nVIDIA GeForce GTX200

[Caydr]

I'm absolutely positive I read somewhere that ATI was planning a special crossfire system where you let one graphics card handle the physics and the other handle the actual graphics. So you might have one high powered one for graphics and some cheapass x1300 for physics for instance.

Definitely read that. Somewhere. I think.

[Keithus]

Seems a little odd that 3d mark should give extra points to a card company simply because they programmed their benchmarking tool to utilize a feature that the other company doesn't yet support.

If nVidia gets bonus points for PhysX then ati should get bonus points for being able to run DX10.1.

I guess I'm just not an fan of unethical marketing strategies.

Rumors of the 4870's performance put it just below the 280gtx for less than half the price.

[[Krogoth86]]

I'm absolutely positive I read somewhere that ATI was planning a special crossfire system where you let one graphics card handle the physics and the other handle the actual graphics. So you might have one high powered one for graphics and some cheapass x1300 for physics for instance.

Definitely read that. Somewhere. I think.

Yeah - that had been the plans back in the 1000er series where you could just plug a X1300 beneath your X1800 for physics. I'm not 100% sure but I think it never made it beyond some demonstrations of this principle...

[Crayfish]

RE: the consoles setting the pace post...

There are plenty of PC games that scale to meet improved hardware. From what I can recall, Black and White was designed to look best on top end hardware that wouldn't even be released for a year after the game.

Crysis needed top end hardware to run at all, and I don't think anything has yet been capable of meeting the challenge of decent FPS at maximum settings.

If the Spring developers felt like it, I'm sure they could make Spring graphically hungry enough to require a Geforce 9 series or whatever.

Add to these points the fact that someone, somewhere is always going to want to make something that wins all the best graphics ever awards and stuff... I think there will be a market for more or less any card they care to make, so long as it's pretty darn awesome. Whether that's a large enough market to justify their development and production costs I wouldn't like to predict.

[Keithus]

Anandtechs review of the 4870 is up, pretty impressive stuff, sitting between the 260 and 280 at less than half the price of the 280 and a $100US less than the 260. Looks like ati is the way to go for price/perf ratio and nVidia if you have more money than brains at this point.

[clericvash]

All these new cards make my 7 series card look like a funny shaped paperweight.

That said right now my cheap end 7 series is all i need.

[reivanen]

ATI sure is fighting with the price/performance ratio.

How do you think the game turns when nvidia releases their 55nm 256bit gddr5 version of their gtx200:s and drop the price down to the level of AMD ?

Currently its the wide memory bus and big process that makes the gtx200:s more expensive.

From what i've heard the release will be in Q3-Q4

[[Krogoth86]]

How do you think the game turns when nvidia releases their 55nm 256bit gddr5 version of their gtx200:s and drop the price down to the level of AMD ?

Currently its the wide memory bus and big process that makes the gtx200:s more expensive.

NVIDIA's problem is that ATI can manufacture more than two RV770 chips for the price of one GTX 280 chip as it's just huge and the yield rate is low. Switching to a 256bit GDDR5 version is rather unlikely to happen as this should require quite some reworking certain sections which would eat up time and with their new DX11 chip being near I guess they're going that way. In addition to that the chip with its huge number of transistors still will cost quite a lot more than one ATI chip which even might have a 45nm shrink up its sleeve...

[Caydr]

I DARE TO REZ! But it's a good one, really.

Update:

Radeon 4870's cheapest price is currently $284.35 CAD

Radeon 4850's cheapest price is currently $174.99 CAD

Nvidia has been kicked in the crotch so hard they're pulling a PS3 and dropping their cards' prices by $100 to try to unass themselves.

Also, Nvidia stocks have taken a plummet and both AMD and Intel have gone up steadily. I like Nvidia, but I also like seeing companies get greedy and then get their asses kicked. Current lowest price for 280 is $539 ($509 after my favorite, a mail-in rebate), current lowest price for 260 is $331, at NCIX and DirectCanada respectively.

BTW, the 4870 ($284) is 1.1 fps slower than the 280 ($539) in Crysis, according to Tom's Hardware. Link for humiliation. Yes, that's 30+ FPS at a resolution that you'd need a CRT monitor just to use, so faster for those of us with a monitor manufactured in the last 6 years.

ALSO the 4870 is apparently a killer overclocker, and they are hard at work at making their cards capable of physics simulation.

[Cabbage]

Don't forget nvidia are about to get absolutely hammered for all their faulty 8k parts..

[[Krogoth86]]

Well I think AMD's strategy worked out great. NVIDIA was way too self-confident - who still remembers the NVIDIA CEO saying like "Nobody in the world cares about ATI!" a few months ago?

Well now they're getting their asses kicked. Even more - I think AMD reached another important goal: They made NVIDIA change their strategy and so are delaying them a bit. Initially NVIDIA wanted to switch from 65nm to 45nm. Now with the HD4000 series NVIDIA rushes to get a 55nm version of the GT200 out which will probably cost quite some manpower and gives AMD some time for their next-gen chip...

Well I also see NVIDIA's situation getting slowly pretty bad. For the last few years we've just seen the same G80 Chip over and over again with different names and even the GT200 is pretty much just an extended G80. Then there has been their defective Notebook GPUs which is why they had to spend that much money recently. The next report also isn't going to be any better with the RV770 whooping their ass and they won't make much money with the recent GT200 prices they had to adopt to in order to stand any chance. Then there are no more chipsets for Intel's Nehalem plattform until they handle over SLI what they probably are not going to do. In addition to that they have to face AMD and Intel on the physics sector with the possibilities for AMD cards to support PhysX too (their already should be a hacked driver out making this possible but I didn't hear anything of it lately - I also think AMD is working on this for their drivers as they can freely adapt that technology thanks to NVIDIA)...

Well we'll see how things will turn out and imo the GTX 260 now is pretty competitive with the recent pricing together witch a recent NVIDIA chipset on your mainboard. The GTX 280 when compared to a 4870 still is like +10 to 20% performance for like +100% the costs...

I also really like AMD's new increased focus on Linux with having published many of their driver specs and things like THIS ONE...

[SwiftSpear]

ATI likes to take the market with great price per performance ratios. Nvidia generally sells a more technological approach, giving developers new tools to work with and what not (which 80% of the time aren't used because other hardware bases can't be arsed to make a compatible alternative)

Caydr: PhysX can be used for non graphical physics calculation, but no developer would dare making a game where it plays a major role though because of the all the other hardware bases they would be excluding. If I had to bet my shiney nickle, I'd say we'll be seeing physX and alternative technologies as the main selling point of the next line of consoles, and THAT is when the market is going to really get hot for complicated physics based games (fluid dynamics and real time cloth interaction exetra)

[Keithus]

Since when did nVidia offer features ATI didn't? PhysX? Thats already been made to run on 3870's (albeit through a thrid party). nVidia has always been about optimized brute force, especially now with their TWIMTBP program is rubbing most developers lower backs.

[Jazcash]

XFX are throwing in Assassin's Creed ( Which sucks tbh ) to try and sweeten the deal.

[[Krogoth86]]

ATI likes to take the market with great price per performance ratios. Nvidia generally sells a more technological approach, giving developers new tools to work with and what not (which 80% of the time aren't used because other hardware bases can't be arsed to make a compatible alternative)

Well imo it's just the other way around:

NVIDIA hasn't shown anything new since their 8000er series despite renaming their stuff and some minor adjustments. ATI offers DX10.1 (even with some DX11 specs afaik), GDDR5, a 55nm production process and there recently has been a report from some guys who got their hands on the 4870 X2 and it seems micro stuttering was solved for it! The only new thing NVIDIA has introduced is their nice CUDA plattform with PhysX and all that stuff. But this GPGPU stuff isn't new at all - you could already use your X1900er card back then for things like Folding@Home (although I have to admit that CUDA probably is way nicer to use). Another thing might be Hybrid Graphics but this also isn't really new - ATI announced their PowerXpress about a year sooner on their roadmaps (media just didn't hype it when this info came out like they did for NVIDIA) and also have this thing running. It's just that they decided to just use it for Notebooks now and use advanced Powerplay for desktop PCs so you aren't limited in your choice of chipsets...

So with that said ATI uses way more advanced technology - it's just that NVIDIA had a killer design with their G80...

Oh btw - it's recently rumored that NVIDIA has given up on a 55nm GT200 refresh...

I'm no ATI fanboy but it's just a fact that after being just technologically more advanced they now finally offer the plain better cards in terms of performance too what took them long enough just as a stronger focus on Linux...

[Erom]

I'm just glad to see ATI getting their feet back under them, it seems like a year or so ago Nvidia had pretty thoroughly kicked them to the curb. I don't really prefer one manufacturer over the other, so for me it's just nice to see some competition again.

Also, Nvidia was getting a little smug, and I love it when a smug company gets a kick in the teeth.

I bet Nvidia is going to come out with some cool shit to get back in the game.

[SwiftSpear]

Meh, the market goes back and forth. In the 4xxx series cards GeForce was a dominant leader, and then in the 5xxx vs 9xxx ATI cards were BY FAR the more impressive design. We saw an nvidia comeback in the 6xxx, which they held through and took a bit of ground on into the 8xxx, and now they are dropping off again (although their new line still offers twice the performance of their previous line). No doubt the 1xxx nvidia will bring something entirely new to the table probably balancing the market again. The only real reason I'm an nvidia fanboy right now is that the cards have significantly better openGL support.

CUDA I find exciting, but mostly I'd just like to see PhysX standards in the market so PhysX features can become gameplay features, not just graphical fluff. I remember promoting physics processors back in the day, I would have bought one if I could have afforded to build a new machine back then.

[SwiftSpear]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dviWZcph ... re=related

[aegis]

2) The Geforce 8xxx series makes all previous video hardware obsolete, being a minimum of 33% faster in any situation and typically much more than that.

Spring

[Caydr]

Eh? I don't understand what "Spring" has to do with that quote. I'm outspokenly vocal about Spring's performance failings so what I said is true, perhaps qualified with "when the GPU is what's under stress." And before these new ATI cards came out it was certainly true, even when we were into the 9xxx series. It's just, now we've got both 40%+ better performance at half the cost, something that's never happened before. Trust me, I know, I've been following this stuff since a Geforce 2 MX 400 was a pretty OK card.

Can't say much more, my keyboard is suddenly not working properly for some reason, about 1/10 keystrokes are ignored.... Ugh... anyway here's a link showing that ATI has also apparently got their multi-card technology off the ground, with performance increases of between 40 and 80% when adding a new card: link

Compare the performance difference between single card Nvidia and SLI with the performance difference between single card ATI and CrossfireX. AFAIK SLI has always been far, far more efficient than Crossfire, but apparently now in some situations Crossfire is performing better. With these graphics cards being so cheap, the only SENSIBLE use of "SLI-like" technology (buy a second card when your current outdated card is getting behind the times) might actually be feasible.

WTF is going on with my computer!!! Now my mouse isn't working properly either.