Ever since Nvidia released its first chipset, PC building newcomers have constantly questioned whether these must be matched to a like-branded graphics card. Traditionally, however, Nvidia chipsets have had no problems supporting ATI graphics cards, and the inverse became true when ATI later introduced its own chipsets.
But why would anyone do this? The answer was easy two years ago, when Nvidia's clear lead in AMD-compatible chipsets was at odds with ATI's clear lead in graphics performance; such were the days of 9700 Pro and FX 5800 graphics. But while today's chipsets seek to "lock in" graphics buyers by offering unique brand-only features such as SLI or Crossfire mode, the majority of buyers will never use these features. And though a larger number of users may wish to add multiple cards to support an increased number of monitors, chipset brand doesn't affect the use of dual-independent cards.
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Friday, April 13, 2007
Vigor Gaming's Force Recon QXN packs a quad core QX6800
We're always impressed with how fast manufacturers are able to incorporate newly-announced components into their products -- we think there's some black magic at play -- and sure enough, boutique gaming house Vigor is already offering a gaming desktop powered by Intel's new high end Core 2 Extreme QX6800. Besides the 2.93GHz, quad core processor -- which comes standard -- you can also stuff this box with as much as 4GB of blazing fast 1111 MHz DDR2 RAM, 750GB of storage, dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI, as well as the usual array of optical drives, wireless radios, and connectivity ports
Nvidia CUDA - preview
Graphic processors or GPUs have evolved much in the past few years. Today, they are capable of calculating things other than pixels in video games, however, it's important to know how to use them efficiently for other tasks. If AMD has been the first to present a concrete solution to this problem, Nvidia is the first to make this solution available. We'll have a look at it in this article.
During the last couple of years, GPU calculation power has improved exponentially and much faster than that of the CPU. However, this doesn't mean that GPUs have evolved faster. These two components face different challenges and for this reason they have evolved in different directions.
Overclocked XFX & Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS Review
Preceding the launch of the GeForce 8800 series, NVIDIA was having great trouble with “hard launching” its products. For many of its new graphics products the company simply ended up with humble “paper launches”—a launch in which there is no actual hardware available for sale. A number of factors contributed to these troubled launches. NVIDIA might have been facing manufacturing and fabrication problems, translating to a limited of supply of hardware for manufacturers. Manufacturers might have also received actual working samples just a few days in advance of the launch, meaning they weren’t able to get a product out in time.
Whatever the reason behind the paper launches, NVIDIA placed a lot of hard work into making sure its GeForce 8800 launch didn’t suffer from the same problems. This time around, manufacturers received working product samples weeks in advance of the actual product launch. These extra few weeks provided ample time for manufacturers to assemble the cards and create a large stock, effectively taking them out of a position in which they would be rushing up to the last minute to get a finished product out the door. The 8800 launch also focused on having products shipped to retailers in large quantities before the actual launch. This move meant that consumers were able to purchase cards immediately on launch day. For the GeForce 8800, NVIDIA had a total of 15 retailers, online and offline, which were launch partners.
Just my quick comment is that this article is great! It directly compares Nvidia 7900GTX in SLI, 8800GTS/X SLI and also Ati's Crossfire. And you can clearly see from benchmarks who is the winner. More
Whatever the reason behind the paper launches, NVIDIA placed a lot of hard work into making sure its GeForce 8800 launch didn’t suffer from the same problems. This time around, manufacturers received working product samples weeks in advance of the actual product launch. These extra few weeks provided ample time for manufacturers to assemble the cards and create a large stock, effectively taking them out of a position in which they would be rushing up to the last minute to get a finished product out the door. The 8800 launch also focused on having products shipped to retailers in large quantities before the actual launch. This move meant that consumers were able to purchase cards immediately on launch day. For the GeForce 8800, NVIDIA had a total of 15 retailers, online and offline, which were launch partners.
Just my quick comment is that this article is great! It directly compares Nvidia 7900GTX in SLI, 8800GTS/X SLI and also Ati's Crossfire. And you can clearly see from benchmarks who is the winner. More
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Matchless Muscle: Overclocked 8800s
Nvidia has its rump comfortably nestled into the performance driver's seat with the only DX10-enabled graphics card available to consumers. One can argue, though, that there aren't any applications yet that can make use of the new API. However, the benefits of using a unified architecture with streaming processors for current applications clear.
There are many models on the market-maybe too many, some say. But regardless of whether or not you are a fan of sorting through the various models numbers and specifications, more choice for the consumer is a good thing. The only problem is the lack of competition in the performance space, which at least partially accounts for why prices remain at $600 for GTX models and $400 for GTS devices. Last month, we saw a 320-MB version of the GTS usher in a lower price of $300 for DX10 hardware.
There are many models on the market-maybe too many, some say. But regardless of whether or not you are a fan of sorting through the various models numbers and specifications, more choice for the consumer is a good thing. The only problem is the lack of competition in the performance space, which at least partially accounts for why prices remain at $600 for GTX models and $400 for GTS devices. Last month, we saw a 320-MB version of the GTS usher in a lower price of $300 for DX10 hardware.
Dell XPS 710 And 710 H2C Still Installed With XP (With NVIDIA SLI)
Last January at CES, Dell made big news with its introduction of its XPS 710 H2C system which allowed massive overclocking of the system due to its new cooling technology. At the time both the XPS 710 and XPS 710 H2C were being installed, like every other PC at the time, with Windows XP. Now it's early April and nearly every new PC system comes with Microsoft's Vista OS installed, except for the high powered and highly expensive Dell's XPS and XPS H2C systems.
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Inno3D iChiLL 7950GT Accelero S1M 256MiB
Inno3D has slowly been transforming itself from a homogeneous producer of NVIDIA-based graphics cards to a company that takes the enthusiast market seriously whilst still providing ye olde reference SKUs. The attempt to woo the enthusiast is best represented by the current iChiLL series, which adds custom cooling, pre-overclocked core and memory speeds, and the use of higher quality components. The end result is a range of premium graphics cards that offer something new. We first took a look at the company's iChiLL 7900GS ACS 6, and were suitably impressed by its impressive performance and attractive street price.
NVIDIA G80 more than just a new GPU
When NVIDIA announced its first DirectX 10 hardware, I could not have been more excited. I knew this new generation of graphics cards would be a huge leap in the development of the GPU. What makes the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series special? First, we have to understand the architecture (and how a GPU works) before we can really talk about the benefits of the G80.
When word of the G80 and its basic specifications were leaked, tech sites lead the world to believe NVIDIA was going to turn its focus away from a unified architecture to a non-unified one. Let's examine the difference between the two.
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When word of the G80 and its basic specifications were leaked, tech sites lead the world to believe NVIDIA was going to turn its focus away from a unified architecture to a non-unified one. Let's examine the difference between the two.
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OCZ PC2-8500 SLI-Ready Memory review
These heat spreaders do an excellent job of keeping the modules cool and look amazing. Each module has a cool looking NVIDIA SLI-ready sticker at the center and memory information on a sticker at the left. When overclocking please remember to have excellent case air circulation. I would recommend actively cooling the memory with the OCZ XTC Cooler. Having active cooling on the memory means better overclocking results. Speaking of overclocking, let's get to it...
Just my quick comment about this, is that the benchmark didn't include any results (in comparision to others). There's just a short info on how much those modules are clock-able. But the worst part of this whole review is that author of it missed one important point! Those are S.L.I. capable DDR2 modules, while he tested those modules with a single card. And that's not all, he tested them with Ati graphic card!!
Oh my god, what people do reviews....
Ah well what can I do about that?? :-(
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Just my quick comment about this, is that the benchmark didn't include any results (in comparision to others). There's just a short info on how much those modules are clock-able. But the worst part of this whole review is that author of it missed one important point! Those are S.L.I. capable DDR2 modules, while he tested those modules with a single card. And that's not all, he tested them with Ati graphic card!!
Oh my god, what people do reviews....
Ah well what can I do about that?? :-(
More
Nvidia's MCP68 headed for touchdown
NVIDIA'S MCP68 chipset is due to be officially launched on the 19th of this month.
The chipset is a media-centric integrated graphics part, designed to compete with DAAMIT's 690G silicon. The 690G is notable for being one of the first integrated graphics chipsets to support HDMI out with the HDCP content protection infection, and this makes it good for living room PCs running Media Center.
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The chipset is a media-centric integrated graphics part, designed to compete with DAAMIT's 690G silicon. The 690G is notable for being one of the first integrated graphics chipsets to support HDMI out with the HDCP content protection infection, and this makes it good for living room PCs running Media Center.
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A Look at "The Quadfather" from Vigor Gaming
We recently received a sweet gaming rig here at Tom’s Hardware Guide. Vigor Gaming, based in City of Industry, CA, sent us a brand new model called “The Quadfather.” We haven’t finishing testing this QuadFX beast yet, but here are some pictures of the system along with a few of the specs. This SLI-enabled rig looks hot and we can’t wait to get it going on some Doom 3 and Oblivion tests. More details coming soon. Stay tuned for some benchmark tests on Tom’s Hardware Guide.
EPoX 5P965+ GLI — a Motherboard Based on Intel P965 Chipset
EPoX hasn't presented new products for Intel for a long time: in fact, the manufacturer made a pause after i945-based models. Indeed, these models provided support for dual-core Pentium D processors. And hard-driving enthusiasts (the traditional target audience of motherboards from this company) were much more interested in AMD solutions, so EPoX launched all new models for this platform. The situation has changed drastically with the release of Core 2. Now this segment of the market is of most interest. The announcement of several i965-based motherboards looks only natural. In future we can expect the chipset base to expand — in particular, to use cheap products from the NVIDIA nForce 600i series.
5P965+ GLI has three PCI slots (quite a lot for these days). Access to them may be blocked only by a large video card installed into the second PCIEx16 slot. As this motherboard does not officially support SLI, all the three PCI slots will be accessible in most cases.
Just my quick comment is that this board is first of it's kind that has second PCIEx16 slot. And it seems that it supports second PCIE graphic card, it's just that in scope of that test nobody tested this board either in SLI or Crossfire mode. Well maybe they will do it in the future. I think it's just great that it's possible to connect second PCIE card to Intel chipset motherboard, without having to be an Ati type of card.
nVIDIA Certifies Thermaltake Armor as SLI Ready Full Tower Case
Thermaltake has proven again to be the No.1 choice for enthusiasts worldwide with nVIDIA certifies Thermaltake Armor chassis as one of the only two Dual GeForce 8800 GTX SLI Ready chassis in the world.
SLI is known to be the essential of a hardcore gamer or enthusiast and GeForce 8800GTX is the newest graphic card from nVIDIA. Unfortunately, with hundreds of chassis in the market to choose from, it’s very difficult to select the most suitable chassis for user’s SLI system. nVIDIA review all its qualified partners and their chassis, then carefully select and certify chassis which meet SLI requirement and provide specification/environment that can bring out the best performance of SLI system.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Dual-Core Processors in 3D Games
As dual-core processors have been actively spreading in the market for the last years, multi-processing features are appearing in games and other non-professional applications. Dual-core processors have been rarely used in desktop computers up to now. They were mostly employed by professionals and rare enthusiasts, who worked with such applications as 3D modeling and rendering, as well as media processing and encoding, which were initially designed to support several CPUs.
Games offered weak support (or even no support) for two and more processors, because multi-processor systems were not popular among gamers because of their high price. A couple of years ago there started to appear mass-scale dual-core processors, but their price was too high for a common user for some time. So they were again bought by enthusiasts, only on a larger scale. With the launch of Intel Pentium D, as well as Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 X2, both companies that manufacture desktop x86 CPUs significantly dropped prices for their processors and still do it from time to time. As a result, dual-core processors are only a little more expensive than single-core models. Besides, x86 processors develop towards multi-cores.
Test include:
Processors: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Socket 939
Motherboard: Foxconn WinFast NF4SK8AA-8KRS (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI)
RAM: 2048 MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB
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Games offered weak support (or even no support) for two and more processors, because multi-processor systems were not popular among gamers because of their high price. A couple of years ago there started to appear mass-scale dual-core processors, but their price was too high for a common user for some time. So they were again bought by enthusiasts, only on a larger scale. With the launch of Intel Pentium D, as well as Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 X2, both companies that manufacture desktop x86 CPUs significantly dropped prices for their processors and still do it from time to time. As a result, dual-core processors are only a little more expensive than single-core models. Besides, x86 processors develop towards multi-cores.
Test include:
Processors: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Socket 939
Motherboard: Foxconn WinFast NF4SK8AA-8KRS (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI)
RAM: 2048 MB DDR SDRAM PC3200
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB
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