Leadtek's $900 Performance Leviathan

hmmm i think the oblivion outdoor benchie is up the ****..... why is the 7900gtx on top??? oh and the 8800gtx was outgunned by the 320 and 640 8800gts's... weired!

Just another gimick to take your money. Next they will start putting turbo chargers and ram air intakes on our video cards. You don't need to spend a bundle to get a good card and to me this is exactly what this article shows.

Errr...Is it Quadcores ? I deserve Quadcores for 900 $

lol 8800gtx or 2900xtx in sli/crossfire will cost about what one of these cards do, so I have no desire to see these "leviathan" cards in sli lol 1800 is a build not just the gpus. I dont think this could ever come close to being worth it ,$ vs performance , at least not at its current price.

As for quad core vs dual core... wouldn't matter much if any. If a game is not coded for more than two threads than it won't matter at all unless there is a bunch of tasks that can handle a quad core running in the background (Which is not he case for individual game tests).

It looks like the GTS 320 and GTS numbers have been copied in the first benchmark. Is that just my imagination?

It does look that way. But it should be kept in mind that the GTS 320 is an overclocked version, not the standard, so some numbers might be very close. Still, identical numbers point to someone making a mistake when filling in the charts. Also, even in the charts where the 320 and 640 versions seem very close, I think a standard GTS 320 would not have scored so well. Alternatively, the 640 version could have been overclocked and therefore put in better numbers.

There are users on this forum who have a more expensive GPU setup.

its nice to see extreme bias, with no 2900 xt 1gb ddr4, its been out from sapphire and his for about 2 months yet toms wont bench the fastest card in their reviews, but they do the 2600 xt ddr4, i makes no sense why u would do one oem moded card and not the other

and if ur comparing dx10 cards u should run vista (nvida) , if some1 says first card for dx10 adn has an ad campeighn for vista by not bench on that, u will have to switch soon to play crisis, tf2, and quake why not start benching it now so that people can see what they are buying for a more modern platform

As a technical showcase for an overclocked 8800 card it only just beats XFX 8800 Ultra XXX using an AIR cooler.

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/produc [...] Id=1085635

Nvidia better get their next gen cards out soon because I think the 8800 chips are really being pushed to their limits by these overclocked cards and I wouldn't be suprised to see plenty of RMA requests in the not to distant future which will give Nvidia a bad name.

@zanzabar: I don't think you can call it 'extreme bias' but yeah I also would like to see the 2900 xt benched by Toms. We all know DX10 is the future whether it be on XP or not so why not test stuff with Vista to highlight were Nvidia are lacking and should pull their socks up (drivers). A comparison in DX9 is still justified though for those that have not/will not make the upgrade.

I was impressed with some of the rankings of the 2900. And these benchies really prove the strenghts and weaknesses of the card. AA & AF really change its performance, but without them the 2900 was almost on top. Even beat the Ultra on 3DMark, but was all over the place on the rest, was sad in Doom3 at the bottom.

Speaks alot to the power of the card, if they could only get the drivers to work with the AA & AF on.

As for the Leviathan, I can't see where it showed it was worth the extra money. Didn't seem to do all that much better than the other cards out there, for 900 bucks I'd was a huge gap in performance between it and the next version down. I'd crossfire a couple of the 2900's before even considering this card. Just seems like a waste.

$900 for a graphics card is nothing. Have you checked out the price on some of the highend nVidia Quattro cards?

Most readers of this forum will never have a need for such a card. I know I don't, but if somebody was passing them out for free I might hafta stand in line...twice.

I believe that is an overstatement on your part. The 8800 is still king in DX10 and the new drivers are almost on par in DX9 in XP vs Vista. While there are a few areas where AMD/ATI shines they aren't winning by any means. Nv also plans on having their second gen cards later this year. With AMD/ATI's recent track record you could be waiting a year or more for their second gen card.

No bias here if AMD/ATI made a better card I would buy it.

doom 3 has been an invalid bench for a long it limits all unknown cards to 30 fps, and used to limit all non nvidia cards to high (u couldent use super high) for non nvidia cards, and to put this into perspective the game came out at the time were the top nvidia card was teh 5900 ultra, and that card lost to the ati 9500,9600,9700, and 980 in all revisions and the 5900 couldent even run the game well if at all with high / supper high settings

and at people who doubt the power of ati go and look at future mark and search the orb by grafix scores teh 2900xt 1gb in cross fire is on top, its 2nd only to a set of fully moded 8800 ultras with replaced memory dims with volt mods and fully customized mb and grafix bios and customized drivers just for that benchmark with liquid nitrogen cooling of course, not to say that the ati cards dont have the same but its documented on the xtreme system forums 9this setup won overall by like 30 points)

Peltiers are shite, and I haven't seen one that's worth the power or money needed to get one. Additionally, while they can get something below ambient, you then will have to deal with condensation; if the peltier goes out, you'll probably have 5 seconds before the chips burn-out.

Just for reference, Anandtech did a review of two or three CPU coolers that used peltiers and guess what? The Ultra 120 eXtreme still whooped their asses! Hell, the performance of the coolers using peltiers was practically no better than that of the stock HSF. Those coolers, however, were designed to operate at ambient or higher to avoid condesation. Regardless, they still failed.

If your rig is already water-cooled, then the odds are in favor that you have already water-cooled the GPU as well, so, yes of course, this card doesn't make much sense. But, for those of us who don't want or need to water-cool our whole system, just the GPU, then this makes more sense. It's still expensive as hell, but isn't it always?

Funny thing, what you said about other setups that were better at cooling when the article never even posted temps! I would also have liked to have seen some pictures of this card setup in a couple of popular cases.

When you consider the price for 2 x 2900XTs 1000MB, a PSU to run them (at 230-250w apiece under load you'll need about 1Kw), and your electric bill, I think they're the biggest waste of money on the planet. I see both 8800 Ultras and GTXs ahead on 3dmark05, and it's pretty much a toss up between the 3 on 3Dmark06. While the Nvidia cards may be highly modded, who's to say the ATIs aren't as well? Considering the cost to power these cards, the 8800Ultra/GTX is a much better deal in the long run.

This Leadtek is obviously aimed at a specific market, those not interested in SLI and those who also want an easy to setup water cooled card. I think Leadtek has once again accomplished what they set out to do, and is one of the best manufacturers on the planet.

I can get this card from our suppliers for almost the same price as an Ultra, so not bad at all. But then having used Leadteks ever since BFG voided my (lifetime?) warranty on 2 x 6800U OCs, I'm a little biased toward Leadtek.

Anyone running a 2900XT or 2 obviously isn't interested in going green.