New cards from ATI and Nvidia!!!

[gohan0032]

ATI and Nvidia are releasing a new line of graphics cards. Nvidia will be releasing details next week at their lan party/advertisement for new card line. I haven't found nay reliable sources, but on site said that the budget card will be similar in price to the fx5200, but have the performance of the fx5600!!!! Too bad this wasn't a reliable source :cry
I figure the worst case scenerio is that prices for the current fx's will go down. Most of this applies to ATI as well. They really want a bigger piece of the budget card market.

Does anyone know of any good info is?

[TheMattrix]

nVidia NV40 = Geforce 6800 (dropping the fx)
ATi R420 = Radeon X800

And of course there's still the "Ultra" and "Pro" versions.

[gohan0032]

nVidia NV40 = Geforce 6800 (dropping the fx)
ATi R420 = Radeon X800


Do you suppose the VN40 will be Geforce6? It kind of seems werid to abandon the numbring system for FX and then go back to the number system.

[TheMattrix]

Meh, FX is WAY overused.

[gohan0032]

Geforce 6800 has been anounced!!! :thumbs

So far it seems that only the high end NV40 cardws have been announced(6800 and 6800 Ultra). Initial benchmarks are amazing!

Halo
1600x1200
Geforce 6800 Ultra: 65.2 fps
Geforce fx 5950 Ultra: 28.3 fps

Unreal Tournament 2004.......

It seems like the link to the 6800 review went down. But in Unreal 2004, the 6800 took a very small performnce hit with 4x aniso and 8x anti enabled; compared to the 5950 which took a large hit at this quality.

Bad news: requires 2 dedicated atx connectors, 2 slot cooling(but not any noiser or heavier than the 1 slot systme on the 5950), Cost more than I can afford, won't hit reatil for 45 days :angry. $500 for the Ultra, $300 for non-ultra.

source: tomshardware and anandtech

[PCC-Richard]

Holy vector shading Batman!

Halo
1600x1200
Geforce 6800 Ultra: 65.2 fps
Geforce fx 5950 Ultra: 28.3 fps

That's insane!

requires 2 dedicated atx connectors, 2 slot cooling

2 atx connectors is sorta funny actually. I wonder if it can double as a heating unit in my room.

2 slot cooling! :angry Grrrr! I use a shuttle at home! :leave

[gohan0032]

I believe they said that it isn't too mauch hotter than the fx 5950 ultra. Then again, not sure how hot that is.

Good news PCC-Richard! The non-ultra will only need one slot. Plus, some vendors may replace the ultra's 2 slot cooling system with their own one slot system.

Check out www.anandtech.com for a comprehensive preiview and explanation of new shaders and other technology.

PS. 6800 will have a programmable video processor for decoding, encoding, etc. The chip with drivers should drastically cut down on video encodeing time. :)

[TheMattrix]

Excellent, I knew nVidia wouldn't make the same mistakes that they did with the FX series.

[gohan0032]

Ya, they couldn't afford to. But it is still possible that they mess up with the "budget" 6000's.

[PCC-Jon]

FYI, the new ATI X800 is now posted on our website. nVidia is soon to follow!

[Anonymous]

Any chance you guys are going to offer the ATI all-in-wonder 9600 in the new XT version? Thats the video card I'd like in my new comp, and I heard the old 9600 AIW are being discontinued anyways

[PCC-Jon]

Yep, we can get that right now, not a problem! If you submit a configuration, just put a note that you'd like that card in the comments field, and we'll update the quote to use that card.

[up_too_late]

I'm no longer sold on throwing down 500 bones on the x800 after reading this article: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040603/index.html

If I'm paying top dollar I want good performance through hardware, not driver/filter tweaks. That's something you expect from lower end cards. I'm thinking it might be better to wait for the price drop on the 9800 platinum.

BTW - came across your site the other day. I like you're setup. If people only knew what crap they were buying from the big companies...

[TheMattrix]

Oh, didn't you know that Tom's hardware is completely partial towards Intel and nVidia? If you didn't know, well...they are. Heck they gave the 5800U (worst card ever) shining reviews. Don't trust any reviews from Tom's Hardware concerning ATi, nVidia, AMD, or Intel. All of their other reviews are fine though. If you want an unpartial review of the card, check out [H]ardOCP or someplace similar. :thumbs

[up_too_late]

I thought they did a fair job staying neutral and showing the facts. I'm a long time ATI fan and was disappointed to read about the filtering tweak.

[TheMattrix]

Meh, ATi explained their actions. nVidia has been cought doing much worse. In my optionion, as long as you can't tell the difference, it's all good.

[PCC-Richard]

I like Toms Hardware, but you do have to take things with a grain of salt, especially since both ATI and Nvidia are guilty of tweaking special drivers to score better on PCmark and 3Dmark.

HardOCP is okay, I guess. I do think they try to maintain integrity, and they're starting to shy away from standard benchmarking.

The general rule of thumb is to read everything with a critical eye. That said, I've heard (and read) some great things about the X800.

[TheMattrix]

Yeah, I like tom's hardware too, but I just don't rely on anything they said concerning processors or video cards.

[up_too_late]

I know they all tweak, but to have it switch filtering types when it detects colored mipmaps is crap.