- Aug 4, 2006
- 920
- 0
- 18,980
Ok this is brutal i got my pc back in 2002 with a geforce ti series card, p4 2.4 ghz, 512 mb ram, asus p4s8x. I have since upgraded the graphics card to a 6600GT, 2 gig ram, and a 420 watt psu.
I litterally cannot play Crysis however iv had the pleasure of playing massive amounts of the game on my friends pc however (8800ultra, 2 gig ram, 680i mobo, Q6600).
Anyways i was waiting for the 8800 and conroe processors and then i heard about the R600 and waited for that thinking it was going to be good. Then when it was not i said why not wait for Penryn and the 9 series. And so i waited for 2 years now. Iv basically come to the point where im going to spend $1000 on a new pc and then spend $2500-3000 later when the new 9800 cards come out.. but by then would not not be good to wait for nehalem?? Im so utterly perplexed as to what to do. iv made a build that should run Crysis on high and get me through with unreal tournament, Cod4, farcry 2 etc.. but i dont know.. can someone help me out plz
do i wait for the new motherboards, penryn, and possibly new graphics cards... so that would mean i would be waiting till about january... which would be almost unbearable. considering my pc
*btw i was looking for new information and i found this which is a very interesting read: http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/so3d/q4_2007/so3d07_4.htm
"The use of TSMC%u2019s 55 nm HS line serves two purposes. The first is that the chips will run very fast, yet pull significantly less power than the previous 80 nm HS. The RV670 has a much higher transistor count than the R600, and I am speculating that it might be as high as 800 million transistors vs. the R600%u2019s 700 million. The second, and perhaps most important for consumers, is that the die size of the RV670 will be much smaller than the R600 as well as the competing G92. If the 800 million transistor figure is correct, the die size should be just shy of 300 mm square for the RV670. Compare this to the R600%u2019s 420 mm square, G80%u2019s 480 mm square, and the G92%u2019s 324 mm square, we can see that the RV670 holds a significant advantage in die size. Initially the RV670 will be more expensive to produce in terms of wafer costs than the G92, but in a few months the per wafer costs will decrease as well as the improvement in yields and speed bins as the design matures.
The initial top card based on the RV670 looks to be an 825 MHz clocked unit with 512 MB of fast GDDR-3 (upwards of 1 GHz). Expect these to be introduced between $259 and $299. Just as NVIDIA did, a 256 MB version for less money will be available sometime after launch. All indications point to it being a faster card than the currently released 8800 GT, yet still existing at the same price range.
Let the Games Begin
In the past few years, whenever there has been a new introduction of graphics chips, the high end products were displayed first. This is not the case this time. We are seeing the midrange cards released first, and being released at very reasonable prices. This is a far cry from the past when we have seen the $450 to $650 cards take the spotlight first, with the midrange and low end cards coming in much later.
I firmly believe the reason for this is that both RV670 and G92 chips will prove to be much more flexible than previous offerings. When we consider the advances that have been made with chip cooling and power delivery, it opens up some pretty tremendous options on how to address the market. By using the same chip in both high end and midrange offerings, these companies can retain good margins across the board. How these cards will be differentiated will be in how much power they are willing to apply to it, and how much cooling is needed for that power and speed.
NVIDIA has taken the first shot, and perhaps has shown what is in store a bit more than what AMD is planning to do. The midrange 8800 GT is truly an excellent card for an outstanding price. But the 8800 GT will not be the end all of the G92 chip. I firmly believe that NVIDIA will be making waves again at the end of November with a %u201Crefresh%u201D of their 8800 GTS and GTX cards.
Remember, the G92 appears to be a full G80 in terms of gross features. That means that there are disabled SP clusters and 2 inactive ROP clusters. While this is not confirmed, by looking at the 8800 GT we can take some educated guesses as to what these refreshes will look like. The refreshed 8800 GTS will likely feature the full 112 SPs, but also feature 5 ROP clusters and the 320 bit memory bus. The chip will likely run at 600 to 650 MHz stock, with SPs running in the 1600 MHz range. This will give the 8800 GTS a much needed performance increase, all the while staying in the old 8800 GTS price range. The 8800 GTX will feature the fully unlocked G92 chip, but running at a 700 MHz core speed with SPs up towards 1800 MHz. It will feature the full 384 bit memory bus.
These cards would of course overshadow the $259 RV670, and NVIDIA would hope to take away some of its thunder. These refreshed cards would likely feature dual slot cooling, and of course suck up a lot more power. The GTX refresh would likely utilize the two PCI-E power plugs that the current spec GTX and Ultra uses. The G92 has been in production for some time, and work has constantly been done by the Fab engineers to improve yields, bins, and power consumption. By December the latest chips off of the line should show some good improvements in these characteristics, and that will allow NVIDIA to release the big daddy of G92 boards. This is the long rumored 8800 GX2, which will feature two full G92 chips running around 600 MHz and 1.5 GB of memory.
NVIDIA is a very nimble company, and the way they address providing cards to the market allows them a lot of flexibility. The first runs of new cards are all produced for NVIDIA by Flextronics and Foxconn. Asus, Biostar, EVGA, BFG, and others all buy lots of these cards and slap on their own stickers and put them in their boxes with bundles of their choice. The first series of products are all fairly vanilla, but it allows NVIDIA to get its parts to market in a timely manner and allow their partners to develop cards on their own without dealing with time to market constraints. This flexibility will likely allow NVIDIA to successfully %u201Crefresh%u201D their higher end cards on very short notice.
AMD does not look like they are planning on being outdone by NVIDIA. I highly doubt that NVIDIA%u2019s 8800 refresh spoilers will be met with silence and emptiness. AMD could easily come back with a dual slot cooled RV670 clocked upwards of 1 GHz. We must also consider that due to the flexibility of the Ringbus Memory architecture, the RV670 could be hiding a full 512 bit memory interface. If AMD comes out with a higher speed card using the full 512 bits, then it will have a likely competitor to NVIDIA%u2019s high end cards. Even if AMD does not have a 512 bit bus hiding in there, the ability to utilize high speed GDDR-4 with 512 MB and 1 GB densities will give them a competitive product.
AMD will also do a two chip card based on the RV670, and it will be showing up in the same Q1 2008 timeframe as the NVIDIA GX2 offering. The flexibility of both CrossFire and SLI, combined with the flexibility of the new RV670 and G92 chips could very well herald a new golden age of 3D graphics in terms of features, price, and performance. When we also consider that AMD will be releasing refreshes of their RV615 and RV630 chips, we will see the same multiple fixes that were implemented on the RV670 make their way to the lower midrange and budget sectors. These products should be much more able to compete with NVIDIA%u2019s G84 and G86 based parts. Not only that, but we will have some honest competition at each price point. It has been a long, long time since we have seen such parity, and hopefully this speculation holds up.
The next few months will truly be fascinating to enthusiasts of all stripes (be it budget or high end). We will see a wide variety of cards being offered that will cater to almost any niche and price point. Both NVIDIA and AMD will give their partners a lot of leeway to help differentiate those parts. I am honestly looking forward to this time like no other in the past 10 years."
I litterally cannot play Crysis however iv had the pleasure of playing massive amounts of the game on my friends pc however (8800ultra, 2 gig ram, 680i mobo, Q6600).
Anyways i was waiting for the 8800 and conroe processors and then i heard about the R600 and waited for that thinking it was going to be good. Then when it was not i said why not wait for Penryn and the 9 series. And so i waited for 2 years now. Iv basically come to the point where im going to spend $1000 on a new pc and then spend $2500-3000 later when the new 9800 cards come out.. but by then would not not be good to wait for nehalem?? Im so utterly perplexed as to what to do. iv made a build that should run Crysis on high and get me through with unreal tournament, Cod4, farcry 2 etc.. but i dont know.. can someone help me out plz
do i wait for the new motherboards, penryn, and possibly new graphics cards... so that would mean i would be waiting till about january... which would be almost unbearable. considering my pc
*btw i was looking for new information and i found this which is a very interesting read: http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/so3d/q4_2007/so3d07_4.htm
"The use of TSMC%u2019s 55 nm HS line serves two purposes. The first is that the chips will run very fast, yet pull significantly less power than the previous 80 nm HS. The RV670 has a much higher transistor count than the R600, and I am speculating that it might be as high as 800 million transistors vs. the R600%u2019s 700 million. The second, and perhaps most important for consumers, is that the die size of the RV670 will be much smaller than the R600 as well as the competing G92. If the 800 million transistor figure is correct, the die size should be just shy of 300 mm square for the RV670. Compare this to the R600%u2019s 420 mm square, G80%u2019s 480 mm square, and the G92%u2019s 324 mm square, we can see that the RV670 holds a significant advantage in die size. Initially the RV670 will be more expensive to produce in terms of wafer costs than the G92, but in a few months the per wafer costs will decrease as well as the improvement in yields and speed bins as the design matures.
The initial top card based on the RV670 looks to be an 825 MHz clocked unit with 512 MB of fast GDDR-3 (upwards of 1 GHz). Expect these to be introduced between $259 and $299. Just as NVIDIA did, a 256 MB version for less money will be available sometime after launch. All indications point to it being a faster card than the currently released 8800 GT, yet still existing at the same price range.
Let the Games Begin
In the past few years, whenever there has been a new introduction of graphics chips, the high end products were displayed first. This is not the case this time. We are seeing the midrange cards released first, and being released at very reasonable prices. This is a far cry from the past when we have seen the $450 to $650 cards take the spotlight first, with the midrange and low end cards coming in much later.
I firmly believe the reason for this is that both RV670 and G92 chips will prove to be much more flexible than previous offerings. When we consider the advances that have been made with chip cooling and power delivery, it opens up some pretty tremendous options on how to address the market. By using the same chip in both high end and midrange offerings, these companies can retain good margins across the board. How these cards will be differentiated will be in how much power they are willing to apply to it, and how much cooling is needed for that power and speed.
NVIDIA has taken the first shot, and perhaps has shown what is in store a bit more than what AMD is planning to do. The midrange 8800 GT is truly an excellent card for an outstanding price. But the 8800 GT will not be the end all of the G92 chip. I firmly believe that NVIDIA will be making waves again at the end of November with a %u201Crefresh%u201D of their 8800 GTS and GTX cards.
Remember, the G92 appears to be a full G80 in terms of gross features. That means that there are disabled SP clusters and 2 inactive ROP clusters. While this is not confirmed, by looking at the 8800 GT we can take some educated guesses as to what these refreshes will look like. The refreshed 8800 GTS will likely feature the full 112 SPs, but also feature 5 ROP clusters and the 320 bit memory bus. The chip will likely run at 600 to 650 MHz stock, with SPs running in the 1600 MHz range. This will give the 8800 GTS a much needed performance increase, all the while staying in the old 8800 GTS price range. The 8800 GTX will feature the fully unlocked G92 chip, but running at a 700 MHz core speed with SPs up towards 1800 MHz. It will feature the full 384 bit memory bus.
These cards would of course overshadow the $259 RV670, and NVIDIA would hope to take away some of its thunder. These refreshed cards would likely feature dual slot cooling, and of course suck up a lot more power. The GTX refresh would likely utilize the two PCI-E power plugs that the current spec GTX and Ultra uses. The G92 has been in production for some time, and work has constantly been done by the Fab engineers to improve yields, bins, and power consumption. By December the latest chips off of the line should show some good improvements in these characteristics, and that will allow NVIDIA to release the big daddy of G92 boards. This is the long rumored 8800 GX2, which will feature two full G92 chips running around 600 MHz and 1.5 GB of memory.
NVIDIA is a very nimble company, and the way they address providing cards to the market allows them a lot of flexibility. The first runs of new cards are all produced for NVIDIA by Flextronics and Foxconn. Asus, Biostar, EVGA, BFG, and others all buy lots of these cards and slap on their own stickers and put them in their boxes with bundles of their choice. The first series of products are all fairly vanilla, but it allows NVIDIA to get its parts to market in a timely manner and allow their partners to develop cards on their own without dealing with time to market constraints. This flexibility will likely allow NVIDIA to successfully %u201Crefresh%u201D their higher end cards on very short notice.
AMD does not look like they are planning on being outdone by NVIDIA. I highly doubt that NVIDIA%u2019s 8800 refresh spoilers will be met with silence and emptiness. AMD could easily come back with a dual slot cooled RV670 clocked upwards of 1 GHz. We must also consider that due to the flexibility of the Ringbus Memory architecture, the RV670 could be hiding a full 512 bit memory interface. If AMD comes out with a higher speed card using the full 512 bits, then it will have a likely competitor to NVIDIA%u2019s high end cards. Even if AMD does not have a 512 bit bus hiding in there, the ability to utilize high speed GDDR-4 with 512 MB and 1 GB densities will give them a competitive product.
AMD will also do a two chip card based on the RV670, and it will be showing up in the same Q1 2008 timeframe as the NVIDIA GX2 offering. The flexibility of both CrossFire and SLI, combined with the flexibility of the new RV670 and G92 chips could very well herald a new golden age of 3D graphics in terms of features, price, and performance. When we also consider that AMD will be releasing refreshes of their RV615 and RV630 chips, we will see the same multiple fixes that were implemented on the RV670 make their way to the lower midrange and budget sectors. These products should be much more able to compete with NVIDIA%u2019s G84 and G86 based parts. Not only that, but we will have some honest competition at each price point. It has been a long, long time since we have seen such parity, and hopefully this speculation holds up.
The next few months will truly be fascinating to enthusiasts of all stripes (be it budget or high end). We will see a wide variety of cards being offered that will cater to almost any niche and price point. Both NVIDIA and AMD will give their partners a lot of leeway to help differentiate those parts. I am honestly looking forward to this time like no other in the past 10 years."
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