Geforce 9xxx Series

[Spazosaurus]

Nvidia just sucking more and more with every piece of news that come out concerning their products. In the first place, I think they should have saved the 9 series for next generation parts, but that's beside the point. But thinking that ati is gonna bring a next generation card that will even remotely compete with anything that nvidia has to offer is wishful thinking at best, especially since amd has already made it clear that they are not looking to compete in the high performance segment.

[W1nTry]

especially since amd has already made it clear that they are not looking to compete in the high performance segment.

Nothing screams that more than building a single PCB DUAL GPU card that bests any single PCB card Nvidia has... right..

[Spazosaurus]

LOL im not talking present tense, in that in the FUTURE they wont be fighting the high end card market so much. Besides, any way you spin it, its two cards they essentially made into one. While that in itself is a feat that even nvidia cant duplicate to date, it is still TWO cards coming together to match ONE card from Nvidia. Now if nv get vex and decide to make a single pcb DUAL 8800ultra, what go be amd situation?

[W1nTry]

COnsidering their driver situation, I would suspect not very much :p btw the intention of AMD for future video esp wrt the higher end segment is exactly what they are doing now, so is Nvidia for that matter. There is not going to be any new 'monster' 1 billion transistor 300W card that can spew crysis at framerates of 1,000,000 fps... rather both camps are working on a simpler archetecture to make it easy to scale their capabilities.... or at least that's AMD and... INTEL's approach. You see with the unified shader tech that ATI used to develop the 2xxx and 3xxx series it's somewhat similar to Intels mini core project. You have a very simple but powerful 'smart' core that can do anything. Then you basically copy and print as many as you need to get the job done. Yes there will be optimizations along each new gen, but the idea is, that you simplify the design process by using basic building blocks for your variations. So if your high end need 500 shaders, then you use 500 shaders, if your mid range only needs 250, etc, etc. Also it was mentioned in an article I read that AMD's approach from now will be mutlicore as opposed to MEGASINGLECORE. Which if you check it, is the way the industry as a whole (not just in GPU and CPU) but on a whole. Parallelism. You can only go SO FAST, after FAST is WIDE.

[Spazosaurus]

I think we can all agree that ATI has superior multi card technology.Now really and truly, HOW multi gpu is achieved should not matter since both nv and amd use their respective linking tech to achieve the bonding in any case. (although single pcb IS better for lower power consumption and heat generation)

The main ingredient in the scaling of the tech is the sli/crossfire. What nvidia really needs to work on is improving their SLI (that is IF they really intend to go the route of uniting two smaller forces to make a single large one or if they're gonna continue in the vein of making one very powerful part).

I think the next few months will be interesting to see how ati can improve on its recent successes and how nvidia responds to the red team's renewed vigour.

[W1nTry]

Hmm...

9800GX2 is woefully expensive

CeBIT 2008 Sometimes you don't get what you pay for

By Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday, 11 March 2008, 3:34 AM

THE NVIDIA 9800GX2 is turning out to be a pretty huge joke, and it is not even out yet. I can't wait to see the fanbois on the forums bragging about how much they got taken for, prepare for laughs.

Why am I down on this card? Several reasons, the main one is price. It is absurdly expensive for what you get, and what you get isn't all that much.

We printed the numbers a few days ago, here if you missed it, and they are pretty woeful. Lets assume the worst for the 3870X2, call it 13,500 3DMark06, and lets assume the best for the the 9800GX2, with a driver drop and other hacks, say it hits 15K. A little math (15,000/13,500 = 1.111) tells us that it will be about 11% faster than the 3870X2. No problem so far.

The funny part? It is going to retail for $599 US, you read that right, $599. The X2 is at $449, 75% of the price. A bit more math tells us that the price performance (3DMark/$) of the X2 is 30/$ and 25/$ for the GX2. That is one hell of a difference, and it is based on best case assumptions. To put it in different terms, you could get a 3870X2 AND a 3870 for a three way for around the same money.

Don't look for this thing to come down in price much, vendors are telling me they are getting charged $425 +/- $25 for kits depending on who they are. When you add a box, trinkets and shipping, you end up with something that can't be sold for much less than that MSRP.

Before you think that the price will go down with volume, don't hold your breath. The numbers I was quoted for allocation are laughably low. Two PCBs, cutouts, bridges and assembly are not cheap, and expensive is not something OEMs like. Neither are dual PCB solutions.

In the end, you have a hot and expensive card that can't justify it's exorbitant cost. With muc h faster and cheaper 3870X2s arriving in short order, there seems little point to the GX2. Who was it that said something about not launching a product unless it was 20% faster than the competition? I guess that quote will have to be airbrushed from the corporate database before the 18th.

As with anything yuh take it with a pinch of salt.. so i'll leave some hope for the green camp (though if the previous gen 7950X2 is anything to go by... then yeah I see a repeat occurence waiting to happen), if what is stated above is right... then SHAME on Nvidia for not doing better!

[Spazosaurus]

I was just waiting for you to post this lol. I let go oneee steups when I read this. As though NV have their head in the sand or something. I would believe that this thing would perform mediocre performance like that and indeed be that expensive. That product would be a total bust once this is true.

[W1nTry]

*W1nTry directs Capt to the 7950GX2 snafu of yesteryear*  err you mean if they DOH stick their heads in the sand AGAIN right?

[Spazosaurus]

lol yeah if they DOH stick their head in the sand. But they have to be total morons to sell a card for $600 us that barely outperforms the $250 8800gt. That would be absolute and utter madness. And not forgetting we have the 8800gts 512 for $300 that approaches ultra speeds and performance. I cant understand for the life of me WHY they would even release this thing if those numbers are right. Maybe they have so many excess PCB's that they have to get rid of them this way, moving two of them out at once. But if that is the case, this is NOT the way to do it. Sell 8800gts's or gt's I mean wtf??

[W1nTry]

Well it will cost alot since its a dual PCB with basically 2 GTs... so in the least its the COST of 2 GTs which is close to 450USD, then you have to remember they need to recoup R&D costs and of course its not a standard layout. THe PCB actually is a cut out layered design... so its more expensive to make since its not in MASS numbers... so I could believe this card could cost close to 500USD... not 600USD but in teh least 450... and even then it's probably a loss. They making this product as an ego trip.. they don't need to make this card imho. Their cards are already more or less in teh least in teh single card dept, and the Tri SLI does win alot of benches... but as I said.. it's prolly an ego thing, since AMD doing it make them look like more of a tech and innovation leader....

[Philosophical45]

check it out here>>> http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1331/nvidia_s_geforce_9800_gx2_early_test/index.html

damn that's large arse card..

[rassmatic]

disappointing. soo damn disappointing. they should have named this card the 8800GX2. it doesn't perform anything like i'd expect a Geforce 9 series card to. but i guess it's largely due to the drivers not being fully optimized. i mean, the card card doesn't even support DirectX 10.1 with SM4.1!!! although no games at the moment supports it, it would be nice for a new series of card to carry new technology (the 3870X2 has Dx10.1 support BTW). Yuh disappointin meh NVidia.

[W1nTry]

Ah well capt... seems I may have been right....we'll call the 9800GX2 the '7950GX2 2nd Edition' kinda like Vista is MS Windows ME II XD

[Spazosaurus]

This is old news. Also, there's another topic for video card news, but not to worry son, its all good. *Merged* Nice comparison between cards though.

Its also important to remember that the new name doenst mean that this is a new generation. ALL nvidia cards post November 2006 are based on g80 tech so you would not get any new features like dx10.1 until next gen comes around.

LOL @ 7950gx2 2nd edition. Nvidia, its all well and good to make mistakes, in fact its a necessary thing. But when you make the same mistake twice, you have to ask youself...wtf??

[W1nTry]

I think most know its not next gen per say, which is a little troubling since AMD will release the 4xxx series this year.. that would mean that Nvidia's next gen this year would be...??Xxxxx? it's funny to me that the nvidia naming has caught up with the AMD naming.... at this rate you'll go out to but a 5800 AMD card and a X1800 Nvidia card.. but yeah... shooting urself in the foot twice can't be a healthy practice...

[Spazosaurus]

LOL nvidia will catch up to amd and amd will catch up to nvidia too lol. 3xxx ati...to 4xxxx then what do we have? ati 5200?

[W1nTry]

That's the thing eh.. we'll hopefully have 5200 series cards that don't suck, a 5800 series card that's NOT a vacuum cleaner or we could have a X1600 that kicks @$$... it's gonna be weird... I studying what about those poor ppl that mix it up...

*guy walks into bestbuy*
baka: "I'd like to get an X800 please"
Clerk: "Would that be Nvidia or AMD?"
baka: "Wait.. their two?"
Clerk: "Yes sir"
baka: "Who's the original manu?"
Clerk: "AMD sir"
baka: "I'll have the AMD X800 then!"
Clerk: "Certainly sir, excellent choice"
... O_o

Later that night..
baka: WTF crysis won't even run on this crap...

[rassmatic]

^HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

[Philosophical45]

That's the thing eh.. we'll hopefully have 5200 series cards that don't suck, a 5800 series card that's NOT a vacuum cleaner or we could have a X1600 that kicks @$$... it's gonna be weird... I studying what about those poor ppl that mix it up...

*guy walks into bestbuy*
baka: "I'd like to get an X800 please"
Clerk: "Would that be Nvidia or AMD?"
baka: "Wait.. their two?"
Clerk: "Yes sir"
baka: "Who's the original manu?"
Clerk: "AMD sir"
baka: "I'll have the AMD X800 then!"
Clerk: "Certainly sir, excellent choice"
... O_o

Later that night..
baka: WTF crysis won't even run on this crap...

 

[TrinireturnofGamez]

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pconline.com.cn%2Fdiy%2Fgraphics%2Freviews%2F0803%2F1243353.html&langpair=zh%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

according to this chinese site , the 9800 is no faster than the 8800, only real benefits would be increased overclockability due to 65nm.

 There is a definite possibility that ATI's HD 4000 series of cards will 0wn Nvidia's @ss, since they are slated to be at least 40% faster , with twice as much shading power, more texture units etc..

if only they would launch soon.


Nvidia got lazy, it might be funny to see them having to play the 'value' game when they could easily have taken the performance crown by boosting their cards a bit.

Though there might be the release of a super clocked '9800 ultra' that could mitigate ATi's lead a bit , the top tier ATI card should still be able to maintain a 10% performance margin over Nvidia.