So is the GT200-series going to be a disappointment too?

[Toss3]

The card will retail @ €599
http://www.hw-elektronik.de/xtc/product_info.php?info=p703_Nvidia-GeForce--b-GTX280--b--1024MB-Marke.html

This means in Europe will be paying $925 for the GTX280 :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: :thumbdwn: ...

No we won't. Or at least not a month after its release; 9800gx2 can be had for around 400€ today.

[K007]

Well I agree with the cost and that is why I am thinking of going ATI for my next card.

plus ure on x38 just like me. Xfire is still a open choice and SLI is out the window.

[Revs]

Isn't that a tad premature ? I mean not one single benchmark (a credible one) is out yet so why make that descicion already ? You'll have plenty of time making a better grounded choice once more imformation is out so whats the rush ?

I was just thinking the updated card will be out if a few months and will probably be faster and cheaper. This card, however you look at it, won't be cheap. I would need two to get any reasonable performance gain and that would cost a crap load of money. We all know we don't really need to upgrade for any game but Crysis ATM anyhow, which i've completed twice now anyway. Therefore i'm not gonna rush out and spend probably near £1k for two of these when, at the moment, cards are being released every few months. That's all! :D

[Siskods9]

No we won't. Or at least not a month after its release; 9800gx2 can be had for around 400€ today.

I take your point about the first month or two costing more but it still does not justify the massive price difference.

And as for the 9800GX2 price... €400 = $620 and I doubt if that's fair either! I mean does the 9800GX2 cost $620 today?

[Redeemed]

I take your point about the first month or two costing more but it still does not justify the massive price difference.

And as for the 9800GX2 price... €400 = $620 and I doubt if that's fair either! I mean does the 9800GX2 cost $620 today?

It depends which one you get. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048&Description=9800GX2&bop=And&Order=PRICED)

[Xion X2]

pretty pathetic IMO, that 2x 4870 is only a bit faster than 1x GTX280. I'm guessing SLI GTX280 will crush 4870GX2 (nana2)

Yeah, and quad-crossfire with 2 4870 GX2s will crush GTX280 SLI, and Tri-GTX280 SLI will probably crush quad-crossfire.

What's the point? There are infinite possibilities to piss money away and crush your bank account.

Show me the games that really need it.

[sammy sung]

I was just thinking the updated card will be out if a few months and will probably be faster and cheaper. This card, however you look at it, won't be cheap. I would need two to get any reasonable performance gain and that would cost a crap load of money. We all know we don't really need to upgrade for any game but Crysis ATM anyhow, which i've completed twice now anyway. Therefore i'm not gonna rush out and spend probably near £1k for two of these when, at the moment, cards are being released every few months. That's all! :D

Idd,i myself have not decided what to buy if anything at all.Lately i havent gamed so much apart from some wow.Bought a ps3 but havent used it much,its collecting dust together with the 360 atm.The thing is though that the 8800 gtx is still a damn fine card and upgrading just isnt so appealing ,especially if i need to change psu aswell.Somehow this isnt as much fun as it used to be,striving for better performance etc.

I might very well buy a Triumph Daytona 675 SE instead,been looking at one for quite some time :p
And i'll get the fully immersive 3D surround driving experience as a bonus,without the need of 8xAA and 16xAF :D

[josiahsuarez]

Yeah, and quad-crossfire with 2 4870 GX2s will crush GTX280 SLI, and Tri-GTX280 SLI will probably crush quad-crossfire.

What's the point? There are infinite possibilities to piss money away and crush your bank account.

Show me the games that really need it.

being at the extreme high end is always a waste of money. personally I run a 9600GT and I find it more than adequate. but there are some people willing to piss money away to run Crysis at 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF. there is a (small) market for the bleeding edge, however impractical it is. I'm sure their are people on this forum right now running 2x 9800GX2 with 1300 watt power supplies :headexplode:

[walterman]

And if the Radeon HD4870X2 will be slightly faster in some games as a single GTX280? I dont care. That card will be expensive too I guess.

We'll know it soon. I think that we'll see better competition in this round.

Here is the 4850:

http://www.fudzilla.com/images/stories/2008/June/Computex_2008/F/4850avail.jpg

187E

I think that the 4870X2 will be considerably cheaper than the GTX280, and i think that it will outperform the GTX280, and if we have luck, nVidia will need to release that GT200b with GDDR5 & 512bit bus, and this would be the sort of card in which i would spend 600E.

[mcolbourn]

plus ure on x38 just like me. Xfire is still a open choice and SLI is out the window.

Yep, and imo i think it gives me the option for the cheapest multi card option. OK it may not be the fastest but bang for buck it should still be good and better that my 8800GTX.

[sammy sung]

We'll know it soon. I think that we'll see better competition in this round.

Here is the 4850 on a swiss shop:

http://www.fudzilla.com/images/stories/2008/June/Computex_2008/F/4850avail.jpg



Thats a swedish shop m8,not swiss :p

[walterman]

Fixed.

[FlashFreeze]

I think the reason nVIDIA went with GDDR3 for GTX280 is to keep the overall price of the card from getting even higher. GTX200 chip at 65nm is expensive to manufacture due to its size, adding the price of GDDR5 on top of that would have summed the total price up to a level that would have worked against nVIDIA instead of helping them sell more. GT200b at 55nm with 1GB GDDR5 sounds very nice but I think it's at least six months away.

However I think ATi had the liberty of going with GDDR5 since their RV770 chip is less expensive to produce compared to GT200. Even ATi's original design has 512MB GDDR5 to keep the price acceptable on launch.

Of course they know there are quite a few games that require >512MB at high res with high AA/AF, but they also know that when you factor in the number of people around the globe who are aware of this fact and think a highend card meant to use at high res/high AA/AF should have >512MB, then compare that to the number of people that would just buy the card with 512MB memory, they do not have to bother with the extra Vram just yet until it's cost effective for them to go with higher amount of memory. There is a reason nVIDIA released the highend card, 9800GTX on aprils fools. ;)

[Uberpwnage]

being at the extreme high end is always a waste of money. personally I run a 9600GT and I find it more than adequate. but there are some people willing to piss money away to run Crysis at 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF. there is a (small) market for the bleeding edge, however impractical it is. I'm sure their are people on this forum right now running 2x 9800GX2 with 1300 watt power supplies :headexplode:
The problem with the "extreme hgh end" is that once you're there, it's very hard to go back. A year ago I would have never thought of getting an Extreme Edition cpu, they're horribley overpriced and have poor resale value, unfortunately they way Intel was going with the higher FSB meant lower multipliers and limited overclocking ability. Now (unfortunately for my bank acount) I am planning on buying the Nehalem EE. In effect, it's a never ending cycle of higher performance and higher cost.

I hope to be wrong, but when i'm going to buy a 650E gfx card, i want exceptional performance & image quality, and i think that GDDR3 is holding the true power of these cards. Even the 512bit bus won't be enough to feed this monster properly at high res res with high level of AA/AF.
I don't think the bandwidth is an issue, the 141GB/s that the 280 offers is substantially higher then previous cards (with the exception of the HD2900 maybe). Tests showed that the 8800 GTX and Ultra weren't exactly starving for more bandwidth. Sure, Crysis can't run with high AA, but I think it has far more to do with the card as a whole, and the level of CPU bottleneck. I also think that the 280 will really shine with 4GHz+ CPU's, moreso then ATI's offering, and don't forget, these cards can be overclocked too... A 2400MHz memory clock would raise the bandwidth to 154GB/s, and even slightly increased core and shader clocks will probably provide pretty noticable benefits as well.

[walterman]

I don't think the bandwidth is an issue, the 141GB/s that the 280 offers is substantially higher then previous cards (with the exception of the HD2900 maybe). Tests showed that the 8800 GTX and Ultra weren't exactly starving for more bandwidth. Sure, Crysis can't run with high AA, but I think it has far more to do with the card as a whole, and the level of CPU bottleneck. I also think that the 280 will really shine with 4GHz+ CPU's, moreso then ATI's offering, and don't forget, these cards can be overclocked too... A 2400MHz memory clock would raise the bandwidth to 154GB/s, and even slightly increased core and shader clocks will probably provide pretty noticable benefits as well.

The GTX280 has 3x times the shading power of the G80, & only a 45% higher bw.

When you use AA, the gpu generates several fragments per pixel that the rops combine finally into a pixel. More shading power helps to generate these fragments faster, but, you need to read more texels and write more fragments, so, you need more bandwidth.

If you use AF, you need to read more texels from your textures in memory, to filter them with your TF units. So, when you use higher level of AF, you also need more bandwidth.

In games like 'Crysis', the shading power, will limit your framerate faster than the effect of the bandwidth. But, in the rest of games, where you aren't bounded by the shading power, you'll need the extra bandwidth to raise the resolution/AA/AF.

I think that in these cases, the GTX280 will be only a 45% faster than the 8800Ultra. We'll know it soon.

[Lfctony]

The GTX280 has 3x times the shading power of the G80, & only a 45% higher bw.

When you use AA, the gpu generates several fragments per pixel that the rops combine finally into a pixel. More shading power helps to generate these fragments faster, but, you need to read more texels and write more fragments, so, you need more bandwidth.

If you use AF, you need to read more texels from your textures in memory, to filter them with your TF units. So, when you use higher level of AF, you also need more bandwidth.

In games like 'Crysis', the shading power, will limit your framerate faster than the effect of the bandwidth. But, in the rest of games, where you aren't bounded by the shading power, you'll need the extra bandwidth to raise the resolution/AA/AF.

I think that in these cases, the GTX280 will be only a 45% faster than the 8800Ultra. We'll know it soon.

Yeah, but, aren't games that bring cards to their knees shader heavy? Thinking out loud now... More and more games are moving towards the way Crysis is looking, so shouldn't shader power be our primary concern? If shader power isn't the limiting factor, games tend to run very fast anyway. That's what I've experienced.

[walterman]

Some people want to upgrade from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 and keep using SSAA 2x ;)

And this is not going to happen unless they raise the bw at least a 75%

[Lfctony]

You and your Bloodrayne! :p

[mullet]

You and your Bloodrayne! :p

HAhaa

[walterman]

Ok, you caught me :D

The game loves video memory bandwidth, and the new BR2 HD project that i'm developing is going to need a 40% higher bandwidth. So, 100 GB/s * ((1920*1200)/(1280*1024)) * 1.4 = 246 GB/s

So, give me that 512bit GDDR5 monster now :)