Graphics war... up your arsenal.

[BmB]

Now it's just moving along at ridiculous speeds. Nvidia has produced a single card with two GPU's... Get SLI with that and you're set for anything.
I wonder if any software available today will even need anything like that.

This is scary... for the wallet at any rate.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6152217/index.html

I wonder what kind of thing ATI Will produce for countering this?

[SeerCouncil]

I wonder what kind of thing ATI Will produce for countering this?New technologies to lure in more customers?
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA3OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
The third element that finishes the Boundless Gaming triangle is actually another Radeon X1600 or better being utilized as a physics processor or PPU.
...
Also ATI says they are going to be simply faster than an Ageia PhysX card even with using a X1600 XT and that a X1900 XT should deliver 9 X the performance of an Ageia PhysX card.

[l337raceryo]

Oh yeah about a 2 dual core GPU with SLI capabilities?

[Ammon Ra]

"should". Show me a test bench built around physics processing and i'll believe who ever gets on average the better result out of the score.

btw, add dual core cpus onto a mobo that can accept two cpus and you have a pc that'll last at least for 5 years. THat's actually not such a bad investment...:hmmm...

[hiddensmoke]

Well the sooner they reach the peak of graphics technology the sooner i can stop buying new cards.

[Ammon Ra]

erm...you wont live that long :p

[boolybooly]

Well I dont know, AMD seem to have hit a plateau recently and cant do much with the speed and are going for power reduction and process reduction along with the parallel computing you are talking about here (multicore). Also bandwidth eg Torrenza will be opening up mobo bottlenecks allowing the hypertransport to act as an intercomponent bus system.

Basically their next CPU line is a bit on the damp squibby side. If they hit that limit with silicon it follows that the GPU will plateau at the same kind of speeds, but they are a way off it yet. I expect that there will be new materials around by the time the GPUs and DDR RAM catch up which should allow faster clocks. But we are a long way off moving to quantum or even optical computing as far as I am aware though there has been some talk of optical data shunts if I remember correctly.

[bluevorlon]

Freeze graphics technology for five years, and I guarantee you'll get better games than if you hadn't.

[Alliance]

oooooh hell no, I just cashed out on a 6600, theres no way im upgrading my video card for a long time now, dual core tech can and will stay out of my computers for the better part of a decade atleast, hopefully along with Vista and its uber demands.

[Boomstar]

Honestly whats the point of a card like this when all dx 9 cards will be obsolete when dx 10 (vista) comes out? People with wayyy to much money to spend I guess.

As for dual core tech though is the future the difference between running quake 4 with a normal cpu with a dual core cpu is a huge huge difference in performance (60 fps + very high settings = :jaw: ).

I can't wait for Prey to come out as its the only other soon to be released game that I know of that utizlizes dual core (wish oblivion did...).

[hiddensmoke]

Or the technology is advancing wayyy to fast, to the point where buying a new card is useless untill the new games dont work on your card (and even then you wait a month for better cards). Eventually it'll hit some sort of peak and upgrades will become needed every 5 years instead of every 1 or 2 (my computer needs an upgrade and it was new last year with all the best tech of the time).

[Starblade]

Honestly whats the point of a card like this when all dx 9 cards will be obsolete when dx 10 (vista) comes out? People with wayyy to much money to spend I guess.

For the same reason people will buy DirectX 10 instead of waiting for DirectX 11.

[Boomstar]

Dx 10 is like 9 months away? Where as the first game to use dx 9 (deus ex invisble war I believe) came out 2 years ago now. I simply don't see why you would get a card this expensive for that short a period of time.

[Tiresias]

I agree with blu, the graphics drive is hurting wallets everwhere and we're not gaining many benefits out of it. COnsole games look better and better with the same hardware, the best thing for the pc gaming arena atm would be if we did freeze development of graphics now.

[Starblade]

Dx 10 is like 9 months away? Where as the first game to use dx 9 (deus ex invisble war I believe) came out 2 years ago now. I simply don't see why you would get a card this expensive for that short a period of time.

How much does it cost nowadays? I haven't been keeping up with prices on anything.

[IcecreamLtDan]

Interesting though the topic may be, it should probably go into The Workshop forum. I'll keep it here, but keep that in mind in the future.

[Atreides]

Since selking my comp did not work out, I will keep my comp and not upgrade ANYTHING until at least my wife is done with school. (August 2008).

The new games using the dual core tech and SLI sound nice, but other than the games themselves I will not buy anything else for this comp. I have a pretty stout system as it is, so i will "make due" for awhile.

[black_ranger]

great a new video card just when i'm about to buy a 7800 GT :(...man i hope it well be enough until Dx10 arrives.

[SeerCouncil]

We are actually so close to photorealism...
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/2922/comparison018mx4df.jpg

[General Blaze]

The problem is that now that Graphics have gotten so high in quality, it's easier to nitpick on things and i dunno, it just seems creepier to me. There was some sort of similar problem, only with robots instead of games. Same premise though, the more real man makes it, the more unreal and uncomfortable it gets.

[FatalTheRabbit]

With vista comming out relatively soon why buy something like this?

[EarthBorn]

Yeah, just wait for DX 10 which will blow all these cards out of the window...almost.

[spacewolflord]

Because there are people like me that still run Windows 2000? He is my view on Vidoe cards. Ever 12 to 14 months I will spend at most $150 on one. It has let me play all my game fine, except for Oblivion which only get a little slow at times. But I am with everyone else here, Console get better graphics with the same hardware and Graphics takes loads of time (and money) away from game play.

[FatalTheRabbit]

Maybe the cheaper-midrange DX10 cards will provide performance similar to the higher end DX9 cards, and so you could get vista, and a DX10 card for the price of something like this while retaining good performance.

[Trizzdog]

Let's not forget that only a few games really need a demanding system, and I really doubt every game will be using dx 10 and running on vista as soon as it's available. For now, don't worry about your card being obsolete in a few months. You can still play practically every game made for at least 2 years with most new(er) cards. Your card is only obsolete in that amount of time when you want the prettiest graphics :)

Anyways, I personally see these kind of cards as a test for this kind of technology, and shouldn't be used except by enthuists or someone with a wallet to burn. You'll see if this stuff is really practical when it hits the market with a great (and throughly proven!) price/performance ratio.

[BmB]

We are actually so close to photorealism...
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/2922/comparison018mx4df.jpg
Not really... Crysis isn't photorealistic. Far from it. Mucho pretty, but not photorealistic.

It'll be a long time before that. Even the real good prerenders are only so close. Some look totally convincing I must admit... *cough*Raph.com*cough*
The only reason your comparison looks reasonable is because you're comparing scenes that look alike.

But it is pretty.

[Starblade]

The only reason your comparison looks reasonable is because you're comparing scenes that look alike.

That was the point, to show how a scene in real life compared to the graphics of a similar (if not the same) scene in a video game. Sure, he could've shown, say, a desert, or a town, but with nothing to compare it to, it wouldn't have been as meaningful.

I like the first pic, too. Very pretty.

[Ammon Ra]

Hey! i have a 6600lite, and it is NOT obsolete. I might not be able to play hl2/farcry/q4 at 100fps, but no screen can refresh at that frequency anyways. I'm very much happy with fps ranging from 20 -60. I *would* like to be able to play the game on max settings and enjoy it as much as possible, but there's no reason not to stick with what i have.

That said, i will upgrade to a top-end pc this summer because thats the last time i can buy anything tax free. a nice 20-25% off my bill :p

[BmB]

I must admit, that I was actually fooled by the first screenshot I saw. I was like; what has that photo got to do with this gam... hey, that's not a photo.

It was, though a very small one. So the revealing details where blurred out.

But, give it a couple o' years and we'll be at the point of being close. Possibly very close.

[spacewolflord]

Ammon Ra why do you get a Tax free stuff over there? Is it something special for students or something?

(On Topic)
I find that if you upgrade your ram, that can be just as good if not better then get a newer Graphics card.

[BrettMan]

I'm actually looking to buy some new hardware next month. I was thinking nVidia 7900 GTX OC and a new AMD processor. MORE POWER! *grunt* *grunt* *grunt* *grunt* *grunt* *grunt* *grunt*

However, this is the first i've heard of dx10. Tell me more.

[BmB]

Gladly... Windows Vista and Crysis will be dx10 based.
It's been totally rewritten and... um... I think that's all I know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_10

[Ammon Ra]

Wait, crysis is only playable on vista? NOOOOOOooooooo.........!!!

[Tiresias]

Crysis devs have stated you can play it on dx9

[Water]

Personally, I am getting tired of the attitude of ATI and nVidia. Instead of actually trying to come up with a more efficient graphics card, they go with the whole "Bigger is better" mantra. Have you seen how big graphics cards are getting? They are HUGE. Not only that, they are becoming the most power hungry component in computers.

And it is only going to get worse:

ATI and NVIDIA have been briefing power supply manufacturers in Taiwan recently about what to expect for next year’s R600 and G80 GPUs. Both GPUs will be introduced in late 2006 or early 2007, and while we don’t know the specifications of the new cores we do know that they will be extremely power hungry. The new GPU's will range in power consumption from 130W up to 300W per card.Link to the rest of that article: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2770

I'm sorry, but I draw the line when I would need to buy a separate power supply for a single component.

ATI and nVidia need to stop the whole "bigger is better" attitude. Bigger, in this case, is not better, especially when you need to buy 1 kilowatt power supplies. What they need to do is adopt Intel's latest goal of aiming for the highest performance/watt possible.

[Slashco]

Yeah, pretty soon you'll need a separate contraption with its own power and cooling just to run the video card. All so that your in-game character can have individually animated arm-hairs.

This is why I like Nintendo's philosophy. They concentrate on making the games fun and maximizing their hardware's potential instead of endlessly building up.

[No1lives4ever]

Well, at least with such pc's you no longer have need for a central heating radiator in your room..

[spacewolflord]

But in the summer you fry like eggs on hot black tarmat. Let us all hope that some one sooner or later will stop this crazyness. Until then Bargen bin for old games you always meet to get to but never did.