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Graphics Software Hardware

NVIDIA 790i Chipset and GeForce 9800 GX2 Launched 117

Posted by Zonk from the don't-eat-these-chips-with-dip dept.
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has launched their next generation desktop chipsets for the Intel platform today, now known as the nForce 790i and 750i SLI families, along with a new high-end graphics card dubbed the GeForce 9800 GX2. The new motherboard chipset offering brings support for DDR3 to the NVIDIA platform for Intel's Core 2 processors with 1600MHz Front Side Bus support, as well as Gen2 PCI Express for multi-GPU graphics and NVIDIA's new ESA health monitoring/control functions. Performance with the new platform looks fairly impressive in both workstation and gaming scenarios."
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NVIDIA 790i Chipset and GeForce 9800 GX2 Launched More

NVIDIA 790i Chipset and GeForce 9800 GX2 Launched

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  • New toys! (Score:4, Funny)

    by d3ac0n ( 715594 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:02AM (#22782718)
    And I still can't afford them. :(

    • Re:New toys! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nichotin ( 794369 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:08AM (#22782780)
      You are still getting a lot of bang for the buck by going 8800GT or 8800GTS instead. 9800GX2 performs much better, but I mean, the price seriously does not justify it this time. Heck, even the 9600GT will give you decent gaming performance these days, and that is a card almost anyone can afford.

      • How about a new numbering schema? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:52AM (#22783242) Journal
        I don't know about you guys, but wasn't it AMD not too long ago who released a '9600/9800'? I think it might be time to come up with a new numbering schema - maybe a whole new marketing plan. It reminds me of how pinball manufacturers jacked up scores to make their pinballs look more impressive. They started out with targets and bumpers worth 1-5 points, and towards the end, a ball would hit a mumber and BOOM! 10,000 points was scored. Stupid.

        Please don't tell me we're going to have the Nvidia 10,000 or the AMD/ATI 1,000,000+...

        • It'll probably be the Xxxx series first, then who knows.. XIxxx? XIIxxx? And maybe even XIIIxxx. Those crazy Romans!
        • Don't be silly. They are smart aren't they? We will have GeForce 10K and AMD 1M+

        • Re:How about a new numbering schema? (Score:5, Informative)

          by TheThiefMaster ( 992038 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @12:29PM (#22785148)
          It's simple, the number is XYY0, with X = series number (manufacturer specific), YY = performance number (within series, higher=better).

          ATI had a 9xxx series years ago (2002), because they didn't start with a "Radeon 1", instead it was the 7000 to match Direct-X 7.0. nVidia started with the "GeForce", followed by 2, then 3, then changed to the standard "thousands" naming with the GeForce 4000 series, also released in 2002.

          nVidia has overlapped ATI's graphics card numbers since the GeForce 7000 series a couple of years ago, but few people noticed because ATI's 7000 cards weren't that memorable. However pretty much everyone who has been building PCs for more than 6 years will still remember the ATI 9800, and how it beat nVidia's "GeForce FX" 5800 so soundly that they had to release a revised version called the 5900, and then ANOTHER revised version called the 5950 in an attempt to beat it.

          I don't yet see a need to get a GeForce 9800, I haven't found any games that my GeForce 8800 GTS r1 (320MB) can't run perfectly fine on high settings. Let me know if one turns up.

          • I haven't found any games that my GeForce 8800 GTS r1 (320MB) can't run perfectly fine on high settings. Let me know if one turns up.
            Uhhh.... Crysis? On a sidenote, I've got the 640MB version of that card... It was free...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cecil ( 37810 )
            Actually the Radeon line did not start at 7000. The first Radeon (R100-based) was called simply that: "ATI Radeon". Later there was a "Radeon 32" and "Radeon 64". But yes, they did eventually settle on the 7000 series as their naming scheme.

            • Actually the Radeon line did not start at 7000. The first Radeon (R100-based) was called simply that: "ATI Radeon". Later there was a "Radeon 32" and "Radeon 64".

              Straying off topic here, but I thought the Radeon 7000 (aka Radeon VE) was a misleading rip-off product. Remember, NVIDIA released the first mainstream card with hardware transform and lighting (T&L) and named it "GeForce." ATI responded a little later by releasing their hardware T&L product, named "Radeon." Later, NVIDIA released the first "reasonably priced" hardware T&L card called "GeForce 2MX." ATI responded with the Radeon 7000/VE, but this product did not feature hardware T&L.

              Other

          • That is very interesting. I also remember the ATI X800, or something along those lines? That was a very good performer back in the day. I think it was about the same time nvidia released some cards with insanely noisy fans? Maybe that was the 5950?
            • Prefixes of competing nVidia and ATI graphics cards:
              GeForce Radeon
              1 -
              2 -
              3 7
              4 8
              5 9
              6 X
              7 X1
              8 HD 2
              9 HD 3
              • Oops, failed by html. this is what I meant to put:

                Prefixes of competing nVidia and ATI graphics cards:
                GeForce <=> Radeon
                1 <=> -
                2 <=> -
                3 <=> 7
                4 <=> 8
                5 <=> 9
                6 <=> X
                7 <=> X1
                8 <=> HD 2
                9 <=> HD 3

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by d3ac0n ( 715594 )
        I'm still using an AMD 64 3500+ on an Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard with an AGP Nvidia 5600LE. An upgrade JUST to a low-end PCI Express system would still cost me over $1000.00 bucks.

        What with household expenses (new tankless water heater needed, finishing the basement, repairing the roof on the porch, Etc.) and all the other stuff that goes along with buying a house, plus having just spent money to start a new car lease (old beater was on it's last legs and I can't afford to buy the size vehicle I need wit

        • Re:New toys! (Score:5, Informative)

          by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @11:03AM (#22784128) Homepage Journal
          A $1000? Do you shop exclusively at Alienware? Assuming you can reuse your HDD, Optical Drive, Case, Power Supply (might be iffy depending on what you currently have), Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse, and any other PCI cards you might already have; you can build a very decent Core2Duo system for $500. You won't be using a 790i or a 9800GX2, but there's no way you should be hitting $1000 if you make sane price/performance tradeoffs.

          I mean you're replacing the Motherboard (~$100), CPU (~$100), Memory (~$100), and Graphics card ($200). Those numbers are very rough too, you could play around quite a bit with them (Get a $175 graphics card to upgrade the CPU for example). Your system won't be a slouch either. It'll be something like a Core2Duo E4500, 2GB Memory, a motherboard with built-in ethernet, sound (unless you already have a sound card), firewire, etc... a Geforce 9600 and all of the peripherals you already have.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by d3ac0n ( 715594 )
            Your numbers are off.

            We may also be looking at different setups here. For me, "Low End" means that while it doesn't have the latest and greatest, it IS fully up to date as far as socket types, FSB speeds, and RAM speeds are concerned. In other words, that there is some upgradability built into it so I can hold onto it longer and upgrade a few times before it's completely outmoded.

            I recently spent some time at Newegg pricing out a new rig.

            Motherboard ~ $150 (at least. Unless you want to get a motherboard

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jandrese ( 485 )
              If $500 is too much then it's probably not a great time to be trying to upgrade your machine anyway, at least not if you want a gaming rig. But I have to point out that if you shop around you don't have to pay top dollar like that. For instance, the Asus P5B is a perfectly workable motherboard equipped with Socket 775 (for your Core2Duo) for $120 [tigerdirect.com]. The lower end Core2Duos can easily be had for another $120 [zipzoomfly.com], Memory is cheap [newegg.com]. And you can even get a pretty good graphics card [newegg.com] for under $200. Granted, this i

            • For me, "Low End" means that while it doesn't have the latest and greatest, it IS fully up to date as far as socket types, FSB speeds, and RAM speeds are concerned. In other words, that there is some upgradability built into it so I can hold onto it longer and upgrade a few times before it's completely outmoded.

              I recently spent some time at Newegg pricing out a new rig.

              Motherboard ~ $150 (at least. Unless you want to get a motherboard that won't be upgradable because it's using a 1 generation old socket.)
              CPU ~ $200 - 300 (core 2 duo's run around $200, quads around $300)
              RAM ~ $250 (for 2 gigs of average quality RAM in the proper speed. A minimum for running VM's and gaming)
              Graphics card ~ $300 (for any Nvidia 8x00 card, although this may have dropped a bit with the release mentioned in TFA)

              Your version of "low end" looks like an upper-mid-range gaming rig to me, especially the $250 for RAM and $300 for a current-generation graphics card.

              If you're willing to use an AMD platform again, motherboards using the new AMD 780G chipset [techreport.com] (socket AM2+ for Phenom, PCI Express 2.0, HyperTransport 3.0, RAID 0/1/10, integrated Radeon HD 2400 based graphics, HDMI) start at $80 ($70 after rebate) at Newegg [newegg.com].

              For now, a $61 Athlon 64 X2 4200+ [newegg.com] (65nm with VT support) should be a very nice temporary upgrade fro

            • Unless the dollar has tanked in the last few days your numbers ARE way off. MB $70-80 (e.g ASUS P5N-MX), CPU $70 (e.g e2160 just overclock the hell out of it), cooler $30, RAM 2GB $70 (e.g. OCZ 6400). That should be quite a nicely performing system for @ $250 sans graphics card although I might bump up the MB to the $100 range in order to be able to get a higher stable overclock out of the e2160.

              Trust me when I say I know what you mean. I'm in the same boat with several AGP systems that it seems stupid to u
            • If you go with AMD, you can get a reliable Micro ATX board (which will fit into a full sized ATX case if that's what you already have) for $50. The MSI AM2 socket boards are solid and cheap. Plus you can get a dual core AMD 3800+ for $70 and 2 Gb of DDR2 800mhz memory for $50(DDR2 800 is cheap as dirt) or even less if you go with more generic memory brands. So far that adds up to $170, plus you can get an Nvidia 7xxx series graphics card for PCIe for as low as $45 for a low end 7300gt, which can still run a
        • I did a 8600GTS 320, an AMD 3800+, a case with PS and a gig of RAM for under $500 more than a year ago. I might be able to do it for half that now. You aren't looking in the right places.
        • I can understand what your frustration is and you are correct in assuming that the latest and greatest is not for you...its not for 99% of the people out there but that's what gets put into the mainstream for the rest of us is last years bleeding edge. You don't need 1000$ for a low-end pci-e system. Provided you still have the peripherals, the HDD and the optical drive then you can replace it with a nearly top of the line system for 700$ clean from the egg: E6850 Proc - 270 8800gt 512Mb - 229 2GB DDR2 8
      • Nonsense... they just go to hexadecimal: A100GT, A100GTS, A100GTX, etc. Mind you that only buys them another five generations. :)

      • the 9600GT will give you decent gaming performance these days...

        I was in the middle of placing an order for PC-parts, including the 9600GT, when I saw this story in the rss-feed. Now I'm wondering, is an announcement like this likely to push prices lower for the 9600GT (released in feb)? And while I'm at it: linux support seems [linuxtoday.com] better for NVidia's 9600GT then ATI's mid-range competitor, the HD 3850, but does anyone here has any experience with those cards running linux?

  • That was planed to be out at the END OF LAST YEAR?
    • Perhaps they were keeping it as a "response" to this release... We'll see during the next week... else they're in a bad position...

  • in financial news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:26AM (#22782940) Homepage
    NVDA shares are down over 50% and are trading at 14 times earnings. Their balance sheet is beautiful, though. No debt on the books!

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=nvda [yahoo.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Crazyswedishguy ( 1020008 )
      No debt is not always a good thing. Healthy debt (good interest rate) is an indication of a stable company with a growth strategy. Most large companies have debt, even if they have lots of liquid assets (cash) lying around. Debt is the (usually cheap) way to raise capital without diluting ownership, and capital is necessary for growth, especially for a company like Nvidia that most likely has a lot of R&D.
      • Debt can be bad, especially if they borrow short like those poor suckers with ARMs. And in bankruptcy, shareholders get paid AFTER bond holders!

        You're right that it's not always bad. But there are some very good things about being debt free.

  • Deja vu (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Datamonstar ( 845886 )
    Didn't we already have a 9800? http://ati.amd.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/index.html [amd.com]
    • Radeons are produced by ati; the geforce is an nvidia product.

    • And as Intel found out ages ago, you can't trademark a number.

      • That's not the point. The point isn't "oh no somebody will mean to buy a four year old card from ATI but accidentally buy a much more expensive and new card from nVidia, even though GeForce/Radeon are the far more prominant parts of the name", it's that they gave it the same number as a four year old card from ATI! I'm just guessing 4 year old, I don't care to go look it up, but I'm sure I bought my 9800 PRO in 2004, and it wasn't the top of the line even then, I don't think. Seems kind of silly, you wou
        • Blame ATI for using the most convoluted nomenclature ever for years and years while nVidia treks along using such antiquated notions as updating the thousandth digit when they release a new series. What else would they do, skip to 10800?
    • What's the thermal output differences between the older chips and the new?
    • Has nVIDIA improved their cooling fans at all or will we still have to get third party [arctic-cooling.com] cooling devices?

    Seriously, I've have an overheated nVIDIA card blow up and take out a motherboard with it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Jafar00 ( 673457 )
      I got the MSI 9600GT and it's cool enough and very quiet even after stressing it out with Crysis.
    • My latest nVidia card (GF 7950GT) actually came with a passive cooler. I think they've got the whole "adequate stock cooler" thing down.
    • I was under the impression that nvidia just made the chipsets and a variety of vendors made the boards with varying heatsink designs.
    • nvidia does not make graphics cards, they make chipsets. You're angry at the wrong company for your crappy fan.
    • You sighted people and your fancy video cards ... I like my PCIe x16 GeForce 7300, with pasive cooling and no extra power requirements. IT does have a nice 128 MB of ram. -- From a blind guy running a linux server out of his bedroom

      • Blindness aside, wouldn't a headless server not even need a video card? The nForce 6 in my server has nVidia's integrated 6150 and needs very little system RAM for the VGA console I never use (I use SSH except in dire situations).

        • It's my server, but I also use it to test gnome accessibility when I'm at home. So I don't want an integrated video card, even though I'm not using compiz-fusion or anything. I just want something with its own memory. And yes, I have a server that's quite overkill for what I need (except for storage) ...
          • There are a lot of lower-end GeForce cards that come with passive heatsinks.

            (I prefer to have as few moving parts in my servers as pratically possible. So motherboards with heat pipes and radiators are better then a tiny 40mm fan cooling a chipset.)
  • I remember a few months ago when information came out about the 9800GX2 it was claimed the MSRP would be $449. Now we know that was merely a pipe dream.. I wonder if Nvidia leaked that low price and changed their mind or if people were just pulling numbers out of thin air for their leak articles.

    Either way, $449 would have been a much nicer price, but I guess since they move so few units of these high end cards anyway (i've heard it is well less than 100k units sold for the high-end cards) they need to ha
    • $449 is a low price?? Maybe for a marketing troll, but people who know how to read wont pay that much for a card that barely beats the 8800 GT with a single GPU.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ironwill96 ( 736883 )
        Are you looking at the same benchmarks I am?

        Go back and look at them again, 9800GX2 trounces the 8800GT as soon as you turn the settings up. It is very comparable to the SLI 8800 GTS 512mb which is 2 8800 GTS cards put together. That will cost you more to do then buying this card will.
        • Ask and ye shall receive; Particular note on the 2560x1600 benchmarks, the 8800 Ultra and the 8800 GT both beat the 9800 GX2. http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3266&p=5 [anandtech.com] Comon, lets see the excuses for a released product.
    • I remember when the 8800GT came out at "$200-250"; in reality it was more like $270-320. Reviewers had to publish mea culpas for misleading prospective buyers.

  • New cards are great and all... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pathological liar ( 659969 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:35AM (#22783034)
    ... but hey NVIDIA, when can we get purevideo support for Linux? I appreciate you folks fixing the black window bug and all, but having accelerated x264 would be incredible.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by antdude ( 79039 )
      The one for Windows doesn't even work correctly. :(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JonXP ( 850946 )
      Purevideo support for MPEG2 is already available for Linux when using the libXvMC provided with nVidia's driver. It's closed source, though.

      I haven't read any word on the newer Purevideo features yet.
      • I seem to recall there being other issues with using XvMC as well, although for the life of me I can't remember what they are now... but why would you? Almost anything can decode MPEG2 at DVD res/bitrate with no real problem, and you could spec out an ultra-low-power media box for that without any difficulty.

        HD content is an entirely different beast, right now you need a high-powered dual core CPU (as a minimum) to decode 1080p content even at low-ish bitrates. My AMD64 3200+ only does 720p with a bit of ro

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by JonXP ( 850946 )
          There is a lot of HD content that was still (regrettably) being compressed with MPEG2, including a lot of ATSC broadcast content. Being able to offload this to your videocard in your MythTV box means you can save a good amount of money on the processor.

          This is just answering the "Why would you?" bit. I still think they should update the library to support all the features of the new cards.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ameboy ( 1211832 )
      Until h.264 support in XvMC is released, I can't see any reason to buy a card newer than my current 6200 - it does the exact same things for me as a current nvidia card would.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kev Vance ( 833 )
      There are some performance bugs that need to get worked out in the current CUDA drivers. But for 8-series and higher cards, there is nothing stopping us from writing our own acceleration and postprocessing code that runs directly on the GPU.

  • As is the names of cards wasn't confusing enough.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ZipR ( 584654 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:38AM (#22783056)
    Now Nvidia has taken the name of one of ATI's best and most memorable cards, the 9800. Is it intentional?
    • the last gen of cards from nVidia carried the 8800/8600/8500 numbering system. It would only make sense that they'd introduce a 9-series GeForce card. usually the *800's are the top of the line. *600 are the mid-range gaming cards, the *500s are crippled but usable lower-end cards. God help you if they continue to release *200 versions (last one I had was a 6200, never again.)
  • Is this an all-new chipset, or merely two of their old ones in SLI mode on one package?

  • NVidia chipset? I would think twice (Score:4, Informative)

    by Godji ( 957148 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:42AM (#22783090) Homepage
    The last time I bought a high-end nVidia chipset (the 680i), the reference design came with an "optional" chipset fan, to be used when overclocking memory. Without the fan, and without overclocking memory, the system would die within 15 minutes of memtest86. With the fan, you get a noisy whine all the time, also because the fan can only be operated at 50% speed, not less. (At 100%, the fan is ridiculously loud.)

    Just sharing my experiences; don't listen to me if you don't want to. Other than the noise issue, the thing is very stable even with a slight CPU+memory overclock.
    • i have the same mobo, the chipset fan is set at 50%, and i dont even notice the noise. but, yes, you definitely should plug the fan it. it probably shouldve been hooked up by default.
    • what does a bum fan have to do with the chipset? the most popular socket 939 series boards (the A8N series from Asus of which I have 3) were notorious for bad fans...but it was a nforce 4 board so is it the chipset's fault? crack open that wallet, drop a sawbuck and buy a new fan. I promise, it won't hurt.

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by ShiNoKaze ( 1097629 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @09:42AM (#22783096)
    Wow Core 2 processors with 1600MHz Front Side Bus!! AMD watch out!! Wait... nvmd.
  • I know Intel is all the rage these days with the Core Quad and whatnot, but I still prefer AMD chips (even though I may be in the minority) and would like to SLI my cards. When are we going to see a decent board for the AM2+ chipset? That was supposed to be a March release too!

    • I still prefer AMD chips (even though I may be in the minority) and would like to SLI my cards

      The answer is, or soon will be, to "crossfire" your cards instead.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by muckdog ( 607284 )
        Not until ATI puts out decent linux drivers. I hear they are improving though.
        • Oh they are! I spent a few hours trying to get fglrx from a yum repo to work. I gave up and downloaded the binary from AMD. It installed and when I started X and fired up glxgears my jaw dropped! It worked...

  • Sheesh, this took them a year and a half? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Marton ( 24416 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2008 @10:02AM (#22783358)
    Seriously - the "new graphics card" is a joke. It's two 8800 GTx cards in SLI. There are two old G92 processors, on two separate PCBs, with a leafblower holding them together. I guess if you want SLI with the minimum amount of fuss, this is the way to go - but come on. Where is the new silicon?

    Same goes for the 790i. It's neat that it can do DDR3 (ho-hum) or that it can run 1600Mhz FSB CPUs (which you'd expect from a recent chipset). Let's face it - it's a very minor improvement over the 780i which itself did little to improve upon the 680i.

    Props to Asus for the nice motherboard - it's nice to see such an innovative northbridge/southbridge cooling solution. Other than that, I don't think there's much to see here.

    I don't mean to be a party-pooper but article sounds like the author got overexcited once or twice during the writing process. I just don't get what the enthusiasm is all about.
    • I'm with you, but the think to remember here is these products are targeted to a very specific market. The kind of wacko who spends $400 on a motherboard for the "privilege" of SLI, is the same wacko who will spend another $400 every year to get the latest and greatest. In total, that individual is spending up to $1500 per year just to stay on top. Not everyone has the luxury of being value-conscious.

      Me, I have what I consider a high-end gaming system. Overclocked quad, 8800GTS, tons of ram and a 27" LC

    • It's two GPUs on one PCB. It's different than two single-GPU cards in SLI, because you can put two dual-GPU cards into SLI, which would theoretically be 4x the graphics power.

      I realize that it might be smarter to wait a month or two for the real technology upgrade, but for the deep-pocketed got-to-have-it-now consumer, a $700 dual-GPU card might be the right frosting on their top-of-the-line cake.

      Now if only I were a deep-pocketed got-to-have-it-now consumer...

  • Yeah but will it run Crysis at full settings?

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Rod Beauvex ( 832040 )
      Seriously, any game that requires that much shit to be playable isn't advanced, it's poorly fucking programmed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kelz ( 611260 )
      50FPS at high settings with a resolution of 1920x1200. I'll bet it'll run decently on very high with 1280x1024.
      • 50FPS is not decent? Are you..human?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kelz ( 611260 )
          Well for one, 50 FPS average means that likely it will dip below 20 or 15 in some instances, which IS noticible. Also I said that the 50fps value is for "high" settings. "Very high" settings would require you to drop the resolution to maintain the same framerate most likely.
          • You're right, I be silly for not reading right. One point though: reducing the resolution by a little did not seem to have an effect when I was trying the game out on very high. I never actually played (no time anymore :( ) but I had to see what it was like, and if these cards can survive the beating my machine took, they may be worth their cost in a few months time. The graphics were a feat of engineering.
  • I finalized the order for my newegg parts......for a 780i striker II board and a 8800 sli. Man I wish I read about this first lol. I knew they were coming...I just expected later this year. Which is why I settled, because I wasn't planning on waiting. GRRR.

  • This is off-topic, I suppose, for discussing the article at HotHardware, rather than the video card.

    But anyway, here goes.

    Cinebench R10 3D Rendering This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below, listed in seconds.

    So it took between 10852 and 10911 seconds to render the scene?

    Yet at the same time, the graph says "higher

  • Will my Linux box supposed to run the driver?
  • So now my fancy new graphics card that lets me run all my PC games at high settings is "obsolete"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kelz ( 611260 )
      The "newest" graphics card if you buy it right when it comes out is obsolete within 2 months. If you bought yours within this period, the 9600 was already out!
    • Well, if you bought a 8600GT it was obsolete the day you took it home. It was never a very good deal price-to-performance, trounced by the 8800GTS 320mb earlier in the release of the 8 series and beaten by the 8800GT now.
  • Or £300 for a PS3. Tough call. Oh wait, I'm on an ASUS K8N mobo, so I'd need to upgrade to a PCI-E capable motherboard, with a new CPU and RAM as well, plus a copy of Vista for all the DirectX-10 shininess.

    Think I'll just wait for Win7 and skip a handful of hardware iterations. Given that the current rig plays HL2 and Far Cry at a decent resolution with full shinies, I can't work out why UT3 either looks nice but runs at 2fps, or runs at 25fps but looks like an Atari 2600 game.

    • I can't work out why UT3 either looks nice but runs at 2fps, or runs at 25fps but looks like an Atari 2600 game.
      Yeah, what the hell is up with that?! I would think that it would look at least as good as ut2004 did on the same machine. Instead, it looks like a textureless game.
  • miss
    Seriously Intel/Nvidia why can't I get a performance non-SLI Enthusiast class motherboard cheap?

    AMD does it and did it before they integrated the memory controller into the cpu.

    I'm glad ATI/AMD is making a comeback because they offered performance cpu/mobo combinations at a reasonable price.

    I can watch morons buy $300 motherboards, $1000 cpus, and $600 GPUS without spite (well maybe a little) but don't make the next step down $50 motherboards, $90 cpus, and $50 GPUS... seriously...

    All three co

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