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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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: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.

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: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.