The Most Expensive Graphics Card
I never knew graphics cards could be so expensive. This is for the highest of high-end applications. The Nvidia Quadro Plex 1000 graphics units are not really for gaming, mind you, but more for workstation uses.
You could buy a pretty decent sports car for that kind of money. Or, according to Nvidia, you can have 12 mega pixel hi-def video, and a card (actually it’s more like a series of cards) that will run every PC game due for release in the next century.
“According to Nvidia, a node can achieve up to 64x full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA), deliver a performance of up to 148 megapixels on 16 synchronized digital-output channels and eight HD SDI channels. The firm says that the fill rate reaches 80 billion pixels/s while the geometry performance is rated at seven billion vertices/s.”
The cheapest model starts at $17,500, and it just goes up from there! When they’re released in September, we’ll probably give a few away. Or, maybe we’ll buy a house instead!
I hear you actually need the processing power of 20 of today’s latest CPUs to get the most out of the Quadro Plex. Otherwise, your CPU would actually be the bottleneck to great performance.
Sports car? I don’t think so. But that’s still pretty darn expensive.
The Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTX: Everyone wants it!
Or so it seems.
The Inquirer reports that Nvidia seems to be creating an artificially-hyped demand for its latest top-of-the-line graphics cards. The Geforce 7900 GTX is in such a large back-order that it seems everyone wants their hands on one.
Nvidia does have a shortage and that it is shipping a limited number of its high end chips. But, at the same time, it created a massive, unbelievable demand for its products. The chaps explained that the cards are flying off the shelves as Nvidia managed to convince everyone that its product is better.
The marketing people of ATI (Nvidia’s main rival in the graphics card market) had better think up something quick to counter the impression that Nvidia cards are better.
Graphics Card Shootout by Extremetech
Extreme Tech recently featured a graphics card shootout, where the reviewers pitted 17 current models against each other. The results were classified according to price range, from entry-level $80 and ridiculously expensive (for a video card) $600.
Once or twice a year, we try to solve this dilemma with a big video card roundup. This time, we took 17 currently available cards representing the range of price points from $80 up to $600. We’ll show you benchmarks with 3DMark06 and a sample of games that are representative of the graphics-card-stressors of the day. We’ll show you which models deliver high fames-per-second per dollar, and just plain high frames-per-second. Ultimately, we hope to arm you with the information you need to figure out exactly which graphics card is right for you.
The verdict:
On the lower end, the MSI RX1300 Pro was great in the sub-$100 range. For the sub-$200 mark, the reviewers favored the new Nvidia GeForce 7600-powered series, such as eVGA’s passively cooled 7600 GS and the slightly overclocked 7600 GT. For the sub-$350 range, the reviewers went for the highly overclocked XFX GeForce 7600 GT XXX, the GeForce 7900 GT XXX (also from XFX) and the ATI Radeon X1800 GTO.
On the higher end, the review found the ATI Radeon X1900 XT series to be among the best, for the $350 and up price range.
Asus EN7600GT review
The Register reviews the Asus EN7600GT graphics card, which is based on Nvidia’s GeForce7600GT. Basically a re-brand (with “Asus” patched and an added little extra with the retail package),
Nvidia’s new GeForce 7600 GT is an incredibly impressive mid-range graphics chip. Asus hasn’t done much with its version, the EN7600GT, apart from re-badging a reference card and bundling a copy of King Kong but heck, what else do you want?
The card’s main plus point is the price, at £140 (VAT inclusive), considering the addition of a game and an HDTV Component cable in the package (well, we could do without the game, thank you). But the card’s fan was found to be too noisy for comfort.
Nvidia out with three new Quadro FX workstation chips
Nvidia has announced three new Quadro FX graphics processing units (GPUs) meant for use with high-end mobile computing, such as with Dell’s higher-end Precision laptop series. The Quadro FX 350M, 1500M and 2500M will each feature power outputs of 15W, 45W and 100W, respectively, with the 2500M outpowering mid-range desktop performance. All would support Shader Model 3.0.
The 350M can take up to 256MB of 400MHz (800MHz effective) DDR 2 video memory connected across a 64-bit bus. The 1500M ups the memory to GDDR 3 and the bus width to 256 bits - it’s clocked to 500MHz (1GHz effective). The 2500 adds support for 512MB of GDDR 3, and is clocked to 600MHz (1.2GHz).
According to Nvidia, the 350M, 1500M and 2500M can process 81 million, 145 million and 181 million vertices per second, respectively, and fill in 1.7 billion, 7.5 billion and 10.8 billion polygons at any given timeframe. while the 350M is limited to standard-definition output, the 1500M and 2500M are capble of HDTV output. All models support DVI and VGA out.
Sapphire Blizzard X1900 XTX water-cooled graphics card review
The Register reviews the Sapphire Blizzard X1900 XTX water-cooled graphics card. In the face-off between a regular ATI X1900 XTX and the similarly-endowed NVIDIA 7900 GTX, the ATI seems to lose the efficiency battle because of extreme heating up.
An X1900 graphics card draws about 150W from your power supply almost all of which ends up dissipated as heat … [In contrast,] a 7900 GTX has to shed but we’d estimate that it’s about 50W - half that of an X1900
…
Deciding whether you should buy a Radeon X1900 or a GeForce 7900 GTX is a tough decision, but on balance we would favour the Nvidia card because it’s quieter and has better drivers. Blizzard changes that and means that we now vote for the X1900 provided you have no plans to run more than one graphics card inside your gaming PC.
We’re in an era where watercooling does not only pertain to auto engines, but computer peripherals as well. When the fight comes to performance, it pays to stay cool, because heat generated usually means inefficiency in the way a device uses energy. So if a graphics card requires that much cooling, then it means it’s probably not using the power it sucks in from your power supply efficiently–most of it goes not to the display output but lost. Better cooling helps out, and if you’re in it for the raw power, then go for the water-cooled X1900.
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