laurieny said:
Read all the posts and then went on a google extravangza on a variety of topics. Thought I should share all I learned but I'll break it up as I may crash before I cover it all.
Topic #1 GTX 512-P2-N545-AX
Good advice from lazerman on not buying the video card from Dell. I was jazzed by the price and the availability but I have been burned before by Dell's proprietary bent before. But then I read the following on cooltechzone with a fair amount of dismay.
NVIDIA to Phase Out 7800GTX 512MB in February
"(Insider Report) - Well, we’ve been hearing rumors about this for a while, but we finally heard it from the horse’s mouth not too long ago. Recent conversations with insiders at NVIDIA have led us to believe that their top of the line card, the 7800GTX 512MB will be out of production sometime in Q1 next year, most likely somewhere around February ‘06.
This fits in quite well as we suspect ATI to launch the R580 GPU around the same timeframe. Therefore, NVIDIA will need to come up with something really special to beat ATIÂ’s upcoming offering (at least on paper). Of course, if the 7800GTX 512MB is anything to go by, the G71 or G72 GPUs will still be considerably faster.
However, tough times could be ahead for NVIDIA, since the maximum overclock that the 7800GTX 512MB managed was around 700MHz while the X1800XT crossed the 1GHz marker. Of course, this was with space age cooling but the potential was definitely there. Needless to say, both NVIDIA and ATI are prepping their next product lineups as 2005 draws to an end. "
I don't want to spend this much on a card that is going out of production a few weeks after I buy it. My new plan is to take the ATI X700 out of his current machine and put in the new system until the next latest and greatest comes out and just stash the $750 alloted for the card until that happens. Maybe the Easter bunny will have to bring it, and I can stretch out this gift over a couple of holidays ;-)
well there is more to a card than the clock speeds. it's the same with CPU's.
the X1800XT gets higher clock speeds, but it only has 16 pixel pipelines, compared to the 7800's 24.
a pixel pipeline is basically what processes what colour each pixel will be. the more pixel pipelines, the more pixels it can process at once.
the 512MB 7800 GTX doesn't get as high clock speeds, but it is still faster because of the larger amount of pixel pipelines.
even if the card does get discontinued, that still doesn't mean it's a bad card.
what it probabbly means is that Nvidia is going to release an even faster card.
it happens all the time. you buy a top-end product, and a few months later there is already something better. you can't avoid that, it's how technology grows.
the 512MB 7800 GTX is the top card at the moment, however it will be exceeded
the card will be a good card for a long time. in a couple of months, it might not be the best card, but it will still be good.
but if you keep waiting for the better card to come out, you're going to be waiting for a long time. there will always be something better going to come out.
although, yes it is an expensive card to get, and I understand somebody not wanting to spend so much on a video card.
