PC Gaming costs: going up!

[xeenrecoil]

Its that time again...

The cost of Gaming is once again going up with the introduction of PCIe and SLI, not for your average gamer but for the hard core enthusiast.

Today you can go out and buy a very fast gaming core for around $850 USD, that cost is about to go up to $1250 USD if you want the latest and greatest, which many of us of course do.

SLI will bring the gaming experiance to a whole new level, up to an 85% increase in frame rates over a single card solution according to the latest benchmarks.

I say its about damn time, although im not necessarily looking forward to spending $800-$1000 on just graphics cards, i will do it because i want that insane graphics performance that you just cant get from a single card solution.

With NVidia leading the way to a better gaming experiance, throwing down the gauntlet the future looks bright for PC gaming.

On another note what is the PSU requirements going to be for an SLI setup, the 6800Ultra already recommends a 450w PSU, granted they dont mention wether that is a True 450w or generic 450w, so im hoping that we can get by with a 480w True wattage PSU.

Only time will tell, im excited about SLI, and i know alot of other people are as well. Also im interested in seeing ATI's practical response to SLI, other then just overclocking one of their cards with a refridgeration unit to match the performance of the SLI configuration.

It looks like Nvidia has started a war here, they fired the first shot with SLI, and it was right to the heart of ATI.
Now as we have seen in the recent past ATI is no coward they wont back down from a fight, as they are fierce competitors, i dont imagine we will see them sticking their tail betwen their legs and running, they will come up with an answer to this vexing NVidia SLI problem soon.

ATI this is what seperated the winners from the loosers, the chips are on the table and NVidia has all the aces, what will you do, bluff, or call?

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[ChipDeath]

if you want the latest and greatest, which many of us of course do

Not really... The majority of real hardcore enthusiasts know that they can buy the high-mid range stuff and OC it to the same levels as the best stuff anyway, and we can often mod Cheapo 'SE' models of cards into their faster siblings and suchlike.... so we usually end up with a top-spec rig for upper-mid range money.

Granted there's always going to be people who'll always buy all the top-end parts, but they're the kind of guys who think paying > $600 for just a CPU is acceptable so money really isn't a problem for them....

This is how I see it anyhow...

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[Crashman]

ATI could take another shot at MAXX. It would actually be cheaper than SLI, with the same results.

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[Ned_Flanders]

? Whats MAXX?

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[Ned_Flanders]

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[Spitfire_x86]

MAXX was ATI's Dual Core Rage card.

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[xeenrecoil]

heya Chipdeath;

Granted there's always going to be people who'll always buy all the top-end parts, but they're the kind of guys who think paying > $600 for just a CPU is acceptable so money really isn't a problem for them....

There is alot more people that dont have low limited budgets then you think, im not one of them but i make it a priority over some other things. like a more expensive car for example, I drive a camaro instead of a corvette for my summer car, and stuff like that. its all in your priorities when your not loaded. What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want?

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[Coyote]

I'm one of the few who isn't exited by SLI. I just don't see myself blowing $800-1000 on two top-of-the-line cards for SLI. And, I'd rather have one good card then two mediocre one's.

If SLI makes two $200 cards better than one $500 card, well OK. But that seems like a weird business model for these companies to pursue.

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[BeyRevRa]

According to Newegg.com a PCI 6600GT is $215, while at the same time the 6800GT is around $400. According to what I have read, the 2x6600GT should outperform the 6800GT by a pretty big margin.

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[RichPLS]

But is this just in certain applications that are written for it?
Would a 6600 double frame rates or just go up by 20%?

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[BeyRevRa]

No, its all based on the drivers, the games will still only see one video card. According to tests, there is anywhere from a 60-85% gain when using SLI, depending on the application. A 6600GT with a 60-85% performance gain would beat a 6800 GT I think... pretty badly.

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[kamaboko]

i'm curious, how many of you did the sli setup when this was the rage with voodoo?

 

[coylter]

A lot.

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[Clob]

I always thaught it would make more sence to use 2 cores on a single board anyhow. Why have 2 seperate cards when 1 can do the same? I think they just want people to spend more money on somthing that could have ben designed better. But to think, what if there was an SLI for deul core cards? There would be about a 325% performance increaese? Would be rather neat because 4 cores would have a hard time fitting on one board IMO. But I am senil right now so dont listen to me.

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[DeKamme]

Poster: kamaboko
Subject: Re: PC Gaming costs: going up!

i'm curious, how many of you did the sli setup when this was the rage with voodoo?

I did. I bought 2 cheapo Voodoo cards, put them in SLI, and suddenly Final Fantasy went much faster with really nice 3D effects!

Re -> clob:
Why don't all servers use Intel's onchip HyperThreading technology in stead of real dual processors? Because separate hardware has it's own registers, controllers, steering, chipsets, ...
Dual GPU in SLI makes you dream about the future though, no doubt about that - only prob now is that NVidia uses SLI, and ATI -may- be going for dual chipsets...

I must say THG is completely in it's right about the paper releases & late announcements - why bother to take all the effort to review test models that will never make it in the stores in large quantities. My dealer is official importer for my country for quite some products, and they have a hard time training their sales staff to know all the products - I was the one that said they only have old and budget versions of cards (LE cards), still I never saw a benchamerk of LE cards on THG!

I think many end-users end up buying a 'weak' version of the card they saw in a review, not even knowing about it. I found the most effective way of comparisation to be checking what card was reviewed, looking up chip details on the mfg's website, then comparing that to what I find in the shop -> then conclude those LE versions have shorter pipelines, less recent RAM (DDR1), ...

My dealer doesn't even know what DDR2 and DDR3 is!

Maybe it's time to start my own dealership ^_^

Hard times for the hardware noob, perfect time for the pro - I've built 8 systems for clients outside work situation this month, it's quite easy to show where shops and books make mistakes these days, and bargain hunting is really easy!