Pimp My GPU: February 2008

GeForce 9600 GT is launched!

Weird, because I just posted an entry about 9600 GT a few days ago. Anyway, today marks the official launch of 9600 GT from NVIDIA. For 9600 GT reference card, this is the spec:

GPU : G94 (D9M) at 65 nm
No. of stream processor : 64
No. of ROPs : 16
Core Clock : 650 MHz
Shader Clock : 1625 MHz
Memory Clock : 1800 MHz
Memory Onboard : 512 MB (not sure about any 256 MB flavour)
Memory Subsystem : 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth : 57.6 GB/sec
Texture Fill rate : 20.8 Gigapixels/sec
Power consumption : 95 W (6-pin power connector required)

From the specs, it looks like a very attractive graphics card, with price tag of $170-$190.

Expect streams of reviews around the net soon.

edited: Flocks of reviews have just emerged. Take a look at:

AnandTech
Guru3D
Elite Bastards
PC Perspective
Legit Reviews
Hot Hardware

On another note, as a pre-emptive strike against 9600 GT launch, AMD slashed the price of HD 3850 and 3870 down to $169 and $189 respectively. It's gonna be a fierce war between NVIDIA and AMD in the midrange sector indeed. Take your pick, gamers!

Crysis on 8800 GT - not bad at all

This clip shows this gamer with 8800 GT playing Crysis on Very High settings. Not bad though I can see the graphics minor stuttering.

PNY 8800 GTS review video

Take a look at this video clip 'cause it's quite a nice review of the card.

Test Drive Unlimited video

I just love this game very much. I would have given it 100% rating if not for some glitches that this game possesses.

Take a look at this clip, and enjoy the tour that Gallardo had!

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS 384 MB review at TechPowerUp

OMG! I guess that during my hiatus, I had accidentally missed another 'silent' product that came from NVIDIA. 8800 GS, another derivative off G92 GPU (well, I initially thought it was based off G8x ) are already in the market. However, I cannot sense it being publicized much compared to like 8800 GT and GTS 512. Could it be a gap-filler solution? A gap between 8600 GTS and 8800 GTS 320, or GTS 320 and GT? Or something else?

Anyway, we've got one of them under reviewer's microscope at TechPowerUp. EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS 384 MB. So basically, this is what they say about what 8800 GS actually is:

"
The G92 is currently NVIDIA's hottest (not temperature) GPU. It sells like mad on several different products like 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512 MB. Since both of them are still fairly expensive and ATI has solid offerings in the $170 range, NVIDIA decided to create the GeForce 8800 GS based on the G92 GPU but with less performance features. They took G92 cores and disabled 24 shader units and 4 ROPs. The memory bus has also been reduced from 256 bit to 192 bit which explains the odd memory size of 384 MB.
"

You're dead right it's odd! Basically, after all that crippling, 8800 GS is left with the specs like this:

Shader Units : 96
ROPS : 12
Transistors : 754M (exactly like 8800 GT)
Memory Bus Width : 192-bit
Memory Size : 384 MB
Coere Clock : 500 MHz
Memory Clock : 800 MHz

All that for $170. It's a head-to-head competition against HD 3850 (duhh! Now I understand!).

It's an interesting review, so head over to TechPowerUp to read the verdict.

AMD dissed physics, Nvidia acquired AGEIA, Nvidia dissed X2

Rant Mode: ON

Ahh, it's just so happening in the graphics industry right now. Not long ago, AMD downplayed the importance of physics saying that it will not be important until at least DX11.

A few days ago, NVIDIA acquired AGEIA, thus promising a momentum in physics application (whether through dedicated hardware or driver).

Intel already has Havok in it's arsenal.

Then, Nvidia made a claim that HD 3870 X2 is not the world's best performing single graphics card (ouch!) and stating that a single chip solution still offer the best performance by referencing its products eg. 8800 GTX, Ultra.

We know that at the same time, 9800 GX2 is about to be released in Q1 this year. So?

Just listen to what Jen-Hsun Huang said:

“If you want to put two GPUs on an add-in card and you deliver the absolute highest performance in the world, the enthusiast that uses that particular PC will certainly tolerate the fact that it’s a much larger solution. But if it’s not the highest performance solution in the world, as in the case of the X2, then it’s just really problematic. You know, there’s no market really for a product that’s larger, louder, and not as high performance. So, I think that GeForce 8800 GTX is still absolutely the best DX10 and highest graphics performance GPU in the world.”

Uhh, that's just sharp. Hehehehe.

Anyway, he did actually make a remark about Nvidia's own dual chip solution. View X-Bit Labs for full text.

There are no 'good' manners in the corporate world.

Rant Mode: OFF

9600 GT review at TweakTown!

Among X600 GT in the history of NVIDIA graphics card, which one was considered the best in its class? Most would say 6600 GT, I guess. 7600 GT?? Emm, okay..but definitely not 8600 GT.
To continue the trend 9600 GT is also a must product from NVIDIA and once again, we'll be seeing the same question again, will this card become the next 'hot' midrange graphics card?

The answer lies right here at TweakTown. What you'll see is that 9600 GT might have something special under that G94 engine that makes this card very competitive. Let me give this clue: it has to be pitted against 8800 GT and HD 3870, not HD 3850 or any other card of its equivalent. And yeah, it won't beat 8800 GT, but how about HD 3870?

I won't spoil it more but for the price that is well under that of HD 3870, it surely is the next attractive card from NVIDIA. And it's gonna hit the retail shelves next week.

Gaming season for me: Juiced 2

I might be late on this, but currently I have 5-6 games waiting to be played on my rig. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Crysis, NFS: Pro Street, Juiced 2, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 etc (yeah, I spent that much on games. I guess I'm still young at heart). Currently, Juiced 2 is the one installed and I'm about 80% through the whole game.

It's pretty much better than the first Juiced, but it's very arcade compared to NFS: Pro Street. The game run very solid without any hiccup, glitch or instability. No problems with graphics smoothness when I'm powered by 8800 GT at hand.

However, the gameplay becomes repetitive after a while when I progress through leagues. I don't even bother to complete each league at full 100%. Just need to unlock the next stage ASAP.

For those who are contemplating on getting this game..well, I won't say it's worthy every penny, but it's still fun to play. Just wait until this game gets cheaper in your nearest gamestore.

You can be sure all babes in this game are SUPER HOT!!!

9600 GT to be released in February 21st

The first card in Geforce 9 series to be released is 9600 GT and it's gonna be released on Feb 21st, after being delayed from the original date, that was on 14th.

...and that is all I have to say.

p/s: OMG OMG OMG! This card trails 8800 GT in preliminary benchies?? Read over here!

My Zotac against GTS 640MB and GTX

I just found a review which pitted my Zotac 8800 GT against Foxconn 8800 GTS 640 MB and MSI 8800 GTX. There is not much review for one as most Zotac card reviewed till today are the AMP version (700 MHz core clock).

To cut the story short, it seems that Zotac 8800 GT equals the performance of GTX in most benchmarks in the review, except in World in Conflict and 3DMark06 (meh!) and certainly whoop GTS 640 MB's butt big time. Even in Crysis, Zotac 8800 GT tops GTX in every tested resolution (a bit strange though, perhaps there's something wrong with the driver?).

It seems that Foxconn and MSI are factory-overclocked configurations too, just look at the table below.

	MSI GeForce 8800 GTX	FOXCONN GeForce 8800 GTS	ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT
Stream Processors	128	96	112
Core Clock (MHz)	610	600	660
Shader Clock (MHz)	1350	1200	1500
Memory Clock (MHz)	1000	1030	900
Video RAM (MB)	768	640	512
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	86.4	64	57.6
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	36.8	24	33.6

The review is also a good read for average, mainstream gamers like me who still stuck with 19" LCD monitor, hence play at 1280x1024 res max. To be honest, there are, but not much reviews today that really provide benchmarks around those resolution. I mean, most reviews are chasing for hi-def gaming benchies or some sort. Come on man, don't leave gamers like us behind!

Enough rants, head over to BenchmarkReviews for the full story.

OMG! Another X2 card?

There is no doubt about it; dual-chip graphics card seems to be the 'in-thing' for the GPU makers this year. Does that mean there are no longer innovations for a single GPU in the future? I hope not, but my guess is per GPU architectural improvement will be less 'heavy' than before if the multi-GPU concept is the way to go.

The reason for the title is that I've spotted another X2 card from AMD in the form of HD 2600XT X2 Quad, which obviously means two 2600XT chip in a single card. It will be made by Visiontek, and the name 'Quad' implies as it has 4 DVI output per card (so for Quad GPU, you get 8 possible outputs to your monitor!)

Obviously it will perform less than HD 3870X2 and I don't know where its performance will fall in benchmarks. Perhaps equal to 8800 Ultra??

Head over here for more details of the card.