nVidia GT200 Series Review Thread

[LightningRider]

UPDATE on EVGA's GTX 260:

They've lowered the price back down to $399 (it was bumped to $460 before, probably an error now that they've put it back to the $399) which is great for us who were planning to step up to it. I only have to pay 60$ to get one and I think this really seals the deal over waiting to see what the HD4870 would have brought. 60$ step up is just too good of a deal!

 

[taltamir]

congrats, please keep us posted about how long you would be without a video card while (they have a no cross-shipping policy)

 

[OCGuy]

Wow..here is some scary news for NV. Leaked Chinese 3dmark06 benchs, showing the 4850 = my old 8800GTS 640.

http://translate.google.com/tr...N&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

 

[HOOfan 1]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

What if he's getting 2 4850's instead? :evil:

Then I would bench it against 2 GTX260s :thumbsup:

I think you should buy him 2 GTX 260 and he should buy you 2 HD4850

that way you can benchmark the other's choice and remove the bias a bit.

Then he gets to keep the $800 worth of videocards you bought him and you get to keep the $400 worth of videocards he bought you.

 

[LightningRider]

Originally posted by: taltamir
congrats, please keep us posted about how long you would be without a video card while (they have a no cross-shipping policy)

Sure, I'll be stepping up first thing tomorrow. I won't be without a video card though as I'm going to be going back to my 8800GTS 320MB while I wait for the new beast. I also have someone's 7300GT that I got but that's staying in the closet for obvious reasons...

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

What if he's getting 2 4850's instead? :evil:

Then I would bench it against 2 GTX260s :thumbsup:

GTX 260 costs $199?

GTX 260 is $399, HD 4850 Crossfire is $399

GTX 280 is $649, HD 4870 Crossfire is $600

That is the competition come June 25th. In August that will change as you will have 4850 X2 & 4870 X2, giving more direct competition to the GT200 parts.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

What if he's getting 2 4850's instead? :evil:

Then I would bench it against 2 GTX260s :thumbsup:

I think you're missing his point. If money were no object than in all probability the the G200 series would win against the R7** series using SLI or Tri-SLI. The point everyone's trying to make is that you'll be paying a lot more money for the NV solution for not much more performance (if ATI performance rumors are to be believed). For example your pair of GTX 260s would cost $800+ while a pair of HD 4850s would be half that and probably not be much slower.

Edit: Doh, I post too slow. :frown:

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

You have a deal. :thumbsup:

Edit: And just a little FYI. ShadowOfMyself made a good point. Ill pick up a E8500 to bench with it. So the hardware is almost identical.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

You better be ready to discuss what else you can buy with the extra 350$ you save by buying a 4870 (which could net you a very fine Quad Core cpu for example)

 

[LightningRider]

For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
Wow..here is some scary news for NV. Leaked Chinese 3dmark06 benchs, showing the 4850 = my old 8800GTS 640.

http://translate.google.com/tr...N&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

3D Mark 06 is a very relevant benchmark, because it always reflects real world performance. The HD 2900XT owns in 3D Mark 06, and it's naturally the fastest card in the world. G80 just can't compare.

/sarcasm

3D Mark 06 is useless. How about you look at Vantage results:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=191096

Vantage Extreme, 1920x1200 + AA/AF

HD 4850 scores X2808.... That is higher than 3870 X2, 9800GTX, 8800GTX. And that is at settings where you would expect the 64 GB/s memory bandwidth to be a limiting factor. HD 4870 should be ~30% faster, which would mean it would tie GTX 260 in Vantage Extreme, a benchmark that sees some of the best performance from GT200 cards of any bench (GTX 260 > GX2 here, not seen in very many places).

 

[HOOfan 1]

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

An ATI/AMD employee said that his company's card would be better than the competition's card


WHAT A SHOCKER :shocked:

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

He's talking about RV770, not R700 when he says 80-90%. He says that RV770 is significantly smaller but will provide 80-90% of the performance. He is probably talking about the HD 4870 model, which is what I have been speculating. 80-90% of GTX 280 performance, half the price, less than half the die size.

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

He's talking about RV770, not R700 when he says 80-90%. He says that RV770 is significantly smaller but will provide 80-90% of the performance. He is probably talking about the HD 4870 model, which is what I have been speculating. 80-90% of GTX 280 performance, half the price, less than half the die size.

So based on 80%-90% performance of the GTX 280.

Would this be right ?

GTX 280 = 100fps
HD 4870 = 80-90fps
HD 4870X2 = 140-180 fps ( depending on how the game scales )

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: JPB

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

He's talking about RV770, not R700 when he says 80-90%. He says that RV770 is significantly smaller but will provide 80-90% of the performance. He is probably talking about the HD 4870 model, which is what I have been speculating. 80-90% of GTX 280 performance, half the price, less than half the die size.

So based on 80%-90% performance of the GTX 280.

Would this be right ?

GTX 280 = 100fps
HD 4870 = 80-90fps
HD 4870X2 = 140-180 fps ( depending on how the game scales )

From his statement, yes. Obviously that's a generalization and it will not be like that in every game. In some games the HD 4870 may be 70% of the GTX 280, in another game it might be equal. I expect the GTX 280 will pull ahead of the single-GPU HD 4870 when it comes to 2560x1600 + AA/AF, at least in comparison to the 512MB 4870 (1GB 4870 models may fare better).

I am very interested in how RV770 clocks....at 750MHz I would think there is a lot of room to be had. Once you replaced the BIOS with one that allowed 860MHz+, it was able to hit close to 900MHz. With a more advanced 55nm process, I am hoping HD 4870 will be capable of hitting over 900MHz on stock cooling.

GTX 200 overclocking seems to be varied. Some sites have reported not so impressive results, while others have seen over 700MHz for both the 260 and 280. Firingsquad was able to hit 750MHz with the GTX 280, which is very impressive and reminds me of G80 overclocking.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: HOOfan 1


An ATI/AMD employee said that his company's card would be better than the competition's card


WHAT A SHOCKER :shocked:

Of course he did, just as Nvidia employees are calling this the best launch, since the last launch.

Personally I find this one impressive card, but it does feel a bit like a placeholder. Would not be surprised to see a more elegant version in a couple of months.

 

[anindrew]

Hi all! Very interesting thread. As someone who is getting ready to build a new PC (first in 5 years), I was waiting eagerly to see benchmarks/reviews of both the new Nvidia and AMD/ATI cards. To me, Nvidia's latest offerings are too expensive. When I build a new PC, I try to budget certain amounts for certain parts. $300 or so for a video card is a reasonable price to me. I usually like to go with the best price/performance no matter who makes a product.

Judging from Bergman's quote, it sounds that he is admitting that AMD/ATI's cards will be close to the performance of Nvidia's new cards, but at considerably less money. If a 4870 is going to be $300, I think I'd have to go with it as it's price/performance ratio will be better.

HOWEVER, I think we should all wait for actual 4850 and 4870 benchmarks/reviews before we can pass a final judgment on which one is better for you.

 

[LightningRider]

Well I was just pointing out the 80-90% remark actually. But yeah, if the HD4870 is between 10-20% less of the speed of the GTX 280, then that's right on par with the GTX 260, only cheaper, if prices remain the way they're set now.

It's hard to know what products exactly they are talking about though so he could be comparing it to the GTX 260. Either way it's pretty obvious that the HD4870 X2 will stomp the GTX 280.

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: JPB

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

He's talking about RV770, not R700 when he says 80-90%. He says that RV770 is significantly smaller but will provide 80-90% of the performance. He is probably talking about the HD 4870 model, which is what I have been speculating. 80-90% of GTX 280 performance, half the price, less than half the die size.

So based on 80%-90% performance of the GTX 280.

Would this be right ?

GTX 280 = 100fps
HD 4870 = 80-90fps
HD 4870X2 = 140-180 fps ( depending on how the game scales )

From his statement, yes. Obviously that's a generalization and it will not be like that in every game. In some games the HD 4870 may be 70% of the GTX 280, in another game it might be equal. I expect the GTX 280 will pull ahead of the single-GPU HD 4870 when it comes to 2560x1600 + AA/AF, at least in comparison to the 512MB 4870 (1GB 4870 models may fare better).

I am very interested in how RV770 clocks....at 750MHz I would think there is a lot of room to be had. Once you replaced the BIOS with one that allowed 860MHz+, it was able to hit close to 900MHz. With a more advanced 55nm process, I am hoping HD 4870 will be capable of hitting over 900MHz on stock cooling.

GTX 200 overclocking seems to be varied. Some sites have reported not so impressive results, while others have seen over 700MHz for both the 260 and 280. Firingsquad was able to hit 750MHz with the GTX 280, which is very impressive and reminds me of G80 overclocking.

Yea, that was just an example. I will admit first hand. I am a ATI fan. Hell, maybe ill get a 4870, a 4870X2, a GTX 260 and a GTX 280 just to bench all in the same system. Only difference would be the GPU.

I have been with Nvidia for almost two years now.

I won't go into ATI too much though since this isn't the appropriate thread.

I did expect more performance from the GTX series though. It is a nice card, no doubt about that. Just not at the price it currently sits at.

But yea, I foresee great months ahead in the GPU wars. If ATI takes back the crown, great. If not...I will have a great card

Win win situation for me. :beer:

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Originally posted by: JPB

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: LightningRider
For those of you bickering about Radeon 4000 VS GT200... I don't know if you guys have seen this but here's what an article on IGN said:

In a question-and-answer session, Bergman said that the R700 will turn the tables in AMD's battle with Nvidia. He cited the chip's high performance, low power, and wealth of features. For example, he said the R700 supports Microsoft's new DirectX 10.1 API, whereas the new Nvidia chip only supports DirectX 10. Also, the Radeon 4000 series will use new GDDR5 memory, whereas the new Nvidia chip still uses GDDR3. And by engineering a small but efficient chip, AMD has the advantages of lower costs. "Our die is about the same area as a dime. [Nvidia's] is about the same area of a quarter. Despite that, we're going to be 80 to 90-percent of their performance," Bergman said.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/882/882097p1.html

In that last section, "80-90% of their performance" leaves me to believe that the cards will be competitive because of their features and the nice price point but won't quite match the performance. He also said in the same article that the card will be able to have single slot cooling solutions, which is something I like... As far as I'm concerned though, I think if I wasn't getting an eVGA GTX 260 for $60, I might have gone with an ATi card for the first time since the Radeon 9700 Pro.

I think ATi will be a great choice this round of GPU wars.

He's talking about RV770, not R700 when he says 80-90%. He says that RV770 is significantly smaller but will provide 80-90% of the performance. He is probably talking about the HD 4870 model, which is what I have been speculating. 80-90% of GTX 280 performance, half the price, less than half the die size.

So based on 80%-90% performance of the GTX 280.

Would this be right ?

GTX 280 = 100fps
HD 4870 = 80-90fps
HD 4870X2 = 140-180 fps ( depending on how the game scales )

Thats what we are speculating, but I very much doubt that... Since it was said by AMD we need to lower the % a bit, so lets assume 70%

GTX 280 = 100fps
HD 4870 = 70 fps
HD 4870X2 = 120- 140 fps ( depending on how the game scales )

It still comes out with a healthy margin for a much lower price

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
We put together some benchmarks as well. They'll defo be some follow ups when newer drivers arrive.

GT200

Got questions? Let 'er rip..

Eek, your page is wider than my 720p monitor. Nice mini-review, though. You're going to switch that Folding@Home team to AnandTech soon, right?

I do have a silly question, or at least clarification I need:
We keep hearing about CUDA PhysX. Is there any (non-NDA'ed) information about how running PhysX affects the GPU's video-rendering speed? I'm blindly assuming here that the same transistors will be split up and used for both, as opposed to the cards currently hiding a second set of secret circuits from us.

Originally posted by: taltamir
What I wanna know is... why is the 9800GTX still priced at 250-300$? it is totally obsolete.

There's still a production cost involved that both nVidia and the retailer need to recoup as best they can. And it's only a few months old, not instantly useless because of one new product.

 

[chizow]

I went ahead and compiled a comparison of different benchmarks between the 8800 GTX, GTX 280, GTX 260 and 9800 GX2 at 1920x1200 using the 8800 GTX as reference as that is the card and resolution I game at.

1920x1200 Review Compilation

As you can see, the differences from a single 8800GTX and GTX 280 (Column L vs P = Q) is significant and often the difference between playable or non-playable. This can be largely subjective but I can tell you for sure the games I own will play better without a doubt jumping from a 30-45FPS average (sub 60) to 60+ always.

The difference between a GTX 280 and 9800GX2 isn't nearly as significant and even though the GX2 often beats the GTX 280, its already at a performance level higher than necessary to achieve solid playable framerates (60+ for me). Keep in mind this difference will be even more pronounced when you go to higher resolutions as bandwidth and framebuffer become more of an issue in GTX 280's favor.

Now, sure you can daisy-chain a whole bunch of cheaper gimpy cards to achieve similar performance, but then you introduce a bunch of other problems including but not limited to:

• Profiles/Scaling- SLI/CF rely on driver profiles for their performance and in the case of ATI, you can't change these yourself. So if your particular game doesn't have a pre-defined profile you may see no benefit or even *worst* performance than with a single card. In the case of relying on two individually slower cards than your single card, you can see that you may actually be paying more for *worst* performance which is unacceptable to me.
  
• Micro-stuttering- Pretty heated debate about the significance of this problem on this board and others although it pops up infrequently. Basically the timing of each frame from the different GPU in AFR can be erratic, leading to this effect. Apparently some people are very sensitive to it and some aren't. I don't know as I have never used SLI, but I certainly wouldn't be happy if I spent $400-600 for SLI/CF only to find I couldn't stand micro-stutter.
  
• Heat/Power/Space - Typically not an issue for most enthusiasts, but it can become a problem when you have 2 or even 3x the power draw and heat from high-end cards. The PSU issue can be a total W issue, but also a power connector issue with so many high-end parts needing 6 or even 8-pin PCI-E connections. Many cases can also have problems accomodating 1x9"+ card, much less 2+.
  
• Multi-Monitor (NV only) - NV multi-GPU solutions do not support multi-monitors. I don't know if this is a superficial driver limitation to prevent desktop cards being used in professional workstations or a truly technical issue, but I'm leaning towards driver limitation as I'm assuming the Quadro GX2 would support more than 1 monitor..... Multi-Monitor support is important to me as I play full screen on my 1920 and use my 2nd monitor for various monitoring tools, surfing the web, etc.
  
• Bandwidth/Frame Buffer - Not as big a deal at 1920, but one of the major reasons to upgrade to the fastes GPU is for ultra high resolutions with AA. With a GX2 or SLI/CF solution, you're still limited to the same bus width and frame buffer as the individual cards even if you have more rendering horse power. This limitation is apparent in the higher resolutions with AA when comparing a GTX 280 with a true 512-bit bus and 1GB frame buffer to the X2/SLI solutions with a 256-bit bus and 512MB buffer.
  
• Chipset specific limitations - ATI CF requires an Intel/AMD chipset and NV SLI requires an NV chipset. This unnecessarily ties your platform to your GPU between generations and in the case of SLI, to NV's flaky chipsets.
  
• Overclocking ability? - NV used to have problems overclocking in SLI in Vista but I think its been fixed. Not sure if ATI has similar problems although I know many of their parts are clock-locked via BIOS.

Sorry but simple math and "logical" multi-GPU solutions are not going to make those problems go away. The only solution that is going to provide a significant increase in performance from where I am without multi-GPU problems is a GTX 280, which is why its worth it (to me).

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: JPB

Too many ATI boys in here today. I cant wait to trash those cards when they come out for not even touching the GTX280.

Once the new ATI cards are released, the quote above is going in my signature.

:laugh:

Im going to hold you to that. As soon as I get my 280, Ill bench against your 4870.

What if he's getting 2 4850's instead? :evil:

Then I would bench it against 2 GTX260s :thumbsup:

In addition to that 280 that you're getting?

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: chizow
I went ahead and compiled a comparison of different benchmarks between the 8800 GTX, GTX 280, GTX 260 and 9800 GX2 at 1920x1200 using the 8800 GTX as reference as that is the card and resolution I game at.

1920x1200 Review Compilation

As you can see, the differences from a single 8800GTX and GTX 280 (Column L vs P = Q) is significant and often the difference between playable or non-playable. This can be largely subjective but I can tell you for sure the games I own will play better without a doubt jumping from a 30-45FPS average (sub 60) to 60+ always.

The difference between a GTX 280 and 9800GX2 isn't nearly as significant and even though the GX2 often beats the GTX 280, its already at a performance level higher than necessary to achieve solid playable framerates (60+ for me). Keep in mind this difference will be even more pronounced when you go to higher resolutions as bandwidth and framebuffer become more of an issue in GTX 280's favor.

Now, sure you can daisy-chain a whole bunch of cheaper gimpy cards to achieve similar performance, but then you introduce a bunch of other problems including but not limited to:

• Profiles/Scaling- SLI/CF rely on driver profiles for their performance and in the case of ATI, you can't change these yourself. So if your particular game doesn't have a pre-defined profile you may see no benefit or even *worst* performance than with a single card. In the case of relying on two individually slower cards than your single card, you can see that you may actually be paying more for *worst* performance which is unacceptable to me.
  
• Micro-stuttering- Pretty heated debate about the significance of this problem on this board and others although it pops up infrequently. Basically the timing of each frame from the different GPU in AFR can be erratic, leading to this effect. Apparently some people are very sensitive to it and some aren't. I don't know as I have never used SLI, but I certainly wouldn't be happy if I spent $400-600 for SLI/CF only to find I couldn't stand micro-stutter.
  
• Heat/Power/Space - Typically not an issue for most enthusiasts, but it can become a problem when you have 2 or even 3x the power draw and heat from high-end cards. The PSU issue can be a total W issue, but also a power connector issue with so many high-end parts needing 6 or even 8-pin PCI-E connections. Many cases can also have problems accomodating 1x9"+ card, much less 2+.
  
• Multi-Monitor (NV only) - NV multi-GPU solutions do not support multi-monitors. I don't know if this is a superficial driver limitation to prevent desktop cards being used in professional workstations or a truly technical issue, but I'm leaning towards driver limitation as I'm assuming the Quadro GX2 would support more than 1 monitor..... Multi-Monitor support is important to me as I play full screen on my 1920 and use my 2nd monitor for various monitoring tools, surfing the web, etc.
  
• Bandwidth/Frame Buffer - Not as big a deal at 1920, but one of the major reasons to upgrade to the fastes GPU is for ultra high resolutions with AA. With a GX2 or SLI/CF solution, you're still limited to the same bus width and frame buffer as the individual cards even if you have more rendering horse power. This limitation is apparent in the higher resolutions with AA when comparing a GTX 280 with a true 512-bit bus and 1GB frame buffer to the X2/SLI solutions with a 256-bit bus and 512MB buffer.
  
• Chipset specific limitations - ATI CF requires an Intel/AMD chipset and NV SLI requires an NV chipset. This unnecessarily ties your platform to your GPU between generations and in the case of SLI, to NV's flaky chipsets.
  
• Overclocking ability? - NV used to have problems overclocking in SLI in Vista but I think its been fixed. Not sure if ATI has similar problems although I know many of their parts are clock-locked via BIOS.

Sorry but simple math and "logical" multi-GPU solutions are not going to make those problems go away. The only solution that is going to provide a significant increase in performance from where I am without multi-GPU problems is a GTX 280, which is why its worth it (to me).

I'm getting a Server Not Found message.

 

[ViRGE]

I left you guys alone for 8 hours and you didn't burn the house down, I'm very impressed. Now for some generic warnings before I need to start going after specific people:

1) Some of you are going on significant segways about AMD stuff, if it doesn't directly and immediately relate to the GT200, use the AMD thread.
2) I'm not going to remind anyone again to not make clearly stupid accusations about each other being fanboys/shills, it's not adding anything to the discussion.
3) As a general reminder, take everything that is a rumor with a grain of salt (2 if it's the Inq), a lot of rumors are false and just lead to people getting wound up over nothing.

Now, carry on