-enough graphics.
PC gaming could be great, especially where consoles lack. Morrowind, for example, was a better game than Oblivion for one simple reason: The compromises that Bethesda had to make on Oblivion so that it would work on a console.
And for the final nail in the coffin of the summaries argument, consider the Wii. Is it the winner of the 3rd generation console wars because it has the best graphics, or because it's more innovative and provides more fun than the two other "look, ma', bigger and more expensive than before" competitors? Heck, the PS3 is losing to the PS2 in sales figures, and I'm sure we don't have to discuss which of them has the better graphics card.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
> The PS3 cost Sony ~$850.00 to make and was intentionally sold at a loss.
I'd be very surprised if it were that high now. I suspect the blu-ray drive was the biggest cost, and I bet that's gone down a LOT. And since they're all the same (modulo some SKU customizations) they can easily drive the cost way down. PC components only get that way when a technology is perfectly stable, but they keep introducing something new every couple years. Anyway, the cost to Sony is irrelevant: the consumer pays a lot less. Additionally, no one cares about the "PC-like" architecture either. The experience is that they buy a much cheaper box that will play good games for the next four to seven years, period.
So sure, if you decide to slap the "PC" label onto everything, then yeah, the PC market is doing fine. Meanwhile, I don't think nVidia is going to have a strong season selling top-end video cards to only the people who bought Crysis.
We're talking about the actual price. Not a theoretical price if it was sold at the greatest profit possible. It's simply a fact, console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming. I'm not saying it's better, but it's the most cost efficient method of gaming. Unless you enjoy spending a few hundred bucks every few months to keep all aspects of your PC up to date. For $600, you get about 5 years of solid gaming. Show me a PC for $600 that will play ALL the games for it while running great for five years...
The XBox360 (which I own and love too), sortakinda does 720p. That's 1280x720. I say sortakinda because checking framebuffers on launch titles revealed some of them weren't even managing that... They were rendering fairly significantly lower resolutions and then upscaling to fill 720p in order to keep their framerates up.
Compare that to a $200 8800GT that laughs at 1280x720 for most games. Sure, there are some games with graphical effects WAY beyond anything I get on my console... but I can switch it down to console levels and play at full 1080p and beyond (I play most games at 1920x1200 on a 24" widescreen with the vast majority of settings maxed out).
Now it's true... An optimized system will always out perform a generalized one with identical parts when asked to perform identical tasks.
However, consoles also have absolutely zero room for upgrading over their five to ten year life cycles whilst PCs sit there benefiting from Moore's Law.
At launch, high end PCs usually match the console but for significantly more money. A year later, mid range PCs match the console for more money. A year after that, low end PCs tend to match the console for hardly anything more. From there on out, the only real arguments in favor of console performance come from comparing frame rates between a low resolution console with no AA (Forza, I'm looking at you) and a PC at dramatically higher resolutions, AA and AF maxed and a whole bunch of cool new graphical tweaks that aren't even an option on the optimized console version.
Both paths are equally valid. The PC, by going generic, has the ability to keep up with Moore's law and not wait on five plus year release cycles. Consoles, by going heavily optimized, can get the best bang for the buck at launch, translating in to greater profits for the makers/lower prices over time, and providing a single environment for games to be optimized for.
The bigger issue, however, is more likely how easy it is to download NOCD hacks, etc. for the PC and have one set of disks passed around a whole group of friends. Console gamers tend to need mod chips and, with Microsoft and Sony controlling the keys to the kingdom, can screw you the moment you go online and get the next forced patch. Game companies factor that in and would rather sell 2-5m units at $60 of Halo 17 with 3-6m turning up with copies etc. than sell 500,000 copies of Doom 18, at $30 a piece after Best Buy slashes prices, with 5-10m copies out there.
As a hardware medium, they're simply different choices. One gets more rewards up front, one pays them out over time. As a business medium for game makers, Microsoft and Sony tightly holding the keys to going on line makes consoles a FAR better investment.
Analog NTSC has no pixel structure, so there is no specific number of pixels on a line. A broadcast channel has 6 MHz bandwidth, so there is a physical limit to the number of 'lines of resolution' before it blurs together.
The broadcast standard is 720 pixels wide, as this can represent the full 6 MHz range. It includes 8 pixels of the blanking area on each side, which, when eliminated, leaves 704 pixels. 640 is commonly used by PCs/consoles because it results in square pixels, and gives sufficient detail with slightly less storage/processing overhead.
As for the frame rate, it is 30 frames per second (not 24 as a previous post indicated), which are made of two interlaced fields (240 visible lines each.) Most games don't draw complete frames at 30fps, though -- they draw independent 640x240 fields at 60 fields per second, as it gives smoother motion.
So compare 640x240 60fps to what a gaming PC has to pump out, and clearly it's a much smaller task for the GPU. Hi-Def TV shifts the balance, though, as full 1920x1080 60fps is more than most desktop PC monitors support.
FIXME: Add a sig here
To continue beating a dead horse...
Do you realize that a console is pretty much a PC with standardized hardware and very restrictive licensing as to what software can run on them?
Step two buy a PC Done years ago. Step three look at the back of the TV and then the PC Done. TV inputs: RF and composite. PC output: VGA. Step four buy the appropriate cable (HDMI, DVI, VGA, or SVGA)
What is the appropriate cable from a PC with only a VGA output to a TV with only RF and composite inputs? Or should someone have have considered this at the "buy a TV" or "buy a PC" stage, and if I have already done that, I'm out $600 for a new TV?
But to give your procedure a full shot, I'll try it on my other PC, which (step three) does have an S-video output.
Step four buy the appropriate cable (HDMI, DVI, VGA, or SVGA) S-video to composite adapter: check. Stereo miniplug to dual RCA: check. Triple 4 m RCA cable: check. Now I have a Windows desktop on the TV. Step five hook cable to TV & PC, right click and then adjust screen resolution to native res of TV The control panel doesn't list 480i, but 480p is close enough. I even understand what "overscan" and "deflicker" are, and when I should and should not turn them on. But: Step six give console fanboy boy a tired look.Console fanboy gives me a look back: "So you got Windows, PowerPoint, and YouTube on your TV. Good job. Now where are the games?" Too many major-label video game publishers dismiss HTPC gaming, claiming that same-screen multiplayer is for consoles only. During the PS2 era, multiplayer titles such as Soul Calibur and Shrek Smash n' Crash Racing would get ported to everything but the PC.
The problem here appears to have a catch-22 in it. Major video game publishers won't port games to the PC because of the TV connection mismatch, and PC makers won't promote PCs with TV output because of the lack of game software.
Nope, here's the difference:
Consoles are locked down and run only proprietary, manufacturer-approved games, while PCs are open and free to develop for. Modchips and Linux don't count, because they are illegal or don't have access to all the hardware, respectively.
If PC -- i.e., free and open gaming dies, it'll be a sad, sad day.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But otherwise he is spot on. We are comparing to consoles here, so no playing at 1600x1200 or at high settings with anti aliasing. you still have yet to buy a display) We are outputting to TV of course. Most graphic cards support that, so it shouldn't be a problem. Your sarcasm doesn't change the fact that consoles are better designed for multiplayer on the same system than PCs are. Actually, no. Console games in general may be better designed for multiplayer, but that is purely a matter of software. There are some PC games that support multiplaying on a single computer. That's absurd. Multiplayer support isn't some sort of concession begrudgingly granted by the console maker. It's an integral part of the design. No, it is an integeral part of the usage pattern of the console, which is family entertainment around the tv. The only specific design console design part is extra controls, but that is easy to add to the PC also, via USB.
That usage paterrn does however mean that more game developers focus on creating split screen games on console. So the software availability on the console does become an advantage.
Of course, the PC has its own software advantage due to its better control options, and less restrictions on distribution. They don't need to, the vast overwhelming majority of people already have them. Very few people already have a computer screen but no computer. Additionally, the vast overwhelming majority of people who have both a computer screen and a television have a *significantly* larger TV than computer display. Then there's sound, as well. You can use a TV as a computer screen. Of course, that way you will notice the obvious shortcoming of the TV, esepcially old ones. But as we only want a gaming PC that can match a console, we don't really need to spend extra money on a computer monitor.