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November 22, 2006 News Before the Break - Josh Before we get into the Thanksgiving break, I thought I would post a few things as well as provide a few thoughts here and there. Things have been very busy in the real world at home, and unfortunately those events have kept me away from any significant writing. I have finished testing and benchmarking several products, now all that needs to happen is the writing! I am in the middle of testing two C-Media CMI-8788 sound cards, and luckily for consumers they are aimed at two different price points. So depending on how deep the pocketbook goes, as well as what features are desired, either would be a good alternative to the Creative products currently out there. While one is more budget oriented, the other is about as feature packed as a soundcard can get... and it lives up to its hype quite well. GeForce 8800 Series The 8800 launch from several weeks ago was a pretty stunning achievement for NVIDIA. This large and complex product hit the store shelves as promised, and has really never been in short supply. Not only that, but we are finally starting to see the prices of these boards drop towards the MSRP levels promised by NVIDIA. Currently buyers can find the 8800 GTS for around $460 and the 8800 GTX for around $639. These models still have a little ways to go before they hit the $449 and $599 price points, but I think the key here is that both cards are represented by a lot of different manufacturers with some nice bundles. Oh, and they are in stock too pretty much everywhere you go. This is a huge difference compared to the 2004 release of the GeForce 6 series, where the 6800 Ultra and GT were just not available in good quantities until about 3 to 4 months after the launch. The 8800 GTS and GTX cards are without a doubt the most powerful cards on the market, with the GTS version beating out the 7900 GTX/7950 GX2 and the X1950 XTX quite handily. While ATI is still selling the X1950 XTX (still their top of the line card) it seems that NVIDIA and its partners are now quietly removing the 7900 GTX and the 7950 GX2 and pushing forward the 7950 GT. Online now there are very few 7900 GTX selections anymore, but eBay is getting swamped with these cards from users obviously trying to jump on the 8800's. This means that there are still a LOT of good deals out there on these used cards, and they should provide users with a great experience for a lot lower price than getting the cards new in retail. Many are still waiting for more word on ATI's R600 series, which will directly compete with the 8800 series, but so far things have been quiet on that front. The latest dirt is that the R600 will feature 64 unified shaders, each of which is singularly more powerful than the Stream Processors that NVIDIA uses in the 8800. It does not appear though that these unified shaders will be clocked up nearly as high as NVIDIA's (plus there are 1/2 of them), so my best guess here is that both products will be very close in actual performance. What may be a huge advantage for the R600 is its 512 bit main memory bus, which when combined with fast GDDR-4, can give a huge amount of bandwidth. It also will allow upwards of 1 GB of memory per card (2 GB most likely in professional versions). NVIDIA currently has the high end market to itself with its very impressive 8800 parts, but it does not appear that ATI will be that far behind once DirectX 10 supporting Vista starts shipping. From a consumer standpoint though, NVIDIA certainly has the market to itself. Once the R600 ships, NVIDIA will be readying their refresh of the 8800's as well as the low end and midrange versions of this new architecture. Now all we need are good WinXP Pro 64 bit drivers for the 8800 series, and most users will be happy! NVIDIA Opens SLI Marketplace NVIDIA has been hard at work on their marketplace idea for about a year now, and we finally get to see it unveiled. The SLI Marketplace is a portal to buying SLI hardware and gear, not just new from retailers like Newegg and Monarch, but also from eBay users wishing to sell their used parts. This one-stop portal should provide nearly anything a user needs while wanting to either buy a full SLI system, or construct one of their own. Currently the portal is only open to US customers, but NVIDIA is working to expand that to international users. The site itself is very easy to navigate, and within two to three clicks users can see what all is available from graphics cards, motherboards, memory, power supplies, and now SLI certified cases. The first of which is the Coolermaster Stacker 830 Evolution. This case is a limited time offer, and is NVIDIA branded. The price at $299 is pretty hefty, but it certainly is an impressive specimen, and an interesting first choice for a SLI Certified case. So, if you are a user looking to jump into the SLI world, it would be well worth your time to browse the SLI marketplace. NVIDIA is not trying to become the new Newegg, but rather they are enabling their retail partners to reach out to consumers more effectively through this easy to use portal. Not only that, but they are trying to establish a viable community of people wishing to buy and sell used parts. NVIDIA does have a Gear Store that they sell NVIDIA branded merchandise (as well as that case). Biostar and the V-Ranger Biostar is really pushing to get into the graphics card market, and one of their first big pushes to differentiate their product is the performance tuner they call the V-Ranger. This customized program acts not only as a solid overclocker, but also at controlling heat and power usage. Depending on what the user wants, the V-Ranger can adjust clock speeds downwards below stock speeds, so power and heat are both reduced when performance is not needed. The first product they are bundling this with is their newly redesigned 7600 GS. While Biostar does not have much of a foothold in the North American market, they are actively pursuing the Asia and European market. Expect to see more and more from Biostar, as they seem pretty intent to be a major player in the graphics arena. November 8, 2006 GeForce 8800 Technology Preview - Josh Unfortunately my 8800 sample did not arrive in time for testing, but I was able to write up a preview of the technology behind the product. NVIDIA has pulled out all the stops with this next generation part, and it has the most advanced and highest performing product on the market. Here is a quick quote: We are now entering a new series of products that radically change the progression of pixel generation. I firmly believe we are seeing a paradigm shift in the graphics industry that is comparable to the first generation of consumer 3D graphics cards. These new products are an inflection point in graphics, as these products will not only be able to produce breathtaking images, but provide new and exciting functionality well apart from the traditional graphics pipeline. So why am I so excited about this technology? Let us explore the reasons… You can read the entire preview here. November 1, 2006 $80,000 in Prizes to be Given at GeForce LAN 3 - Josh It seems that NVIDIA is pulling out all the stops for their upcoming GeForce 3 LAN and G80 release. They are offering over $80,000 in prizes to people attending, and considering it is only open to 300 to 400 gamers, that turns into some seriously good chances for loot. You can register at http://www.geforcelan.com for your chance to cash in. Up for grabs are laptops, video cards, power supplies, cases, processors, memory, and pretty much anything else related to computers. If you can get off work in the middle of the week, and live somewhere near the Bay Area, then it sounds like a great thing to get into. Not only do you get a good chance to win stuff, but you get to be at the release of NVIDIA's next generation graphics card/technology. It should be a great time! ATI/AMD Releases the X1650 XT It seems the talk of the RV560 and RV570 was a bit misleading, as there really is only one chip instead of two. The X1950 Pro was released some weeks back based on the RV570, and it is a very nice midrange performer for AMD. The new X1650 XT is based on a partially disabled RV560 in that it still has 12 ROPS and 8 vertex shaders, but it has had the pixel shader units cut down to 24 instead of the X1950 Pro's 36 and a 128 bit memory path compared to its bigger brother's 256 bit. The product is aimed to be priced at $149, which puts it right at the same level as the GeForce 7600 GT. Preliminary results show that it performs much on the same level as that card, but it does feature the nice quality enhancements of the R5x0 series of chips. It is also the second AMD card with the new CrossFire support. Reviews so far have been positive considering its price point, and it is a far more competent chip than the previous X1600 series of cards for its price range. Catalyst 6.10 Released With most of the Catalyst programmers really working hard on Vista support, there were many that were expecting the 6.10s to be released in early November. Seems the driver folks came through and delivered it on the last day of October! The most notable change in these drivers is the native Oblivion HDR/AA support previously provided by the "Chuck Patch" and some minor performance improvements. GPGPU is also supported by these, as well as the new X1950 and X1650 video cards released in the past month and a half. Linux Catalysts are also available for those interested. Go to ATI's new site at http://ati.amd.com for the downloads themselves. October 20, 2006 NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Review - Josh SLI has been a primary focus of NVIDIA since the introduction of the GeForce 6 series. This has turned out to be a very strong selling point for NVIDIA based cards because it is so easy to increase gaming performance with the addition of an identical card. The amount of driver and software work that has gone into SLI is unprecedented at this time, and this work has paid off in the form of the single fastest "card" in the market... the GeForce 7950 GX2. This dual GPU card has proven to be a success for NVIDIA in terms of mindshare and sales. Now that these cards have hit the sub-$500 range, users have an even greater motivation to buy one. Even though we face the next generation of DX10 based cards in the near future, the GX2 should still be able to perform in current and upcoming games in a very impressive manner. I took an in depth look at this card, and what exactly it offers users willing to pony up the money to put one of these in their machine. Here is a quote:
You can find the entire article here. October 17, 2006 ATI Radeon X1950 Pro Release - Josh Today the midrange graphics card market received a tremendous boost. ATI has officially released their RV570 based X1950 Pros. These are aimed at the $199 and $249 markets, and have 256 MB and 512 MB of GDDR-3 respectively. This is the first TSMC based 80 nm part to hit the market, and from what I can see its performance comes between the GeForce 7900 GS and GeForce 7950 GT for the most part. There are some applications where the ATI parts do overcome the more expensive 7950 GT, but for the most part the price/performance of the different offerings fall where one would expect. The RV570 features 12 ROPS, 36 pixel shader pipelines, 8 vertex shaders, and 12 texture units. It also has the full 512 bit internal Ringbus memory controller, as well as a full 256 bit external memory path. The chip itself is not a cut down version of the R580 (as in units are disabled but still present), and the switch to the 80 nm process has made it a much smaller chip to process. Apparently it is around 230 mm square, while the competing G71 based GeForce 7900 GS is around 196 mm square (but with portions disabled). The RV570 is also the first ATI chip to feature an internal CrossFire connection. Instead of using the dongle and CrossFire Edition card, ATI has gone with a "over-the-top" connection like NVIDIA's SLI. Unlike SLI though, it uses two bridges instead of one. I have not received word yet on how its bandwidth compares to SLI, but I would expect it to be slightly faster than the older technology. This means no more external compositing chip or shared bandwidth over the PCI-e bus. Now that CrossFire technology has at least reached parity with SLI (and could in fact be more advanced), I would hope to see the software side step up and provide the end user support to make CrossFire as big of a success as SLI. ATI was able to implement a new cooling solution for these cards, and though the core runs at a brisk 580 MHz it only needs a single slot cooler. The card appears fairly compact (though I don't have one for any comparisons). The shrink to 80 nm does not necessarily mean that it should run cooler and faster than its 90 nm counterparts, as it is supposed to be more or less an optical shrink. From all indications though, TSMC's 80 nm process is on the whole more refined than the 90 nm process it is based upon (Low-K). In the past several years it seems that ATI has been the more aggressive of the two when dealing with new process nodes and half-nodes. This is probably one of ATI's most impressive midrange cards to date. The performance and capabilities of this card are amazingly close to the high end X1950 XTX. Once these become a lot more available in retail, users should be flocking to pick them up. Again, this type of performance at the $199 and $249 range is really second to none, and the features that the X1x00 architecture are second to none.
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