If there's any fanboy war as vicious as the one that rages between Sony and Microsoft, it's the one that boils within the PC camp over graphics card manufacturers Nvidia and ATi.
Nvidia unleashed another salvo with the latest blast of details on their upcoming GF100 graphics processor. Based on the new "Fermi" architecture, the GF100 arranges 512 CUDA (compute unified device architecture) cores into four GPCs (Graphics Processing Clusters), each of which comes with four SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), all packing the power of Nvidia's PolyMorph Engine. All those acronyms amount to a 8X boost in power devoted to tessellation, the activity that lies at the heart of DirectX 11, which is the thing you need to have to run DiRT 2 and the new Aliens vs. Predator game at their maximum sexiness settings.
That all sounds great, and if all true will provide a considerable challenge to ATi's 5000 series of cards currently on shelves. Unfortunately, Nvidia forgot to tell us how much all this graphical goodness is going to cost us, and exactly when we'll have to pay for it.
Come on, Nvidia! Give us PC gamers a price point! We'll need it when we have put together a list of parts that will totally outperform the consoles for pocket change, just to remind them that we're superior.
Nvidia details GF100 graphics beastie [Channel Register]
[Image credit to Tomioka Jirou]
Contest:
8:30 PM on 01.19.2010
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sorry, I'm on my iPhone
Not to mention with such a big complex die and low yields for 40nm this GPU might come in at 800USD.
All in all it looks like a turkey.
[ur]http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/01/17/nvidias_fermi_gf100_facts_opinions[/url]
And the whole graphic card thing will eventually end when game developers invest in Kits that use more of OpenGL instead of DirectX so we'll buy our graphics chips based on performance comparisons and not in proprietary features and custom driver support for certain games and platforms, even though currently it's all under Windows, they should all work with any game with a card that has Direct, but that not the case... Game developers, step away from proprietary and go open source...
Here's one location:
http://tomioka2.huruike.com/
And here's another version:
http://tomioka2.huruike.com/heya.jpg
The first link has a bit cropped off the top but there are full versions out there.
http://img01.pixiv.net/img/tomioka2/8104238.jpg
Registered just to geddit.
lol the good times.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3721&p=2
theres some more info
However, by the time I can afford a gaming PC, I should be able to afford this GF100 (as long as the reviews impress). Either way, I might just get one... one day.
It's the fear of having to upgrade constantly which has me set back. That and I'm currently not employed or a drug dealer.
Just something I want to get off my chest too. I've always felt that it's the constant evolution of PC technology that keeps console gaming alive, does anyone agree? I know every year since the early 90s in seems, there have been articles about the death of the PC as a gaming platform but with out the push for better tech in graphics, processor speed, ram speed, etc in the PC market. Consoles have nothing to base their "next generation" on.
Just to touch on the price of things as well. Hardware prices have come down so much in the last few years but also hardware itself is lasting a lot longer. It wasn't that long ago that I can admit as a PC gamer that it was true about constant upgrades being needed every year or two and prices being stupid. Now, well, as an example I'm still using two 8800GTs (a 3 year old card) for my graphics needs and they are still holding up brilliantly to everything I throw at them.
online law degree
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