Graphics Cards Limitations

[Aziphirael]

I've managed to survived on a P4 2ghx machine, with 768 megs of RAM and a GeForce 3 with 64megs of memory :-) But then I tend to buy a new machine every three or four years and then buy a new one when its past its sell by date.

Still, now that I have a RL business that earns bits of its revenue from EU/SL and other RCE based games decided to buy a computer through it. So gone for a quad core, with 4gbs RAM, 8800 GT card on a SLI motherboard. Cost about £1000 and should be a good step up for next years gaming.

[rwin]

Originally Posted by Allotta Fagina

If you are not running at resolutions above 1600x1200 then SLI is worthless. Spending over $1,000.00 for two cards to run at 1280x1024 brings zero benefit except for pimping your e-penis. You bought into the lie. NVIDIA thanks you for helping them recover the money they wasted on buying 3Dfx and their obsolete technology. We will see how all the SLI owners feel after next year when the dual GPUs on a single card hits the market and SLI goes the way of Rambus system ram.

You will see a performance boost. You can get 2 cards in SLI for less than 500$. Comparing it to Rambus is laughable. SLI and crossfire are spread out over a much larger set of motherboards and price ranges than Rambus ever was.
SLI obsolete in one year, don’t be ridiculous. dual core cards? That is Rambus, they will last one year. Get up to date, 2009 brings GPU's on the motherboard and no video card at all.
a good 8800/2900 series pair will most likely be the last cards you ever buy.
in 3 years , we buy a motherboarsd with high speed integrated grafix. So, tuck in your e-penis and try to get up to date b4 you show is to everyone again

Originally Posted by Mora

Buying "best" thing from the market isn't ped-wise in my opinion.

Totally agree, that what makes the 250$ 8800gt so attractive, it’s a mid range card 200 to 300 less then the front runners and it will drop in price soon.

[Hass]

Being a often player of Crysis i know that there will be a LOT of buggs when this happens and as EU moves on the stuff WILL get more powerfull and it will be upto you to stay upto date on your stuff!

As for me i want to play the latest games so what did i do? got a job and got me a 8800 GTX + an extra £500 worth of gear

Im all set ARE YOU!

[aia]

Originally Posted by rwin

You will see a performance boost. You can get 2 cards in SLI for less than 500$.

Is there some reasonably economic fanless cards to recommend?

To give a hint about what I want, I want a fanless graphic card (because I tend to keep my computer turned on even when not playing and I think fans are evil) at a decent price (my old graphic card did cost ~250 SEK when I bought it a couple of years ago).

The graphic adapter I have now worked "ok" up until 9.1 when I lost the textures on my clothing. Besides from that it still works (at least up to 1680x1050), but I realize that when new engine comes out there might be more things that break.

Since I don't play quake and other action games like quake, I don't really need top-of-the-line graphics gard. Just a card that works, don't have parts that will break in 6 months and won't force me to sweat for a month because I can't deposit, just to slice som trox and shoot some thorifoids once in a while.

As for getting a job, guess what I have tried the last 4 years

[rwin]

Originally Posted by aia

Is there some reasonably economic fanless cards to recommend?

To give a hint about what I want, I want a fanless graphic card (because I tend to keep my computer turned on even when not playing and I think fans are evil) at a decent price (my old graphic card did cost ~250 SEK when I bought it a couple of years ago).

The graphic adapter I have now worked "ok" up until 9.1 when I lost the textures on my clothing. Besides from that it still works (at least up to 1680x1050), but I realize that when new engine comes out there might be more things that break.

Since I don't play quake and other action games like quake, I don't really need top-of-the-line graphics gard. Just a card that works, don't have parts that will break in 6 months and won't force me to sweat for a month because I can't deposit, just to slice som trox and shoot some thorifoids once in a while.

As for getting a job, guess what I have tried the last 4 years

I just saw some last week, im going on newegg later i see what it was and post it here. what is your price window?

there are some 8600's that are fanless, from 150 to 200 usd.
but from the guys i have been talking to a single 8800gts or 8600 is not very loud.

[AkiranBlade]

Originally Posted by thoreau

and some people think the cryengine wont' have any effect....

It didn't, on my system.

Originally Posted by Allotta Fagina

IMHO SLI/Crossfire= Huge Waste of PED. Best scam ever pulled off by the graphics card makers to convince you to buy not just one over priced card but two.

I'm sorry, but the performance gains I receive between running a single and dual system is to great to be palmed off as a "waste of PED."

Originally Posted by Violet

I could do with more clarification on what "fully supports" means?

Early adopter cards often don't fully support certain specifications. The reason for this is that the hardware is being developed in parallel to the software/specification requirements. What often happens is the subsequent driver releases tend to fix any of the deficits over time, however some deficits are based in the hardware and will never be fully sorted.

All I would recommend to you is to ensure the graphics card drivers are up to date and installed correctly.

Originally Posted by Allotta Fagina

If you are not running at resolutions above 1600x1200 then SLI is worthless. Spending over $1,000.00 for two cards to run at 1280x1024 brings zero benefit except for pimping your e-penis. You bought into the lie. NVIDIA thanks you for helping them recover the money they wasted on buying 3Dfx and their obsolete technology. We will see how all the SLI owners feel after next year when the dual GPUs on a single card hits the market and SLI goes the way of Rambus system ram.

Again, another thoughtless comment. E-Penis, that's quite funny though, perhaps the only thing worth reading in this paragraph.

I run SLi and have tried single GPU operation too from time to time. The SLi does make a significant difference. Games run much smoother then when running on on GPU. I never run games at more than 1280x1024, mainly because I'm getting too old and reading text that's way too small is getting difficult :/. Yet I would never opt for non-SLi over SLi if I have the budget.

I intend to buy a single 8800 GTS in the coming months, which on it's own will be better than my dual 7800 GTX cards. When I can afford the second, I will buy the second for two reasons... firstly, because games will have moved on yet again and secondly, because the second card will end up being cheaper than the first so it's a cheaper way to get extra oomph out of your system.

The gains you get are not only the rather 2D thinking of bigger resolution at high frame rate, it's the ability to get higher image quality also.

Also, when graphics cards are able to house two GPUs per card, all that is going to happen is people will go for quad GPU setups, plain and simple. And provided the figures from reviews back it's worth up, I will go for that too. Especially seeing as I want to be able to run dual monitors, currently not supported in SLi but should be at some point. Some games will be released to support multiple monitor setups for full panoramic viewing. You will need multiple cores to process that adequately.

It's not all about the E-Penis.

[rwin]

Originally Posted by AkiranBlade

It's not all about the E-Penis.

AkiranBlade,
the 8800gt might be worth looking at, for some reason Nvidia went out of order on the normal name structure this time and from what i have been reading the GT is actually better than the GTS, just a thought.

[AkiranBlade]

Originally Posted by rwin

AkiranBlade,
the 8800gt might be worth looking at, for some reason Nvidia went out of order on the normal name structure this time and from what i have been reading the GT is actually better than the GTS, just a thought.

A friend of mine went for the 8800GTS, which after a little tweaking, is performing as good as the GTX offering.

[Koister]

I would advise anyone thinking of upgrading there system to wait a few months.

Cpu's/Graphics Card/Motherboards will all be taking a huge leap in performance in a few months.

So if you've got money saved for upgrading. Save it a little longer. Cause theres some real great stuff coming out.

And the current high end items will be much cheaper in a few months.

[Allotta Fagina]

Originally Posted by rwin

You will see a performance boost. You can get 2 cards in SLI for less than 500$. Comparing it to Rambus is laughable. SLI and crossfire are spread out over a much larger set of motherboards and price ranges than Rambus ever was.
SLI obsolete in one year, don’t be ridiculous. dual core cards? That is Rambus, they will last one year. Get up to date, 2009 brings GPU's on the motherboard and no video card at all.
a good 8800/2900 series pair will most likely be the last cards you ever buy.
in 3 years , we buy a motherboarsd with high speed integrated grafix. So, tuck in your e-penis and try to get up to date b4 you show is to everyone again



Totally agree, that what makes the 250$ 8800gt so attractive, it’s a mid range card 200 to 300 less then the front runners and it will drop in price soon.

Never compared SLI to Rambus just said it would go the way of Rambus, early adopters bought in then the technology disappeared. SLI technology is old it was acquired from the 3Dfx buyout. CPU’s are multi-core and being built on 45nm process so it was only a matter of time before the GPU makers who are now switching from 65nm to 55nm would follow suit.

AMD Fusion/Swift News 12/16/2007

X-bit labs - AMD Claims First “Swift” Fusion Processor Due in Second Half 2009.

I imagine you are referring to AMD’s Fusion or Swift APU product, well this is not really new at all, you have been able to buy MB’s with integrated graphics for years (yes I realize there is a difference between what we can get today and what Fusion will bring to the table) and that’s all well and good but for a desktop system with technology changing every 6 months I would rather just put in a new video card when better ones become available rather than replace the whole MB and/or APU. Being locked into only one manufacturers technology roadmap is a bad thing IMHO because it also puts you at the mercy of their pricing whims. Since it will only be available for laptops initially it is of little interest at this point since it is at least 3 years away for the desktop anyway.

PCIe 2.0 is the next thing for video technology, even if they haven’t even pushed current PCIe limits. Both AMD and NVIDIA are working on multi core GPU’s AMD plans to integrate the PCIe bridge to the GPU with R700.


AMD R670 and R700

AMD to focus on multi-GPU cards for the high-end market

This man works on software for Cell and AMD NVIDIA GPU’s and seems to believe multi-core is the direction.

Dr. Dobb's | Multicore and GPUs: One Tool, Two Processors | May 11, 2007

Originally Posted by AkiranBlade

It didn't, on my system.



I'm sorry, but the performance gains I receive between running a single and dual system is to great to be palmed off as a "waste of PED."



Early adopter cards often don't fully support certain specifications. The reason for this is that the hardware is being developed in parallel to the software/specification requirements. What often happens is the subsequent driver releases tend to fix any of the deficits over time, however some deficits are based in the hardware and will never be fully sorted.

All I would recommend to you is to ensure the graphics card drivers are up to date and installed correctly.



Again, another thoughtless comment. E-Penis, that's quite funny though, perhaps the only thing worth reading in this paragraph.

I run SLi and have tried single GPU operation too from time to time. The SLi does make a significant difference. Games run much smoother then when running on on GPU. I never run games at more than 1280x1024, mainly because I'm getting too old and reading text that's way too small is getting difficult :/. Yet I would never opt for non-SLi over SLi if I have the budget.

I intend to buy a single 8800 GTS in the coming months, which on it's own will be better than my dual 7800 GTX cards. When I can afford the second, I will buy the second for two reasons... firstly, because games will have moved on yet again and secondly, because the second card will end up being cheaper than the first so it's a cheaper way to get extra oomph out of your system.

The gains you get are not only the rather 2D thinking of bigger resolution at high frame rate, it's the ability to get higher image quality also.

Also, when graphics cards are able to house two GPUs per card, all that is going to happen is people will go for quad GPU setups, plain and simple. And provided the figures from reviews back it's worth up, I will go for that too. Especially seeing as I want to be able to run dual monitors, currently not supported in SLi but should be at some point. Some games will be released to support multiple monitor setups for full panoramic viewing. You will need multiple cores to process that adequately.

It's not all about the E-Penis.

Well then here is truth about the cost/benefit ratio of a 7800GTX setup that you purchased. Then consider that a single 8800GT outperforms it. Further consider that a single upcoming NVIDIA D9E will likely outperform a current 8800 GTX SLI Solution.

GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB (SLI) Review November 14, 2005

GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB (SLI)

“Doing the SLI thang - For the 5 people here in the Netherlands that can afford two of these cards and activate them in SLI mode, well congratulations. A) you are rich and B) butter butter butter smooth gameplay is what you can expect. You can activate the highest resolutions, then enable 8 levels of AA and then set 16 levels of AF. The cards just don't care and will do it with at the least a 60 FPS framerate. Take Chaos Theory for example, with HDR enabled 16 levels of AF at 1600x1200 it did roughly 100 frames per second. What about Quake 4 then ? A 1600x1200 resolution with 8xAA and 16xAF .. yes, 78 FPS ! Craaazeey ! It's the fellowship of cards, Mordor in your box ! Remember the PSU requirements though and the fact that you need a very spicy processor to feed these minions.”

VGA Charts VIII: PCI Express Winter 2005

VGA Charts VIII: PCI Express Winter 2005 | Tom's Hardware

Pay particular attention to the performance gains chart and notice that several games that were available at the time actually run slower with SLI enabled.

7800 GTX 256 MB Review Friday, 25 November 2005

SLI is like a family, stone me - The INQUIRER

Again more performance testing results. Indicating cost/benefit ratio.

Originally Posted by Koister

I would advise anyone thinking of upgrading there system to wait a few months.

Cpu's/Graphics Card/Motherboards will all be taking a huge leap in performance in a few months.

So if you've got money saved for upgrading. Save it a little longer. Cause theres some real great stuff coming out.

And the current high end items will be much cheaper in a few months.

Ah the voice of reason.

Look it’s entirely up to you if you have the kind of money to purchase a 8800GTX SLI setup @ $1,142 USD and change, just for the cards, then you probably aren’t in this forum looking for advice on what to do since you are solidly in the top 10% of PC owners worldwide. For the rest of the peeps out there just looking for advice about technology they may not know much about and may only have a mainstream PC budget SLI is not the way to go.
Considering the cost versus benefit in my mind SLI is just for the e-penis, but then I am just frugal girl anyway. I like nice stuff, but I don’t like paying nasty prices for it.

I dun know why you boys can’t see what I am trying to tell you so I will lay it out for you. With the money you saved you can afford to buy “That special someone” in your life something real nice too and if she is grateful, like I would be, she would show her appreciation in return. The rest you will have to figure out for yourself. I was just saying myself I would love a fur coat.

Have a Great Day!