Geforce 6800U Expectations / Gripes

[CraziFuzzy]

After reading the new review/preview on the new Nvidia NV40, I am at awe of the raw performance of the card. However, there are a couple of things that I find rather disappointing:

1. The card still uses some cheats that are unable to disable. I for one, do not always run games at ultra high resolutions, and would be VERY willing to give up a little performance (where the card is CPU limited anyways) for some better PQ.

2. (and this is actually my bigger gripe) The new chip still only contains 2 RAMDACs in it. I think there is a big future in multimonitor gaming, and having just 2 displays is a serious disadvantage, as it puts the monitor border right in the center of your view. Currently the only real gaming advantage to a 2-monitor system is if the game allows you to place some information on the second screen, while still keeping the action confined to the main display. Imagine playing a shooter, or simulator, with the image spread across 3 monitors. This would give you the awesome panoramic view, while leaving the action uninterrupted on the center screen. Maybe this is just a call to chip makers that there IS a draw for this kind of thing, in a SERIOUS gamer's chip (which this definately IS)

Any thoughts on these complaints? or are there any other complaints out there?

-Chris

 

[kinney]

I'll do my best to hopefully give you a satisfactory reply.

1. Remember this is a pre-retail copy with essentially beta drivers for this card... and extremely limited time for software application developers with the early launch. For instance, DX9C isnt even out yet.
Just saying that give it time.

2. No worthwhile gaming cards do surround gaming. Only Matrox can claim half of this equation, as they can do it.. but its so slow its not worthwhile.
But FYI Nvidia does multimonitor gaming far superior to any other competitor if you consider both speed and features.
some great dual monitor information <A HREF="http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040216/index.html" target="_new">here</A>.

ATI can do surround gaming (3 monitors), if you use one of their P4 motherboards with a ATI card.. but I wouldnt recommend that as Im not sure on its software support quality as well as the onboard part being pretty terrible.

Surround gaming is still a thing of the future realistically.

Count on surround gaming coming from all worthwhile GPU makers (ATI/NV) with PCIE's introduction.
Then your dreams will be realized fully IMO.

____________________________
<b>RESIDENT FORUM WARRIOR
<font color=purple>I just neutered the cat.
Now he's a liberal.</font color=purple></b>

 

[CraziFuzzy]

The Geforce cards work GREAT for multimonitor gaming, still VERY fast and everything simply by setting up the monitors to horizontal span. Problem being you can't span across video cards, so the card has to support more than 2 displays. I was hoping that with the new chips, they would support more RAMDACs in them so they could support more than 2 displays. Even if the chip had external RAMDACs, they could probably be configured to support an endless number, simply by some tricky addressing tricks.
How do you expect PCIE to change the future of multimonitor systems? The GPU still has to support this, which, from the specs, the NV40 still does not do.

 

[kinney]

I just think we'll see the return of SLI type setups and lots of multiple monitor setups.. especially from Nvidia.

As far as multimonitor, its more of a driver thing than actual hardware when your using more than 1 physical card.

For instance, you can pop two GF4MX PCI cards and run dual displays in any PC.

I dont see the future, but I think PCIE will lead to lots of cool stuff.

____________________________
<b>RESIDENT FORUM WARRIOR
<font color=purple>I just neutered the cat.
Now he's a liberal.</font color=purple></b>

 

[CraziFuzzy]

I am aware that you can use multiple cards for more than 2 monitors, heck, with two GF2MX's, you can have 4 screens, the issue is you cannot set these screens up in Horizontal Span mode, which is where the two displays actually share the same frame buffer (well, each get's half of it) allowing the software (and games most importantly) to see them as just one, really wide monitor (at say 2048x768). Any game that supports non-standard resolutions will support this. Unfortunately, the framebuffer cannot be shared across video cards (old cards technically could do it with the expansion plug on them, but this was WAY to slow for modern graphics). Most (if not all) games I can think of do not support displaying across different monitors. It is a feature a lot of games could benefit from, and I do expect it in the future, since most video cards have dualview support now, but currently, the only real way for multimonitor gaming is with two displays driven from the same card, in Horizontal Span mode. DirectX does support using more than one display surface at a time, it will just take the developers to realize taht there is an interest in this feature. Even the advent of PCIE will not really improve this situation any, as, yes, it will allow more than one high speed video card, the game would still have to natively support more than one drawing surface to utilize it.