Graphics Card Comparison Guide 271
JaniceZ writes "These days, there are so many graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications of the various desktop GPUs in the market as well as those already obsolescent or obsolete."
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Re:It _is_ a shame (Score:3, Insightful)
And if we are discussing naming conventions, I absolutely HATE Nvidia's naming conventions and really don't buy from them because of it. At least when I buy a 9600, I know its better than a 9200. But when I see
NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra
GeForce FX
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
GeForce 6 Series
I have absolutly NO IDEA what is better...
Re:wow, what an utterly useless article (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no 'article text' because this appears to be a set of comparison charts, not a card discussion, and there is no explanation of 'what is what' because it is assumed that if you are comparing stats, you already know your subject. Finally, there is indeed an article navigation control at the bottom of the page. At least there is in Firefox, and also no Google ads for me, thanks to the same.
YAG3DGCC! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about something that covers new ground? How about evaluating the features beyond simple stats and 3D performance in various games I'll never play?
I want to see a comparison that looks at these characterstics without regard to 3D FPS...
1) Noise level, idle and under load
2) Heat level and/or power consumption, idle and under load
3) DVI signal quality when pushed to maximum resolution & refresh rate - i.e. how long a cable I can hang off of it at what resolution
4) Video acceleration - mpeg2, mpeg2 for hi-def, WM9, WM9 for hi-def, h.264 and h.264 for at hi-def resolutions
5) Video de-interlacing support and quality - 3:2 telecine at what resolutions, how about 2:2 telecine, etc
6) Video scaling quality -- how many taps for vertical, how many taps horizontal, any fancy algorithms, test-pattern measured quality levels
Anybody and his brother can put up a speclist of 3D features or run a set of semi-standard 3D benchmarks and they already have. How about somebody with some real tools - oscope, multi-meter, pattern tests, etc do something new and useful to the REST of us for a change?
Nice charts, what happened to Matrox? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like they haven't really introduced anything new in quite some time.
Re:Thank God (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had the opposite experience. The worst problem I've had with an Nvidia card has been trouble configuring the DVI display settings on a Linux machine. Eventually thanks to user forums I figured out the magic settings (and they released a driver update with those settings a few days later).
On the other hand, I've been burned by ATI twice on graphics cards. In fact on one of the cards (a card supporting TV in) they never even made functional Windows drivers, much less Linux. Even called ATI tech support on that one and they put me on hold on their charge-per-minute support line - yeah great support there. Funny thing is years after the fact some 3rd party wrote a generic driver for the chipset under Linux which made it work. (So in total ATI "official" Windows drivers never worked, and generic 3rd party unofficial Linux drivers did work)
So now I don't even bother to look at ATI specs. They could make whatever uber-card they want that outperforms Nvidia ten times over, and I still won't ever touch the thing. Twice burned is enough for me.
Do not post your website on slashdot.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which GPU is best for scientific computing task (Score:2, Insightful)
The older AGP standard transmitted data to the card very fast but could only read it slowly. This worked well for the things that graphics cards traditionally do.
The newer PCI-e cards can read from the graphics card at a much higher rate.
Re:Article content is medicore at best (Score:5, Insightful)
Radeon 9800 Pro 128-bits 380 MHz 3040 MTexels/s 256-bits DDR 340MHz 21.76GB/s
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 450 MHz 3600 MTexels/s 256-bits DDR 425 MHz 27.20 GB/s
The 9800 Pro has 1 additional vertex shader pipe, but the raw pixel pushing of the 5900U should be a good 15-20% faster than the Radeon.
Clearly that is not the case in the real world [tomshardware.com]
A modern graphics card has so many complex and intricate features and tradeoffs for performance and power and production, looking at a handful of stats isn't even a good comparison when we're dealing with GPUs of the same family, much less a wide ranging comparison.
If you want to know how something performs, there is no substitute for benchmarks.
Re:It _is_ a shame (Score:4, Insightful)
GeForce FX5200, FX5300, FX5700, FX5750, FX5900
GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800
GeForce 7800
nForce refers to motherboard chipsets. Regular is regular, SLI means it supports SLI, and Ultra means it's the highest performing model (which also happens to include SLI).
The only confusing aspect is the suffixes like GT (Ultra, GTX, LE) on the graphics cards, which can make cards with the same number have different specs. Of course, ATI does that was well (which is better: A Pro, an SE an XT or a regular?). In fact, the major difference between the naming schemes the two companies use is that the first number for a nVidia card is the generation the chip is from (4, 5, 6), while the first number in an ATI card is (supposed to be) the version of DirectX it's built to support (or, it was until the X series; they ran out of 9-based numbers, I guess). So for a time, ATI was actually inserting new 9x00 chips between existing 9x00 chips from an earlier generation. Are you sure that a 9600 is significantly worse than a 9700 in that situation?
nVidia's naming scheme is no more or less complex than ATI's. You're just familiar with ATI's product line, and rather ignorant (it seems) of nVidia's.
Re:Article content is medicore at best (Score:4, Insightful)
Cedega (transgaming's wine) rocks. I love it.
And I'm using a Geforce FX 5900, which runs all my games at 1280x1024, 40-50 FPS. You can get one for ~$130 at pricewatch or techbargains.
I've got an xbox and Ps2, but I just don't come back to those games the same way I come back to PC games.
*shrug*. I've tried to make the move. I've got a mac mini, a powerbook, and 2 consoles. I still like my x86 linux box the best.
Re:6600GT "infinite loop": 7,900 hits. (Score:2, Insightful)