# Nvidia GeForce 9 Series to be Released February 21st!!!!!



## sarakoth (Feb 8, 2008)

Featuring a return to Quad SLI . . . 

Improved Directx 10 . . . 

and a steep price drop for the 8 series.


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## Lenny (Feb 8, 2008)

Baybey!  Quad SLi... *drool*

Have you got a link to an article?


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## Commonmind (Feb 18, 2008)

I'd also like to see the source for this, as I generally watch the hardware industry like a hawk and haven't seen any official news on the subject.


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## WriterDoug (Feb 18, 2008)

I am especially interested in the price.  

The two computers I use are just so old, and I need to build a new one!


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## Delicious (Mar 21, 2008)

How about a notebook?


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## sarakoth (Mar 21, 2008)

Now that there out, I won't have to hunt down the rumour sights I found the information on! Yay!

Anyways, the Geforce 9600 GT is a steal in my opinion.


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## Lenny (Mar 21, 2008)

The 9600GT is a brilliant deal.

But you know that, if you had the money, you'd go for two of the 9800GX2's. *drool*

Dual core, 1gb of memory, from 25%-50% faster than the 8800 GTX Ultra with games. Only £434.  Imagine two of them in SLi, along with your 1500W PSU.


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## Commonmind (Mar 21, 2008)

sarakoth said:


> Now that there out, I won't have to hunt down the rumour sights I found the information on! Yay!
> 
> Anyways, the Geforce 9600 GT is a steal in my opinion.



Well, it's also a month later than what you originally stated...


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## sarakoth (Mar 23, 2008)

For those of us who don't have a 1000w+ PSU, the 9600 GT only requires a 400w _if _one is running it with some crazy core 2 Quad q6600 (also an incredible deal) and two gigs of DDR2 RAM.


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## Lenny (Mar 23, 2008)

I've only got a 550W, sadly. But come the re-build, I'm hoping to to least triple that. I've got big plans for my next computer, and two 9800GX2's are forcing the two 8800 GTX Ultra's out into the street.


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## sarakoth (Mar 23, 2008)

Lenny said:


> I've only got a 550W, sadly. But come the re-build, I'm hoping to to least triple that. I've got big plans for my next computer, and two 9800GX2's are forcing the two 8800 GTX Ultra's out into the street.


 
That'll actually make you a profit because the Ultras are waaay overpriced 

By the way, you can support two Ultras with a 550w PSU? That must be really strectching it.


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## Lenny (Mar 23, 2008)

I don't know. I wouldn't risk it with less than a 700W.

At the moment I've got a 550W with an 8800GTS 640mb happily ticking over to itself. Before the 9-series came out I was thinking of two Ultras (sorry if there was any confusion - I've not actually got two Ultras, if you thought I had), but now the 9800's have caught my eye.


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## sarakoth (Mar 26, 2008)

Lenny said:


> I don't know. I wouldn't risk it with less than a 700W.
> 
> At the moment I've got a 550W with an 8800GTS 640mb happily ticking over to itself. Before the 9-series came out I was thinking of two Ultras (sorry if there was any confusion - I've not actually got two Ultras, if you thought I had), but now the 9800's have caught my eye.


 
Have fun running two instances of Crysis, maxed out, on four screens!


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## Commonmind (Mar 26, 2008)

I've got a Q6600 moderately overclocked, two overclocked 8800 GT's in SLI and extremely high-performance ram with great timings and Crysis still kicks my machine's ass. Not even God is running Crysis with playable framerates at a decent resolution.


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## sarakoth (Mar 26, 2008)

Commonmind said:


> I've got a Q6600 moderately overclocked, two overclocked 8800 GT's in SLI and extremely high-performance ram with great timings and Crysis still kicks my machine's ass. Not even God is running Crysis with playable framerates at a decent resolution.


 
You can probably max out Crysis at a lower resolution.


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## Commonmind (Mar 30, 2008)

I'm very familiar with my PC's performance. Even at lower resolutions (both vanilla and the current iteration of) Crysis is still far too resource heavy to be "maxed out" while remaining enjoyable (in my particular case; I don't find fluctuating between 16 and 24 FPS to be a good time). But, this isn't really surprising or upsetting; the developers stated many times that the hardware needed to run Crysis at the highest settings at tolerable resolutions while maintaining playable frame-rates was still several generations away - likely two to three years from launch. In two or three years there will be games pushing beyond the bar Crysis has set (visually) and so I'll likely never experience the game in its full glory as I'll be occupied with something else 

In my original comment I was merely remarking on how ridiculous a notion it was to be running two iterations of Crysis at the highest settings on several displays - in case you misunderstood.


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## sarakoth (Mar 30, 2008)

Commonmind said:


> I'm very familiar with my PC's performance. Even at lower resolutions (both vanilla and the current iteration of) Crysis is still far too resource heavy to be "maxed out" while remaining enjoyable (in my particular case; I don't find fluctuating between 16 and 24 FPS to be a good time). But, this isn't really surprising or upsetting; the developers stated many times that the hardware needed to run Crysis at the highest settings at tolerable resolutions while maintaining playable frame-rates was still several generations away - likely two to three years from launch. In two or three years there will be games pushing beyond the bar Crysis has set (visually) and so I'll likely never experience the game in its full glory as I'll be occupied with something else
> 
> In my original comment I was merely remarking on how ridiculous a notion it was to be running two iterations of Crysis at the highest settings on several displays - in case you misunderstood.


 
I was just being sarcastic. Besides, with a good LCD monitor with good frame to frame transition, 24 fps looks pretty smooth.


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## Commonmind (Apr 1, 2008)

It's very hard to divulge tone from text alone; you may want to throw in the accustomed /winky so that we don't misconstrue your meaning. The way I took it was that you had a lack of understanding of both what the hardware was capable of and how demanding Crysis was on current technology.

And I have a fantastic monitor, one of the best on the market. Every individual's experience is subjective, of course, and like I stated *I *don't find 24 FPS to be tolerable at the resolution I was playing at, especially considering that 24 FPS was more the exception than the rule. What's smooth for you may not be for me; different strokes for different folks, and all that. I've been building PC's for 15 years and been a hardware enthusiast for longer than that; I have a higher standard for performance than most folks and although I don't fault Crysis for being a resource hog, I have to admit that my experience with the game was definitely hampered by the presence of the pig.


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## sarakoth (Apr 1, 2008)

Commonmind said:


> It's very hard to divulge tone from text alone; you may want to throw in the accustomed /winky so that we don't misconstrue your meaning. The way I took it was that you had a lack of understanding of both what the hardware was capable of and how demanding Crysis was on current technology.
> 
> And I have a fantastic monitor, one of the best on the market. Every individual's experience is subjective, of course, and like I stated *I *don't find 24 FPS to be tolerable at the resolution I was playing at, especially considering that 24 FPS was more the exception than the rule. What's smooth for you may not be for me; different strokes for different folks, and all that. I've been building PC's for 15 years and been a hardware enthusiast for longer than that; I have a higher standard for performance than most folks and although I don't fault Crysis for being a resource hog, I have to admit that my experience with the game was definitely hampered by the presence of the pig.


 
Hmmmm . . . Maybe I underestimated Crysis. You meet the _recommended requirements _with flying colors (your specs are more than double that of the recommended requirements) yet you claim to be getting 15 - 24 fps. Usually, when one meets the recommended requirements, one can run a game at a tolerable resolution with very high setting at a fine frame rate.


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## Commonmind (Apr 2, 2008)

Not only are they double, but I've spent countless hours optimizing and tweaking, both on the 32 and 64bit Vista platforms, running several iterations of Crysis with many different drivers - no matter how much work I did to achieve a steady frame-rate at maximum settings, the result was relatively the same. 

Over a certain resolution the hardware simply doesn't cut it (and the very "suspect" SLI support isn't helping matters at all).

Despite Crytek's claims to the opposite, they have in fact developed the most impressive tech-demo ever conceived.


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## Happy Joe (Apr 2, 2008)

Unfortunately the FPS on games appears to be very misleading... If I recall correctly, the illusion of motion in motion pictures is supposed to be "continuous" at any frame rate over 16 FPS. However this does not seem to apply to games; I can play (not really enjoy) games at FPS around 18 but they seem choppy. I'm not really certain if this is because of the FPS of if it is due to the hardware actually dropping frames so that you see jumps in the motion. I found the game enjoyable at 22 and above FPS (when killing and fighting for my character's life there is not really time to see the eye candy so lower resolutions don't really give me all that much problem game play wise).

Vista was a problem OS for this game at first but I had heard that the shortcomings were resolved by driver changes, apparently this is not entirely true.

I was contemplating a newer vid card (8800GTS; G92) and vista 64 to allow better frame rates on my replacement monitor (1680 x 1050 native res.) (my old monitor died) however, I am rethinking this since vid cards will only get cheaper and vista 64 seems to have few if any advantages over xp pro 32.

The minimum specs for computer requirements are usually those that will enable the game to run at minimum settings (not allow for eye candy or enjoyable play).

I agree; we paid for a tech demo and I, for one, am dissatisfied with the game.

Enjoy!


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## Commonmind (Apr 2, 2008)

Perceivable frame-rate is different for every individual, and the fact that a debate still rages based on that very subject should be evidence enough that it is subjective -- yet folks still argue. Alas, people are, respectfully, stupid.

As for Vista, it's exhibiting the same growing pains as XP did upon its launch. The simple fact of the matter is that the audience for which it was designed is exponentially more sophisticated than it was those few years ago and is thus more keen and taking issue with certain unsightly yet not-unforeseen problems inherent in any new piece of software. 

I remember my first XP install was riddled with problems, as was the case with some of my friends at the time, and we spent many months debating whether or not the nifty GUI was worth scrapping our copies of 98 SE for. 

Sound familiar?

Vista is going to be the platform to own if you're a gamer, and that's the (albeit raw) deal. If you want DX10 and support for future hardware technologies you'll need to install the OS. Simple as that. 

In fact, my personal opinion is that any hardware upgrades done to improve gaming performance are done in vain if you're going to be running them on an XP Pro machine. You're better off grabbing a bargain-bin 7800 and a nice, top-of-the-line P4D and calling it a day until you've got the mind to upgrade to Vista. When it comes down to it, all that extra performance you're going to get out of a nicer card and a better processor is going to be wasted on playing DX9-based software, especially when you find developers who are building their games in a totally DX10 environment and scaling back (Crysis) and not vice-versa (Company of Heroes; developed as a DX9 title and later receiving a DX10 patch) -- the latter at least having a chance to look somewhat palatable on older hardware. 

As for the advantages of Vista over XP Pro, performance on older hardware aside, there are plenty. If you haven't spent any time actually researching them than you're likely not going to see a huge difference because you really don't want to see one, for whatever reason. Also, many of the major performance and stability issues people were gawking at were rectified in SP1, as was the case with XP Pro (though we all seem to forget that fact and by comparison consider XP to be infallible next to Vista; again, people are stupid -- this is equivalent to eating a shitty hamburger for so many years that you no longer find it shitty and then eating another shitty hamburger one day while exclaiming, "man, those other hamburgers were great!" Oh really?).


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## sarakoth (Apr 2, 2008)

Commonmind said:


> Not only are they double, but I've spent countless hours optimizing and tweaking, both on the 32 and 64bit Vista platforms, running several iterations of Crysis with many different drivers - no matter how much work I did to achieve a steady frame-rate at maximum settings, the result was relatively the same.
> 
> Over a certain resolution the hardware simply doesn't cut it (and the very "suspect" SLI support isn't helping matters at all).
> 
> Despite Crytek's claims to the opposite, they have in fact developed the most impressive tech-demo ever conceived.


 
The good thing about Crysis is that even at medium or low settings, the graphics still look good.


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## Commonmind (Apr 2, 2008)

Well, I don't know about that. At medium settings the game does a fair job of keeping up. At lower settings, however, it does scream: "Hey, look at me, I'm a fantastic looking game on lower settings." It has the appearance of a game which was intended to be experienced on a higher-end machine. Take a game like, as with the example I used above, Company of Heroes - the game was developed around a different generation of hardware for a different platform and it runs well on lower-end hardware while retaining much of its original appearance because the difference between the intended experience and the actual one are very close on the spectrum.

That's not to say CoH looks better than Crysis, so please don't misconstrue my meaning; I mean simply that at the lower-end Crysis looks like crap compared to other games where their lower-end settings aren't tragically apparent departures from what the game looks like on higher settings. But, let's be realistic here, playing Crysis on low settings is a bit like winning the lottery and buying a Big Mac (or a Royale with Cheese) in celebration; it just doesn't make much sense.


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## Happy Joe (Apr 3, 2008)

Are we experiencing hamburger withdrawal? (2 posts 2 burger analogies!) 

I agree that vista is a work in progress and the way to go in the future gaming.  

I will undoubtedly get there eventually (probably late summer if additional, good, games are released for DX10).

Right now XP pro works (better, for me, than any previous windows OS for home computers, I have win 95 and up)) and there seems to be little to no advantage in vista (I defy anyone to tell the difference in the quality of picture between tweaked DX9 crysis and DX10 crysis (I haven't tried tweaking the DX10 yet (no DX10 vid card and no vista) but I have played crysis on (friends') vista 32 machines. (Some a bit better, frame rate wise, some worse than my xp pro machine).

I do have a couple of questions, Commonmind; Is vista 64 significantly better than 32 for 64 bit multiprocessor systems?  (I don't really care about benchies; does the machine feel like it operates smoother/significantly faster etc?  Are their any down sides?).

Again my primary reason for considering G92 based (8800 gts and up or 9600/9800) vid cards is to let me play games at native res on my monitor (the ol' reliable 7800 is more than maxed out and overclocked; so it is time to upgrade).  The 7800 will go into one of the LAN machines networked together in the basement for group gaming.

I will probably go with the 8800GTS (256, 512 card) since it is basically a 9800GTX at a 30% lower price and 90+% of the performance (200 USD as opposed to 300 USD).  The  upper range 9600 cards are as expensive as the 8800GTS but suffer a significant performance hit.

Enjoy!


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## Commonmind (Apr 3, 2008)

Happy Joe said:


> Are we experiencing hamburger withdrawal? (2 posts 2 burger analogies!)



 Ironically I don't eat fast-food and as a result I don't suffer from any hamburger withdrawal. Although, I did just get done watching Pulp Fiction, which is where the Royal with Cheese reference probably came from.



> I agree that vista is a work in progress and the way to go in the future gaming.
> 
> I will undoubtedly get there eventually (probably late summer if additional, good, games are released for DX10).
> 
> Right now XP pro works (better, for me, than any previous windows OS for home computers, I have win 95 and up)) and there seems to be little to no advantage in vista (I defy anyone to tell the difference in the quality of picture between tweaked DX9 crysis and DX10 crysis (I haven't tried tweaking the DX10 yet (no DX10 vid card and no vista) but I have played crysis on (friends') vista 32 machines. (Some a bit better, frame rate wise, some worse than my xp pro machine).


I can't very well present an argument of subjectivity on one hand and then call you a crackpot for not being able to tell the difference on the other; everyone's perception is different and if you find them to be similar you can't be faulted for it. 

I will say that, in my experience, after playing them both in motion, I could tell a significant difference. Perhaps that's because I knew what I was looking for, perhaps not -- it's more likely due to the obsessive videophile raging inside me -- but the difference is real and it's apparent to others as well. The simple fact of the matter is that while you can follow Tweakguides' DX9 and optimization guides to the letter, there are still aspects of DX10 that DX9 cannot mimic in any way shape or form.



> I do have a couple of questions, Commonmind; Is vista 64 significantly better than 32 for 64 bit multiprocessor systems?  (I don't really care about benchies; does the machine feel like it operates smoother/significantly faster etc?  Are their any down sides?).


It's not 100% "better" at the moment, no. The downsides are that the driver support, although it has improved drastically, is still somewhat inferior to Vista 32. Though the benefits of using a 64bit processor and 64bit OS are going to grow exponentially over the next few hardware cycles -- well before Vista is replaced -- and especially as we start to see the limitations of the 32bit platform start to rear their ugly heads. Remember when we said 2gigs of ram was overkill, when all of us gamers who were current were still rocking 1gig? Well, 2gigs is the standard minimum now and will soon be ousted by big-brother 4gigs (sooner than you would think, too) and a 32bit platform is going to be left in the dust as that number grows and grows. So, just from a hardware standpoint alone the upgrade to 64bit is going to be necessary sooner rather than later. 



> Again my primary reason for considering G92 based (8800 gts and up or 9600/9800) vid cards is to let me play games at native res on my monitor (the ol' reliable 7800 is more than maxed out and overclocked; so it is time to upgrade).  The 7800 will go into one of the LAN machines networked together in the basement for group gaming.
> 
> I will probably go with the 8800GTS (256, 512 card) since it is basically a 9800GTX at a 30% lower price and 90+% of the performance (200 USD as opposed to 300 USD).  The  upper range 9600 cards are as expensive as the 8800GTS but suffer a significant performance hit.
> 
> Enjoy!


I could definitely see the use in upgrading to play at a native resolution. I've got a 1900x1200 (24") monitor so I definitely feel the pain there myself. And get an 8800GT (without the S), all the kids are doing it; they're like iPods, only you can't strap them on your bicep and jog by my house looking like a pretentious tool who pays too much for sunglasses.

Good luck


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## Happy Joe (Apr 3, 2008)

I believe that I will stick with the G92 version of the 8800GTS as it has a bit more performance (one of the more visible differences; 128 stream processors as opposed to 112) than the older G80 chip used in most of the 8800 series cards.  I tend to save some money in the long run by purchasing a a some what better/more expensive vid card every few years (as opposed to some of my friends who purchase less costly cards evey year, sometimes several times a year).

It should be noted that my experience with Crysis on vista machines was on mid range to slightly better than mid range equipment (no sli, low to medium/high video settings). I would expect that high end machines would make this hardware intensive game look much better and emphasize the visibility of the differences between DX9 and DX10.

I expect that 64bit driver availability (as 64 bit application availability) will get better as time goes by (another reason for delaying the implementation of vista 64, in my case).

Enjoy!


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## Commonmind (Apr 3, 2008)

Never mind my recommendation. I'm just a rabid fan of the GT and what it is capable of; it reminds me a lot of the old Ti4200's and the ATI 9500 pros. Cheap and very overclockable (that's not to say the GTS's aren't cheap, because they're definitely a great deal and I'm glad nVidia didn't can them).

The difference in what type of hardware we'd seen the game on was likely the reason why the comparison wasn't that jolting for you.


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## sarakoth (Apr 3, 2008)

Hmmmm

It seems to me that the 9600GT with 1GB of memory is the best card in terms of price. It's _significantly _cheaper than the 8800GTS but only slightly worse in benchmark scores.


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## Happy Joe (Apr 4, 2008)

Just checked; 
9600GT (1g) vs. 8800GTS (512g G92) - the cheapest 9600 gt was 30 USD cheaper (after rebates) than the cheapest 8800GTS (G92) (after rebates) however the 9600 had a lower customer satisfaction rating. 

Tech wise;
You get 64 streaming processors in the 9600GT vs 128 in the 8800GTS
1 gig of on board memory is mostly a waste due to the 256 bit bus (it would come alive with a 512 bus but this can't be changed). 
You do get the advantage (?) of the 9600 changes that Nvidia made in the 9600 clock control (possibly easier overclocking) and potentially very slightly lower power requirements (would need more research on the specific cards chosen or both on a test bench). 
Between the two cheapest cards I looked at (Palit and MSI the Palit is factory over clocked to 700mhz and the MSI 8800GTS was factory overclocked to 678mhz. This should give slightly better benchies on the Palit, although it will probably be largely off set by the higher number of streaming processors on the 8800 (G92). I tend to ignore small benchmark differences as they are not normally visible in real life (or in virtual life in games).
Some Palits have better on board power than other brands (I did not check to see if this particular card had this advantage).

Over all these would be basically a tie decision wise and the choice would depend on brand preference/value of customer satisfaction etc. ($30 US would not be a great influence to me).

If price were a very high priority then a comparison between the 9600GT (512), the 8800GT (G80, 512) and the ATI cards would be a good exercise.

For some folks overclockablity is a large part of their selection process I ignored this because it would have taken much more time.

Enjoy!

(edit) here is the card ranking for March from Tom's Hardware:
The Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money: March 2008 | Tom's Hardware


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## Happy Joe (Apr 4, 2008)

I think, perhaps, there is some confusion relative to model numbers and graphics processors, here is a bit of history that may clarify things;

A couple of years ago (or maybe 18 months) Nvidia came out with the G80 chip with 112 stream processors, it was/is a good chip and was/is used in the 8000 series cards.

Last fall Nvidia released the G92 chip (which is a new revision of the G80 chip, correcting some errors, it has 128 stream processors) it was promptly placed into many of the same 8800GT, GTS, etc. cards that had used the G80 chip, this provided a performance increase (and a lot of consumer confusion; you could/can get many of the same series cards with either a G80 or the G92 chip and of course this information is often left off of benchmark graphs and catalog descriptions).

With the new year Nvidia decided to market a downsized (crippled) budget version of the G92 chip; this is the G94 chip which has 64 stream processors and is used in the 9600 series cards.

Now since everyone knows that the newest is always the best Nvidia decided to release a 9800GTX card with the G92 chip, there is very little difference between this card and the 8800 G92 cards in single card aplications (it does support tri-sli) possibly the biggest change being in the method of determining the clock frequency (which may or may not make the GPU easier to over clock).

I hope that provides some clarification; when you look at benchmarks of the 8800 series cards you need to know which GPU the board actually has since not all 8800 GTS  etc. cards have the same chip (although they are related).

Enjoy!


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## Lenny (Apr 4, 2008)

Is it bad of me to assume how good a graphics card will be by price? 

The 8800 Ultra was the most expensive of the 8 series, so I assumed that was the best of the bunch (what was correct). I'm thinking the same with the 9800 GX2.


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## Commonmind (Apr 4, 2008)

It's not a bad thing if money is no object. Generally speaking, better technologies are often priced accordingly (with this generation of hardware at least). If you're on a budget, however, you may find that the difference of 50 dollars between two comparably performing cards is not worth the investment when the card that's performing slightly better is only doing so by a small margin. 

A bit of research is still recommended, of course.


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## Happy Joe (Apr 4, 2008)

> Is it bad of me to assume how good a graphics card will be by price?


 
Kind of, within a model/series Nvidia (and ATI) release a reference package that tells manufacturers how to use the GPU. I don't know how detailed this package is but I suspect that it includes details of the recommended printed circuit board layout and conductor routing.

From manufacturer to manufacturer you will see differences of memory and other parts vendors and large differences in heat sinks (and sometimes prices).

Usually the actual card performance is very similar within a model, suffix family (GT, GTX, Ultra etc) between card makers (some may over clock better etc). It should be noted that some makers do not follow the reference design and these may have significantly better (or worse) performance.

Overall the ultra cards (and other suffixes) will have very similar performance to one another across manufacturers but the prices from manufacturer to manufacturer will usually differ. And you can, usually, roughly gage a families/suffix performance by the price.

To make sure that you are getting the best deal you will need to search for your models benchmarks and it pays to keep up with the technology (to avoid spending an extra $100 for a card like the 9800GTX that is not much of an improvement over the old G92 8800 GT or GTS). (Watch for sales when shopping as they can amount to a free upgrade, and avoid buying a model right after it comes out (the prices will always drop eventually).

Enjoy!

Review of 9800 GX2 performance vs. ulta and ATI 3XXX performance;
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Review | Tom's Hardware


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## sarakoth (Apr 8, 2008)

So what are your picks for cards that are both cheap and relatively good?? 

There's the unbeatable 9600GT of course, but are there any cards in the high-end range?


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## Happy Joe (Apr 9, 2008)

Things are changing fast; nvidia is renaming many boards and looks to be bringing out the next gen in a few months, the 8800 gt series is drooping in price, the 8800 gs looks comparable to the 9600 series price wise, and ATI should definitely be considered a player.

I guess it all depends on your definition of low price, and "relatively good"... I have considered the 200 USD area a reasonable price for an adequate card for the last several years. A relatively good one, IMO, would be a card that can play Crysis at medium setting with a minimum reasonable resolution (say 1280x1024 or a bit higher, depending on your preferences and monitor) at reasonable minimum frame rate of around 24 (higher is better and people respond differently to frame rates so this number can vary); of course everyone will have differing opinions on these.

With prices and names changing it is very difficult (nearly impossible) to come up with a best card, even if there were one best card it would probably be a different one tomorrow.

I would recommend that people considering new graphics cars make their decisions based on;

budget

Band width & memory (higher numbers = better (256 bit would be my minimum), memory should be 2x the bandwidth; 256 bit cards need 512 memory (less will work but impacts the boards performance, more is wasted for games but can show advantage in other apps, CAD work for example)).

number of streaming processors (more = better)

The actual chip used (a lower priced board with a better chip can have better performance than a similar card with a lesser chip. Note; it has been the practice of manufacturers to deactivate parts of chips when used in less expensive applications thus giving less performance, the combination of different chips and deactivation can give 92, 112 or 128 (and possibly other) streaming processors in an 8800 series card). Note; there is large difference between chip manufactures (Nvidia and ATI) the number of streams is not directly comparable across chip makers but useful when comparing within a chip makers products)

Clock speed (memory and chip, higher is better).

Power consumption; high end and multiple cards can deliver a knock out blow to a marginal or low output power supply.

Bench marks for your models under consideration as compared to others in a similar price range (you need to be very careful here as many benchies do not account for variation between makers for things that may vary like number of streaming processors), these can be very useful to compare between different chip makers like ATI and Nvidia though.

Consumer recommendations/opinions for the specific board/brand/model that you are considering (if only 60% of the people responding to a card were very happy with it what are your chances of getting a good one?).

For the techies;
Overclockability

Ability to unlock parts of boards through bios changes or mods.

Of course getting all of this information is work and takes time but it should give an individual an idea of the best deal for their budget. (Note I spent more than 20 hours researching my choices before my last purchase, then a sale gave me the best price.)

Enjoy!


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