November 11th, 2007
nVidia is introducing 3-way SLI - that's up to 6 slots space taken.
AMD / ATI introduced CrossFireX - that's up to 8 slots space taken.
Now, I do realize that both of these have tremendous horsepower in them, but at what cost?
No, I'm not talking about powerbills. I'm talking about your PCs functionality.
How many of you have a motherboard with over 6 slots space for add-in cards, let alone 8? I don't, that's for sure.
Let's say I would like to go and get myself 3-way SLI or CrossFire X system - where does AMD and nVidia think I'll put my soundcard to? No, integrated is not enough for me, excluding perhaps ATI's on the gfx cards, but even then that's only for watching videos if I had a amplifier that supported HDMI, which I don't, so it's useless for me. Where do they think I'll put my TV receiver card? And NICs and other possible cards I could have.
Now, by using HD3850's or 8800GT's you could somewhat get by this, since they only have single slot coolers by default, but if I didn't put my computer in a freezer, I'm quite sure 3 tightly packed 8800GT's might actually just start melting through the mobo with all the heat coming from other sources too.
But seriously - both of the platforms sound great, but they forgot one little problem - there's no room for other add-in cards.
We need bigger motherboard, or we need alternative solutions, 3870 X2 is one, of course, but that wouldn't probably fit all the cases (though, it shouldn't be longer than 8800 Ultra so I guess it's still manageable)
Showing posts with label radeon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radeon. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Enthusiast graphics cards - the new way to show you have too much money?
October 31th, 2007
We don't need to go far back, when it was all simple.
You had high end card(s), you had midrange card(s) and then you had lowend card(s).
All simple, clear differences in prices and performance.
Then someone came up with an idea, hey, how about an new "performance" group?
Both ATI (now AMD) and nVidia introduced great cards for low prices last generation, and now it's happening all over again, and this time it's even more pronounced than before.
True, that 8800GT is coming nearly a year later than the original 8800-series, but stil, it's priced to 200-250€ or so, and offers near 8800GTX performance in most cases - extremely small performance difference, extremely large price difference.
Same for AMD's camp - even more pronounced to be exact - HD38xx series which, by the looks of it, will actually outperform the long awaited, and to many, dissappointing HD2900XT, and even though 2900XT wasn't topend card in the sense of GTX, not for performance nor price, it was still a lot more expensive than the HD38xx series is expected to be.
Many people say "skip the first generation" of new tech since it won't be good performing part / will have bugs etc on the new stuff - but it looks more like "skip the first generation" is true for the price, wait 6 months to a year or even shorter time, and you get cheaply priced, extremely well performing part.
The subject of this post is a bit misleading, after all, buying that enthusiast part gave you great performance a lot sooner than you could get it for the cheaper prices, but there will still be people going to buy GTX's and Ultras at least, when they could have pretty much the same performance for half or even less of the price.
We don't need to go far back, when it was all simple.
You had high end card(s), you had midrange card(s) and then you had lowend card(s).
All simple, clear differences in prices and performance.
Then someone came up with an idea, hey, how about an new "performance" group?
Both ATI (now AMD) and nVidia introduced great cards for low prices last generation, and now it's happening all over again, and this time it's even more pronounced than before.
True, that 8800GT is coming nearly a year later than the original 8800-series, but stil, it's priced to 200-250€ or so, and offers near 8800GTX performance in most cases - extremely small performance difference, extremely large price difference.
Same for AMD's camp - even more pronounced to be exact - HD38xx series which, by the looks of it, will actually outperform the long awaited, and to many, dissappointing HD2900XT, and even though 2900XT wasn't topend card in the sense of GTX, not for performance nor price, it was still a lot more expensive than the HD38xx series is expected to be.
Many people say "skip the first generation" of new tech since it won't be good performing part / will have bugs etc on the new stuff - but it looks more like "skip the first generation" is true for the price, wait 6 months to a year or even shorter time, and you get cheaply priced, extremely well performing part.
The subject of this post is a bit misleading, after all, buying that enthusiast part gave you great performance a lot sooner than you could get it for the cheaper prices, but there will still be people going to buy GTX's and Ultras at least, when they could have pretty much the same performance for half or even less of the price.
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