Nextgen Video Card Thread
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N3ur0n0saurusl2exs0r!!!
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I don't have a fucking clue...but what would you expect from a fucking drunken bastard...I think you would be fine with whatever you choose to buy...
I don't think PCI express will help much in the video department. AGP and PCIX are about the same speed so far. Maybe when newer cards come out in a year or two, and other cards in the system are sucking more bandwidth. The thing about AGP is that it's not a bus or on a bus. It's a port, which means it connects directly to the system memory and CPU. So it never really had a bottleneck from the PCI bus. So PCIX would just enhance bus bandwidth and move the graphics card back onto the bus. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than all that, but that's what I've picked up while reading graphics card previews and reviews. I haven't actually read the spec on PCIX yet.
Also, today I looked at a review of the upcoming chipsets from Intel on www.hardocp.com and it looks like a fast CPU on an i875 motherboard is not much slower than the new PCIX chipsets. The AMD64s compete well too. The article is one of the sticky ones at the top of the main page.
I'm going to wait a while to see what kind of things get released CPU-wise, and wait until the PCIX peripherals are saturating the market a bit.
Also, today I looked at a review of the upcoming chipsets from Intel on www.hardocp.com and it looks like a fast CPU on an i875 motherboard is not much slower than the new PCIX chipsets. The AMD64s compete well too. The article is one of the sticky ones at the top of the main page.
I'm going to wait a while to see what kind of things get released CPU-wise, and wait until the PCIX peripherals are saturating the market a bit.
Oh, and....
... as far as utilizing the AGP port goes, yes, a lot of data is sent through the port. Geometry and lighting is done on the GPU/VPU, but tons of other things still get sent from the CPU and main memory. I would guess that AGP texturing is not used as much anymore though with the amount of memory on the newer graphics cards.
I would need a faster CPU in order to make full use of an X800 XT, which is why I got the pro. The 4 extra pixel pipelines would have been cool for shader programs, but the speed increase would not be of much use, since I'm CPU limited currently.
I would need a faster CPU in order to make full use of an X800 XT, which is why I got the pro. The 4 extra pixel pipelines would have been cool for shader programs, but the speed increase would not be of much use, since I'm CPU limited currently.
ok. So it looks like PCIX has 3 times the bandwidth and is full duplex as compared to AGP 8X. So that's a nice improvement, when there are actually graphics cards the push those limits. I kind of doubt that there will be much of a difference with current PCIX/AGP cards though. I saw a preview of a PCIX X800 against the AGP version, and there wasn't much difference.
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enderzero
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Because for some reason I think it is more fun to resurrect
So ATI has released their new technology. Except it isn't new technology - it is just a stupid implementation of SLI with year old technology.
ATI Crossfire - ArsTechnica news
Doesn't sound too exciting to me. I hate SLI to begin with. I hate the fact that now you have to spend $1200 on two $600 video cards to get top of the line performance. Am I the only one that thinks this is BS?!
What's coming down the pipe in terms of video? J3RK - you mentioned you were thinking of upgrading?
ATI Crossfire - ArsTechnica news
Doesn't sound too exciting to me. I hate SLI to begin with. I hate the fact that now you have to spend $1200 on two $600 video cards to get top of the line performance. Am I the only one that thinks this is BS?!
bleh!Crossfire currently sports an annoying 60Hz refresh rate/1600x1200 max resolution limitation that's going to be a deal-breaker for a lot of hardcore gamers.
What's coming down the pipe in terms of video? J3RK - you mentioned you were thinking of upgrading?
The X1800 should be out very soon, which is ATI's (rather late) competitor for the NV 7800 series. It's supposed to be very fast, and fully DX9.0C SM3.0 compliant (and maybe more, (I haven't read up on it for a while.))
I just picked up a single BFG 7800 GT OC. My plan was to get another one soon, but it already seems to perform better (at least over a wider range of games and settings,) than my 2 6800 GT OCs did. They outperformed this card in certain games at very high resolution/AA/AF settings, but this single GT seems to have a much more consistent frame rate. I can even have transparency anti-aliasing on with pretty close to no performance hit. It seems to handle shaders a little more efficiently too. My system is totally stable now too. I used to get a lock every now and then using SLI. Not sure if it was from the extra heat, or just addressing two cards being twitchy or what, but it doesn't happen now. Having a single card in my system brings both my CPU and MB temps down to 97 degrees fahrenheit. (which means I can lower some of my fan speeds and quiet the system down a little more.)
I was going to go with one GTX, but I found that the extra $150(ish) didn't equate to $150 worth of increased performance. (and I can still stick another GT in if I feel like it later.)
As far as Crossfire goes, it doesn't look all that great. You have to have an ATI motherboard. I've used a few, and they weren't bad, but compared to an NForce 4 or one of the better Intel boards, they are crap. You don't get anymore performance than you do out of SLI, and there were a few other weird things about it. (check out the HardOCP article)
Won't know for sure until ATI releases the X1800, but I think Nvidia has another round on their side. I really like the 6 and 7 series.
I just picked up a single BFG 7800 GT OC. My plan was to get another one soon, but it already seems to perform better (at least over a wider range of games and settings,) than my 2 6800 GT OCs did. They outperformed this card in certain games at very high resolution/AA/AF settings, but this single GT seems to have a much more consistent frame rate. I can even have transparency anti-aliasing on with pretty close to no performance hit. It seems to handle shaders a little more efficiently too. My system is totally stable now too. I used to get a lock every now and then using SLI. Not sure if it was from the extra heat, or just addressing two cards being twitchy or what, but it doesn't happen now. Having a single card in my system brings both my CPU and MB temps down to 97 degrees fahrenheit. (which means I can lower some of my fan speeds and quiet the system down a little more.)
I was going to go with one GTX, but I found that the extra $150(ish) didn't equate to $150 worth of increased performance. (and I can still stick another GT in if I feel like it later.)
As far as Crossfire goes, it doesn't look all that great. You have to have an ATI motherboard. I've used a few, and they weren't bad, but compared to an NForce 4 or one of the better Intel boards, they are crap. You don't get anymore performance than you do out of SLI, and there were a few other weird things about it. (check out the HardOCP article)
Won't know for sure until ATI releases the X1800, but I think Nvidia has another round on their side. I really like the 6 and 7 series.
Well then, the X1800, X1600, and X1300 are out now. (There are two versions of the X1800, the XL (which competes with the 7800GT,) and the XT (which competes with the GTX (and isn't quite out yet.))
There is an excellent review on HardOCP. Anyway, the cards seem to match up performance and feature-wise with all of Nvidia's cards. None of them really kill the others in any way. ATI performs slightly better in some games, and Nvidia performs slightly better in others. They all support the same graphics features with slightly different implementations.
I'm going to say that NV still leads a bit in the OpenGL department. (just because their drivers have always been that much more advanced)
Anyway, it's good to see that both brands are very close together. That means that you could buy either one, and not be missing something that the other has. I was starting to get worried that I should have waited a couple weeks to buy my new card(s) but it looks like there would be no compelling reason to switch back to ATI. (while at the same time, there isn't really any reason not to go with ATI if you don't already have this generation of card) All comes down to personal preference now.
There is an excellent review on HardOCP. Anyway, the cards seem to match up performance and feature-wise with all of Nvidia's cards. None of them really kill the others in any way. ATI performs slightly better in some games, and Nvidia performs slightly better in others. They all support the same graphics features with slightly different implementations.
I'm going to say that NV still leads a bit in the OpenGL department. (just because their drivers have always been that much more advanced)
Anyway, it's good to see that both brands are very close together. That means that you could buy either one, and not be missing something that the other has. I was starting to get worried that I should have waited a couple weeks to buy my new card(s) but it looks like there would be no compelling reason to switch back to ATI. (while at the same time, there isn't really any reason not to go with ATI if you don't already have this generation of card) All comes down to personal preference now.
Now there is NO reason to get the ATI cards, (at least if you're interested in having all SM3.0 and DX9.0C+ features.) Check out the news-item on the front page of HardOCP. The Nvidia 6 and 7 series both support all SM3.0 specs, while ATI decided one major feature wasn't important. (Just like they decided that SM3.0 wasn't important before.) They're still pretty cool cards, but when you can get a readily available NV card that DOES support all functionality for less money, I don't see any reason to go ATI for yet another round.
