Basic Overview: The following computer setup was used for testing:
* Processor: Intel Kentsfield Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (Quad Core) 2.66 GHz, overclocked to 3.2GHz
* RAM: OCZ Titanium 2048 MB (2×1GB) DDR2-800 PC2-6400 Dual Channel
* Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR LGA 775 (Socket T) nVidia nForce 680
* Harddrive: 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3500641AS 500 GB @ 7200 RPM, SATA 3.0 Gb/s on RAID 0
* Dedicated Sound: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum
If you just bought a GeForce 8800, especially the GTX version, you might want to return your card on January 22nd when ATI R600 cards become available throughout the US at 630 USD (MSRP Price) which roughly equals the current price for a GeForce 8800GTX.
Both, nVidia GeForce 8800GTX and ATI R600 are revolutionizing the graphics card market with so-far unseen graphics processing power. They are thus enabling game developers to create the worlds they want to create without being limited by hardware capabilities. But problems are coming up as well: If you develop a game for the high-end market, you will either have to forget about everyone else, or spend more time and money to make your game playable on lower-end hardware as well.
Unfortunately, as with everything, game development is mostly about money. Until we see the current high-end become a standard, it will be hard to see anything meet all capabilities of your new graphics card. Microsoft is simplifying this, as they continue standardizing DirectX and remove chip-specific commands, making it easier for game developers to develop for every card.
However, if we look back at the testing done with ATI’s new R600 chip, a successor of the XBox chip, we can tell that ATI did their homework very well, even though we had to work with a corporate test sample and a (surprisingly stable) pre-driver release initially designed for Windows Vista.
Let’s just hope noone with a GeForce 8800GTX gets jealous when you show off your R600.
If you have any comments or feedback, let us know at comments@level505.com.
With best regards,
WE LEARNED that ATI's highly anticipated next GPU will consume up to an incredible 250 W to work. No wonder we reported on many occasions that the chip will be one of the hottest ever.
It is the 80 nanometre chip and we talked about it here saying a 65 nanometre chip is simply not possible for such a complex chip.
We also said that cards based on it will need a new "super doper" cooler, here.
And Charlie D has something to say, here.
We can now confirm that the new ATI card will consume around 250W. The currently fastest ATI, R580+ or Radeon X1950 XTX consumes up to 125W i a worst case scenario and heavy 3D while you can suck up 145W out with the dual chip X7950 GX2 card.
This means that the R600 will consume twice as much power, and probably will end up close to twice as warm but we also hear it will get much faster then the current cards with sixty four pipelines. It could easily end up twice as fast than the current ATI offerings.
It is now a January/February chip, so it will be a while until we have this baby on our desk but after a long time we are getting mildly titillated at the prospect.
sabooya wrote:If you just bought a GeForce 8800, especially the GTX version, you might want to return your card on January 22nd when ATI R600 cards become available throughout the US at 630 USD (MSRP Price) which roughly equals the current price for a GeForce 8800GTX.
Ill prolly end up getting SLI 8600 or something i dont really wanna spend over 300 bucks on a GPU
WOW WOW WOW WOW!!! Very very nice indeed. I'm starting to lean towards DX games more than OPENGL just cause of availability so ATI may be on order for me!!!
