So I used to be in the know back in the day ( more then a year ago ) will and the jazz with the 8 series cards and how they compared to the lack of ATI equivalents and Nvidia was doing good in the high end market. Now everything has seemingly changed and I got just a little bit of spare time to get more up to date reading wikipedia articles ( don't hate its useful for quick information that offers sources and I just used it to see quick number facts and comparisons ) and some xbit labs articles and benchmarks: X-bit labs - Articles
Anyways heres a few questions that I came up with, sure I can find out the answers to them with more extensive research but I haven't got the time for that and I know some of you folks obsess over this stuff and know it off the top of your head, so heres my questions: ( appreciation offered in advance! )
1. The 9800 gtx2 seemed to do really well in all the performance charts yet xbit stated in a single sentence that it had problems and wasn't supported well, what did they mean exactly by this? Anyone wanna gimmie the scoop?
2. For games that have problems with taking advantage of Crossfire ( say 2 4870s ), does that mean that the 4870 x2 ( the one where 2 GPUs are in 1 card ) will have these same problems or no?
3. So what would be the best video card deal as of now for $200? $300? $400 $500+?
4. By how far is a GTX 260 better then a vanilla 9800 GTX? Or 9800 GTX+? Is the 9 gtx series cards that much better then a 8800 gtx?
5. Why are they still using that 65nm chips, does that still mean the heating problems that plagued the 8 series are still evident in the 9 series and 200 series? ( hate the way nvidia changed the names )
6. Does gigabyte offer many crossfire capable mobos? Also doesn't crossfire and SLI in itself generated way more heat then any of the GPU x2 single cards generate?
7. Is "Theoretical Shader Processing" basically tell a cards power?
8. Does anyone even care about synthetic benchmarks like 3dmark06 anymore? ATI seems to own Nvidia consistently when it comes to these, yet not necessarily in actual video game performance.
Anyways heres a few questions that I came up with, sure I can find out the answers to them with more extensive research but I haven't got the time for that and I know some of you folks obsess over this stuff and know it off the top of your head, so heres my questions: ( appreciation offered in advance! )
1. The 9800 gtx2 seemed to do really well in all the performance charts yet xbit stated in a single sentence that it had problems and wasn't supported well, what did they mean exactly by this? Anyone wanna gimmie the scoop?
2. For games that have problems with taking advantage of Crossfire ( say 2 4870s ), does that mean that the 4870 x2 ( the one where 2 GPUs are in 1 card ) will have these same problems or no?
3. So what would be the best video card deal as of now for $200? $300? $400 $500+?
4. By how far is a GTX 260 better then a vanilla 9800 GTX? Or 9800 GTX+? Is the 9 gtx series cards that much better then a 8800 gtx?
5. Why are they still using that 65nm chips, does that still mean the heating problems that plagued the 8 series are still evident in the 9 series and 200 series? ( hate the way nvidia changed the names )
6. Does gigabyte offer many crossfire capable mobos? Also doesn't crossfire and SLI in itself generated way more heat then any of the GPU x2 single cards generate?
7. Is "Theoretical Shader Processing" basically tell a cards power?
8. Does anyone even care about synthetic benchmarks like 3dmark06 anymore? ATI seems to own Nvidia consistently when it comes to these, yet not necessarily in actual video game performance.
