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Nvidia's 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2 seem to be a waste of time & money
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:05:44 +0100, "Trimble Bracegirdle"
wrote: Wise man (?) say: "You're joking, right? ...... Running an 8800GTX at 1024x768 with everything maxed on a 21" CRT? You're using an 8800GTX 768Mb card to do what an 8600GT would do at 1024x768." Exactly...a year ago the 8800GTX (DX10 etc) looked to make sense & those other cheaper lower spec 8xxx's were not out . The CRT won't last forever anway. It sure will last lots longer than the backlight on current generation LCDs. For both the total lifetime and the (lack of) intensity loss per year. Take a look at the lumens vs time curve for a typical LCD backlight. You will not like what you see... at all. Both of these problems with LCD backlights will only be solved with the universal availability of LED backlighting (at a denent price). Oh, and getting a replacement backlight for your LCD -- forget it..... John Lewis (\__/) (='.'=) (")_(") mouse(Yes we did rather get that purchses wrong did we not) |
#12
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Nvidia's 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2 seem to be a waste of time & money
"John Lewis" wrote in message ... On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:05:44 +0100, "Trimble Bracegirdle" wrote: Wise man (?) say: "You're joking, right? ...... Running an 8800GTX at 1024x768 with everything maxed on a 21" CRT? You're using an 8800GTX 768Mb card to do what an 8600GT would do at 1024x768." Exactly...a year ago the 8800GTX (DX10 etc) looked to make sense & those other cheaper lower spec 8xxx's were not out . The CRT won't last forever anway. It sure will last lots longer than the backlight on current generation LCDs. For both the total lifetime and the (lack of) intensity loss per year. Take a look at the lumens vs time curve for a typical LCD backlight. You will not like what you see... at all. Both of these problems with LCD backlights will only be solved with the universal availability of LED backlighting (at a denent price). Oh, and getting a replacement backlight for your LCD -- forget it..... John Lewis I guess I'm like a guy that likes vinyl over CD. Sure the CD sounds great, but there's just something about an old record that sounds better to some people. That's the way I feel about CRT's They just have a great picture and are easier on my eyes then LCD's. I also have a HD CRT. Sure it's not a mammoth set, but what there is to see is amazing. I haven't yet seen an HD set even come close to having the rich color my WEGA has. JLC |
#13
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Nvidia's 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2 seem to be a waste of time & money
That's the game them video card people do to us all the time.
ATI roled out their HD 3870, and charged a premium for it. Turns out that 3870 is just a rehash of 2600 ! Both have 120 stream processors in them. The 2600 XT runs at 1.4 GHz, while the 3870 at 1.7 GHz, a 20% different, but they charge a whole lot more than the 20% improvement in speed. On Apr 16, 12:21 am, NV55 wrote: If you have a 8800 GTX, 8800 Ultra or 8800 GT, you might as well save your money, don't waste it on 9800 GTX or 9800 GX2. These cards are more or less what you already have. In some important areas, really less. Save it for the upcoming GT200 based 9900GTX or 9900GX2. Which will should be arriving Q3 2008. http://www.techradar.com/news/comput...hics-cards/our... Our verdict: Nvidia's 9800 GTX and GX2 on test Are these cards a technological leap? 16 hours ago | Reader comments (0) The new Nvidia GeForce 9800 range is not as good as we'd hoped ZoomZoom Just over eighteen months ago the much-heralded age of the DirectX10- capable graphics card dawned, as the supreme G80-powered GeForce 8800GTX dropped into the TechRadar office. Six months later came the updated 8800 Ultra, a card that has remained Nvidia's top end offering... until now. We've had to wait 12 long months for the refresh, during which time we have been treated to a mass of mid-range cards, including the excellent 8800GT - Nvidia's first card with a 65nm core. But still, it's been a long time coming for the 9800 GTX and GX2. Long time passing Both new cards are powered by the same 65nm G92, a core that is itself now six months old. And it's the first time that Nvidia has released a brand new family of top-end cards based on old architecture. Replacing the 8800GTX and Ultra is a necessity as far as furthering the Nvidia brand is concerned, competition-wise though it's less of an issue. AMD still hasn't managed to create anything to seriously outperform these year-old cards, so is the lack of a new core an acknowledgment that Nvidia only has to turn up at the track to win the race? The GTX version of the 9800 card is a straight, beefed up version of the G92 with higher clock speeds across the board. While it shares the number of Raster Operators (ROPs) with the 8800GT, it does have the old GTX's complement of shader units at 128, giving it the necessary speed boost. The GX2 follows the example of the old 7950GX2, strapping two G92- stuffed PCBs together. But this time both PCBs face into the same heatsink and are housed in a vaguely coffin-like surround. The clock speeds are slightly slower than the GTX, but a fair bit of optimising has gone into making this single-card SLI offering an impressive piece of engineering. Swiss cheese memory The first difference you'll notice when comparing the two new cards with their predecessors is the change in memory capacity. Both the 8800 GTX and Ultra had a 384-bit memory bus with 768MB of GDDR3, while the 9800s make do with the same 256-bit 512MB of memory that resides on the GTS and GT iterations of the G92-based 8800s. Due to its two cores, the GX2 comes out tops in the memory bandwidth stakes at 128GB/s compared with the Ultra's 103.7GB/s, but the 9800 GTX lags well behind both of the previous cards. What this all means in real terms is that at the higher resolutions, and most especially with full screen anti-aliasing turned on, the new cards take quite a hit at the levels we were hoping these big-panel pixel pushers would excel at. The differences between the GTX and GX2, and indeed the 8800GT, are slight; the GX2 simply relying on the brute force effect of the single card SLI factor. Where the difference between the two new G92 parts is most obvious though is the number of ROPs. The GTX is still hobbling along with 16, less than both the 8800GTX and Ultra at 24, but due to the doubling up, the 9800 GX2 has 32 ROPs. The difficulty is in knowing how much of a benefit this multi-GPU's extra ROPs gives us as opposed to the single card with 24. Bigger, faster, stronger So where do we find ourselves with the two new top-end cards? Well, mostly in the same place we were before to be honest. There's very little difference between this new set and the old, with the 9800 GTX being the biggest disappointment. It struggles to find any space between itself and the 8800 GTX (which it's supposed to be replacing), and there's also the fact that you can still pick up the older card - with the extra memory, bandwidth and ROPs - for less than £200. In some places you can save yourself around £50 and come out with an equivalent, and in some cases, faster card. The march of progress seems to have stomped right past this iteration of the 9800, and here at TechRadar we might just have to plump for the original DX10 monster. With regards to the GX2, Nvidia had to go down the multi-GPU route, not just to prove it could produce a functional version like AMD, but also to create a card that it could legitimately call the fastest graphics card around. The final verdict... Still, the memory constraints hold the GX2 back from being the superlative, stand out, top-end card de jour. On lower-res panels without silicon-melting anti-aliasing, it speeds ahead of the competition. Yet with all the bells and whistles cranked up to a deafening roar it struggles to break-even with the old 8800 Ultra. Again, if you shop around you can pick up an Ultra for around £350, and be fairly sure that your card will have drivers mature enough to cater for whatever you throw down its graphics tubes. The long and short of it is that if you've got yourself an 8800GTX or Ultra, and felt that twinge of envy at the announcement of this new generation of top-end cards, then you can stop worrying. In fact, you can probably be down-right smug as your slightly geriatric cards are still more than capable of holding their own against these youngbloods. Til the GT200 comes out that is... The full version of this review will appear in PC Format magazine issue 214 and will go on sale on 4 May. By Dave James and James Rivington |
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