512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra Reviewed 468
Timmus writes "If you thought the $500 GeForce 6800 Ultra and $550 Radeon X850 XT PE were excessive, wait until you see nVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB: it officially retails for $999.99! Firingsquad has a review of the card manufactured by BFG. They ran tests with 6 different configurations (including a pair of 512MB cards running in SLI) with widescreen benchmarks at 1980x1200 as well."
I might wait.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then buy a PS3.
Re:I might wait.... (Score:2)
Quick comment and mirrors (Score:5, Insightful)
A mirror of the print version is here [networkmirror.com] and a mirror of the full article is here [networkmirror.com]
But hey... (Score:3, Insightful)
This'll be obsolete next month... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but it comes with a t-shirt! That makes all the difference!
For that price it better come with a hooker and a bottle of whiskey.
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should be blaming the company for the price, not the consumer. After all, it's the company that set it.
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
Hercules Graphics Station Card = $750
+ 2Mbyte VRAM + PROM chips = $200
more dollars than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when the "high end" cards were priced around $200, and that wasn't very long ago at all.
From the article:
It employs the same six-pin power input you'd expect on any other high-end PCI Express graphics card, and the board sports a very similar active cooler for its graphics processor.
I also remember when graphics cards didn't require a loud, whining fan to keep from catching on fire, not to mention a secondary power connector direct from the PSU.
What really gets me, though, is how normal firingsquad tries to make it sound. It employs the same six pin power connector and "active cooler" you'd expect. No, I don't expect that. It's bizarre. It's wrong.
Gaming isn't about faster and faster hardware performance. It's about games.
As far as I can tell, the only way out of this mess is to buy used hardware and games two or three years after they're released. By that time, the bugs are ironed out and your friends have already emptied their wallets figuring out what's worth playing.
Re:more dollars than sense (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't disagree with that, with the exception of the "value" cards of course.
As it turns out, huge ICs with millions of transistors require cooling. And power.
I don't disagree with this, either.
Part of my point is that it's disgusting to observe the methods companies use to erode the quality of life of consumers by tricking them into redefining what they be
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:3, Insightful)
Why they make these cards (Score:4, Insightful)
The second, and most important, is that development houses need the hardware of the future. They don't care if it needs a small bar fridge attached to make it work - the consumer product will cost $200 in a year and will be what their customers will buy.
Then there's PR. It's why car companies sponsor Rally teams who use their cars. It says something that the fastest video card in the world is an nVidia, even if only for a week until ATI claims it, and so on.
I think you'll find that these cards are loss leaders - 512MB of the fastest ram, a smoking GPU, etc, likely cost much more than $1000. When the timing isn't as critical and any ram can be used - and likely comes on 1/4 as many chips, and when the GPU yields are better than the single-digits everything starts at, the card will start to sell, but as an already known product line that has stable (we hope) drivers and games written for them.
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment -- (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment -- (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment -- (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:2)
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider the rate at which I can access data from memory on board. The latency involved is in the dozens of cycles.
Going across PCI express, the latency involved is in the hundreds of cycles.
This doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that I might be reading from up to 12 textures at the same time, the latency differences add up in a ridiculous hurry. Consider that I might invoke the fragment processor 200 million times
Re:Quick comment and mirrors (Score:5, Interesting)
$999? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:$999? (Score:2)
Wow.
--LWM
processing power (Score:5, Informative)
A $1000 video card? (Score:2)
Except for scientific aplications and video work, what can use this?
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:5, Funny)
Which is why I'm still running a full length CGA card.
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:2)
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:5, Funny)
Not content to read punch cards.
Honestly, what is it with you guys and your "CRT Displays"?
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:3, Funny)
LK
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:2)
Niche-market that is.
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:2)
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:3, Informative)
I seriously doubt that scientists would use these cards. The "performance" level drivers tend to intentionally make various minute errors to make things run as fast as possible. In most scientific applications, precision is a requirement.
As for video work, I'm not sure that anyone would bother with spending TOO much on a card. The drivers tend to be very one way, making the return of the image very slow. Since there's a hugh bottleneck i
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A $1000 video card? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does that goofy
This appears to be... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This appears to be... (Score:3, Interesting)
It strike me that the 512MB card may be of use to someone (e.g. scientific visualization?) who can find a use for all the video RAM
IMO (Score:2)
The parallels between Thresh's firingsquad and MS / SUN / Red Hat's bought and paid for style reviews are somewhat disturbing.
-- RLJ
Re:This appears to be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you could probably buy the 256MB card now and upgrade to a 512MB in a couple of years and end up paying less for both cards combined than you will for this card alone. $1,000 really doesn't make much sense, except that the price will undoubtedly
Re:This appears to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
The people writing the games for the 512 MB cards tomorrow need the 512 MB cards today.
System requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still saving up for the 4way multi-core CPU minimum requirement =/
Now can someone help me with this? (Score:4, Interesting)
See where I'm going with this? Just how big of a loss are Sony and MS willing to take with their consoles this time around? I mean either way the consumer wins out big.
Even by the time winter rolls around you're not going to see this card or it's 256MB version for $50.
Re:Now can someone help me with this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the better question is Just how much profit are the video card manufacturers making?
Re: (Score:2)
No one (Score:5, Funny)
3 PS3s (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a geforce4ti, and wonder why will I need more GPU power anyway. HL2 and doom3 run fine, and seem to need more memory and cpu bandwidths than triangle-pushers.
Theres a major lackage of a physics processor right now. Given the nice placement of GPU cards... on a high bandwidth bus of the northbridge, I'd say put the physics chip on the video card. Otherwise on a PCIX card.
Anyone care to comment where a card like this Geforce will be REQUIRED?
Re:3 PS3s (Score:3, Funny)
Not without a time machine, you can't.
Re:3 PS3s (Score:3, Informative)
Or better, pay off part of your credit card. Saving 20% intrest works better than making 4% intrest. Ben Franklin's Credit card maxim.
Re:3 PS3s (Score:5, Funny)
Or 3 nice [see note] hookers.
Note: The kind without a penis.
Re:3 PS3s (Score:5, Funny)
Then you'll need a new kidney.
Re:3 PS3s (Score:2)
That said, lottery win notwithstanding, I would never drop a grand on a graphics card just to get more RAM on it.
Re:3 PS3s (Score:2)
The main feature of this card is to display onto big Apple displays at about 12 times the resolution... Fairly different audiences, even though both will likely be playing games.
This card will likely be Required in the same places the Quattro was required: Big rendering houses for animation and LARGE picture work, and for game devs looking to make a game for "common" hardware 3-4 years from n
Re:3 PS3s (Score:2)
For that price (Score:2)
Or you could buy a PS3 and a not-quite-so-bloody-expensive-but-still-damn-good video card...
Maybe they're just hoping that by offering an obscene initial price the cards will seem really spectacular. A few rich fanboys will buy 'em, then they can dump the price and others will think they've become a good deal...
Re:3 PS3s (Score:3, Informative)
Someone is developing something like this, it will be a seperate add-in card, but sounds interesting
http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/physi c sdedicatedhardwaresoon.shtml [megagames.com]
Although this article is a bit old, not sure if it is still in the works or not...
"I have a geforce4ti, and w
PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing it (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of that, those "obsolete" cards haven't gotten any cheaper as new products usurp them. The 9800 I saw on the shelf last weekend still cost as much as when I bought mine a year ago.
So far all signs point to the next gen of consoles being pretty much on par, visually, with the greatest crap that ATI and nVidia churn out.
It's really hard to see the point of PC gaming anymore. What's it got that consoles dont? Online gaming with annoying mouthy 14 year olds? Check. Overpriced titles, and half-baked content delivery mechanisms? Check. Half finished products that require patches and updates to work correctly? Check.
For what this card costs, I could get a jillion-inch widescreen high-def DLP set to hook my PS3 and XBox 360's up to.
Just posting to keep the "pc gamer" vs "console gamer" wars going strong. It's fun to watch dweebs and simps fight.
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:2)
No, you couldn't. I agree though, consoles are coming in as much better value for money.
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:2)
Keep in mind that the new consoles won't come out until late this year at the earliest, more likely some time in 2006.
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:2)
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:2)
This whole "patches are bad" argument sucks for one reason--it assumes that console games are always bug free. But they're not. MVP Baseball 2004 came out with a fairly big bug on Xbox, PS2, and PC (left handed hitters had a serious lack of power). The PC version got patched. The PS2 version never did (I don't know about XBox). So why is the fact that the PS2 version can't get patched a good thing?
Driver patches (Score:2)
The game will always *know* what the hardware is, and during testing they can catch more errors. On a console, the vendor can't te
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:3, Insightful)
PC gaming may die off, but it'll be cheap off the shelf PC equivilents that resemble the PS3 or 360 that'll kill it. All they need is MS Office 360 edition and the like. Next gen systems are a soft
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:3, Insightful)
It might be a pain on the wallet if any titles actually required anything that expensive. But they don't and never will, because, well, a game wouldn't sell if most people couldn't afford the hardware to run it.
No, what they're doing is capitalizing on the people that for one reason or another just absolutely must have the latest, greatest, and most (expensive), despite all sensibility.
This is the same type that buys Rolexes, when a Timex would do jus
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:3, Insightful)
"
I've got a Riva TNT2 that still runs the latest drivers as this new $1k card. Still gets performance enhancements from newer drivers too. Not as often, but its not uncommon to see a few more fps after the occasional driver upgrade.
As for prices coming down, Nvidea GeForce FX 5200 AGP8X 128MB DDR is $60 on froogle. I
Prices come down? Are you kidding me? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the ability for the rest of the family to watch tv whilst you play your video games?
Re:PC Gaming is dying, nVidia and ATI are killing (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, other people here have noted that anything with user-created content won't work very well on console
Summary (Score:2)
Show-offs only need apply, for now.
Dual-link DVI (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the 30-inch Cinema HD display is supported in this over-priced cards dual-link mode either. According to Apple, the optimum resolution [apple.com] of the 30-inch HD display is 2560 x 1600 pixels. The let's-drop-a-grand card supports a maximum of 2048 x 1536 (according to the article). Do the people who spend the money on these things expect blurriness?
Re:Dual-link DVI (Score:3, Informative)
A GRAND for a VIDEO CARD??? (Score:5, Funny)
All I can say is that for a grand, this card better blow me and make me toast in the morning.
Re:A GRAND for a VIDEO CARD??? (Score:5, Funny)
Easy.
Spend $1000 on a video card? That blows...
Tell your wife/girlfriend? You're toast...
the 6800 (Score:2)
In a few months the price will drop to less than half, and BFG, LeadTek, or Asus will release the same board but with 1GB of RAM.
expensive (Score:2)
1900x1200? 1280x860? Who comes up with these #s? (Score:2)
It seems to me the graphics chip guys are pushing the MBs on the cards instead of the resolution they put out. I wonder why?
Re:1900x1200? 1280x860? Who comes up with these #s (Score:2)
Re:1900x1200? 1280x860? Who comes up with these #s (Score:2)
FSAA considered useless? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the really interesting question is: Didn't FSAA come a little late to the scene, considering the ridiculous resolutions we can now play our game at?
Every where you go you'll see websites benchmarking at 1900x1200 4xFSAA 16-tap and I'll just go... what the hell?
Anti-Aliasing made a hell of a lot more sense to me back at 320x200 to 800x600... but maybe that's just me. I'm sure we'll have 16x FSAA at 8192x6160 too, and everyone will say it's da bomb! "How can you play without anti-aliasing? Don't y
Most Obvious Use. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are starting a new, state of the art game now: by the time you get it out the door, this level of video card will be standard built into motherboards. Almost Every PC game company in the world will need a few of these for testing, if nothing else.
Turns out.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Turns out.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought entry models always underperform a bit, until they tweak it up with drivers and balance things out, and improve the logics. To eventually end up with the "better and newer" version.
When the first DirectX 9.0 Graca's came out they underperformed and were still 'evolving' (=buggy) compared to their matured DirectX 8.1 end-models. It's the way it goes.
Nit... (Score:2)
/.'d (Score:2)
Sweet! (Score:2)
Wooooow (Score:2)
Excess (Score:5, Insightful)
512mb.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this is to actually "define" a sucker (Score:5, Insightful)
None.
Zero, zilch, nada.
Their only note is "well, with all that RAM, perhaps tomorrow's games will take advantage of it!"
Thing is, in 1 year, you'll be able to get a card with 512 MB of RAM, which is 2x as fast as this card, for $399. In 2 years, that same card will be $199. So there is ZERO advantage to getting it now, because nothing can use it, and by the time technology *can* use it, it will be old hat.
82% Rating? These guys are on the take.
Incomplete Benchmarks (Score:4, Informative)
Nonetheless, even if you justified buying the card on the grounds that you don't need SLI, chances are you still have to upgrade your motherboard to PCI-E, and you still spend $1000 on video cards without the gain in performance achieved with two graphics processors.
But hey, at least you're ready for Half-Life 3.
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:2)
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Back in my day, we had punch cards. And they weren't those fancy paper ones. Ours where made out of stone. If we made a mistake, you just didn't fill out another one. You had to walk 2 miles uphill to the rock quarry and cut another one. Kids these days.
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:2)
~S
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:3, Insightful)
Enter... Porn.
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
And I had to walk uphill to school both ways.
Re:Thats a Llot of RAM... (Score:3, Interesting)
I had begged and whined and whined and begged for my parents to buy that for me, a 9 year old would-be 1337 h4xx04. So marks the first step in my disillusionment.