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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.
There's something very fishy about the graphics card market. Using a substantially faster video card in a PC doesn't provide nearly the performance of a slower spec'd console. The console isn't burdened by nearly as much overhead, but that should not affect the GPU noticably. The only factor that I can see in play is that games can be better optimized when the developers know exactly what hardware will be used (as is the case with consoles), but surely having twice the power should be enough to negate that.
Whale
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?
Someone released hardware that has yet to be taken advantage of! It must be the death of PC gaming forever! No successful industry has ever released a single product that flopped because it was before its time! clearly the failure of a single Nvidia product to deliver massive speed boosts to games that weren't made with it in mind, spells the doom of not only PC games, but the PC itself.
I'm not sure I'd say P.C. gaming is "dead" but I have my doubts about long term viability. As P.C. become even more connected to the outside world and more and more of your collateral exists in digital form on your P.C. The need for security and reliability increase even more. To circumvent the security in order to get good performance for games means that hackers can circumvent the security for their purposes as well.
A console who's sole purpose for existing is to play games doesn't need to (a) be a general purpose computing system and (b) contain anything particularly sensitive. It can dispense with operating system security. There is no way a P.C. can ignore the very real threat of intrusion, data theft, and risk of hijacking.
So, if a video card for your computer costs as much as a whole gaming system, what's the benefit of the video card? More over, if you have to jeopardize the security and integrity of your system to play games, is it worth it?
I can't say, I'm not a gamer and besides a little solitaire, I don't play games on my computer. So, in the abstract, I can't see the advantage of playing games on a computer when good/cheap consoles exist.
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.
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
...that an Xbox 360 pro (HDMI, hard disk, wireless controller) only costs $350 USD and already includes everything you need to play games. Your $200 card, $300 CPU will also need a case, mobo, RAM, keyboard, mouse, and now you're at $800 or so to "trounce" whatever the consoles can provide.
I think a lot of people just don't have the time to set up and maintain a rig anymore or they just don't want to go through the hassle, and contrary to the way things were in the N64/PS1-2 days consoles really don't seem that far behind PCs anymore but the prices are still way cheaper.
The peak of PC (& mac) gaming was the early 90s. Games like tetris, civilization, sim city, lemmings, kings quest, red baron, played fine on standard issue office computers, and the platform was targeted at adults rather than the under 25 crowd. At what point in the 80s did Apple IIs stop getting ports? Since grownups outside a dedicated fanbase generally do not care about the next iteration of graphics and twitch style play, this meant that games had to use either innovative gameplay, storyline, or compelling simulation to compete.
It was also wonderful that games had small enough budgets and man hours of development that games could be signed by individual creators. Virtually nothing made by committee is as interesting as the enthusiastic work of a dedicated artist.
All the "are video games art?" questions amuse me. Because the answer is: they used to be, now they're straight Hollywood, with opening weekends and everything, and if that qualifies as art or not really depends on individual taste. But they aren't terribly compelling art as storytelling mediums (Chrono Trigger is the only non-adventure story game I've ever played that might make a decent non-licensed-property paperback) and they don't match film for visual spectacle. Interactivity is the fundamental nature of the art. Tetris is ten times the work of art that Final Fantasy is.
While I'm complaining: what's with the totally jockish attitude toward games. I have so little interest in proving my skill against testosterone drive 15 year olds, I can't even begin to describe it. Competitive online content, which is seeing the most energy and creativity on both PCs AND consoles, is a turn-off to most people.
Rhythm games are interesting because much like adventure games, they have a basic interaction model that is dirt simple, but they appeal based on the surrounding context. If you'd told me at the time that Parappa the Rappa was one of the most important games ever made, possibly more so than Street Fighter II, I'd have thought you were nuts.
There's a lot of innovation on the PC these days though. It's all in Flash. If you haven't played Desktop Tower Defense, you're way missing out (say goodbye to your productive time and sleep schedule though, 100 level challenge is basically impossible but you just keep wanting to try). I'd relearn actionscript (haven't played with it since Flash 4) to make some games if I wasn't very well aware that any good game takes hundreds of hours to write and under the hood if you aren't using complicated physics or AI it isn't very interesting programming. I'd rather invent a language or fork Minix or something.
On the other hand, MMORPGs are very interesting. Though I worry that WoW defined the success model too well and experimentation is going to fall off (given the huge investment it takes to launch an MMORPG this isn't so much a worry as a certainty).
Back to the main topic: it's no accident at all that WoW runs playably well on 8 year old graphics cards. Games that require specced out systems have a bright neon sign that says "hobbyists only." If you want a game that crosses over, make it run on whatever piece of crap integrated graphics they put in $500 laptops these days. Hell make it run on OLPC. Graphics can scale down much farther than the currently do, and most people don't mind. Most games could be reduced to Halflife 1 level graphics and still convey the important ingame objects and map features. One thing that I'm constantly bewildered by is that designers use all these polygons not to populate worlds with more interactive objects, but to dress up the same low moving object count we've had since Quake 1. Halo would play perfectly well with 500 polygon characters.
Or maybe I'm just bitter because 1991 era action puzzle games were the last genre I was any good at. I beat Oh No More Lemmings! as a 10 year old, a fact that I'm still damn proud of.
But don't worry, PC gaming isn't anywhere near as dead as arcade games.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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 trouble is, in "real life", you don't respawn when you get shot.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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 persistence of vision is 1/20th of a second. But that's ONLY vision. If you don't render faster on an interactive system, your control inputs will lag, because we compensate for the "slow" vision by being able to predict movements according to the rules that are set out. How else could a pitcher catch a ball hit directly back at him? Point is, there IS a very valid reason on games to do faster than 20fps. On movies, not quite so much, but anything interactive definitely so.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
For the nay-sayers who think PC gaming is dead...
Maybe I'm missing the picture here but given the inner workings of both the XBox and the PS3, their PC-like peripherals (sans mouse), their network-ability and the mod-ability of both into Linux systems, I would argue that console gaming is dead. The only problem with that argument is that the Wii (as the only real console left) is doing pretty damned well.
On a side note, even Apple has realized the benefits of being more PC.
I'd say the PC is doing fine, 1200 dollar video cards and all.
You know, Custer had a plan.
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.
It's not an uber gaming rig, but it'll play most games fairly decently, and it's only $200 to $300 more expensive than an Xbox 360 or PS3 + accessories. You could drop the 8800GT card down to a 8600GT and save another $110 off the total price, bringing it down to $642.
By comparison, an Xbox 360 Halo 3 Edition is $415 with shipping, or a PS3 40GB is $413 with shipping.
It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but $1200 is not the entry point for PC gaming, and you'd have to go back to the mid to late 1990s to find the last time that it was.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
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...
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
I'm glad that all the fanboys have left the platform for the consoles. There's more games available for the PC than ever before and many absolutely free. Its just so easy to create PC games (as opposed to getting another platform's SDK) and now with the Interwebs its become so easy to distribute them and develop communities around them. They aren't blockbusters, they are more like indy films. Better yet, they're indy films where YOU can actually have fun participating to make them better.
I think the state of PC games is back in the hands of the game hobbyists, maybe more like the early days of PC gaming, rather than the big companies. To me thats a good thing.
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?
Well every "rule" has exceptions. There was PS3 at ~$700 and the 3DO at ~$700 back in the 90s. But generally speaking, consoles use one-generation-old technology in order to provide decent gaming at an affordable price (about $300). Nintendo's NES was providing 8 bit gaming while most computer gamers had already moved onto 16 bit. Super Nintendo provided 65,000 colors but computer gamers were already looking at 16 million colors. And so on.
>>>"A genre that used to dominate innovation in the field now requires a $1200 piece of graphics technology just to participate"
As I recall that statement would have been just as valid in 1990.
PC gaming has never been inexpensive to participate,
because PC gaming is always pushing the envelope.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
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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"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Nvidia's QuadroFX series are the ones that are good for 3D modeling, etc.
The current crop of "quad" SLI and Crossfire are only for gaming ($1100 for 2 dual gpu cards). Remember that the size of PC screens and resolutions have been going up at a brisk pace and many gamers have 24" or 30" monitors. That's 1920x1200 to 2560x1600 pixels. Even the most cutting edge solution gets less than 30 FPS from Crysis on even 1600x1200 and the minimum framerate dips below 12 FPS. (And that's without AA or AF enabled). Unlike on CRTs, lowering the resolution makes the monitor display a blurrier/crappier image on LCD screens.
For the non-hardcore, anything below 30FPS minimum is simply bad (jerky, choppy, ruins the experience) and ideally, you don't want it to dip below 60 FPS to have perfectly smooth motion. Most find a minimum between 30 and 60 FPS to be good.
Bottom line: Top of the line GPUs are about 5 years behind monitor resolutions.
This particular model (Shuttle XPC SN27P2) has a 400W PSU, and I've googled around and read through some discussion boards where people claim, at least, that they have run the SN27P2 with an 8800GT. I'd like to find some more specs on the actual power output per rail from the PSU before buying this all together, though.
NVIDIA has a neat graphics and PSU comparison Flash webpage where you can drag sliders to specify your PSU wattage, and it'll recommend video cards accordingly. At least according to them, a 400W PSU should be sufficient to power 8800GT class cards.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Maybe I'm mistaken, but weren't Doom, Descent, et al using 8-bit color? Quake I believe used 16-bit color for its textures. In fact, 3dfx's demise came about when the Voodoo3 (1999) didn't support 32-bit color.
As the owner of a 2-way SLI system I can claim that everything about SLI disappoints. As far as my experience is concerned, it only makes a difference at higher frame rates (i.e.: if the game is running at 40fps you can expect it to jump to 60-70fps). That's the case of Oblivion, which fluctuates between 50fps and 250fps on my system (it used to do only 30-140fps with one card). Crysis, however, which was the game that made me upgrade, doesn't benefit the slightest bit from SLI because the areas where I was having 15fps and needed a performance boost the most keep running at 15fps with two cards.
The first two are right, but the last one is wrong. This in fact brings up the point that the "PC gaming is dying" crowd is making- the low end never catches up. This is due to integrated graphics. Sure the CPU power and RAM size might increase for the low end over the years, but the graphics ability has remained at a low level for some time.
Integrated graphics of a low end computer today (say the GMA 950) is actually worse that the graphics card in the original Xbox, never mind the 360. Integrated graphics don't make a jump from generation to generation. The most modern Intel integrated graphics (x3000) is only mildly better than the GMA 950 which is only mildly better than the GMA 915 which is mildly better than GMA8xx. And by mildly I mean "gaming benchmarks won't really run on any of them so we don't know." Heck, the GMA 950 might be the most popular GPU by volume in the world- the new baseline. And that baseline can barely play WOW (a Directx 7 game) let alone anything more modern.
Now I know that the reply might be "throw in a $60 graphics card and you are set," which is true. Problem is that starting last year when the majority of computer sold were laptops, now the bulk of the market is STUCK with integrated graphics.
THAT is what is killing PC Gaming- the fact that the low end (and the mid end in the case of laptops- you usually have to spend over 1k to get one with dedicated graphics) NEVER competes with consoles in their lifetime. Intel has failed Moore's law on graphics. Because most people don't care- GMA 950 does Vista's effects and that is all non gamers need. And actually if it wasn't for ole Aero Glass, the GMA950 wouldn't even be as strong as it is- Intel designed it to be JUST enough to run Vista premium.
So we have a situation were the low end has CPU/RAM/HARDISK power that is 50% of what the mid end has, but has 5% of the graphics power (if by midend you mean "has a low end dedicated graphics card" as I do). Hence Intel is killing PC gaming...
Open Source Sushi
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.
Also, both NVIDIA and ATI/AMD developed the graphics technology that went into today's consoles. It's not like console technology will somehow overtake what's available for PCs; it's the same technology, only the product cycle for PCs is a lot shorter.
Consoles simply cannot defeat the PC as a gaming platform on the basis of somehow having better hardware. Sure, Wii games are fun. Gameplay is always important, blah blah. That's no reason to assume consoles are, have, or will be crushing PCs anytime soon. As long as compilers are available, small timers will be making games for PCs. And successful small timers occasionally become bigger timers. But what about profit? We all played WoW on our PCs.
Here is why you shouldn't care too much about the results listed in the article. The GF9800 GX2 isn't just for 3D graphics. The reason why NVIDIA rushed the GF9800 GX2 to market now is to support the brave new world of high-performance computing they are envisioning. NVIDIA recently announced that a CUDA implementation of PhysX would be released; you'll probably want two GPUs for that. Additionally, CUDA 2.0 is due real soon now, and this will certainly have enhanced support for multi-GPU application development. To buy one of these just for gaming right now is, well, not economical. To buy a system capable of this degree of performance in this form factor (*eight* GPUs fit on one Extended ATX Intel Skulltrail) intended for research, scientific, or industrial computing is, well, a steal. Hats off to gamers for making this kind of technology affordable.
And now, the sensationalist closing: could this be the year of the Slashdot article summary that concludes without baseless rhetorical questions?
If you say so.
All I know is that my 68000 Amiga ran circles around the NES and Sega systems of the late 80s. They were still stuck using early 80s hardware (6502s) and primitive graphics/sound, while the Amiga was producing arcade-level clones of games.
That may be some of the confusion. You're thinking "IBM PC gaming", while I was thinking of "PC gaming" in the generic sense which included Atari STs and Commodore Amigas which were far more advanced than anything the consoles could do.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.