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A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need
Vigile writes "With the release of AMD's latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world's first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for under $100. What is even more interesting is that as PC gaming has evolved it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles — as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"
I used to have a top-of-the-line 3dfx graphics card. It was all I ever thought I'd need.
Today, that kind of power is available in my scientific caluclator.
Just goes to show that today's technology will become yesterday's technology in a very short period of time.
Xbox.
It's exactly the same principle, that you have a 'standard' set of guidelines.
The PC world brings you the ability to get deeper textures and whatever if you want better graphics, or LESS if you want faster framerates. It's nice customizability, and while a $99 graphics card may be all you need to play the titles, the options don't end just there... and that's why there will always be a market for higher end graphics cards, or processors for that matter.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I recently purchased an Nvidia 9800 for around 129 bucks. It came with two Call of Duty games, so I imagine the card is significantly cheaper than that.
It runs everything without so much as a single complaint, on max details.
And is it just me, or does FSAA have little real effect on visual quality? I never have it on, and even with it on (such as in WoW), I can't notice a bit of difference on a 19" LCD monitor. Turning FSAA can save you tons of money (and framerates!)
hookers and grits.
It's not merely a matter of what resolution you are running at, but how many polys you are pushing, how many texture passes you are doing, and what shaders you are taking advantage of. As long as artists can dream, we will require more and more power from our graphics renderers.
Therefore, no. The high end will not be going away. Some folks will always feel inadequate and seek to compensate.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I still like X-Wing alliance an Half life 2, they are great games and run great on reasonably modern pc's
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
No is the easy answer.
High-end graphics cards are rarely sold because of their real-world in game performance which is often insanely high; too high to notice in any game on release anyway. Nope, in my experience $600 graphics cards is all about bragging rights and benchmarks. It's the same category of people that buy water-cooling and ram chip heat-sinks & fans; they just want to squeeze that last 2% throughput out their probably insanely overclocked systems for the highest benchmarks possible.
It's actually good fun if you're into that; what you learn in overclocking is quite astonishing, but the super-high-end graphics cards are all part of that game.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I recently bought the HD4830 for $130 and was completely blown away by the performance. Crysis maxed out on a budget system?!! Hallelujah!! Now just imagine that without the OS Layer.
Budget video cards have always been available. As higher performance cards become available, game designers take advantage of those additional cycles to make their games look even more impressive than the competitor.
There are still lots of little tricks to try and get every ounce out of a graphics card's performance that could be done away with for higher quality graphics as better cards come out.
At some point, we may actually have cards fast enough to do truly intelligent per-pixel shadows on every applicable object, for example, at good frame rates.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?
Heck, we just now have tv's that do above 640x480.. but all the old sd sets came in all sorts of sizes. It did not mean your 54inch tv was capable of displaying any more pixels then your 7 inch handheld.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
I've had much better experience with ATI than NVIDIA cards. I like both but ATI cards generally seem more power efficient, at least at the level I spend (which isn't a lot). Maybe I just had some poor NVIDIA manufacturers though. I agree with the summary. Even with existing cards, you can get very acceptable performance from cards that are $100 or less (especially if you find a nice deal on a card). I don't know if I'd limit it to just $100 though but for $150 and under you can definitely buy enough card to run most games at high detail and quite high resolutions.
First, why pay more than $99 USD for a video card?
Second, Newegg lists the ATI 4770 as $109 USD with a 128-bit memory.
Third, the ATI 4830 are a better deal for under $99 with a 256-bit memory.
Amen. I wish the open graphics project the best of luck -- imagine how much better our drivers could be if we had real documentation for our graphics hardware!
What's probably going to happen is that the second that the OGP starts to get a decent graphics card, some of the major vendors will start releasing documentation and/or much better Free Software drivers. And hopefully everyone will benefit.
coding is life
Probably shouldn't be a troll here. I have a $250 high end Radeon. Bought it along with a new system back in October. From the beginning, it would blue screen on boot but only once in a while. Now it's doing it more often (event log identifies the problem as with the ATI driver), it randomly boots the machine, and currently the machine is in a reboot cycle. Searching on the problem shows it's well known. Suggestions are to upgrade to the newest driver (fails) and disable some feature (fails). Reports of contacting ATI results in "it's Microsoft's fault". Calls to Microsoft result in "it's ATI's fault".
Yea. I agree. No matter the price, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Actually, I purchased my watercooling system not to overclock, but to run everything at a lower temperature. So far it's kept my GTX260 and Q6600 at constant temps and has kept my office about 5 to 10 degrees F cooler.
"could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"
I wish it would! I'm tired of carrying around all this envy directed at people with the kind of coin required to buy top-of-the-line graphics cards. I got a wife and kids to support!
I am not left-handed, either!
Blow their money on hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on super high-end processors, super high-end video cards, and super high-end RAM.
They will probably never learn that all those super high-end cards are such a waste of money. IMO the best thing to do is to shoot towards the middle to low high-end cards at most. In addition SLI is kind of stupid. Your better off using your money to get one high end video card. SLI/Crossfire doesn't double performance, it increases it substantially of course but it certainly isn't double performance.
Also you won't see performance gains on most games for a while on your super-duper high end cards, and by the time you do your card would be a middle-end card.
With how fast prices drop, the best thing to do is get decent stuff and upgrade it ever 1-2 years depending on your budget. Performance wise, Getting a 200 dollar video card ever 2 years is better than getting a 600 dollar SLI set of video cards ever 4 years.
And this is why I choose to get a Clevo laptop when I got a gaming laptop, but I would rather pay a little extra for an upgradable solidly built upgradable laptop with quad core support because it will last longer than a slightly cheaper dell POS.
Hmm ... do you use linux for your gaming/graphics needs? I've only had headaches when I've been futzing around with ATI cards on one of my linux boxes. Configuring them sometimes requires a bit of xorg.conf knowledge and it never seemed to perform as well compared to running on a windows machine. Nvidia, however, tends to have good linux support, thus teaching me a lesson about buying a gfx card for a particular os. Even if they're more expensive, I'd rather shell out the extra 50$ for some decent firmware support than get something which sometimes works.
Does it play GTA4 at good res with good detail?
Different people have different needs.
For me a $99 vid card is overkill I just use onboard.
For hardcore gamer dude with money it's definitely not enough.
Would that $99 card run at decent framerates for high end games?
By decent framerates, I mean 40FPS avg with decent graphic quality settings.
Do anyone use that card mentioned above to play Crysis and see how well it runs?
...does it run Linux?
...I'm packin' four of nVidia's latest and greatest. My mobo may not support SLI, but it sure as hell supports duct tape.
Yes, I'm hung like a foetus.
My GeForce 8800 died a few weeks ago, so I bought a sub $100 HD 4830. And since I have a 1440x900 monitor, it should play todays games just fine at reasonable frame rates with reasonable quality. There's a reason why NVIDIA and ATI make so much on their lower-end products.
And, funnily enough, the CAPTCHA was "justify". How can you justify paying $400 for a damn graphics card?
as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"
My primary display is 2048x1536, my secondary is 3840x1024, and I've been wanting to build a 5040x1050 display but need to build a new system capable of driving it first (req. Windows XP with Nvidia 200 series GPUs, not supported under Vista).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Wait...
Where does the heat in the water go?
A quick google search reveals nothing under $104.99. Anyone have some magical fell-off-the-truck source for the sub-$100 price quoted in the article?
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."
Am I alone?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I am going to build a new PC and am in the market for a card. $100 on the graphics card would give me welcome flexibility on other components. Does anyone know if this can run Nethack at full res? What if you overclock it?
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
How does that work? You're still producing the same amount of heat. Water cooling just moves it away from the electronics and into the room faster.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Less powerful than these cards.
It's about time vid card companies stepped away from the 500 dollar cards and started offering more in the 100-150 dollar range.
I remember back when a geforce2 mx cost about 150 bucks and you could play everything under the sun on it, just at a little bit lower resolution.
I have a 3870 currently, and it's looking like this card is equivalent to that, and my 3870 cost me about 250 bucks, so this is a pretty cool development for the consumer.
Sounds like you've got an overheating issue. Vacuum out the dust, and/or check that all the fans are working. Maybe get an extra case fan.
There are many untapped aspects of graphics. Showing a multiple-screens, multiple-angles viewpoint better is in immediate demand, but really high dpi, dots per inch, has yet to be available to budget PC users. Several years ago, IBM was reported to have monitors that have a resolution equivalent to what you find on the printed page. With that kind of resolution, a typical small laptop screen should fit inside 1 square inch with room to spare. I don't know if this is CRT technology rather than LCD, but higher resolution could be around the corner.
After 2D, there's 3D, and real time 3D. So keep buying better graphics, and there will be even better graphics coming.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Perhaps under Linux, but under Windows I haven't had any issues.
Until the cards can do at least 60fps, with full FSAA turned on in most games, then no...
The benchmarks on some of those games are low 20fps on that card. And they dont even have Antialiasing turned on.
Icky performance on a 20 or 24inch lcd.
And we didnt even hit multi monitor with playing h.264 on one and wow on the other like some people do.
Have you been ignoring AMD/ATI for the past year?
They've been releasing documentation on most of their chips lately, and the open source drivers have been making good use of it. The open-source 3d drivers aren't as good as the proprietary drivers, but if open-source drivers are a must for you, AMD is clearly the way to go, and has been for quite some time.
A quick google search reveals nothing under $104.99.
Anyone have some magical fell-off-the-truck source for the sub-$100 price quoted in the article?
The MSRP is $110, and that's the price most everywhere. As Anand stated, $99 was the expected price. The summary is a lie. Most likely, it was based off info in TFA, which came from Pcper. Pcper probably wrote their article before the release and forgot to change the price from the rumored to announced value when ATI revealed it.
Also, why do /. stories about graphics cards always link to laughable sites like Pcper? Not only is Anand's site a lot better in its testing, but it also offers truly insightful discussion concerning the technology or metanarrative behind a new release.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Three of the five 4770's they have for sale are under $100 (with rebate).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201305520549%20106792627%201067947628&name=Radeon%20HD%204770
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
Maybe that is the next high end craze.
They are $109.99 + $10 rebates at newegg.com
Their latest drivers are f*cked up in Linux Dual Monitor setup.
And guess what previous versions working good with dual setup.
And double guess what.
Older versions won't install never version linux kernels.
F*cking F*cks. C'moon we are in 2009.
They can make a 99$ card and can't wrote proper driver for Linux.
My current setup was first and last ati thing ever.
This week I will replace an onboard config or a new NVIDIA card.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
People spend large sums of money on audio and video equipment, cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, lawnmowers, and tons of other items in the quest to have the biggest/fastest/showiest/best quality, spending amounts that far exceed any percent gain in relation to the dollars spent. Some do it for bragging rights, others suffer from the 'just because I can' syndrome. Some do it because they really can tell the difference in quality and can't stand cheaper alternatives. I used to take plenty of pictures with a cheap point and shoot camera. I have a dSLR now with an assortment of lenses and can't stand to use a cheap camera anymore.
Some choose to spend money on the beefiest system they can while others choose to purchase designer clothes or eat at expensive restaurants or take vacations to exotic locals or play golf at expensive courses. They are all choices that seem reasonable to anyone with similar preferences, but will always seem outrageous or extravagant to everyone else.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Now its going to be only $99 for a graphics card and only $400 for the physics engine card..
What he didn't say is, it's a total-loss water cooling system. His office is cooler from the "swamp cooling" effect of the water pooling around the base of the PC.
Actually, I purchased my watercooling system not to overclock, but to run everything at a lower temperature. So far it's kept my GTX260 and Q6600 at constant temps and has kept my office about 5 to 10 degrees F cooler.
I know nothing about water cooling, so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but why would your office be any cooler? The goal is to keep the CPU cooler by moving the heat away from it more efficiently, but all of that heat still dissipates into the room doesn't it? Or have I just been trolled?
/...
$99 after $10 mail-in rebate at Newegg
Hosting and Domain name coupons
Reminds me of the guy in my wife's office who kept a window unit AC sitting (and running) on his shelf. His office had no windows.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Like Nvidia's are any better. They haven't had flat panel scaling working for I don't know how long.
Asus 3450 256mb DDR2 looks OK to me, should be able to run Xterm & Firefox -- what else do you really need ?
I've been 'into computing' since a '286/20 was described as 'lightning fast'. I've never, ever spent more than 100 dollars on a video card. I've always bought last-years' high flyer for 60-80 dollars and I've never hurt for lack of fun games to play at resolutions that I've ever noticed as a problem.
Last years' CPU on last years' mobo costs 100 dollars for the pair. HDD upgrades for sale at 60 dollars - who isn't happy with this? Your average computer lasts about 4 years, by buying 1 year late you get 3/4 the performance life at 1/4 the cost while staying within the range of the target platform for most of the latest games.
Why is this even a question?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Well below 30 FPS average in Crysis 1920x1200 with only 0xAA and 8xAF? No thanks. Why would I buy a card that's underpowered on today's^H^H^H last year's games at far less than max quality?
This might be a big deal.
Prices are sometimes thought of as starting extremely high to compensate for high initial costs. However, once the technology is developed the per-chip cost is rather low throughout the life cycle.
Regardless they kept prices high at first to makes as much off those who would pay a lot. What we seeing is economics. If you cut your prices below the competitor you'll sell more. So they cut the top of the line a little, the other guy does, and soon enough you have what you have here. The prices are reaching equilibrium!!
Wow, it's not 2001 anymore. ATI/AMD have monthly driver releases, you very rarely hear about issues on the tech websites, and they're opening up the hardware specifications for open source drivers, which will take time to arrive but at least it's a good move for people who want an open source only desktop.
Why on /. of all places to I see a bunch of posts indicating that the current graphic cards "aught to be enough for anyone".
Maybe they are now, but until our cards can accurately render true to life animations at huge resolutions for $100 then there will always be graphics advances and need for better cards. The new cards will always start expensive and then go down in price over time. I confused why people think this will change.
Eventually however, once realtime photorealism is realized at a complexity level that rivals reality (think stadium full of fans, battlefields full of soldiers, reefs teeming with virtual life)and becomes the norm, the high end will cease to be relevant.
Entertainment has always been the driving force behind graphics performance. Eventually at a consumer level it will be irrelevant. There will still be a high end market but it will be for multi screen custom installations in a commercial setting.
So do I think a $100 video card signals the beginning of the end? Probably not. Will we eventually reach a point where basic computers can push photorealistic experiences, absolutely.
Much in the same way processor speed has become somewhat irrelevant in todays markets, framerates and polygons will cease to be relevant measures of performance.
By the time that happens we will have some other thing for the rich kids to blow their money on for bragging rights.
I think all this will do is push technologies like live raytracing harder. A raytraced 3d view is much much more realistic than anything a modern GPU can muster. Back in the day when i fooled around with povray on my 33 mhz computer it was very easy to do 3d views that beat anything i has ever seen in a modern game. It took a couple of days to do a high resolution image. Live it has to render a pic about 40-50 times a second wich demands a great deal of computational power or a new way of doing raytracing.
HTTP/1.1 400
How does that work? You're still producing the same amount of heat. Water cooling just moves it away from the electronics and into the room faster.
That's it. Water can transport heat away from your CPU, RAM, GPU..whatever faster than air. That allows you to create more heat by overclocking! :)
I take offense to that -- I water-cooled my system so it wouldn't sound like a hair dryer in a box.
Okay, and because it looks cool.
I guess bragging rights too. (Hence this post.)
on Crysis Wars running DX10 with "Good Graphics", AA 2x, 1280 x 1024?
If it doesn't then I don't want it, I better use those 100$ + a few bux more for a used Xbox 360. Crysis is one of the few games that make PC gaming worthy, if it can't run it then it's worthless for gamers.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
I've been TV-out'ing with ATI cards non-stop since 1995. My Sharp Aquos 52-inch HDTV? The one I'm typing on? *STILL* does not register 1080p mode unless I use PowerStrip and some advanced timings that some other person figured out for me. Yay monthly driver releases. They don't mean jack. I've never used a non-ATI card, but I think it's ridiculous to say that monthly driver releases fix their issues. I know someone else with an nVidea card and *almost* my same TV (Sharp Aquos 42inch instead of 52inch) and he has none of these problems.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Clearly not written by anyone who is very familiar with the graphics requirements of games like Crysis or Farcry 2. Can you run these games on a budget card? Yes. Is it possible to enjoy those games at a lower resolution or frame rate? Quite possible. Can either of those titles be enjoyed at their maximum potential? No
There are plenty of idiots who say bigger this, bigger that == bigger e-peen. That is really just stupid. There is a large segment of the gaming population who actually enjoy playing their games in the way the designers intended. Using physix, anti-alliasing, etc to achieve a full cinematic effect.
This goes for any enthusiast niche market. You have your audiophiles, your car guys, musicians, and artists, the list goes on. Why does a musician want a certain amp or guitar? Is it because he wants his peen to go to 11?
640 stream processors ought to be enough for anybody.
Try the latest open source drivers (specifically xf-86-video-ati), you won't get 3d with any newer cards but everything else is spectacular. 3d should be coming in the next month or two for newer cards, for older cards its already there and very stable.
Technically, "Nethack at full res" would be the GL ports Falcon's Eye and its successor Vulture's Eye. Despite the oddball names and fancy 3d graphics, these are Nethack. And it probably is possible to find a card that would struggle to run these versions of Nethack (though you might have to go to the used market).
So...your question wasn't actually quite as dumb as you probably intended it to be. Still dumb enough that I won't waste your time or mine by actually answering it, though. :)
cheers
He pumps the water into his dickhead boss's office, of course.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How does that work? You're still producing the same amount of heat. Water cooling just moves it away from the electronics and into the room faster.
Easy, he refrigerates the water so it's colder. Don't see how this is so hard for you to understand...
/s
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Probably shouldn't be a troll here. I have a $250 high end Radeon. Bought it along with a new system back in October. From the beginning, it would blue screen on boot but only once in a while. Now it's doing it more often (event log identifies the problem as with the ATI driver), it randomly boots the machine, and currently the machine is in a reboot cycle. Searching on the problem shows it's well known. Suggestions are to upgrade to the newest driver (fails) and disable some feature (fails). Reports of contacting ATI results in "it's Microsoft's fault". Calls to Microsoft result in "it's ATI's fault".
Yea. I agree. No matter the price, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
[John]
I can play this too.
Probably shouldn't be a troll here. I have a $250 high end Geforce. Bought it along with a new system back in October. From the beginning, it would blue screen on boot but only once in a while. Now it's doing it more often (event log identifies the problem as with the Nvidia driver), it randomly boots the machine, and currently the machine is in a reboot cycle. Searching on the problem shows it's well known. Suggestions are to upgrade to the newest driver (fails) and disable some feature (fails). Reports of contacting NVidia results in "it's Microsoft's fault". Calls to Microsoft result in "it's NVidia's fault".
Yea. I agree. No matter the price, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
Nvidia is known to pay forum users and the like to post FUD like this.
Ever since AMD bought ATI the drivers have been improving by leaps and bounds. With AMD/ATI, you now get a driver release every month. Their drivers have been completely stable for at least a year or two now, and game support has been growing and solidifying as well. The only game that ATI cards struggle with now is UT3; all the others the newest line (4850/70/90) thoroughly trounces the equally priced Nvidia card.
Think of it this way-- would you rather have the Nvidia 285 for $330, or the 4890 for $230? They perform the same, and drivers are not an issue.
If the GPU can boot the machine, load drivers, and do a few more CPU oriented 'things', then we will finally have a gaming PC that costs as much as a game or two.
Open Source the tiny motherboard needed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware/ and soon it would be miniaturized so you could carry it around to the nearest HD monitor. Add GE's holographic memory and you don't need a {DV}{B}D drive.
Heck, the military could use the thing to test out different attack scenarios in real-time during battle, lobbying virtual shells to see which one has the biggest bang, and then shoot the real one that way. With a link to Google Earth, military version, a soldier could see around the corner or over the ridge, in real-time.
Scatter a few in the mountains of Afghanistan with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare loaded, and the Taliban will think they have tapped into our network and can actually see what our forces are doing.
It may finally help answer the question, "Where in the world is BL?", unless the soldier thought the fire button also fired the real shell.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
It would be nice if you actually made a point. I'm suprised you were modded up.
You and I know ATI cards are top performers and SOLID stable cards. The trumping they gave nVidia over the last year speaks volumes.
The release of this card does nothing more than to say they are sticking to a tried and true strategy. While nVidia is forced to sell more costly hardware ATI is able to produce less expensive hardware that outperforms the competition.
I think it's just a very confused/misled poster, unless his radiator is off in a different room (unlikely, but I've seen it done).
While the total amount of heat produced won't change regardless of your cooling method, the noise to achieve said cooling can be remarkably different. Back when I was into that stuff (and indeed, using Windows machines), the main benefit of watercooling was to use a large radiator with very quiet fans rather than a fast, loud fan on a traditional heatsink.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Spot on. No one asks the question whether the age of Rolls Royce and Bugatti would go away.
Reminds me of the Arts student in our dorm leaving the fridge door propped open to cool the place down on hot days. Yes, we mocked him savagely. Not sure if he ever did get it, heat and temperature were the same thing to him.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Cause somebody once told me that would be all I ever need.
This is a link to a Goole search for nVidia BSOD in 2008. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nvidia+bsod+2008&btnG=Search
So I have to agree, if it doesn't work it doesn't work.
Of course if you don't know how to use it you don't know how to use it. You stuck with a card that BSOD since last October? /boggle
Try turning off Vista AERO.
If the open source drivers aren't as good as the proprietary ones and those simply put suck ass... There really aren't any options then are there?
Definitely check temps. I'm running a Radeon 4850 with a Zalman cooler and I've had no problems at all for any reason ever. Except in Linux with the proprietary drivers (compositing and GL video output caused video to flicker) , but that's been solved since Catalyst 9.3.
I have the same with NVidia @ Vista... After 3s-1 min the screen goes away, and the computer gets into serious crash while dumping the content of memory onto disk. When NVidia is out, everything works. Windows 7 is beautifully stable on the same configuration and drivers. Perhaps it is Microsoft's fault in the end?
That's my point, they're releasing drivers every month that don't actually fix anything. High bitrate H.264 video using hardware acceleration on ATI boards produces all sorts of weird problems, green screen, green blocks etc. Well again, it's not really the board but the drivers.
I made the unfortuneate error of choosing an ATI product over an nVidia product when making my selection when building my media center machine. Even though the specs were similar and the ATI board was $5 more I went with ATI because of the superior scaling options for HD panels. This was prior to nVidia's driver update that kinda threw it together.
The newest Catalyst drivers will not display high bitrate video. They borked it up sometime after the 8.7 release, of course I could just use the 8.7 version right, except it doesn't have the scaling options...
I stand by my original post, if it doesn't work, it's a waste of money regardless of what they charge. Fine boards, crappy drivers.
depends on how your water cooling is set up though. If you have an open cooling solution, heat will be absorbed by water then phase shifting into vapor. But he will need to keep on feeding water into the tank.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
It's not maxing everything and getting 60 FPS. It's getting 25-30 fps at "high" (not very high) at the high resolutions with no AA and only 8X AF. I game at 1920x1200 and I'm hoping to move to 2560x1600 soon. This won't begin to satisify my "needs".
I stopped thinking of needs after 12 years when I installed an ati 2600. It seems my needs are synonymous with prices, it always knows what I am thinking....I started as well with a "tiny" rage lt pro years ago now and fell for the whole evolution of it all...at least 10 cards in 11 years... I am still air cooled BTW, AGP, dx10 and vista, AGP and air cooled need a realistic return that needs to make a return to mainstream and demanding computing..
I bought a laptop with an AMD/ATI chip in for this purpose... Only to discover that there wasn't any free driver available for my card...
:)
Which likely makes it the last time I'm not buying Intel...
Wow, you talk about monthly driver releases like they're a good thing! Are the drivers that buggy that monthly releases are required? You'd think at some point they'd get it mostly right, and such frequent releases wouldn't be necessary! (I'm not talking about ATI in particular here, I'd say the same about any company with monthly driver releases).
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
I just bought a 9800gt not too long ago for my gaming box. Owned. I always seem to delay making purchases just long enough that stuff like this happens and I feel like I got gyped!
Though, I'm pretty happy with the 9800gt so all is well. Certainly much better than my old unstable 7950gt SLI setup.
The high end game card market will never go away - too profitable. They will artificially drive prices up unless they have a large incentive to not (eg ATI/AMD stick it to nVidia with proc/gpu combos). There's no money to be made in volume, really - they make their real killing in releasing a high end card and keeping the prices jacked up for as long as humanly possible.
As for the ATI vs nVidia fanboyism, that mostly exists in Linux. On my windows gaming box, the drivers for both have always been stable. As much as I eat, work, live & breathe *NIX, I would not consider gaming in the OS. So moot point for me. Windows for me has always just been a source of professional frustration or my personal gaming box (I prefer PC console for most games still)
Has everyone given up on ray tracing, radiosity, etc.? These things require MUCH more computational power than what current graphics cards can provide, and as soon as games start using new, shiny hardware to produce new, shiny graphics, we're going to see a decent spike in price for a short while before it comes back down.
Into my big silent reserator, which is why I have water cooling.
As for the other guy, maybe his radiator is outside his office? ;)
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
GPGPU is getting pretty big lately. THink about CUDA for example, which a 600 dollar card eats a 100 dollar card for breakfast. Let's see you deal with that. Scientific computing can never have enough power and fancier grpahics cards (which might not need to be used for graphics) are one way to go
The budget 1080p HDTV will have both HDMI and VGA inputs. But equally significant is the PC video card that can output audio and video over a single HDMI cable.
Realtime ray-tracing.
The open-source drivers are more reliable, easier to use, and more compatible with other software, but their performance is significantly lower than the proprietary drivers.
I remember when we had an array of DSPs that got us a GigaFLOPS worth of horsepower, and could do cool things like ray tracing with it. And that Cray-1, which had 100-250 MLOPS, depending on how much parallelism you could get your programs to use. And even my VAX could support 40-50 users....
I'm actually finding this video-card discussion frustrating, because they new ones all seem to want PCI-Express. My home desktop motherboard does AGP, and none of the AGP graphics cards I can find support 1920x1200; I don't think most of them support 1600x1xxx. So if I go get a decent LCD monitor, I'm going to need to replace the motherboard to support the graphics card...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The world of high-end graphics cards went away a decade ago. Evans and Sutherland, Dynamic Pictures, and Lockheed all had graphics cards for PCs in the $1000-$5000 range. Ten years ago, I had a $3000 graphics board from Dynamic Pictures. For a while I had something called a Fujitsu Sapphire graphics board on loan; Fujitsu gave up and exited the business before launching a product. And I'm ignoring SGI here.
The high-end guys were run over by the gamer card industry, which had real volume and was "good enough" for high-end animation tools. "High end" today is a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand.
The big headache for the animation community has been insufficient graphics memory. Gamer cards tended to stress fill rate over texture memory. Nobody in animation cares about frame rate once it passes 30FPS. What you need for animation is plenty of space for big textures. Game textures are shrunk to fit, but that happens late in the development pipeline. During content creation (and for movie and TV work) you need much larger texture maps. A few gigabytes of texture memory would not be too much. For most of a decade, you couldn't get that on PCs. Finally, you can.
High-end graphics are more about crapily programmed software. I use a system at work with 4 Nvidia Quadro 5800's and it's barely enough to keep up. I use all 4Gb of texture RAM not because what I'm doing is just that cool, but because I don't have the skill or time to optimize what I'm doing. PC graphics for games have been saturated for years, so much so that developers are offloading other tasks onto the massively underutilized GPU, like physics calculations.
Make sure that you are completely removing the old drivers with something like Driver Cleaner before you install any new ones. Whenever I install new drivers, I usually boot into Safe Mode (after Driver Cleaner reports no old driver files hanging around) and do the install from there. Then it is reboot once more (I never promised this would be simple) and set the resolution and make any final adjustments. Not un-installing an old driver completely can leave behind old files that will still be used. I was having similar problems in the past and doing all of that finally cured it. Now it is a little more effort than simply installing the new drivers over the old ones, but since doing it the long and diligent way, I have yet to run into any driver issues. (And this is on a 64 bit Vista system.)
"But this one goes to 11!"
"High-end graphics cards are rarely sold because of their real-world in game performance which is often insanely high; too high to notice in any game on release anyway"
I'm not sure what planet you live on but look at the differences between a game released in 2000-2005, era and the games released within the 2006-2009 timeframe. Difference is night and day, the more advanced shader technology has really upped the ante. The gaming benchmarks don't truly show just how much as changed. While framerate wise things may seem "too fast", if you include AA and anistropic filtering at high resolutions plus the shaders and everything else. It's hardly the case.
did you know that only paid forum users read forums like this one...
Sorry, but whether you're an ATidiot or NVidiot, the same is true.
I used an ATi board up until I needed an Nvidia back (to get my old VRStandard shutter glasses usable again). Then NVidia fucked me over by making the "new" 3D glasses driver Vista-only and proprietary to their own fucking brand glasses, forcing me to choose between running an old driver (which won't work for certain games) or buying $500 in new hardware AND infecting my PC with Vista.
Bottom line is, if you're not doing something like that, you don't really care whether you have NVidia or ATi. Buy whatever is at the "sweet spot" in the pricing point. The 4770 for $99 certainly is a great price.
Oh, and one other thing to remember - Are you "Okay" with playing in 1900x1200? Fuck, man, I remember when 640x480 was stellar. When 800x600 at 30 frames was something to goggle at. To this day, I run a 21" CRT monitor that does 120 Hz at 1280x1024, I still have a NVidia 7800GS card (though I'll upgrade in a few months finally... after THREE AND A HALF YEARS on my current rig with no tears shed) and that's all I need.
Does anyone "need" 1900x1200? I doubt it. "High-end" graphics haven't been used by anyone but a few people who look more for bragging rights than fun in gaming for years. Hell, what are you going to play on it anyways - all the MMORPG's are still designed to run on 5 year old hardware, and anything "intensive" like Crysis is more of a fucking tech demo than an actual playable game anyways. The fun games, except for the MMORPG's, now come out on the consoles first and maybe get a PC port if you're lucky a year later.
Not Vista, XP Pro. And I'm using the old classic theme as well. :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
What makes you think open-source drivers automatically makes them suck less? Open-source is a concept, and when applied, quite often does not meet the demands or requirements of the real world.
That said, yes, I have been ignoring AMD/ATI for the past *4* years: ever since I reported a bug with hardware mouse cursor support on their Radeon cards. Four completely different Radeon cards (one even made by Appian at the time) and four different PCs (including two stock out-of-the-box Dell systems) -- yet ATI's response was "we can't reproduce this, can you send us the **entire PC**?" As far as I know, the bug still exists (reading Radeon driver ChangeLogs indicates no related fixes), and I'm not willing to spend money on a Radeon card just to find out it still exists.
Thus, all the systems are now nVidia. Different set of bugs, but none so far that affect GDI or hardware mouse cursor support.
Bottom line: we live in a world where when the axe begins to fall, QA is first on the chopping block.
it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles
Yes, and 640k is enough for anyone.
Realistically though, the bottom of the line value machine has been "good enough" for every mainstream task for the past 5 or 6 years. Why is it surprising that graphics cards have come to this point too?
Wait...
Where does the heat in the water go?
Water cooling systems have a radiator and pump setup. Budget setups may have the radiator the size of a 120mm case fan, easily keeping it all 'in-case', while more expensive setups will have the radiator the same size as the case itself like this. High end cases these days tend to feature 'holes' to run the water cooling piping out of to external radiators too.
*Really* high end liquid cooling features full refrigeration systems using vapor - compression systems and whatnot - like this, which easily sit well into negative 30-40 degrees. Which is useful for people pulling insane overclocks for the sake of pulling insane overclocks.
And then liquid nitrogen for people trying to make records. =P
~Jarik
Seconded. On Linux, their drivers are completely useless for the 48xx series. From what I heard, hey have only one poor developer who works on them, and is not able to keep up with the pace of the Windows team.
I have done really extensive testing, and came up with the following problems, that still persist in the leaked 8.600 drivers. While the older versions aren't more stable, but missing even more functionality.
- Not compatible to the actual 2.6.29 kernel, because they finally took out a very outdated API, that the driver still used.
- "amdxmm.so" crashes X, and has to be moved manually. Of course, then you can't use stuff that needs it, probably causing other crashes.
- It's possible for the X server, to fall into an infinite loop, when certain HAL/input events are triggered. (Works fine with the nvidia driver.)
- Compositing and Xinerama do still not work at the same time.
- Gross color errors: Everything dark seems darker, and everything bright seems brighter. In some movies, a window with a bright white sky in the background, bleeds the white to the whole screen, making it a nearly totally white glow. Everything looks fine with the nVidia driver.
- Video playback looks very blocked, because it seems that the ATi driver accelerates that, but does so in a horribly bad way.
- Having the VirtualBox kernel modules active causes random crashes in the driver.
- The driver still only supports OpenGL 1.4, and nothing above that.
- I seem to get random crashes with it, while I can run my system for days, when I use the onboard nVidia chip.
I have bought a Radeon 4850, but can not use it at all on my Linux system (which I'm using 99% of the time), because of this shit. I still have to use my onboard nVidia chip, which is slow, but works like a charm. Simple install, simple config, perfectly stable. with Compiz, Xinerama and everything.
In Windows, it runs fine. (From what I can tell, with windows not having a real and actually used logging system.)
So I have lost 120 on that shitty thing, and will never ever buy an ATi card again. I also recommend not to buy ATi to everyone I know.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I think we've reached a point where
- graphics are no longer a limiting factor for a game's enjoyment. Wireframe spaceships sucked. 100.000-polygons ones instead of 10.000-polygons ones probably don't make a huge difference. On the contrary, too many moving things actually distract. We can go "more lifelike", and blend (pun inteded) the boundary between games and films, but still...
- graphics costs are ballooning, both in terms of creating the ressource files, and programming all the candy/actions. At the same time, the attention is moving to other topics (IA...), and budgets are tight.
- there's probably a limit on how big a PC screen, and how small the dots on it, can be. Actually, most LCD screens don't even render all that many colors anyway.
Which explains why nVidia in particular is desperately trying to find other uses for a GPU. They are the only of the big 3 that don't have much else in their portfolio.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
While I have no idea what caused the problem you're seeing, your best bet is to sent a report with your failing conditions directly to ATI/AMD and hope for the best. This may just as easily be a driver problem, as a problem with the chipset, or even just dirt in the PCIe port. Hell, maybe you just got really unlucky and managed to get a bad board.
If you're feeling extra adventurous, try creating a new partition and put on a fresh install of XP.
Hey, My desktop box is water cooled just 'cause it's quiet. Isn't that enough of a reason?
(How else am I going to hear Rick?)
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
Ah, it's the old "now they're better" argument. My laptop with a Radeon 9600 still can't suspend with the proprietary driver. Sometimes it locks up when I enable an external monitor with their utility (gotta save all my work before trying that one.) Seriously, I hear the same thing about MS and security. If they're living with a reputation they've earned, don't expect that to change overnight. And don't blame users who've gotten bad support, even if their data is a little out of date. If I'm going to get screwed again, at least it won't be by the same company.
My next laptop will have Nvidia based on the experiences with my current one. Maybe after that they'll get another shot.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I read the article and looked at the benchmarks and thought to myself, I should pay $20 and just get the Nvidia 250 card. It beats the rest of the cards and only costs $20 more. I'm sure there are other people who read the same article and thought, "I can get nearly the same performance and spend $20 less."
Is the performance better than the GMA 950? If so, then it's good enough for me...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's nice that ATI keeps releasing value-conscious products for those cheap gamers, but it is rather short-sighted and sensational to say that "a $99 card is all you need". Ten years ago, a $99 card was enough to play Quake 3 in medium-res medium-graphics. The one thing these graphics companies are good at is marketing. They have figured out how to maximize their sales, and that meant crippling the used resale value of their products to capture the idiotic low-end market. They sell these crippled products in big box stores to people who don't know better, to get them hooked on the upgrade treadmill. Six months later, Joe Stupid is a budding gamer, wants to play Call of Duty 8 and drops another $99 on that month's cheapo card. After a couple of years, Joe has upgraded 3-4 times, while he could have spent the $300 up front for a good card that would still have some fight left in it.
I have seen this cycle far too often. I dunno, maybe these people suck at math, but they're clearly not saving money in the end. Some people are happy with their $99 card and keep it for the lifetime of their PC, but those people would have been just as happy with "free" Intel integrated graphics. Gamers always want more.
That's also why we've seen a ton of movement in the low-end segment, but very little progress at the top end. If you spent $500 on graphics two years ago, you're still within 10-15% of today's $500 graphics solutions, and that's just pathetic.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
All of those systems you described still seem to pump the excess heat into the office.
I have no mod points :-(
Parent is right on the money. I can haz moar frame buffer plz? :-)
Ian Ameline
I bought an Asus 8800GS for $45 back in October. (I'm serious)
Problem was, it wasn't stable at stock speeds. Instant-reboots, and pink textures in games like Left4Dead.
I underclocked it 15% and the problems went away. :(
All the new nVidia drivers blow. One of my friends had stability problems too - I told him to go back to 180.xx, and that fixed his. Too bad it didn't fix mine at stock speeds.
One thing that this does is push the game developers to make games with better graphics faster/sooner than they would in the past.
Developers need to look at the low end, the high end, and the average for CPU and graphics power for their target audience. In the past, we would see a ton of Intel garbage graphics in systems, and that was the baseline that developers had to code for. As time has moved on, more and more systems, even with integrated graphics have shown up with NVIDIA graphics on the Intel side, and AMD systems have always had either AMD or NVIDIA graphics, which raises the bar by quite a bit.
With the level of GPU power in a $99 card, it shouldn't take too long for integrated graphics to show a significant improvement over the Radeon 3300 graphics on the AMD 790GX chipset. The question remains how long it will take, and how good or bad the integrated version ends up being.
Now, that raises the bar. While resolutions may not increase, the detail and quality we can run at will go up. Yes, a $100 card may run fine with medium graphics settings, but can you really expect a $100 card to run every game at 1024x768 at max settings and AA? That is the key to why people will buy higher end cards, so they can see games in their full glory.
exactly
and thanks for not mentioning my stereo setup with 147 buttons and 86 knobs and 14 meters :)
I can confirm Radeon 4850 hell with Suse and Mandriva, however ubuntu seems to have 4850s working reasonably painlessly out of the box now on 8.10 etc and 9.04 works nicely. 48xx support in Linux is getting better.
However....
Even with 3D setting itself up perfectly, in Ubuntu 904 I get intermittent random display artifacts, especially in compiz, and even visible on a black background. These appear to be the same as you get when overclocking or running two low core voltage. This is not a fault with my hardware as this card has run brutal looping benchmarks in various Windows versions with various driver versions, ATITool/Furmark etc and not even a trace of visual artifacts for days. I can only conclude that the OSS and Proprietary drivers for 48xx on linux are still crap, or at least interacting strangely with the hardware (GPU VID set too low thus GPU buggin out?).
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Nvidia is known to pay forum users and the like to post FUD like this.
Link or it didn't happen
What makes you think open-source drivers automatically makes them suck less?
There are some people (I am included in that group) for whom non-free software carries a certain minimum suckage, so to speak. It is true that if I have no alternative, I will use non-free software. But if I can do what I need to do I'll pick free software even if the alternative has more functionality. I'll save the rant about the value of freedom for the end user for another time. But I place a very high value on that freedom.
For example, I have an Intel 945GM card in my laptop. The 3D drivers in Linux suck very badly (sorry if anyone working on it is insulted), performance wise. Basically, I can play no games on it. My $50 NVidia graphics card *from 5 years ago* has 2 or 3 times the performance. But, if I were really worried about it, I could do something. The reason I moved from the NVidia card was a bug in the proprietary driver several years ago that caused me not to be able to do my work for some time (forget off hand the details). I felt powerless to do anything. And, for me, that sucked far more than the crappy 3D performance on my Intel card.
From my experience, they're not at all. People need drivers to play games, and the open source drivers are terrible for game compatibility, so they aren't an option.
I was at NTC (Training for Iraq) in the army, and a COLLEGE DEGREE havin officer actually plunked one of the fuckers down in our operations tent and was going to plug it in, and I had to explain to him why we needed to hook it up to an outlet vent. Wow.
Run a video card stress test, like this one If your computer crashes/reboots/hangs, then your graphics card is overheating. I had an nVidia card with no built in fan that came pre-installed in a high-end Sony Media PC with no provision made for cooling the graphics card. I always had trouble with it, even after installing an auxiliary fan to cool it, so I replaced it with the best ATI card that would work in my box. Now it has no problem passing stability tests. And I don't buy crap made by Sony anymore either.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What a bizzare story.
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=612&card2=571
Why would you spend $109 for a 4770 when you can spend $20 for something that's almost 2x as fast?
Actually that still makes sense. If the AC is blowing cold air at the guy, he's still feeling cooler. Sure he's heating the room more, but he'll still feel cooler from the breeze. Isn't that what we do to our planet anyways when we're using AC all the time...
The specs for DX11, such as they are at this point, call for real-time ray tracing. This will require a massive increase in power that frankly this new card is only starting to get close to being capable of. There's tons of new room to grow here. Perhaps it would be the last DX10 card you'd ever need, but not even close for future use.
That said, there should also be a standardized ray tracing test in the video suites. IIRC, there is already a ray traced version of Quake 4 out.
http://www.idfun.de/temp/q4rt/
...this is a great offer. Thats why I've been buying ATI cards, because you get similar quality to Nvidia, but the price is significantly less. But until ATI makes better Linux drivers, my HD3870 is the last ATI card I buy =)
Think of it this way-- would you rather have the Nvidia 285 for $330, or the 4890 for $230? They perform the same, and drivers are not an issue.
I have to disagree with this, a friend of mine had a crossfire of two 4870x2 and drivers were a huge problem, for example flight simulator x has a lot of known graphical glitches also when we played left 4 dead online he always crashed at least once because the ati driver crashed or they caused a bsod, each driver update fixed some bugs but also introduced a lot of new bugs Now he buyed a single gtx285 and it's performing better than two 4870x2 without any crashes
I've been 'into computing' since a '286/20 was described as 'lightning fast'. I've never, ever spent more than 100 dollars on a video card.
Intel 80286 released in 1982. Value of 1982 $100 in today's cash: $220.28.
Da Blog
Well, maybe he just needed some electrical heater. :)
Performance is pretty decent for fully supported cards. With an ancient Athlon 64 3200+ and a Radeon 1950 Pro, I get 122 fps in Quake3 timedemo with a resolution of 1600x1200 and everything on max, and I can play 1080p video as well. Unfortunately, newer cards are more work in progress, and it's only OpenGL 1.4 so far.
Exactly!!! We aren't near complex enough--we can still understand it as one concept. We need these things to power the holodeck someday! But yeah, that is kind of where the rending R&D is heading these days (away from the processor centric graphics cards that have flooded the market).
He mentioned liquid nitrogen which doesn't put heat in *the office* (but where the tank was filled).
Also, you won't end up with the heat in the office if the system is cooled with *tap* water (heat is lost in the sewers)
Much more simpler and realistic : several water-cooling setups (such as the Reserator series from Zalman) rely on an external reservoir/radiator combination (eventually also with pump and fans).
With long enough tubes, you don't need to put them in the same place as the computer (exactly as one would do with an air conditioner).
Thus the heat goes next door or outside depending on where the cooling unit was installed.
(That's what I actually do)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Wait, we talking linux or windows here, with the quality of ATI drivers, its sometimes hard to tell apart the arguments :)
When people ask me for my opinion, I have 2 sayings (only one I can use when trying to sell hardware though):
ATI cards are like a London bus, big, red, and with crappy drivers.
ATI drivers, causing more crashes than marijuana and alcohol combined.
...
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=nvidia+problem&word2=ati+problem
For sufficiently low values of both resolution and detail.
...
Sounds like a shitty power supply
In the end, into the air...via the radiator that cools the water.
The difference being the AMD open drivers don't allow 3D acceleration on current chips and Intel open drivers work, but they're 5 years behind in speed and features in hardware 3D. Since Linux is also 5 years behind in demand for 3D power, they're a perfect match for each other.
Seriously, what's the point of running Linux with a current Windows gaming card? It's not like it needs 3D unless you run Compiz, which is pointless broken bloatware.
I use the proprietary drivers on a dual boot box with a 4800 card and the only games that need it are run through wine. All the native games are circa 2001 graphics quality.
I'm serious. That card is the only hardware in a very long time which I've had to retire because of a lack of drivers. As a matter of personal principle, the replacement will be from the competition if that is the case.
I don't think high-end graphics cards will be completely necesary, but we will need graphics cards powerful enough to decode VC-1 or AVC encoded video from a Blu-ray disc and also provide HDCP support, too. Most of the very latest graphics cards with DVI-D outputs fortunately pass these compatibility tests so necessary for desktop computers to play back Blu-ray discs. Indeed, right now the graphics used on the iMac and Mac Pro are likely Blu-ray compatible, so only some software additions are necessary for Apple to add a BD-RE drive to play back Blu-ray movies and master BD-RE discs.
"could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?" Nope, not as long as there are gamers with teeny, tiny penises. Nerd sports cars.
What's probably going to happen is that the second that the OGP starts to get a decent graphics card, some of the major vendors will start releasing documentation and/or much better Free Software drivers.
While ATI is attempting to do this, frankly, I don't see why you would assume that. It seems to me that the more likely outcome is a patent lawsuit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
BSODs these days are usually a sign of a hardware issue. Bad memory, fucked HDD, weak PSU, damaged videocard, that sort of thing. It's been years since I've seen a driver cause a BSOD. Corrupted driver yes, but a reinstall on a new HDD fixed it.
Any one make a os for it?
For those of us with a modicum of control over our wallets, it is fantastic, their spending improves the bottom cards too.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Uh, that hardware is not ancient compared to Quake 3.
Would be nice to have some comparison with fglrx or the Windows drivers. Also, I haven't kept up with those open source drivers, weren't there two competing ones? One of which always used some kind of hardware abstraction layer, and the other at least started out as a down to the metal driver, if memory serves?
Would be good to know which of those drivers you're using, too.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Actually it's all automated. The botnets harvest forum accounts and argue with each other.
You're lucky, my m9700 never really worked at all with the proprietary driver. ATi seemed to go out of their way to break support for mobile chips under windows so I wasn't really surprised that the Linux proprietary drivers were fubar. But the open diver was fine as long as I stuck to non 3D stuff.
Now that AMD has depreciated support for x1950 and earlier I hoping they'll open up the drivers for community support. Not gonna hold my breath though.
On the other hand, the desktop 4850 has worked pretty well with proprietary drivers. At least as well as the GF6800GT that came before it. Driver install was point and click too. I was amazed.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
The ATI HD 4770 isn't the only amazing graphics card from ATI. For $52 (NewEgg) I'm installing an ATI HD 4550 into my Dell C521 low-profile system. Passive cooling, low profile, VGA output required, and a 25W power budget severely constrain my possible choices. But for a tiny card this one is a powerhouse as well. ATI is truly redefining the GPU space these day - and for the better! Anyone who doesn't think so need only remember the Nvidia GTX 280 released last year for $649.00. That price barely lasted a month once the ATI HD 4870 arrived with near the performance at half the price!
Greed may be good, but competition is much better!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Probably shouldn't be a troll here.
Actually I wasn't admitting I was a troll or that I was trolling. The poster I replied to was modded as a troll. I was saying that the OP probably shouldn't be modded as a troll. I just said it incorrectly.
I'm not trolling when I recount an actual problem I'm having with ATI drivers. Off-topic perhaps but not trolling.
Just saying.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
No we don't ... ... Damn.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Amusing. This guy says the same thing as I did but with Nvidia and he's insightful but I'm marked as a Troll when it's clear he was trolling and I wasn't.
Meh, the Nvidia fanboys must be out tonight.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Actually a raytraced 3d view compared to the current raster hacks available is A LITTLE more realistic than anything a modern GPU can muster. Some very clever hacks have proven to bring raster graphics close to raytraced results - and still in realtime.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They have a fix. http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2064&p_created=1177972007
This post would have been Redundant if it had been First Post.
Realtime raytracing on the desktop is 5 years away. It has always been 5 years away, and it will always be 5 years away.
Why? Because monitors will always be much bigger and faster 5 years from now, multiplying the level of the requirements for realtime raytracing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yuck @ ati cards, as their drivers are horrible and unstable. I have been using Nvidia cards for a long time and have not experienced any issues. So, who cares if it beats the 9800gt. It's still an ati card and I would wipe that card on my ass.!
Check out user "Rollo" from Anandtech forums.
From the AT-Wiki--
A video card junkie who possesses a strong Nvidia bias. He was unveiled to be a participant in the AEG "user feedback" program, and his future is currently in limbo over his hiding his participation and concerns that this participation has improperly influenced him both in his recommendations and in the degree of trolling he partakes in.
IIRC, he was banned, reinstated, and then permabanned again for continually posting misinformation and plain blatant lies about ATI/AMD graphics products. FUD in online forums is quite viral and effective. I for one am glad he was banned, it was easy to see the effect he was having.
Really only in the last 2 years have GPU prices come down (ever since ATI launched their 3000 and 4000 series after the abysmal 2000 ones and nVidia could no longer charge a fortune for theirs).
So I don't need a graphics card you insensitive clod! (at least other than the built-in one)
Dunno 'bout you but I run WoW just fine (at slightly higher frame rates, in fact) on xubuntu. And last weekend I bought myself the Valve pack on Steam so I could play L4D with my friends (got the pack rather than just L4D because I've always wanted to play through Portal, the original HL, and a bunch of other games in the pack). L4D does have some performance problems, which is a little disappointing, but is still playable (albeit at half the frame rate and resolution that my machine could do under Windows).
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I don't know - ATI was 100% against open-source anything for a long time - it all seemed to start right after they purchased the corpse of Diamond Multimedia, another anti-Linux company. In fact Diamond was so bad I learned x86 assembly just to write a utility to probe the chipset on a Stealth 32 card on it to figure out which registers did what and then hacked the ET4000 x server so I could run X on my AMD DX4/120 (basically, a 120Mhz 486). DiamondMM was actively hostile toward Linux users while AMD was relatively helpful, and it seemed like ATI did an about-face the moment they bought out Diamond and inherited the anti-Linux attitude. I've been pro-Nvidia since then. Their drivers may not be open source, but NVidia's drivers just work, and they were never actively hostile toward non-Windows users as far as I can recall.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Nobody really "needs" a Ferrari, but they make a fair share of sales nonetheless!
as long as they can push more polygons (or rays?!), bigger, badder video cards will still be on the market
Time for Philip Slusallek to dust of the RPU from 2005. If he was able to build a 60 FPS raytrace accelerator using about the same gate count and clock as a Rage II, then a state of the art accelerator for OpenRT and one killer game using hardware raytracing and nobody will remember the $99 Radeon.
The GPU will move onto the same silicon as the multi-core processors.
Depending on your need you will have 3 CPU cores and one GPU cores on a desktop chip, with a workstation having 12 CPU cores and 4 GPU cores.
They will share very high speed switched data communications that will allow any two of the cores to communicate directly other cores, allowing data to be high speed streamed through the cores like a car on an assembly line.
I've built a lot of PC's for people over the years. When they come to me, they want something good, fast, and stable, that will last them for years. They've usually been burnt with the pre-boxed big name machines, that have some sort of fatal problem after a year or so, and have no component upgrade path. Like, when a manufacturer uses a proprietary motherboard with everything integrated, when the video card dies you likely have to replace the motherboard (because frequently add-on cards don't work either). Since you can't get a motherboard that will fit into the case, you're now looking at a new case, motherboard, video card, and then adding in NIC (if not integrated). Since it's probably an upgrade, the CPU and memory won't be compatible either. All that you have left is the old drives. If you're going that far, why keep the old drives in a new computer?
So the question comes up, "What video card should I get?" I always tell people to get the $100 card. It sounds like a half answer, but it's easily explained.
The pricing usually goes a little something like this...
For several hundred dollars, you can get the latest greatest offering in the local stores.
For a couple hundred dollars, you can get the latest greatest video card from 6 months ago.
For $100, you can get the latest greatest video card from a year ago, which was "just marked down" or "on sale".
For $20, you can get the latest greatest off-brand offering from several years ago.
So I ask them, "be honest and think about what you really do with your computer."
If they really (REALLY) go out and buy the latest games the day they're released, and that's the majority of their usage, they may want the expensive card. They may also want to upgrade the video card several times before they want a new PC built in a year because they need better performance.
If they usually surf the net, write emails, read Slashdot, watch movies (DVD, youtube, downloaded porn, etc), and occasionally play a game that's a year or so old, they would be very happy with the $100 card.
If they generally don't do much more than answer emails, they'd be happy with the $20 card.
I've never had anyone request for me to put the $20 card in their new computer. Those have always been used in servers that don't have a monitor hooked up most of the time anyways.
Most people want the $100 card. I know there's a lot of brand loyalty on here, but to most people it doesn't really matter. I tell the customer to compare specs, and figure out which comparable card is cheapest right now. Sales fluctuate, so you may have a choice of $99.95 and $129.95 for comparable cards. They'll always go for the $99.99 card.
In my own machines, I'm working in shells through X11. I may have a few dozen windows open, if I'm using clusterssh, and a few browser sessions open. Occasionally (very occasionally), I play video games on the PC, and that's only if I have a Windows drive to boot to do it. I buy the $100 card, and am perfectly happy.
So, figure out what you do the most with your PC, and build it accordingly. Bragging rights of "I have the better card" are for teenage boys who don't realize it really doesn't matter, because mom isn't buying you a new computer after this one, because this one cost too damned much. Enjoy your $4,000 Alienware machine. In a year when faster better machines are available, you'll still be using that one. And in 2 years. And in 4 years. And the whole time, your friends will be getting newer better PCs at less than $1k, and you're "I'm the coolest kid on the block" fame will be gone.
I won't try to say what anyone should buy. If you want to spend hundreds on a video card, go for it. It's your money. That's why I let people pick what they want in theirs when I build one out. I only guide them through the options.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?
No. It means the times of paying unreasonably high prices for a graphics card might go away. It's long overdue.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Troll? Bah
If you had to sell vid cards to people who think that "a good one" costs under $50AU then you wouldn't mod this troll, it would be insightful or some such.
Go on, mod this troll too, I dare you mods (would do it myself but can't mod my own posts).
...
Actually a raytraced 3d view compared to the current raster hacks available is A LITTLE more realistic than anything a modern GPU can muster. Some very clever hacks have proven to bring raster graphics close to raytraced results - and still in realtime.
Yes, but they also tend to avoid the cases where you really would want reflections of reflections with many shiny surfaces, mirrors, lenses and translucent objects. Not that it happens that often in real life either, but watching ray tracing demos of showcases really sets them apart. I think you could make some really crazy "hall of mirrors" FPS levels that you wouldn't even be close to doing realistically today. Good ray tracing bounces the rays quite a few times and gets rather computationally expensive too though, so I'm not sure when we'll see anything like that in realtime.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The whole reason a lot of games used to push high end graphics was it didn't always mean you were going to increase development costs dramatically. Thus for not too much more money you had a guaranteed way to stand out from the crowd. Most people couldn't afford to enjoy those newer graphics but the engines could easily scale down to cheaper hardware.
That doesn't work for current graphics though. The level of detail has increased costs dramatically. Therefore it's no longer logical for them to cut down on potential customers in order to stand out at heavily increased costs.
Even a $50 nvidia 512mb 9400GS graphics card will give computer users a massive boost over motherboard integrated graphics. Sure call of duty at high res wont be great, but World of warcraft at high res will run decently as will blu-ray and neither will run decently on integrated motherboards.
It goes through a forced-air heatsink and comes back to the cpu cool.
I have an HTPC based on a Jetway NC81-LF using onboard video (ATI HD 3200 Mobile Chip)
This little guy plays my BD rips no problem (I use Linux, no currently possible way to play direct from disc)
So even integrated chips can play this stuff. People like myself do not need any more than that.
Nvidia is known to pay forum users and the like to post FUD like this.
Really? If this is *known* why doesn't ATI sue?
Anyway, I realize this is about the Windows drivers, but I've had three ATI cards, and the flgrx didn't work properly on any of them, while I've never had any trouble with the NVIDIA cards.
So where can I claim my $$, or does the FUD have to be false?
But all the big consumer PC brands like Dell, HP, Vaio, Gateway, etc. are Riddled with exclusive deals. By the time they can think of distributing these cards in their PCs the next generation will be out. Remember, all those years when AMD had amazing processors, the couldn't gain market share because most re-sellers were stuck with long term intel-exclusive deals ....
Same with what's stopping linux now... It was unfit for consumer use for a long time.. But with distro's like Ubuntu, It is mature enough for everyone, but Microsoft exclusive deals and Fears of not able to use proprietary appls like Yahoo! Messenger voice chat, that microphone, google talk, videos on ABC.com, etc. stop ppl from migrating en=masse
I actually had an idea to run a water cooling system with a radiator set on the outside of the house, the downside to this is the increased temperatures during the summer, and having a hideous radiator sitting outside your house.
I doubt I'll ever do something like this.
Why? Because monitors will always be much bigger and faster 5 years from now, multiplying the level of the requirements for realtime raytracing.
I'm not saying that the whole "it's always 5 years away" thing isn't true (I don't know, one way or the other), but one of the touted benefits of raytracing is that numbers of rays you need to trace only scales up with the final number of pixels, while the number of polygons you need to rasterize goes up with the scene complexity. Guess which one is growing faster?
Welcome to the wonderful world of "leakage current" in the overall power dissipation of modern processors (sub 90nm).
Short story: cooler chips lead to lower power dissipation, thus a better cooling solution can indeed reduce overall power dissipation.
While the total amount of heat produced won't change noticeably regardless of your cooling method, [...]
[pedant] There, fixed that for you...[/pedant]
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Shoving a 3.6GHz quad-core into a 2U case pretty much requires water cooling.... or lots of 60Db fans...
Now I have a really fast local server that doesn't scream like a banshee.... or use precious real estate in my already cramped workspace.
For me it wasn't about bragging rights.... it was about creating a high performance linux machine box that I could LIVE with....
Lol it did another unexpected service this winter.... The baseboard heater in my office was off for the duration....
Hmm - Professional products from Nvidia site:
http://store.nvidia.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=nvidia&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=67049700
Quadro FX 5600 $2,999.00
Quadro FX 4600 $1,999.00
and... ... $3,039.35
PNY Quadro FX 5800 Graphics Card - nVIDIA
I heard about these from my co-worker who is shopping for a couple. Perhaps the high-end cards are still around, just not where you are looking for them.
lol he was just pumping the heat over the neighboring cubicles.
How do you know this is a video card problem? Most random blue screens I've seen have been bad memory and not enough power from the power supply.
DiamondMM was actively hostile toward Linux users while AMD was relatively helpful ...
And they did another about-face when they got bought by AMD, and, not surprisingly, have adopted AMD's open-friendly, linux-friendly attitude. This all happened a couple of years ago, didn't you hear about it?
So you might want to give AMD/ATI another look, or at least read up on how they've changed their behavior and what they've been doing lately (releasing a ton of tech docs for their chips - putting Linux support at the same level as Windows support in their driver development process, etc).
Disclaimer: I'm a happy owner of a system with an AMD CPU and AMD/ATI 790GX on-board graphics.
Really? If this is *known* why doesn't ATI sue?
Because knowing something and proving it in a court of law are two different things?
As a corporation, you don't *normally* go around sueing individuals just for saying bad things about you, and *proving* the NVIDIA link would be the really hard part, legally.
Besides, ATI, now also known as AMD, is too embroiled right now in a legal fight with the 800lb gorilla of the hardware world, known to all as Intel, to be going around picking other fights, especially in a bad economy.
Yes, the Quadro cards are very popular, actually. Also they come in special versions, with HDSDI interfaces for professional video equipment, or for example as QuadroPlex boxes, for powering VR caves and big visualization applications.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Did you ever consider that the fact that you SELL video card might affect your neutrality on the question of how much people should spend on them? Just a thought.
Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away ?
No.
Sure, go ATI if you're happy with sub-par driver support in anything other than Windows.
As someone who runs Linux as their main operating system at home, I'll *never* buy ATI again... i've been burnt far too many times.
One AC gave half the answer. Here is the other half: dehumidification. So you have a breeze and, you should off the coils, get some dehumidification as well. More of the answer, if it heats building but makes the air space in *his* immediate vicinity cooler, then it has its desired affect. Want more of the answer? Owner/manager did not want AC cranked up or did not want to put a hole in the wall (or could not) for the AC unit.
$100 video cards have been the norm for almost 18 years now. I don't know why this is news. However there will always be the market for the $600 graphics card as new technology comes in. Just because AMD and NVidia haven't come up with anything new doesn't mean anything. One day a new player will enter the market and blow both those companies out of the water. This is the nature of the industry.
If you get a silent water cooling kit (like the Reserator) then you can have a good gaming PC which is completely silent - no large and loud CPU fans, no jet-engine-taking-off-like sounds coming out of your PC when you are playing 3D games.
I do admit that most water cooling kits out there are targeted at the "crazy overclocking and maybe compensating for something" crowd, not the "gamers with silent PCs" one.
That said, I do have a Reserator (picture: http://www.zalman.com/DataFile/product/RESERATOR-1-V2_01_b(0).jpg - notice the radiator tower) so maybe I'm compensating for something myself ;)
With regards to heat, in a water cooling setup the heat from the CPU/GPU goes directly to the radiator outside of the PC case where it will radiate directly to the large volume of air in the room where the computer is. With air cooling, the heat radiates to the volume of air inside the case which in turn has to be forcefully refreshed with air from outside the case (usually using case fans).
Although in the end, both systems move the heat out to the air in the room, water cooling is much faster at doing it since water can transport a lot more heat out, it flows faster and since it travels inside pipes is barely affected by the geometry inside the case (e.g. obstructions to the air flow such as cables, boards and everything else in the path of the air coming inside and going outside).
Even with a passive water cooling setup like I have, the increase in efficiency versus air-cooling is so large that my CPU usually runs at around 32C instead of the 57C that where usual with air-cooling.
OK, then. I installed it in Windows XP and tested, just for you. Same computer, of course, but with a more recent version of ioquake3; same resolution and everything. 192 fps. So it's faster in Windows, as I expected. I'm not going to bother with fglrx.
122 fps was with the old radeon driver, as radeonhd doesn't work for me. The OpenGL performance for the two should be pretty much identical, though, as they both use the same Mesa and DRI.
Oh dear you nearly said something insightful there but then lost it.
High-end cards exist for media creators i.e. people who run Maya at work. The people that don't want to *play* the game, but *make* the game. Flying around a Crysis level at 1000ft with infinite draw distance is *necessary* when you're editing it.
They also exist because generally the first round of product is expensive to produce. Although ATI seems to have gotten around this problem somehow.
That's for another issue, overscan. Flat panel scaling, specifically using "Nvidia scaling" or "Nvidia scaling with fixed aspect ratio" doesn't work for quite some time (more than a year?). It doesn't work in XP, Vista and Windows 7.
There is a temporary fix (as in working only one time, until running a video or a 3d app) for it, but that fix also doesn't work for me.
The driver still only supports OpenGL 1.4, and nothing above that.
Okay, you're definitely doing something wrong. The closed-source ATI drivers support OpenGL 2.0 on your generation of cards; always have done. (I'm pretty sure I've even checked this on my 2600XT - while it's an older card than yours, the difference between the two is tiny from an OpenGL driver perspective.)
i spent about 250 euros just for a agp gfx card ... now i've been using the same GT8500 for over a year, bought if for 68 euros brandnew
As long as i keep windows tweaked i have no problems playing the latest titles so far and since that's all i use windows for, a little spellborn or cod i don't see the need for expensive gear anymore
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
Check all your components when faced with a gfx BSOD, don't automatically assume it's the card. In most cases I've found it's either motherboard or RAM at fault. Bear in mind that Windows will frequently blame the gfx driver even if it's another component.
For weeks I got BSODs blaming the nvidia gfx driver, until i discovered my northbridge was waaaay overheated. A fan pointed at the NB heatsink cured all the problems.
NB overheating, as I discovered later, is a fairly common problem with nForce 780i chipsets. Since you're on ATI platform this probably isn't your specific issue, but thought I'd mention it anyway.
Sorry you've been marked Troll by ATI fanbois... It's a shame you can't actually discuss legitimate problems with either platform on Slashdot without stirring up the knee-jerk crazies and sponsored astroturfers on both sides.
For the record, I use both nVidia and ATI hardware, but not in the same machines. I'm happy with both.
I think that the graphics card manufacturers agree with the premise too, i.e. high end gpus might not be desirable or necessary for the majority of gamers in the near future. As evidence I take the recent push by nvidia on gpgpu (general purpose gpu programming), to create a market for high end gpus, starting with high end users (specialist, compute intensive software, e.g. scientific applications). One day in the not-too-distant-future (3-5 years?), I'm sure that nvidia (probably amd too) wants to expand this niche market to the extent that a large percentage of personal computers will have a (gpu) co-processor for doing number crunching.
Why is this modded up? To me, this reads like an advert for AMD written by a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboi, and the OP doesn't look particularly FUD. Why the modding bias?
There are those of us, myself included, who have used BOTH nVidia and ATI hardware, and know that BOTH have their quirks and issues. Different combinations of hardware produce wildly different results. Such is the PC market.
So, instead of spouting the usual fanboi shit, why not break the cycle of dick-waving and try to diagnose the problem? Why not try proving that your pet vendor is as good as you believe it to be, instead of a diatribe about driver quality and comparative price?
My last experience with Catalyst was a less than stable system. Thanks, but until Nvidia screws up I'll stick with them.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
the temperature of a processor is usually around 120 degrees F, dangerous temperatures are above 150. the temperature of a room isn't going to increase more than a few degrees unless it is very well insulated and not cooled. the main object is removing heat fast enough from the processor so that it doesn't get too hot when overclocking. you just cant put a big enough air cooled heatsink on a quadcore processor when doing a major overclock and increasing the voltage a lot.
As a corporation, you don't *normally* go around sueing individuals just for saying bad things about you, and *proving* the NVIDIA link would be the really hard part, legally.
Well, I don't normally go around claiming knowledge without some form of proof either. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_for_comment_affair, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with NVidia or ATI. After several searches of Google I haven't found any evidence that anyone other than electrosoccertux even suspects Nvidia of this. Nor do I know on what basis 'tux "knows" this. Does someone have a link to any discussion of the evidence?
(Also, Technically, for a civil trial you just need to show that the "preponderance of evidence" indicates that the law was broken. So arguably you can win a lawsuit without even knowing that the law was broken, depending on how strongly you interpret the word "know".)
Most games are developed cross-platform with consoles - there are very few PC only games where graphics are the selling point.
What this means is that whilst you might get higher resolutions, or maybe some fancier filtering, what you get on your PC can never be too different to what a 360/PS3 is capable of pumping out.
It was only really the gaming that kept me on the eternal treadmill of GPU purchases - so my PC has had no new bits in it for a few years, and I'm more than happy with it for that.
Finally I don't think graphics are the selling point the used to be. What we have now is 'good enough' - in precisely the same way I used to slavishly update my soundcard for stereo, ' CD controller, MT32 compatibility etc I used to upgrade my GPU. Now as with the soundcard, the upgrades no longer seem to be worth the money. Not to say I wouldn't mind an improvement, but just that my actual increase in enjoyment would in no way outbalance the expense of the purchase.
Don't get mad, and don't try to convince them otherwise, for heaven's sake. Guys like that are paying for the R&D costs of the uber-high-end cards that you can I enjoy for $100 a few years later.
Why wait?! Just tell him "Sorry man, that's a bummer about those cards. I don't do anything fancy like DVD playback so if you every get rid of them let me know." ;^)
I am sure there are many more knowledgeable folks on here that will same the same. I call BS.
Unless there has been some remarkable new discovery in technology in Video Cards, AND the video game industry has shifted alarmingly, this is simply not the case.
For those that don't know:
0$ aka Integrated video - Runs Word just fine.
100$ aka Value video - Runs old games just fine.
200-300$ aka Mid-range Video - Most bang for buck.
500$ aka High-End - Bleeding edge.
1000$ aka SLI aka Stupid Loser Idiots.
Nothing has changed really. "Fine" is a relative word. Fine for you may not be fine for me. There are also a lot more "casual" gamers out there. If anything has changed, that may be it. This group of people may not care so much about video, and thus be fine with whatever. Guitar Hero and WOW do not really tax a modern video card all that much.
Being able to run a game at low levels may be fine for some. However some may want most the eye candy on and need flawless FPS with no dips for multiplayer.
Along with more casual players, the age of gamers is increasing, which means two things. 1) They may be a little less hardcore than they used to be and, 2) They likely have more money to spend (but very well may have other things to spend it on like, kids, houses, retirement, etc...). I am not sure if that is a net win or loss one way or another...
Disclaimer my last video card I bought was a 1950Pro for 200$, and I have been happy with it.
The only technical thing I can see that will make a difference in the near future is when development is done to optimize for parallel programing to take advantage of multiple cores, optimization for 64 bit architecture, and efficient swapping and/or integration between GPU and CPU.
Problem is, none of that shit is going to happen until windows goes 64bit mainstream and it somehow becomes easier to program in parallel.
I think it is crazy that these "new" technologies have been out for awhile now, and are pretty much sitting in peoples boxes mostly unused (other than perhaps for some multitasking).
Sonicdouche: Is it women's fault that you are a closet queer http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1214827&cid=27751445 ?
What does under $50 AU have to do with $150 (assumed to be American), especially considering the generally higher costs of computer hardware down under? Your comment provided no information, and was at best moot and at worst idiotic.
My 9 year old ATI AGP card that came stock with my G4 Macintosh is more video card than I need.
The tubes are hooked up to radiators that reside outside of the machine, which use traditional cooling methods to move it elsewhere, but the point is, the heat is moved from the case to the outside environment.
I remember the Sapphire for the Digital Alpha. GLINT was nice.
God, what was that, 1995?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
> could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?
No. They can get their sorry asses back to developing real 3D immersion, don't care how, goggles, special screens, or whatever, and the associated wraparound technology for immersion.
Hint: I don't want motion blur so it looks like a movie -- that's a fault of the movies, and you're reproducing it?!?!?
One of the most realistic 3D renderings I saw was actually many years ago with Quake. Running with the horrible, blocky software renderer, on a newer (for that time) machine, you got fantastic refresh rates in excess of 70 fps.
Long gone were the last vestiges of any kind of motion issues, which, sorry for the naysayers around here, do exist well past a paltry 30 or even 45 fps.
Also, given the RAM wasn't an issue, there were no stutters as you entered an area, or just turned around quickly. This lead to a phenomenal feeling that you were looking through a window of your monitor into an actual world out there.
Then along came hardware renderers, better resolution, colors, whatnot. But it's still not the same. Even if you get a good fps, as I do in town on, say, Dungeons and Dragons Online, when you start moving, turning, or have a sudden bunch of explosive special effects, the machine stutters. Whether this is due to paging, or loading the objects to the video card, or whatever, I don't know. The point is, I don't care.
I'd rather trade off the next pointless increase on this or that bizarre feature or resolution, in favor of cleaning up these stutter issues that detract from realism. And then integrate true 3D. And then integrate a wraparound scenario, be it a special bubble display, or a motion sensor in your 3D goggle headset. I don't care.
But I wanna see that all at a smooth 70+ fps before the next 3D card that can do 45 fps of 8000x16000 resolution just so I can see lovely grey cement with rust stains on it stutter as I run into town to sell my stuff.
Sigh. Yes, I know you can get 3D goggles and software that makes true 3D out of almost any 3D game. Yes I know you can get multiple huge monitors for a wraparound (but I have great difficulty finding a site where people actually do this for a game, say, 3 widescreens side-by-side, such that you are looking at your character in the middle of the middle screen, rather than his split ass in-between the two screens of a dual setup, and what card(s), FPS, and so on. Actual links, not "well, check out this card which has 3 video outs and should do that in theory.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
UNDER 1920x1200?!? What, did I fall into a coma and wake up in the era of 20 megabit computer displays? If it's an RPG with a considerable amount of on-screen text, I can see how this would be an issue. For most games, you just don't notice much difference after a few minutes of gameplay. I'd much rather have silky-smooth framerates at 1024x768. Yeah, the fillrates on most decent modern GPUs can easily handle smooth gameplay at extreme resolutions, but what really kills is when multiple layers of post-processing effects are being used. This hype for running PC games at high resolution is unfortunate because one of the great things about console development was that you focused on making your graphics look as good as possible and play as smoothly within the constraints of a fixed screen buffer at a fixed frame-rate. I see this as becoming more of an issue as GPUs become more and more like general processors, and inevitably use more painterly-like rendering techniques.
The 8800s used the G80 chip, and are fine. Anything else in the 8xxx range and at least some earlier revisions of the 9600 are bad news.
All cards based off of G84 (8600) or G86 (8300, 8400, 8500) are dead silicon walking, as well as at least some of the earlier revisions of G94. (9600)
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
The 8800 GT was on the 65 nm process, and is fucking broken. It was also the "OMG BEST VALUE" card that everyone got hyped up for.
The 8800 GTS and 8800 GTS 112 (second revision) were on the 90nm process, but are just binnings of the GTX/Ultra, and also have higher failure rates, especially the second revision (nothing like the 65nm parts though, lol).
And some of the earlier low-level 200 series, since they were just rebadged, renamed, and remarketed leftovers from the broken 9000 series.
(Yes, all of the 9000 series is broken. ALL of it.)
All of the 9 series is broken, eh? Why is my 9800GTX+ working just fine? Piece of shit, my ass. It wasn't bad silicon, it was a BAD DIE PACKAGING that fucked the higher end of the 8 series up through the earliest versions of the 200 series, or did you not pay attention to all the news concerning the massive failure rates of nVidia graphics chips in desktop cards and laptop computers? The silicon was fine, bad die packaging caused overheating and burnout.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Matrox M3D was my favorite $99 graphics card from 1997. It made Quake2 fly. Too bad the driver support stopped midway through 98 from Voodoo2 popularity pressure.
Uh, yeah, and it's present in the 9000 series.
You're running on the G92, and all of those are built with the shitty broken process, EXCEPT for some of the later ones, maybe.
Nvidia pushed out the good (non-broken) 9000 series parts towards the end of the 9000 series life cycle, but made NO INDICATION (either by name, note on the box, or by SKU) as to which parts were good and which were bad.
If you picked up a 9000 series part late in the 9000 series' life cycle, you were playing roulette with old stock and new good parts.
Some of these same parts were again rebadged as the lower-end 200 series, since the 9000 series died off. See here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/214/1050214/evidence-that-nvidia-renamed-9xxx-gpus-tips-up
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/502/1016502/nvidia-sticks-names-old-cards
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/123/1051123/nvidia-cuts-reviewers-gts250
Did YOU not pay attention to all the news?
All 65 nm and 55 nm parts during that time frame were broken. FUCKING BROKEN.
I take it you were wrong to claim most cards do this automatically.
http://harvey-mars.com/
During that issue I was working as a repair tech. I read all the engineering reports, it was not bad silicon. It was bad die packaging. We had two engineering recalls on three different lines of laptop, one concerning hinges, the other concerning bad packaging around the die itself. The silicon was fine, and we sent that all back to nVidia to get properly-packaged cores that wouldn't screw up.
Not nVidia's fault, it was the fault of their outsourced manufacturing partner, which I think was TSMC?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Expensive graphics cards are commonly seen being purchased by engineers at my workplace for CAD development and simulation. Even with some of the recent "affordable" graphics cards, assemblies won't run as effective as many engineers would like.
Of course, but people already know, going onto a shop, that the assistant won't be neutral, hell the usual question is "in your opinion is ....".
As for the other comment about my post not adding anything, I was merely pointing out that saying that a $150US card (thats about $200-250AU) card can run "most" games at "high detail" at "quite high rez" is pushing it, even older engines like UT3, CoH etc will struggle once you crank the detail up on a card from this bracket, at "quite high rez" (is that vague-speak for a 22" screen?).
And I was trying to do it in a humorous manner, gods forbid I was trying to point out something and be funny at the same time, maybe they modded me too far both funny and insightful and the signed int rolled around...
Not likely, since I was trolling :)
...
I KNOW IT'S FUCKING BAD DIE PACKAGING.
But ALL of the chips of that series from that time frame are BROKEN.
Engineering reports? From whom? Nvidia NEVER admitted to the problem outside of the "a small limited batch of parts" bullshit. They fucking LIED nonstop and said it didn't affect other parts (such as the G92) when it did.
Hell, theinq busted out an electron microscope to fucking prove it.
You send cores BACK to nVidia to be repackaged? WTF is this shit?
Until you get those people to start thinking that simple, clean, and efficient is better. Then watch their heads explode while they try to compare the expensive stereo system buldging with buttons and leds vs a less expensive and simpler system.
The finger pointing is an easy one: It's nVidia's fault.
nVidia claimed support for various flavours of Windows on the box, if they aren't prepared to write drivers for Windows they should remove those claims.
The fa
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...