Rated: 50% (2 votes)
Loading ...GeForce 9-series: a big disappointment
Clive Webster
The GeForce 9-series has three flavours so far:
- GeForce 9600 GT - a mid-range product that performs near-identically to an existing 8-series product and costs roughly the same.
- GeForce 9800 GX2 – a massive graphics brick that inelegantly combines two underclocked 8-series GPUs for high performance and Sun-like temperatures
- GeForce 9800 GTX – a minor update to the 512MB GeForce 8800 GTS that performs near-enough the same, but costs much more.
Aren’t you glad you waited for the 9-series to launch before upgrading your graphics? You really needn’t have bothered.
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
Loading ...If it wasn’t for Crysis, would you need a new graphics card?
Clive Webster
Even a £135 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT can play modern games at 1,920 x 1,200 without sacrificing any image quality. All bar Crysis that is, which struggles to be playable on this card even at relatively low resolutions with detail settings turned down. With Nvidia co-operating with Crytek (the makers of Crysis) from an early point - giving them access to early GeForce 8800 cards, helping optimise game code drivers, and so on.
So, with other games easily playable even at very high resolutions and maximum detail settings, wouldn’t Nvidia need a reason for you to buy a new GeForce graphics card? And hopefully to spend more than £135. Enter Crysis, which demands some kind of monster PC to run with Very High settings at a decent resolution and frame rate. ‘Want to play Crysis?’ Nvidia asks, ‘then get yourself a pair of GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB cards…’
Surely, given that Nvidia has been so involved with the development of Crysis, it should have a card capable of playing it? Granted, this isn’t a consipracy of David Icke proportions, but is far more believable. What do you think?
Rated: 100% (4 votes)
Loading ...Why Hybrid SLI will be rubbish
Clive Webster
Nvidia has just announced a new kind of SLI: Hybrid SLI. This doesn’t pair a GeForce 8800 GTS with a Radeon HD 3870 or anything like that. The ‘Hybrid’ bit of the name comes from the way you can use the GPU of a graphics card with the GPU built into your (forthcoming) Nvidia motherboard. Yippee…
Hybrid SLI brings two new technologies: GeForce Boost and HybridPower. Boost combines the awesome rendering power of the forthcoming GeForce 8200 integrated GPU with a GeForce 8400 GS or 8500 GT graphics card. And yes, I’m joking when I say awesome; those GPUs couldn’t render their way out of polygon-light, vertex-lit paper bag - combining two won’t help matters much.
HybridPower sounds more interesting: when ‘graphics horsepower is not required, such as high definition movie playback* or emailing… HybridPower allows the PC to switch processing from a single GPU, or multiple GPUs in SLI configuration, to the onboard motherboard GPU’ automatically. The aim is toshut down unused, high-energy components and so decrease power consumption and noise.
HybridPower could be of use for a laptop, where battery life could be extended or gaming performance increased depending on what you’re doing. Sony has a similar system where you can manually switch between the integrated GPU and a gaming GPU, though this requires a re-boot.
However, the two graphics cards announced by Nvidia as supporting Hybris SLI aren’t mobile parts, they’re desktop cards. And this is why Hybrid SLI will be utterly rubbish:
1) If you’re gaming on an integrated, motherboard GPU in a desktop PC, chances are you don’t know PC hardware very well (if at all) and so won’t know who Nvidia is or what SLI does. Chances of such a person buying a Hybrid SLI graphics card to add to their integrated GPU? None whatsoever. Chances of a knowledgeable PC gamer user buying Hybrid SLI? Very small.
2) Integrated graphics have sod all performance, and the GeForce 8400 GS and 8500 GT only marginally more. Even using the more powerful GeForce 8500 GT with Hybrid SLI, I reckon you’ll have rubbish performance in modern games at respectable detail and resolutions.
3) While HybridPower has some potential for laptops, it’ll be pants in a desktop PC. If you’ve got a graphics card, you connect that to your monitor. However, if your graphics card is going to shut down every time you boot into Windows or quit a game, that’s not going to work. As most monitors don’t have two DVI inputs, Nvidia doesn’t want you to have to use two DVI cables either (one from your graphics card and one from the integrated GPU). The ideal situation would be for the Hybrid SLI-compatible cards to have a pass-through for the screen-out of the integrated GPU even when it’s powered down, but I’ve been told by an industry insider that that’s too tricky. Instead, Hybrid SLI looks like it’ll ask your graphics card to screen-out via the ingrated chipset’s output when it’s running and trying to render a game This means sending it’s rendered data back to the Northbridge-based GPU over the PCI-E bus which will cause inevitable lag from the bus and the arbitration at the Northbridge. If Nvidia tries to use this method with a a high-performance Hybrid SLI card, I’m betting you’ll see a significant performance drop from a conventional non-Hybrid set-up.
So, given that the people at which Hybrid SLI is aimed won’t know or care what it is (and therefore won’t buy it), that it looks like it’ll be inelegantly implemented, and that I reckon you won’t see much extra performance anyway, I’m betting it’s going to be utter crap. Expect Hybrid SLI motherboards for AMD soon (there don’t seem to be plans for an Intel version, oddly). Of course, only the tests on these boards will tell whether I’m right or not, but let me know your thoughts an Hybrid SLI below.
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* This despite Nvidia also wanting to sell you expensive graphics cards because they’ll accelerate and enhance HD movie playback with Pure Video HD. Well done, the Nvidia marketing team…
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
Loading ...If I was AMD, I’d…
Clive Webster
Beyond the fact that if I was working for AMD at the moment I’d be sprucing up my CV and checking monster for relevant vacancies, the company could turn around the current dominance by Intel and Nvidia with a few smart moves. This would be of massive benefit to the industry, as we need competition to give us innovations, good products and fair prices. I’ve put together some ideas on how AMD can fight back, but feel free to add your own (or discuss why a suggestion I make might not be a good idea) in the comments. Hopefully an AMD senior bod will stumble across the list and get some inspiration…
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
Loading ...GeFarce
Clive Webster
Bless me reader, for I have sinned. It’s been two months since my last blog…
And not being catholic I have no idea how the rest of a Confession is meant to go; this is pretty much all Hollywood has let me see of the fascinating ritual. That and the Hail Marys (nope, no idea what they are either) and perhaps some farcical mix up where someone’s pushed into the booth and has to recommend an appropriate course of action to a bewildered worshipper.
Anyway, onto the blog, which is all about a new screen I recently bought. Yes, bought. With my own actual money what I had earned. Read more
Rated: 68% (5 votes)
Loading ...CPC Benchmarks - nearly there!
Clive Webster
Well, the benchmarks are almost done. In fact the reference PC is running the tests as I write, and then it’ll just be a case of Spode putting these scores into the code, making a couple of interface tweaks and we’ll have something we can send out.
It’s been a tough week or two bug-testing the new benchmarks into the wee small hours, and debating what’s going on with the few anomalous scores we’ve been getting, but it’s definitely worth the effort. Read more
Rated: 88% (5 votes)
Loading ...So, should AMD make a console?
Clive Webster
By now I’m going to assume that everyone’s listened to episode 8 of the CPC podcast and has therefore heard my crazy suggestion that AMD should get into the console market. This sparked quite a disussion in the ofice, so expect some counter-blog from someone soon. Read more
Rated: 92% (5 votes)
Loading ...Is Intel being too aggresive for, er, your own good?
Clive Webster
The pricing has just come out for the new 1,333MHz FSB Intel processors. And while I might have said in a previous blog that I’d give them a miss and wait for Penryn, the super-low prices have made me think again.
Let’s take the new 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750. In testing this performed identically to the E6700 but could overclcok further. And it cost 40% less (at time of writing). Read more
Rated: 80% (2 votes)
Loading ...Is Intel being too aggressive for its own good?
Clive Webster
The next few months will see Intel release an avalanche of products, but there are so many that even the notorious Intel marketing machine can’t keep up. We were less than impressed with the lack of information flowing from Intel about the P35 chipset while reviewing the Asus P5K Deluxe and even more surprised when a new Pentium CPU turned up on Aria with absolutely no fanfare (or comment as to why the brand had been re-introduced, at time of writing) from Intel at all. This from a company which had the marketing power to foist NetBurst Pentium 4s and Pentium Ds on the world for years in surprisingly large quantities. Read more