Nvidia Unveils New Mid-Range GeForce Graphics Card

crookedvulture writes "Nvidia has uncorked another mid-range graphics card, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Every tech site on the web seems to have coverage of this new $250 offering, and The Tech Report's review will tell you all you need to know about the various flavors available, including how their performance compares to cards from 2-3 years ago. Interestingly, the review concludes that pretty much any modern mid-range graphics card offers smooth frame rates while playing the latest games at the common desktop resolution of 1920x1080. You may want to pay closer attention to power consumption and noise levels when selecting a new card."

Comments

Mid-range?

[XanC]

Somebody dropping two hundred and fifty big ones on a video card is mid-range?

Re:Mid-range?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody dropping two hundred and fifty big ones on a video card is mid-range?

Yes, $50 for the card and $200 for the monster cable.

Re:Mid-range?

[Spazntwich]

Yeah WTF. An M5 isn't midrange just because you can buy 83% lean for way less than a dry-aged filet.

Re:Mid-range?

[eepok]

Precisely my thought.

Budget: Free/Hand-me-down to $75
Mid-Range: $76-$150
Enthusiast: $151-$250
Takes gaming too seriously: $251+

Re:Mid-range?

[TWX]

Video cards seem to be the one aspect of computers that doesn't follow both Moore's Law and the cost reduction model that we've seen elsewhere. It would appear that for most computer components and systems, over time power increases and costs drop. In the case of video cards though, prices seem to have been stable or on the increase for the various classes of components at a given point. When my first-generation 3dFX card was top-of-the-line-consumer class it was less than $200 if memory serves. My (at the time) high end Matrox G-series dual head card was about the same price or maybe a little more expensive. Modern ATI and nVidia products seem to be more expensive compared to what the previous cards were introduced at.

I guess that the cost to game is why I got out of most computer gaming. I found myself with less and less time to play, and it's hard to justify $300 for an expansion card when I'll use it twice a month and when it'll be "obsolete" in six. Ditto for the games themselves, when they're $50 each it's hard to play more than one with such a small amount of time. I get a lot more value for my money buying games at a books/media store that buys the remnants that didn't sell originally a year ago and sells them for $10 a title or less, plus they work on hardware I already have.

Re:Mid-range?

[vintagepc]

Precisely my thought.

Budget: Free/Hand-me-down to $75
Mid-Range: $76-$150
Enthusiast: $151-$250
Has parent's credit card or too much extra cash: $251+

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Mid-range?

[hedwards]

My Samsung SyncMaster T240HD can do 1920x1200 native I forget what I paid, but I don't think it was that much more than this video card. Plus I can watch Blurays on it and use it as a TV.

Re:Mid-range?

[Tumbleweed]

Somebody dropping two hundred and fifty big ones on a video card is mid-range?

I see this reaction a lot in people who don't know the market. Ignorance of what the low and high ends of the 'range' wind up surprising people. If you're ignorant of the numbers 1 through 10, someone randomly reciting the number 5 might seem high to you. In video cards, there are $350+ cards, and even $500+ cards, in the consumer space. And that's just PER CARD, and doesn't take into account multi-card setups.

So yeah, $250 is a MID-range card. That's not to say it does (or doesn't) meet your specific needs, but expressing shock at something you're obviously ignorant of really doesn't make you sound like a smart consumer.

Re:Mid-range?

[larry bagina]

Maybe you should read up on what Moore's Law actually is.

Re:Mid-range?

[obarthelemy]

Depends how you define mid-range. Steam has a nice breakdown of actual graphics cards used to play their games: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ Keep in mind that these stats are for players, the actual market is much more low-end that that.

So $250 would be about in the top 5% of the gamers' market, 1% general market ?

Re:Mid-range?

[LurkerXXX]

So you've never seen a monitor that can run at 1920x1080 natively. I had a laptop 8 years ago that could run it natively. I'm not sure what either anecdote says about what is midrange.

Re:Mid-range?

[Tumbleweed]

Depends how you define mid-range

I define it by the prices involved, since that's what people are talking about in the first place - the price of the card. You'll always find fewer users at the high end of any price range.

Re:Mid-range?

[Lord Ender]

No. The MSRP is $250. This means they will actually sell for $200, which is midrange (I say $100-$200 is midrange).

Re:Mid-range?

[h4rr4r]

1280x1024 is one hell of a low resolution. 1920x1080 is pretty standard these days, I have had monitors higher. It is only 1080p.

Re:Mid-range?

[nedlohs]

So it's low end then?

Given a Quadro 6000 from nvidia will set you back between $3000 and $4000, the a mid-range card must be $1500-$2000, right?

Re:Mid-range?

[Pharmboy]

And I don't think I've ever in my life seen a monitor that can run at 1920x1080 natively.

I own several. As a matter of fact, MOST of my monitors run it natively. Two are Vizio 42" TVs that I use for monitors, the rest are 24" monitors at home and work. 1920x1080 is not even remotely a big deal. Most newer 37" TVs do that, and many 32" TVs are starting to.

And 1280x1024 is a 4:3 aspect ratio, unlike 1920x1080, which is 16:9, so obviously your 4:3 monitors aren't running HD natively, and since most new monitors are 16:9, it sounds like you are talking about monitors over 2 years old. Not a good guide for how common "new" stuff is.

Re:Mid-range?

[Tumbleweed]

So it's low end then?

Given a Quadro 6000 from nvidia will set you back between $3000 and $4000, the a mid-range card must be $1500-$2000, right?

That's not a consumer graphics card, though. :)

Re:Mid-range?

[eepok]

Mid-Range typically refers to what the majority are willing to spend on something, not what prices are offered. The buyers, not the sellers, determine mid-range and the buyers aren't scrambling to grab $250 cards.

Re:Mid-range?

[Surt]

Yes, it is in the middle of the range from people who spend $0 additional for the on the on-board graphics of their motherboard/cpu, and the people who spend $500 for a top-of-the-line card. Mid-range, exactly fitting the definition.

Re:Mid-range?

[Surt]

I hate to say it, but 'in the middle of the two end points of the range' is pretty much the dictionary definition of 'mid-range'.

Re:Mid-range?

[Tumbleweed]

Mid-Range typically refers to what the majority are willing to spend on something, not what prices are offered. The buyers, not the sellers, determine mid-range and the buyers aren't scrambling to grab $250 cards.

People don't generally buy video cards. They buy computers with (or without) video cards. For people who actually buy video cards, $250 is mid-range.

Re:Mid-range?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Video cards seem to be the one aspect of computers that doesn't follow both Moore's Law and the cost reduction model that we've seen elsewhere.

How do you mean? Moore's law is all about transistor density - the fact that Nvidia maintains specific price points and varies performance to compete is irrelevant.

Re:Mid-range?

[jedidiah]

I'm not sure you can assume that just because someone is buying a video card that it will necessarily be the most expensive thing possible.

Not everyone is trying to play the latest shooter at the highest resolution and frame rate possible. Not even people building or upgrading their own boxes.

Re:Mid-range?

[vux984]

Its "mid Range" in Nvidia's line of cards. In that its not near the bottom, and its not near the top. I think its fair.

When you look at 'mid range' from the perspective of the buyer I think you are more or less right. But the upper "mid range" product is where enthusiasts with brains AND money tend to buy in at.

Re:Mid-range?

[Tumbleweed]

I'm not sure you can assume that just because someone is buying a video card that it will necessarily be the most expensive thing possible.

Good thing that's not remotely what I said. We're talking about 'mid-range' here, after all. A $250 card is not a $499 card, and certainly isn't a $599 card. It's much closer to the $150 everyone here seems to WANT to be the mid-range, simply because they're cheap, I guess. But wishing doesn't make it so. I've used $150 cards for the last several generations myself, but I'm not trying to fool myself into believing that I'm getting a mid-range card for that price.

Re:Mid-range?

[Vegemeister]

It's actually 5:4. Remember that when you set your CRT to 1280x1024. What you're looking for is 1280x960.

Re:Mid-range?

[Killall -9 Bash]

I was thinking almost the same thing. "Midrange" to me is $150-ish... and also what I consider the sweet spot for video card purchase. For that price, usually you're getting a good quality implementation of a die shrink of last year's GPU. Lower power consumption, better driver stability than bleeding edge, no redonculous(not a typo) heatsink/fan, and no need to throw your power supply out the window because it has a 6-pin connector instead of 8.

Re:Mid-range?

[jrumney]

I went out and bought the cheapest small monitor I could find 2 years ago, to set up my media center PC before hooking it up the TV. Its native resolution is 1440x900, so I don't think you've been looking hard if you haven't seen a monitor that can do 1920x1080 natively.

Re:Mid-range?

[Cthefuture]

I think it's because video cards are becoming more like whole computer systems in themselves. More and more general purpose computing features and such. Just recently I have been playing with GPU development and I have to say that for certain tasks it's quite impressive.

Really $250 (GTX560) or $350 (GTX570) is not out of line for what you pay for a mid-range CPU, it makes sense that the video card is in the same ballpark.

But like everything I do wish they were cheaper.

Re:Mid-range?

[tepples]

Not everyone is trying to play the latest shooter at the highest resolution and frame rate possible.

And a lot of these people are happy with Intel onboard "Graphics My Arse".

Re:Mid-range?

[Zebai]

leading edge right now is pushing $500, so technically it is exactly mid range price wise. Performance wise nvidia models under in the x60 generally would less powered than older generation x70 models, or as close to it to not be a worthy upgrade.

I do buy high end cards but I usually buy 2nd gen. I have a 275 right now, and my next upgrade will either be the 475 when it drops under $200 or the 570 when it eventually drops to $250-300 range, at the going rate I expect that by the 4th quarter this year I will have one of these cards.

Re:Mid-range?

[wagnerrp]

You should look at the chart again. The top two cards of each graphics series is going to be in the $200 and up range when purchased, so tallying those up from the December survey, you get somewhere around 45% of the users. Significantly higher than the 5% you seem to have pulled out of nowhere.

Now what is the general market? The people who are going to buy their own graphics cards are going to be professionals doing 3D or computational work, gamers, and HTPC builders. Everyone else is going to stick to their integrated Intel graphics and be none the wiser. The HTPC market is going to buy all low end stuff, the professional market is going to buy primarily high end stuff, and the gamer market, according to that survey, seems to be right in the middle of that price range. For people who actually would buy a video card, which is the only market that matters to video card manufacturers, $250 indeed does seem to be mid-range.

Re:Mid-range?

[Darinbob]

Also surprised that they say 1920x1080 resolution is "common".

Basically a year or two ago I got the best card I could get that didn't require an extra fan or upgraded power supply. It actually did better than my older one that was a loud space heater. But I was somewhat discouraged to find that it was about the only one of it's kind, every other card on the shelf recommended more watts than my tower supplied and came with an integrated fan.

Re:Mid-range?

[Darinbob]

It's mid range for high end gamers. However it is not mid range for average consumers! Do not compare to your peers, or you'll get a misleading number. Someone who drives a Lexus might have an inflated notion of what a mid range automobile is too.

Re:Mid-range?

[Rockoon]

Until recently, 1280x1024 was the most common gaming resolution on PC's.

Now 1680x1050 is in the #1 spot and 1920x1080 is #2, with that 1280x1024 at #3.

Re:Mid-range?

[TWX]

In a broader sense Moore's law has been applied to computing power doubling every eighteen months. Yes, specifically it's it's transistor density.

Re:Mid-range?

[Gadget_Guy]

That's not a consumer graphics card, though.

But you have now gone from saying that mid-range is not defined by the consumer to saying that the top of the range is defined by the consumer.

Re:Mid-range?

[adamofgreyskull]

"Mid-range automobile"? What possible use would it be to consider that? When there are multiple manufacturers with multiple "ranges" and multiple classes of cars from $2m supercars right down to $18,000 economy cars. If instead you asked a sensible question like: "What is the mid-range Ford saloon-car?" the Lexus owner would look at the most expensive model, then the least expensive, and tell you that the mid-range Ford saloon-car offering was the model closest to the mid-point.

The new "mid-range" GeForce is what we're talking about. Not the most expensive, nor the least expensive, but the new card which has a price-point somewhere between the two. The "mid-range" doesn't depend on what you or anyone else is prepared to pay, it depends only on the prices of the other cards in the range.

Re:Mid-range?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the power of graphics cards, relative to that required to run the latest games, has increased. If you compare a high-end graphics card from 10 years ago (runs the latest games with max resolution) with a low-range graphics card from today (runs the latest games with max resolution), you find that the cost has decreased. The only benefit to an expensive card today is to be ready for future games.

Re:Mid-range?

[PhrstBrn]

Video cards seem to be the one aspect of computers that doesn't follow both Moore's Law and the cost reduction model that we've seen elsewhere.

How do you mean? Moore's law is all about transistor density - the fact that Nvidia maintains specific price points and varies performance to compete is irrelevant.

Actually, Moore's law focuses more on the economics of chip making. Because chips become cheaper to make over time, manufactures are able to double the transistor density every 18 months without increasing the cost.

The Moore's law states that the increased transistor density is a side effect of cheaper manufacturing processes, not the other way around.

Re:Mid-range?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Somebody dropping two hundred and fifty big ones on a video card is mid-range?

High end cards hover around $500, and get 33% to 100% more performance than the mid-range cards at $250, who get the same performance edge over the low-end cards around $125, which blow the hell out of the performance of entry level or integrated graphics.

The new generation is no exception. The 580 is intriguing to me, but the 560 Ti (especially overclocked) looks like it has the best combination of price, performance, temperature and noise.

Re:Mid-range?

[LordLimecat]

An ATI 5870 isnt midrange? What about a 6850? Are they low-end?

Last-gen doesnt mean "garbage" or even "low-end"; a coworker bought a 7900GTS about 2 years ago and it would still probably rank as "low-midrange" today.

Re:Mid-range?

[smash]

And I don't think I've ever in my life seen a monitor that can run at 1920x1080 natively.

You obviously don't deal with hardware much in the past few years then. My 15" LAPTOP (a HP Elitebook 8540p) has a native screen resolution of 1920x1080.

The new 27" imacs are 2560x1440, which is a massive step up above that.

TVs are a different matter and have traditionally had much lower DPI than PC monitors. This has not changed. An 11" macbook air has the same screen resolution as your TV, and thats about the lowest resolution screen you can buy on a non-netbook computer these days.

Re:Mid-range?

[smash]

No, you can't just pick a mid point between zero and max cost. Hardware gets more expensive for diminishing returns at the high end.

Its quite likely you'll get 90% of the performance of a $2000 card for half the price. Mid-range performance wise is much cheaper.

Otherwise we'd be calling $800,000 cars "mid-range" as they're halfway between zero and a veyron's price tag.

Re:Mid-range?

[smash]

1920x1080 is common if you're in the market for new hardware. i.e., if you're building a new box with new monitor, etc. Its also the lowest res you've been able to buy in an iMac for some time now.

Given that the monitors we've been getting with our Dells lately have been 1920x1080 and cost about 250 bucks, it isn't going to break the bank.

1920x1080 is HDTV res, and as more people are doing things like processing high def video on their PCs, it is very likely to become the "Standard" resolution on any new desktop hardware for a long time to come.

Re:Mid-range?

[Lonewolf666]

Oh, the computing power is increasing all right. But so is the computing power required by the latest games. So it may look like there is no progress, but that is wrong.

Also, the low-end cards of yesterday are made obsolete by the integrated chipset graphics of today (or by integrated GPU/GPU combos). For instance, if you compare today's low end cards (like ATI Radeon HD 5450 or NVIDIA GeForce 210) to the performance of the integrated GPU in Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPUs, Sandy Bridge is close if not equal. Thus, the low end cards get "radically cost reduced":
they sit in the chipset or CPU of your new mainboard ;-)

Re:Mid-range?

[wisty]

Also, until Windows gets resolution independent graphics, 1920 X 1080 is about as high as you want to get for a 22 inch monitor. Any higher, and I won't be able to see the graphics. Retina has 326 dpi to have the same resolution of a normal eye at 12 inches. At twice the viewing distance, you would need just 1/4 the resolution - 81.5 dpi. Any more, and you are paying good money just to make your icons smaller.

Besides, my Intel graphics can't render much more.

Re:Mid-range?

[shish]

By that logic, walking is free, a private jet can be up to $50mil, so a mid-range form of personal transport should be around $25mil

Re:Mid-range?

[Chili-71]

Uh, yes. Gamers are willing to drop 6 or 7 big ones for a good card or even more if they get two to run in parallel. Actually, I would say that $250 is probably the low end of mid-range.

Re:Mid-range?

[Migraineman]

Aw c'mon, you're not even trying.

Flapping your arms is free, a high-end private jet can be about $50M, so a mid-range personal jet should be about $25M.

According to this list of prices, the Gulfstream G550 has a MSRP of about $46M, and a "mid-range" Cessna Citation is in the $15M-$25M range. How about that. Note, this doesn't imply that a Ford Focus should cost $25M. While the Focus is "transportation," it's lacking wings. You been hanging out with BadAnalogyGuy?

Re:Mid-range?

[tlhIngan]

Actually, Moore's law focuses more on the economics of chip making. Because chips become cheaper to make over time, manufactures are able to double the transistor density every 18 months without increasing the cost.

The Moore's law states that the increased transistor density is a side effect of cheaper manufacturing processes, not the other way around.

Correct. But CPUs, GPUs, and chipsets, which are full of random logic are not the stunning examples of transistor density. In fact, what limits the transistor density in random logic parts is wiring density and I/O count (wiring density is how close you can put all the little connections between transistors, I/O count being the number of pins). In fact, most such chips are I/O limited as well which limits what the chip can do.

Memory (all types - EEPROM/Flash/RAM) is however silicon-limited. Once you reach the maximum transistor density, the only way to increase storage is increase silicon area consumed (which means less chips and exponentially greater cost as defects claim more chips).

It's also why memory tends to be anywhere from a half-generation to full generation ahead of CPUs and the like.

Intel's 4 billion transistor CPUs aren't terribly dense when you think a 8/16+ GB memory card already has at least 4 billion transistors, especially the microSD formfactors which limit you to one flash chip. Most of those 4 billion transistors also aren't involved in any computational path, either, being used in cache and various other processor memories onchip.

Re:Mid-range?

[shish]

While the Focus is "transportation," it's lacking wings

So? I'm not in the market for a plane, I'm in the market for some form of personal transport

Re:Mid-range?

[Machtyn]

Actually, the HTPC market is starting to get some decent integrated options from ATI and nVidia. These onboard chips are designed for TV connections and HD content (HDMI connectors, software to decode 1080p natively, etc). These chips, as I've found out, still aren't good enough for playing World of Warcraft at great graphics resolutions (good, yes, not great).

Re:Mid-range?

[Machtyn]

For me, those are the high-end range of things. For processors, I recently picked up a Gigabyte motherboard and an Athlon X4 CPU for $300 total. (An equivalent Intel purchase would have increased the motherboard price by $100-$150 and the CPU price by around $100.)

Mid-range would be the GT4xx and GeForce 88xx or 98xx series and the low-end would be the GT2xx and GeForce 86xx or 96xx series.

I would try to list ATI equivalents, but I've never been a fan of them... and now that I'm in a Linux world, I try to avoid them as much as possible.

And where is 1920x1080 common? Is this with 23" widescreen monitors? Most people I run into (myself included) are hanging around the 19 - 21 inch monitors where the native resolution is 1440x900. (Of course, I'm just a single data point, I do hang around a lot of computers.)

Re:Mid-range?

[Machtyn]

For those who dropped out of computer gaming because the "cost to upgrade" every 6 months was too high need to take a look at it again. I can agree it was crazy between 1998 and 2004. Now, however, my 4 year old nVidia GeForce 8800GT can still handle a lot of the A list games without any problem.

The industry is to the point now that nVidia has really stopped marketing to the gamers and have started making the cards attractive to the researchers, 3d modelers, and others who would find a high CPU core count interesting. The fact that this type of card is also useful at rendering polygons and rays very, very quickly is a side benefit for the few gamers where money is no object.

Re:Mid-range?

[Surt]

No, by my logic, walking is free, consumer level vehicles top out at 60k, midrange is 30k. All the transportation at higher prices (luxury cars, jets etc) is typically classified as 'luxury' rather than consumer (and typically not sold through standard consumer channels). Likewise, I omitted $8K professional grade graphics cards from the consumer range, which are not typically sold at consumer outlets.

Re:Mid-range?

[wye43]

There are no 4 ranges, there were only 3:
Budget was always <100$
Mid-Range 100$-400$
Enthusiast >400$. Yes, there are some very sweet cards even at 1,000$. Yes, my 3 year old water-cooled vendor-over-clocked, even more over-clocked by me card beats your so called "Enthusiast" range card.

No, there is no "I thing people thinking different than me are stupid" category, doesn't matter if we talk about 1$ or 1,000,000$.

Re:Mid-range?

[wye43]

I can't imagine how you can actually enjoy yourself playing computer games twice a month. It's like buying a screwdriver to screw some screws once every 20 years and complaining that the screwdriver gets outdated meanwhile. My only explanation, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, is that you try to artificially maintain an idea that you actually play computer games.

Don't get me wrong, I mean, you don't have to play them if you are busy doing anything else. And its fine. Pretending that you are, with all respect, sounds phony.

Re:Mid-range?

[wye43]

Keep in mind thou, my comment was based on the assumption that you were actually honest and describing your actual use pattern, and you were not presenting some extreme use case, just to be over-dramatic. Was my assumption wrong?

Re:Mid-range?

[wye43]

I get a lot more value for my money buying games at a books/media store that buys the remnants that didn't sell originally a year ago and sells them for $10 a title or less, plus they work on hardware I already have.

And people laugh at me when I tell them time travel is already possible. It's called money! Its your own choice if you want to live in the past.

Getting performance levels or experiences at a standard of 1-2 years ago is cheap. The present is expensive.

Re:Mid-range?

[holmstar]

Takes gaming too seriously: $251+

All depends on how you look at it. A fair number of people that are in to golf spend say $800/year for a club membership. Or people that are in to cars might spend $400 a month for that shiny new sports car. $2000 for that fancy TV, etc. All of the aforementioned things being primarily for entertainment, so the graphics card doesn't look so bad in comparison. Granted, these would all be considered to be on the luxury end of the price curve, but if you have the money to spend and games are your thing, why not.

1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[intellitech]

Jeez, I feel old.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Rinnon]

Jeez, I feel old.

I suspect that is because you are. *tramples all over your lawn*

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[xMrFishx]

Apparently 1680 x 1050 is still winning, by a little bit, Though lower resolutions overall are still quite common. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[rubycodez]

it's *because* I'm old I bought the 1920x1080 graphics card (used, $70) and 23" widescreen monitor (refurbished, $100), for the big fonts yet two pages on a screen. I might even get a 2nd monitor this is sooo nice

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[TWX]

Yeah, I hear you. I was used to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, so these 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratios take some getting used to.

What really irks me, though, is a seeming lack of development for inexpensive high-res monitors that go beyond "1080p". My current display is a 20" 4:3 ratio 1600x1200 unit, and if I wanted to go bigger I'd want more than 1080 rows. I sort of understand the complaints that audiophiles had back in the eighties with the Red Book CD standard and being limited to 44KHz 16 bit audio and no functional implementation of more than stereo audio. Before that they enjoyed quadraphonic sound in whatever quality the analog recording equipment and playback equipment could achieve, and while lower end equipment and poor media maintenance might have led to results less than 44KHz 16 bit, high end stuff and good practices would have yielded much better sound. By releasing Compact Disc as the high end system and later as the de facto standard for everyone they cut off the ability to get more.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[hedwards]

Assuming you bargain hunt they aren't that expensive. But they do require some outlay of cash, I think mine was under $300 and serves as an HDTV as well. It wasn't that long ago that 15" LCDs were going for $300+

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[TWX]

Cathodes still offer the fastest refresh rates and highest contrast ratios, and on top of that are the most durable displays manufactured. CRT televisions also have much longer lifespans and can generally be serviced if problems develop, unlike throw-it-away LCD and Plasma units. On top of that, CRTs aren't fixed resolution or refresh rate, so different inputs can be handled optimally instead of having to interpolate or antialias the image to make it show if it's not the same as the physical display like on an LCD.

If they offered a widescreen 32" CRT television with 1080p and HDMI that would fit into a 33" by 24" space I'd buy it. Kids couldn't wreck it with a Nintendo Wii controller, if I bump into it I won't break it or knock it off of the cabinet, and since all of my equipment is 10-20" deep it's no hardship to have depth to my TV and my cabinet. Since I don't plan on moving it once it's set up, weight is not really an issue to me either, other than the benefits of having something difficult to knock over and difficult to steal.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Ant P.]

Smartphones push 200, 300, 400dpi already so it's not like 96dpi is even a hard limit. I'd be willing to pay the premium for a 300dpi desktop screen with insanely high resolution, but nobody wants my money apparently...

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[BLToday]

I'm with you on that. I paid $800 for my first 1600 x 1200, 21 inch monitor. Completely worth the price. I'm more than willing to pay that much again for a 24+ inch with 2K resolution.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[grimJester]

What really irks me, though, is a seeming lack of development for inexpensive high-res monitors that go beyond "1080p". My current display is a 20" 4:3 ratio 1600x1200 unit, and if I wanted to go bigger I'd want more than 1080 rows.

I had the same dilemma a few years ago and decided to get a 2560x1600 monitor. They cost a bit more, but given the lack of progress, it'll still be high tech ten years from now. Although some 2160p TVs have been demo'd I'd call it pretty unlikely you can get those at a decent price within a decade.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Surt]

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=224-8284

(Dell, 27" U2711, 2k resolution (2560x1440)
Frequently on sale for $800.
Or did you need 2k vertical? That's going to be much harder to come by.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Vegemeister]

Using a CRT at 1600x1200 right now. If I get around to ordering the non-conductive screwdrivers to adjust the focus, it'll be running at 2048x1536.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[tepples]

Since I don't plan on moving it once it's set up, weight is not really an issue to me either

A lot of people follow the jobs and thus have to move from city to city. Other people are children of divorced parents and essentially have to move every 7 days. It appears you aren't among them.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[(H)elix1]

I'm a big fan of vertical pixels too. One of the things I did with my old Dell 2407 was turn it 90 degrees. The rotated 1980x1200 screen is perfect for web browsing, gmail, and other 'tall' layout apps.

The 'cheap' panels are 16:9 form factor - you see the 1080p stuff everywhere because it costs nothing. Think I paid around $130 for a 22" 1080p monitor that *just* fits inside a carry on suitcase. Those can be rotated as well. (Tis a crime you can hardly find a laptop not using a 16:9 aspect - I really liked my 4:3 t60p and would settle for 16:10 at this point)

I really, really enjoy the 2560x1600 with my primary monitor. Best 1k I ever spent, and comperable to the monies put out for the Hitachi 20" CRT in the day.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[BlackBloq]

Kinda reminds me how you are full of shit. 44k 16 bit was and is kickass. You would know that if you actually encoded more than fart air from your buttocks. For real. More quality than 44k audio you could not afford buddy; you probably couldn't tell the difference at all. I've used old reel to reel systems and no matter what , you have the quality of the studio and the master as the only important matter. Here is cd vs mp3 http://www.lincomatic.com/mp3/mp3quality.html anyway who gives a fuck.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[LurkerXXX]

There are a lot of professionals who need extremely good color matching who would disagree with you Mr. Coward.

For a consumer, sure, LCD is the way to go. But there is a reason for some to prefer CRTs. Saying there is NO reason for most things is usually not a smart statement.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Waccoon]

Not to mention the lack of decent, affordable IPS LCD panels. Thanks to their narrow viewing angles, TN panels have a significant stereographic effect that is so horrible, they give me eyestrain worse than any tube I've ever used. Even the crappiest LCD TV is better than a high-end computer monitor.

I find it distressing how many people will spend $300 for a new video card every two years, but then they spend several years using some $150 LCD they bought on sale. My dad, for example.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[evilbessie]

Err, not really sure what would have been better audio as CDs used the best quality recordings available at the time which was DAT, which is where the limits come from. I'm not entirely sure that there were any better analogue recordings either, as they all have other issues such as noise which can be a very big issue.

Also I'm not convinced you can actually hear anything about 22.05 kHz so 44.1kHz is a reasonable compromise, especially as this was at the very limit of what was possible 30 years ago.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[heathen_01]

Does it have a glossy screen though?

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Migraineman]

Additionally, HD monitors have killed-off the 4:3 aspect-ratio displays. I manufacture OEM equipment, and there are sooooo many situations where the 4:3 monitor was superior. I can't buy new ones now to save my life.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[sa666_666]

No, but if you want that, you can get an Apple Cinema 27" for roughly the same price (with basically the same specs as the U2711).

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[DocSavage64109]

Same here. I had a 20" 1600x1200, and when it went bad, I went to a 24" 1920(or some such)x1200. When it went bad, I couldn't find any locally available 16:10 screens, so I went with a 16:9. It annoyed the heck out of me, and I immediately bought a 2560x1600 30" even though it was $1200 or so with warantee. The only problem is you have to have a sufficiently expensive system and video card to drive such a display smoothly.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Onuma]

CRT televisions also have much longer lifespans and can generally be serviced if problems develop, unlike throw-it-away LCD and Plasma units.

2 words -- Planned. Obsolescence.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[Surt]

That's an odd request. Most buyers of high end displays don't want glossy.

Re:1920x1080 is considered common these days?

[LurkerXXX]

I'm someone who the FDA *REQUIRES* to have good color matching for the diagnostics being done.

Just because a CRT isn't wanted or needed for what you do, doesn't mean others don't want or need them for good reasons.

250 is midrange?

[bhcompy]

5770 is a nice midrange card. Plays everything well, mostly with high settings. 140$ is a nice price for a 5770 w/ 1GB GDDR5. For nearly the same price as the one mentioned here you're in CrossfireX with more power behind it

Re:250 is midrange?

[Cthefuture]

Uh sure, or you could get a $125 nVidia GTX 460 and completely destroy that 5770 in terms of performance and features. Plus you get a lot better drivers.

Re:250 is midrange?

[Gadget_Guy]

I went from an nVidia card to the 5770 purely because I didn't want to heat up my computer room just by having the computer on. (I also went for a low powered CPU for the same reason).

I live in Australia and which gets rather hot around here. I found that it doesn't matter how much better the performance is of one card if it makes the room so oppressively hot that I just don't want to use the computer in the first place. With my current setup, I can use the PC on the hottest day and still have the room only 1 or 2 degrees higher than the rest of the house. It is also nice that I often have to look at the computer lights to know if the PC is on, as compared with than being able to hear the fans from another room.

During winter I have been known to turn on my old computer just to warm the place up. It really does make a difference!

Re:250 is midrange?

[bhcompy]

Completely destroy as in marginally better. And a GTX 460 1gb averages closer to 200 than 125. Cheapest on newegg is 170 on special, average price for the wide range of manufacturers is 199(sorry, I'll stay away from Powercolor and HIS, thank you).

And driver problems? This isn't 2002.

Re:250 is midrange?

[smash]

No, its 2011 and ATi's drivers are still shit, especially under Linux. You'd think they'd have fixed them in the past 9 years, but alas...

Re:250 is midrange?

[bhcompy]

and you're not playing games under linux that is going to max out either card, so why spend more for something thats going to suck up more energy and give you potential marginal gains?

Re:250 is midrange?

[Shotgun]

Yes I am. Xplane. And I'm trying to wind my way through the benchmarks to build a new system that will handle Xplane 10, which will (reportedly) scale much better with improved hardware.

Power/performance envelope

[CAIMLAS]

It would appear that, based on power use and the performance of various chips, that the CPUs days of being the power hog and performance workhorse of the common desktop are over. Anything which today needs high-end CPU can (or at least, should) be able to utilize the GPU on the card as well - and to greater effect.

At the same time, We're seeing similar power use increases in our GPUs today that we did 8-10 years ago with CPUs. Performance is increasing, but power input is, as well. 40db for a graphics card is quite a bit, as is 230+ watts (ohmygod, that's more than my entire system while playing a game).

I wonder how long it'll be until we see the same kind of power performance improvements in GPU design as we saw in CPU design a couple years ago.

All said, it's quite a contrast from the 700Mhz celeron I still have cooking away with the 'whole system' power envelope at about 25 watts (PSU is only 35 watts), and have for the past 8 years. No, it's not gaming, but it's doing quite a lot just the same.

Re:Power/performance envelope

[eepok]

About a year and a half ago, I upgraded my system to a cheapo off a w00t!-off for ~$300. It came with a decent dual-core processor, DVD-RW, 750GB HDD, onboard sound, onboard video, 6GB RAM, and a free upgrade to Win7 from the pre-installed Vista. It also came with a a 270w power supply. Being a budget gamer and someone always open to another computer challenge, looked immediately into making a low-wattage system that could play games like L4D2 and the aging but still-insanely-resource-hungry Everquest.

After some quick research, I found that my processor was already a "low-wattage" option. I figured the onboard sounds was livable and started researching the existence of power-sipping video cards. I found the GeForce GT 220 which maxes out at 58w at full load. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-radeon-hd-6870-geforce-gtx-570,2834-7.html) Tom's equates it to about a GeForce 7900 GT or X1900 XTX.

I went with the GT 220 (I think it cost me $65), kicked the RAM up to 8GB, installed Windows 7 and have never had an issue. The computer's on 24/7. I play DCUO, EQ, L4D2, BF2. None of them are played at maximum settings, but all are set just below the max settings or at a lower-than-monitor-max resolution. I play DCUO, for example, at 1366x768 or something.

So I'm gaming happily at less-than 300w and under $400. That's just me, though.

Re:Power/performance envelope

[Elbereth]

How the fuck did you get that system to even power up with only 35W? RAM itself can use up most of that, unless you're using ancient PC100 RAM, and only 64MB of it.

Holy crap.

Re:Power/performance envelope

[drinkypoo]

Must be coppermine.

Re:Power/performance envelope

[Lonewolf666]

In that performance class, I'd probably prefer the Radeon HD 5570, at 43W at full load. For instance the ASUS EAH5570 Silent/DI - with passive cooling, so it is quiet as well as a "low-wattage" option.

In general, I have a similar preference for low power components, but I also like stuff like well-made cases and ECC RAM, so my systems tend to be a bit more expensive...

Re:Power/performance envelope

[eepok]

Also good. Key point: there are low-wattage options and there could be more (both manufacturers could be compelled to explore the tech more) if people started buying up the cards.

Of course, most people are just told "Get a big power supply and you won't have to worry about it".

Re:Power/performance envelope

[CAIMLAS]

Not terribly sure, to be honest with you. The PSU only has a 35 watt rating, so I'm not bending things too much; it's been a while since I tested it at the wall, but I find it hard to believe it'd be much more than that.

It's one of these: http://www.accurateit.com/images/items/compaq_ipaq.jpg

It's got the original 700Mhz CPU (board wouldn't boot with a 900Mhz replacement), a single fan in the PSU (quiet), an 80G disk, and 386Mb of RAM. I'll be very sad when it finally kicks off to the great divide - I no longer have any replacement components for it, so when something dies (short of the HDD, which I can replace with CF), it's gone. The thing has been on the 'upgrade mill' since Debian 3 (now on 5), is regularly using less than 128Mb of RAM, runs vbox headless w/ a 2k server instance, and a handful of network tools.

Re:Power/performance envelope

[archen]

GPU power consumption seems to be a different market though. No one cared about CPU power utilization until businesses started to care and AMD began processing per watt. That was mainly a question of scale though, because businesses have tons of servers and that adds up. Graphics cards are generally consumer items. Even enthusiasts would rarely have more than 3. And would someone willing to drop $500 per video card really care that much about power consumption?

Those of us that want decent performance at reasonable power consumption seem to be rare. For a while I thought perhaps power consumption would be limited when they couldn't drag any more power through the PCIE slot, but then they added a power connector. Figured eventually that power connector would top out and that would be the limiting factor, but now they just add more power connectors. I'm starting to think the only thing that will finally reign this in is how much power you can suck out of a wall socket. Chalk up another attribute for console gaming I guess.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[oracleguy01]

why would PC gamers use a TV as a screen? true gamers don't cut their screen so much, we use 1920 x 1440 or 1920 x 1200

Please tell that to the companies that make computer monitors. Models that run at 1920x1200 are much less common now, they've all gone to 1920x1080 which is sad.

More benchmarks

[3vi1]

Additional benchmarks in another review over at HotHardware: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-560-Ti-Debut-MSI/

Re:More benchmarks

[Archeleus]

Going by this, this card ain't worth getting. My 480 GTX performs close enough at 1080p and it will keep going on for half a year more or so. Of course I don't mind reducing AA to 2x, you don't realise notice the changes when getting shot in the ass by Koreans.

I may get it after Deus Ex Human Revolution is out though.

Re:More benchmarks

[Narishma]

Of course you forgot to mention that your 480 costs twice as much, is louder and more power hungry.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[DWMorse]

My Tri-monitor Eyefinity at 5760x1200 sez, why just one monitor?

With a $250 Radeon HD 5870, new intensive games like Need for Speed : Hot Pursuit look freaking awesome.

If anything, Nvidia's unwillingness to support multi-monitor gaming without SLI says to me that their cards don't handle larger resolutions nearly as nicely as ATI cards.

MID RANGE!?

[ZorinLynx]

>You may want to pay closer attention to power consumption and noise levels when selecting a new card."

Hells no!! If the card doesn't make the room lights dim when I start up Crysis, and the back of the computer doesn't feel like a blowdryer (and sound like one), it's not fast enough!!!!111oneoneoneone *pant pant pant*

Re:MID RANGE!?

[Vegemeister]

Hells yeah! They make 100 ft HDMI cables for a reason!

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[Surt]

Because the thick bars in the middle of the viewfield drive most of us crazy.

Well four reasons

[Sycraft-fu]

One is as you say the de facto standard thing. The top ATSC rez is 1080, so that is what a lot targets. However another part is just money. It is expensive to pack more transistors in a small space and that's what you need for higher rez monitors. People are pretty price sensitive so the market would be kinda small, meaning the unit price goes up meaning the market is even smaller. Another is interconnect bandwidth. Single link DVI and by extension older HDMI only supports up to 1920x1200@60Hz. That's just all the more bandwidth it has. Newer standards support higher resolutions, but they are pretty new. Many things still don't support them.

However a big one is simply interface scaling. Until recently, OSes couldn't really handle resolution independence well. In fact many still can't. Even those that can, they have to wait for apps to catch up. Windows 7 handles scaling flawlessly and if you have apps that support it, it all works great. However when you get an app that does it at best looks ugly, sometimes doesn't scale at all, or at worst has some elements (like the fonts) scale but not others. Developers have to get on board and start using new methods to allow the OS to scale their app arbitrarily. Otherwise, a high rez monitor just means tiny items and that is a no-go for most people with less than perfect vision.

We'll see higher rez monitors in time, and there already are some (you can get 2.5k 27" and 30" displays from a number of companies for reasonably affordable prices), however it'll be a bit. There's a number of issues t be dealt with.

Re:Well four reasons

[adolf]

So, let's be in the future, already.

I've had a 15.4" 1920x1200 display on my Dell Inspiron laptop for six and a half years. Scaling problems? I haven't seen any in a long, long time -- even XP was behaving pretty well in that regard when I last used it.

7, as you say, is flawless and I've had precisely zero issues with that end of things: It even tends to set things up with reasonable scaling, based on actual display DPI automatically, out-of-the-box, while also automagically configuring things at native resolution (given a proper computer monitor and an HDMI or DVI link, at least).

Nowadays, it feels positively silly to be looking at a 24" desktop display which, at 1920x1080, has fewer pixels than that tiny little laptop panel does.

Bargain bin gaming is for single players

[tepples]

I get a lot more value for my money buying games at a books/media store that buys the remnants that didn't sell originally a year ago and sells them for $10 a title or less

In a lot of cases, these games are in the bargain bin precisely because 1. the publisher has pulled the plug on the online multiplayer matchmaking servers, and 2. the game offers no local multiplayer (shared-screen or spawn installation) option.

Mouse and keyboard on a TV tray

[tepples]

42" TV is not bad, and very inexpensive, for a monitor.

Sure, if you want to put your mouse and keyboard on a TV tray and do all your web surfing, word processing, and coding on a television while other members of your household sit and wait for you to finish.

Re:Mouse and keyboard on a TV tray

[tepples]

So you have your PC connected to an HDTV monitor and a desktop computer monitor. For one thing, it this still requires the PC to be in the same room as the TV, and a 20 foot cable to be run across the floor. For another, a lot of full-screen apps will blank all monitors except the primary one, meaning when your full-screen video or game is open, you can't see the web browser or word processor that you have opened on your desktop monitor.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[tepples]

Only when you choose games that don't support player 1 on one monitor and player 2 on another.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[tepples]

why would PC gamers use a TV as a screen?

For same-screen multiplayer games (which need not be split). These include Trine, Street Fighter 4, Soldat, and classic arcade games in emulation.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[DWMorse]

It's not "in the middle of the viewfield." I have the same standard perspective as anyone else. I just happen to -also- have peripheral vision. It's no more interrupting after about 5 minutes of adjusting, than it is to have the roof supports of your car 'blocking your viewfield' either.

It's particularly hilarious in FPSs. Sniping will get me banned on suspicion of 'hax' on a regular basis, just because there's NO way to sneak up on me or go around me. It's a lot of fun. Their tears of sorrow are delicious.

Whaaaat?

[dragonhunter21]

1920x1080 is "common"? Not a single monitor in my house can display above 1440x900 (except my TV, and that doesn't hardly count). I wish 1920x1080 was that common.

Re:Whaaaat?

[smash]

You are not the common pc user apparently. The rest of the world moved into the 21st century, and have been running with 1680x1050, 1920x1200 or lately 1920x1080 for some time now. My 4 year old 22" monitor is running 1680x1050 and my laptop is running 1920x1080. My 10 year old Sony 17" LCD monitor on my old machine is running 1280x1024, which is on par with your best monitor...

Just because you don't have it, doesn't mean its not commonplace. 1440x900 is barely higher res than the current 11" macbook air, which is also commonly used by recent $300 netbooks.

Re:Whaaaat?

[dragonhunter21]

This computer was purchased last year. It's got a GTS 250 card in it, so I believe it's a limitation of my monitor.

Wait, your LAPTOP runs that high? Wow. My netbook runs a cool 1024x600- any much faster and it start slowing down. (Year-old MSI Wind)

Really, I'm not sure I need much more than 1440x900. It's still big enough to read, and I can run most games well enough. Of course, this is the guy that doesn't notice a significant difference between 1280x800 and 1440x900.

Re:Whaaaat?

[smash]

Yup. Elitebook 8540p with the full-hd screen. Desktop replacement, i use it in combination with a 24" 1920x1200 monitor for work. Moving forward, 1920x1080 will be the standard on desktops/desktop replacement notebooks, as hd video takes off.

Re:Whaaaat?

[smash]

OH yeah it would definitely be a monitor limitation in your case. Pretty sure most recent half-decent cards should support 2536x1440 or whatever it is if given an appropriate monitor to output to.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[Surt]

Are you telling me the roof supports of your car don't bother you? I hate them. I so wish we could get domes or transparent supports.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[Surt]

Are there really games that do that, I haven't heard of that.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[DWMorse]

Yeah, sitting under a glass dome has the tendency to act much like a magnifying glass. There's a reason they didn't take off in the 1950's when the fad first hit.

I love the look too, but it's neither safe, practical or comfortable.

And no, my car roof supports don't bother me, because if they did, I'd take my 1100 Sabre out instead and have no worries at all. :3

Compare to GTX 470?

[MikeV]

GTX 470 is slower, but has 448 cores, and a 302-bit memory interface. Does more speed of the GTX 560 Ti make up for less cores and slower memory interface? I'm interested in experimenting with OpenCLI and getting three of these in SLI for some GPU raytrace rendering - something the 470 lends itself to pretty well. 560 seems like a few steps forward and a few steps backwards - hard to say if it's worth getting over the 470, unless I have grossly missed something.

Re:Compare to GTX 470?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I just bought a GTX 470 this week. I too wonder.

Re:1920 x 1080 is TV resolution

[smash]

Most of the multiplayer games i play support that. Over ethernet.

Dammit!

[senorpoco]

I got sick and tired of spending nearly double the price to get games on a console so I decided to get a mid range gaming PC. Looking over the math again, $1500 probably could have bought a lot of console games instead.

Re:Dammit!

[cfalcon]

If you got time to play that many console games, more power to you.

Re:Dammit!

[Machtyn]

Yes, but can you also browse the web, do your homework, work on projects, do some video, image, audio editing, your taxes, your budget, or whatever else you want you computer to do and at the same time if you want on a console?

My computer is my primary gaming device. But it is also so much more useful to me than just games.

linear musical chairs

[gosand]

And in 6 months, all cards move one level down.

I just upgraded from on-board video and got a GeForce GT240. Even if my rebate doesn't go through, it falls in your Budget category.
Then again, I run a quad-core CPU running 64-bit Linux, and am not a hardcore gamer. But it's been great. I'll probably never drop more than $100 on a video card, it just doesn't make sense to me. I think a lot of people get caught up in the "latest and greatest" frenzy, and some people truly are hardcore gamers (those that are snickering at my video card choice). Which is great because it pushes the technology but I just don't get it.

'common desktop resolution'

[slyrat]

I guess I am a bit out of touch if the common desktop resolution is now 1920x1080. Maybe for newer monitors from the last 2 years or so. I also find it quite odd that it is much easier to find widescreen monitors nowadays. What happened to the 1600x1200 or 1024x768 resolutions?

Re:Takes gaming too seriously: $251+ or 30" screen

[DocSavage64109]

If you happen to purchase a 30" monitor with 2560x1600 resolution, you pretty much need a $251+ video card for smooth games. Granted you can get away with a lesser video card, but cheaping out by $200 when your monitor costs $1000+ seems silly.

Re:Mid-range for $1500

[DocSavage64109]

I'm not sure exactly what you bought, but in the last month I bought an Asus P8P67 mobo + Intel 2500K 4 core processor for $300 (runs at 4.5GHz on demand using Asus' built in overclocking), 8GB ram for $80, CPU Heatsink $30, computer case for $100, and a Geforce 580 for $500. I saved some money by using the OS and HD from my old system. But I would call this more than mid range, and less than $1500 (or at least comparable if buying Win7 and a HD)

Re:PC gaming .. fail.

[DocSavage64109]

Why'd you post anonymously? Your opinions are valid. One thing you can do if you want cheap gaming is download Steam from http://store.steampowered.com/ and buy your games online. They often have sales with older games costing 1/4 the already low price. And older games have much lower requirements. It's certainly worth a shot and they have lots of free demos as well.

Re:Takes gaming too seriously: $251+ or 30" screen

[eepok]

And that puts you in the "enthusiast" group if you're throwing down $1000 on a monitor alone.

Two PCs, two video cards, two copies

[tepples]

Which means you have to buy two gaming PCs, two of these video cards, and usually* two copies of every single game, for each household with more than one gamer.

* Few games nowadays support spawn installation.