Hardware GT200: Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 analysis

Or you could build a dirt cheap system with a GTX 280 and get significantly better performance than a quad core offers.

 

Tim, thanks for the link. Sucks that it's not available for the 9800GX2 yet......

 

"Or you could build a dirt cheap system with a GTX 280"

Hmm, clearly 'dirt cheap' means different things to different people.

 

Of course, you could build a system with an Nvidia/ATI card in it for Folding... but the performance wouldn't be as good as a GTX 280. That's kind of a given though.

 

Is there a chance that gaming will be moved to the GPU entirely? maybe down the road??

Sounds to me if game developers can use the GPU for game related, non-graphical, calculation such as AI and other logic, it would seriously affect the need for new faster CPU's. I mean most office apps and such run with processing power to spare with CPUs that are 2 or 3 years old.

I think Intel might have something to think about and AMD / Nvidia might have an amazing opportunity on their hands.

I think things are getting exciting again and things like OpenCL / cuda are good foundation shakers.

 

There's some AI stuff coming to GPUs - both ATI/Nvidia have talked about and demoed it... and yes, it's impressive. The latest demo I saw was of 3,000 characters (each individually rendered) moving around with dynamic pathfinding that is dependant on what else is happening in the environment - think Fire, Enemies, Artillery etc.

 

Congrats on getting married Tim!

I can't wait until mid-july when we'll be seeing some more concrete benchmarked comparisons between the 4850, 4870, 260, 280, 9800GTX+ and all the other previous-gen cards!
It's going to be a gpu-palooza, good luck getting all those tests done guys!

 

I own a 8800GTX. Im personally more interested to see how the 4870 stacks up against the 260/280 to be honest. Nvidia has been taking us for a ride the last 18 months with overpriced cards. Only now that they have some competition are the prices coming down. AMD, whilst not aiming for the top end, are actually targetting the market segment that I now belong in...... affordable performance cards.

 

While there's a lot of stuff in here about the parallel processing capabilities of the chip, I don't think the investment in the 280GTX is valid, even with their CUDA initiative. By the time the technology is in place to make the API valuable to the PC gaming experience, a new card will be out that offers as good, or better, performance in that respect, and, in all likelihood, substantially better graphics processing power, at a lower price point. Pioneering or not, it doesn't seem like a sound investment of money.

And congratulations, Tim

 

I mean make the rest of the system really really cheap to compensate for the expensive GPU.

 

It actually means that the rest of the system is hand-made out of mud brick and sod to compensate for the expensive GPU.

 

Just out of curiosity, was there an ATI card mixed in with all the other NVIDIA cards in the picture on the 8th(?) page?

 

They are clearly trying to hit the University Market with CUDA...

just wait until Virginia Tech (or some other school) makes a super computer thats comparable to the worlds leader (http://www.top500.org/system/9485)

that things Rpeak is 1375776 Gflops...

a GTX280 is ~900 Gflops

that means ~1600 GTX280s could "theoretically" be on equal footing with that super computer.

lets compare wattage too.

1 GTX280 uses ~400Watts...
that entire super computer pumps out 2.5MEGAWatts or 2.5million watts

400W * 2000 = 800000 Watts or .8 Megawatts.



yes yes you can moan and groan about how inaccurate it is, but I am just stating them to prove a point.

Simply, This thing is a BEAST.

IF you work in a science department of some university, and only have a 40K budget for super computing usage (IE having to lease time or whatnot) you can just build a sick one with these suckers and now you OWN the super computer


OH YEAH, and as a side note, the 100th fastest Super computer on that list has a Rmax of 24576, so to get in the top 100, 40 of these would suffice. (again, im not including RAM, SANs, fiber channels etc etc... )

 

I would like gaming performance over video encoding ect. I've never actually had to wait for encoding because I just run it while I sleep so there's no real benefit, sounds to me like it's still gonna take forever anyways. The only benefit I could get from this is if Autodesk would use cuda to 12X there render times in mental ray, that'd be sweet.

 

this is very good link for CUDA 4x 9800 GX2 (SLI turnd off so all 8 CUDA cores can be accessed) id Love to see folding on that Monster

http://www.dvhardware.net/article.php?sid=27538

link 20 of them up you got some insane power there

i just Hope F@H do not put an limit on How many GPUs you can use with that setup there (say GPU all water cooled cpu less important should get by air cooled)

 

haha, i totally don't get the obsession with folding and the video encoding doesn't sound like an outright win to me. the questions raised about that suggest to me that once it's all out people are going to be left going meh. so i think i might avoid buying nvidia for a while.

 

umm no. that's not how it works.

 

From the performance reviews ive seen

At the settings these cards are aimed at

9800gx2 destroys 4850 and 4870 Quiet a few sites now have reviews of all 4 cards

For performance crown AMDATI losses again to a last gen card. ( congratz) Price performance they may win but who honestly cares. Most wont upgrade from 8800gts or 8800gtxs for what is a small upgrade.

personally still have 2 8800ultras, Dont game above 1680*1050 ( who really needs a 25 inch screen in a bedroom really ) Still run every game i play at max settings. Till im down below medium theres no reason to upgrade. And that is ATI and Nvidias problem. Crysis the game that requires the biggest beast to play. Will be as high as it gets for a few years yet id think. The standard rig for crysis on high wont be seen by many till 2012, Farcry took 6 years for most people to max.

As for Ati they are dead in the water on high end performance market . It will still be a 1 performance king nvidia who can still charge as they please.

Ati can reduce power all they want In the high end world of fastest wins and money is no object pc building . Which is who cards like the 9800gx2 are aimed at there is only one winner. Those people dont care about power consumption they just want hte fastest pc in the world.

As for the gtx280 STill needs alot more real world testing to see if its really any better. At some sain resolutions. Testing at 2500 or whatever hte res is. Doesnt matter to most people. If you game at that res u will go blind.

Until games can run soloy from a gpu. You will still need a very fast cpu.

Im not impressed by either ATI or Nvidia since the release of the orginal 8800gtx which is close to 2years now, Also Laughed hard that a 9800gx2 is still faster in crysis,

Even for crossfire of 2 * 4870, They will still be blown to peaces when you go tri sli or quad sli with 280gtx, Cost doesnt matter in high performance land only performance does. 4870x2 is here soon also.

tri 280 gtx sli may cost alot but it will destroy crossfire setups.

Performance nvidia wins again
price Ati wins again

no difrent than last time. Ill buy the cheaper card for my media system and if the 280sli proves a decent upgrade over 8800 ultras ill put that in main pc and be done with it..

 

Greetings!

ATi just released the mid-range cars RV770 (HD4850 and HD870). The R700, ATi high-end, is supposed to appear only in September.

 

r700 is surely lower end than rv770? never did get atis markings. We shall see