Holiday 2006 Shopping Guide: GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 13, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Extreme Performance GPUs
There are basically only three Extreme Performance GPUs currently available. Of course we have the GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX, but we also include the GeForce 7950 GX2 in this category. Besides the individual graphics cards, we will finally include all of the multi-GPU configurations that we feel are worth considering. We'll start this category by first taking a look at the various options available.
The first four configurations in the above table are generally going to be slower than a single 7950 GX2, so with the possible exception of X1900 GT CrossFire we would avoid them. We would also take a pass on the X1900 GT CrossFire configuration and go with a single High-End GPU at that price point, because the overall difference in performance isn't going to be much. In terms of performance, the 7950 GX2 actually ends up being faster than the 8800 GTS, but if you haven't purchased a GX2 already there's no real reason to purchase one now. Throw a bit of overclocking at the 8800 GTS and you can easily close the performance gap (and then some), plus you still get DirectX 10 support and lower noise levels.
Given that most of the remaining configurations can't even match the overall performance of a single GeForce 8800 GTX - they might prove faster in a few titles, but on average they will be slower - there's really no reason to purchase anything less than a GeForce 8800 series card or two if you are after extreme performance. Keep in mind that a single 8800 GTX is able to run most games at 2560x1600 with 4x antialiasing at reasonable frame rates, so unless you have a 30" display you may not feel any need to purchase more than one 8800 GTX card. If you simply want the best of the best and money is no object, of course dual 8800 GTX cards in SLI can't be beat for insane performance. Just make sure the rest of your system is up to snuff.
Somewhat similar to ATI's use of more pixel shader units on the X1900 cards in order to improve performance relative to the X1800, NVIDIA packs a whopping 96 or 128 shaders into the G80 cores. Unlike previous GPU designs (other than the Xbox 360's and Xenos chip), the G80 shaders are "unified shaders" and are able to function as pixel, vertex, or geometry shaders as appropriate. (Geometry shaders are one of the new additions to DirectX 10.) Each individual shader on the G80 is going to be less powerful than an equivalent shader on the G70 core, but the flexibility along with the sheer number of shader units makes for an extremely powerful, forward thinking architecture.
It's probably not too surprising that the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 line gets our recommendation right now for those of you who are after maximum graphics performance. There are no other graphics cards that can come near the performance level offered by the 8800 GTX, and no multi-GPU solution can touch the 8800 GTX SLI. Before going out and spending $600 or more on a graphics setup, however, there are some other things we need to mention.
If you decide to go out and purchase a GeForce 8800 card, you are definitely living on the "bleeding-edge" of technology. As has been the case with most new graphics technology launches (DirectX 7, 8, and 9), the drivers and software really aren't fully mature at present. We have seen at least one game already where the current NVIDIA drivers do not function properly, and we have heard various reports of additional games that don't work properly/at all with the G80 cards. If you don't like being a beta tester, you should probably wait at least another month or two before purchasing any DirectX 10 hardware.
That said, some of you are probably wondering what NVIDIA's competition can bring to the table in the near future. Unfortunately, we don't have the answer to that question, and all we know is that AMD/ATI is planning on releasing their next-generation DirectX 10 capable R600 hardware sometime in Q1'07 - some sources say early Q1, so it might only be another month or two before we can provide answers. We would expect the R600 to be competitive with the G80, and it wouldn't be too surprising to see it take the lead in some benchmarks. It also wouldn't be surprising to see driver issues similar to what NVIDIA is currently experiencing. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware)!
The simple fact of the matter is that no one that really knows what R600 can do is going to talk right now. You can wait to see what happens in the next few months, but of course faster products are always coming out. If you've got the money, though, a GeForce 8800 GTX (or two) should keep you gaming happily for the next couple of years (once the "beta" issues are solved).
Would we actually recommend purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTX right now? That all depends on how much time you spend gaming. If you've got a Core 2 Extreme processor (or a Core 2 Duo overclocked to a similar level), a 30" LCD, lots of memory and hard drive space, and a power supply capable of delivering 1.21 Gigawatts of power, by all means go nuts. Hopefully you love to play the latest and greatest games at maximum detail levels as well, or there's a good chance all of that raw performance potential is going untapped, and don't be surprised if you run into some problems during the next few months while the drivers are ironed out. For the majority of people, a single high-end graphics card is going to be sufficient, with potentially fewer headaches as well.
There are basically only three Extreme Performance GPUs currently available. Of course we have the GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX, but we also include the GeForce 7950 GX2 in this category. Besides the individual graphics cards, we will finally include all of the multi-GPU configurations that we feel are worth considering. We'll start this category by first taking a look at the various options available.
| Extreme Performance GPUs | |||||||
| GPU | Pixel Shaders |
Vertex Shaders |
ROPs | Core Speed |
RAM Speed |
Memory Interface |
Price |
| X1900 GT CF | 72 | 16 | 24 | 575 | 1200 | 256bit | $352 |
| X1950 Pro CF | 72 | 16 | 24 | 575 | 1380 | 256bit | $412 |
| 7900 GT SLI | 48 | 16 | 32 | 450 | 1320 | 256bit | $492 |
| 7950 GX2 | 48 | 16 | 32 | 500 | 1200 | 256bit | $465 |
| 8800 GTS | 96 | 96 | 20 | 500 | 1600 | 320bit | $455 |
| 7950 GT SLI | 48 | 16 | 32 | 550 | 1400 | 256bit | $498 |
| 7900 GTO SLI | 48 | 16 | 32 | 650 | 1320 | 256bit | $620 |
| 7950 GX2 QSLI | 96 | 32 | 64 | 500 | 1200 | 256bit | $930 |
| 7900 GTX SLI | 48 | 16 | 32 | 650 | 1600 | 256bit | $860 |
| X1900 XT CF | 96 | 16 | 32 | 625 | 1450 | 256bit | $770 |
| X1950 XTX CF | 96 | 16 | 32 | 650 | 2000 | 256bit | $774 |
| 8800 GTX | 128 | 128 | 24 | 575 | 1800 | 384bit | $603 |
| 8800 GTS SLI | 192 | 192 | 40 | 500 | 1600 | 320bit | $910 |
| 8800 GTX SLI | 256 | 256 | 48 | 575 | 1800 | 384bit | $1206 |
The first four configurations in the above table are generally going to be slower than a single 7950 GX2, so with the possible exception of X1900 GT CrossFire we would avoid them. We would also take a pass on the X1900 GT CrossFire configuration and go with a single High-End GPU at that price point, because the overall difference in performance isn't going to be much. In terms of performance, the 7950 GX2 actually ends up being faster than the 8800 GTS, but if you haven't purchased a GX2 already there's no real reason to purchase one now. Throw a bit of overclocking at the 8800 GTS and you can easily close the performance gap (and then some), plus you still get DirectX 10 support and lower noise levels.
Given that most of the remaining configurations can't even match the overall performance of a single GeForce 8800 GTX - they might prove faster in a few titles, but on average they will be slower - there's really no reason to purchase anything less than a GeForce 8800 series card or two if you are after extreme performance. Keep in mind that a single 8800 GTX is able to run most games at 2560x1600 with 4x antialiasing at reasonable frame rates, so unless you have a 30" display you may not feel any need to purchase more than one 8800 GTX card. If you simply want the best of the best and money is no object, of course dual 8800 GTX cards in SLI can't be beat for insane performance. Just make sure the rest of your system is up to snuff.
Somewhat similar to ATI's use of more pixel shader units on the X1900 cards in order to improve performance relative to the X1800, NVIDIA packs a whopping 96 or 128 shaders into the G80 cores. Unlike previous GPU designs (other than the Xbox 360's and Xenos chip), the G80 shaders are "unified shaders" and are able to function as pixel, vertex, or geometry shaders as appropriate. (Geometry shaders are one of the new additions to DirectX 10.) Each individual shader on the G80 is going to be less powerful than an equivalent shader on the G70 core, but the flexibility along with the sheer number of shader units makes for an extremely powerful, forward thinking architecture.
It's probably not too surprising that the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 line gets our recommendation right now for those of you who are after maximum graphics performance. There are no other graphics cards that can come near the performance level offered by the 8800 GTX, and no multi-GPU solution can touch the 8800 GTX SLI. Before going out and spending $600 or more on a graphics setup, however, there are some other things we need to mention.
If you decide to go out and purchase a GeForce 8800 card, you are definitely living on the "bleeding-edge" of technology. As has been the case with most new graphics technology launches (DirectX 7, 8, and 9), the drivers and software really aren't fully mature at present. We have seen at least one game already where the current NVIDIA drivers do not function properly, and we have heard various reports of additional games that don't work properly/at all with the G80 cards. If you don't like being a beta tester, you should probably wait at least another month or two before purchasing any DirectX 10 hardware.
That said, some of you are probably wondering what NVIDIA's competition can bring to the table in the near future. Unfortunately, we don't have the answer to that question, and all we know is that AMD/ATI is planning on releasing their next-generation DirectX 10 capable R600 hardware sometime in Q1'07 - some sources say early Q1, so it might only be another month or two before we can provide answers. We would expect the R600 to be competitive with the G80, and it wouldn't be too surprising to see it take the lead in some benchmarks. It also wouldn't be surprising to see driver issues similar to what NVIDIA is currently experiencing. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware)!
The simple fact of the matter is that no one that really knows what R600 can do is going to talk right now. You can wait to see what happens in the next few months, but of course faster products are always coming out. If you've got the money, though, a GeForce 8800 GTX (or two) should keep you gaming happily for the next couple of years (once the "beta" issues are solved).
Would we actually recommend purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTX right now? That all depends on how much time you spend gaming. If you've got a Core 2 Extreme processor (or a Core 2 Duo overclocked to a similar level), a 30" LCD, lots of memory and hard drive space, and a power supply capable of delivering 1.21 Gigawatts of power, by all means go nuts. Hopefully you love to play the latest and greatest games at maximum detail levels as well, or there's a good chance all of that raw performance potential is going untapped, and don't be surprised if you run into some problems during the next few months while the drivers are ironed out. For the majority of people, a single high-end graphics card is going to be sufficient, with potentially fewer headaches as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
51 Comments
View All Comments
justly - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I apoligize for straying from the video topic, but I really get annoyed at the all to often trash talk about VIA and SiS chipsets.I understand that this is a GPU article so I can see Anandtech not recommending SiS or VIA integrated graphics based on their lack luster video capabilities. My question (or maybe I should call it a complaint) is how can Anandtech claim SiS and VIA boards are not stable or reliable? The last reviw (that I can remember) of a SiS based board was over a year ago, even then I dont think it was a production board. Coverage of VIA based boards isn't much better but at least Anandtech does give VIA some budget coverage.
I can fully understand if Anandtech doesn't want to recommend VIA or SiS to their enthusiast crowd due to poor overclocking, or being "a bit more quirky" as your article states.
I'm not going to read all the way through old articles just to try and figure out what these stability and reliability issues mighy be (mainly because most of the articles are so old that a BIOS update could easily have made any stability issues invalid). Well I lied a little, I did briefly look through the VIA board articles within the last year and found no stability issues at stock settings. In fact, the only stability issues I saw mentioned in an article happened when "we tried to exceed the SPD settings of our DDR memory modules" but the next line reads "We did not experience these same issues with our DDR2 memory modules" (and that article is 1 week shy of 9 months old).
I hope Anandtech decides to either stop repeating these claims of unstable, unreliable and quirky boards based on VIA & SiS or start reviewing these boards and show its readers why they deserve these remarks.
Then again if the only thing we as readers get from reviews of these chipsets/boards is complaints about how budget boards are not able to overclock, or the lack of a tweakable BIOS in a sub $60 board then blame the board not the chipset as most people are already aware that budget boards are like this reguardless of what chipset they use.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I know of at least one attempted SiS board review in the past year that was canned because our reviewer could not get the board to function properly (after several BIOS updates and two boards, IIRC). Motherboards (and chipsets) are such an integral part of any computer that I would never skimp in that area. Then again, maybe I'm just too demanding of my computers?If you read user reviews of VIA/SiS boards you typically see a pattern that indicates the boards are overall "less reliable" - periodic instabilities and far higher failure rates. Some people report no problems and love the low prices, while others try to do a bit more with their systems and encounter difficulties.
If you just want to use a computer for office tasks, just about any system will be fine... but then again, if you're doing office work and your computer crashes, you probably won't be too happy. Anyone planning on running a higher-spec GPU should avoid cheaper motherboards IMO, as running a $300+ GPU in a <$75 board is just asking for problems. (For the same reason, I recommend $75+ PSUs for anyone running a CPU+GPU that cost more than $400 combined.)
Basically, I just can't recommend a questionable motherboard that saves a person $10-$20. The fact that the companies aren't out there promoting their products says something. If they're not proud enough of their work to try hard to get reviews at reputable sites, perhaps it's because they know their boards won't pass muster.
I actually had a company representative complain to me once about my stress tests being "unrealistic". He asked, "How many people actually try to run Folding@Home and a bunch of gaming benchmarks in sequence?" Basically, the system would crash if I used my script to benchmark games at various resolutions without rebooting in between each run. It's true that a lot of people might never stress a system to that level, but when I've looked at dozens of computers that handle that workload without problems, a system that crashes/locks in the same situation is clearly not as "stable or reliable" as competing solutions. All things being equal, I would recommend a different PC at the same price.
That's basically how I see the VIA/SiS situation. $10 is about 100 miles of driving, a trip to most restaurants, a two hour movie.... It's not worth the risk just to save $10. If it is, maybe a new computer isn't what you really need; a used PC would probably be just as good and likely a lot cheaper (and possibly faster as well).
justly - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I agree with most of what you say, no one wants a system that crashs.One thing I do notice though, is that most of your arguments can be atributed to low priced boards, yet the comments I find annoying are the generalizations about chipsets. Do you actually believe a $50 nvidia based board is significantly more stable or reliable than any other chipset? and if you do, couldn't this just be a side effect of being a more popular chipset thus less work programming a bios? I'm sure this isn't what you meant, but going by your comments about motherboard pricing, if I found a $100 SiS based board it should be more stable and reliable than a $50 nvidia board.
You also want me to read "user reviews"? this doesn't sound like a good way to judge reliability to me. Most user reviews are either in enthusiast fourms like the ones you have here, these usually only rewiew overclocking abilities, or on retail sites like Newegg, and to be honest most of the bad reviews I see there look more like PEBKAC.
You really haven't cleared up why VIA or SiS chipsets should be considered unreliable or unstable, although your dislike of budget boards is quite evedent.
I'm not trying to deny you your opinion, I'm just asking that you refrain from singling out specific chipsets if what you are really having a problem with is all budget boards, if there actually is a chipset specific problem please try to get a review published indicating what the problem is.
BTW if the board that wouldn't function, and had the review canned was a production board I feel sorry for the person that bought it without a proper warning from a review site that knew it was flawed (you don't want to know what I think of the review site that would let this happen).
Knowing what to expect from a product can help a budget builder as much as it can help an overclocker.
Sunrise089 - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I tend to view guids like these through the eyes of my own system, and having a 7900GT at 500/1500, there is little reason to upgrade if I'm going to continue to play games at 1280x1024. However, 22" (widescreen) LCDs have also become a lot cheaper, and with my poor eyes, the 1650x1050 or so resolution will probably work pretty well. That leads me to the great situation I'm apparently in - it looks like my card will fetch around $200 if I sell it, and I have the option of either a perhaps slightly faster X1950pro for $199, basically making it a free change but only slightly faster, or a X1950XT 256meg for only $249. That's a lot of additional card for only $50, and pretty tempting. I cannot see why the $249 part doesn't get the nod for your pick over the 7950GT though.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Despite the fact that they are separated by quite a few cards in the table, the X1950 XT 256MB and the 7950 GT give relatively similar performance. The XT is probably 10-15% faster depending on game, but that's not really enough to mean the difference between one resolution and another in my opinion. You also get 512MB of RAM with the 7950GT, and it tends to overclock better than the XT resulting in performance that is basically equal.However, you're right that it is still worth considering, and so I added it to the final table. This is particularly true for people that don't like NVIDIA hardware for whatever reason - just as the 7950GT is worth considering for people that don't like ATI's drivers. Honestly, I'm still unhappy with ATI's drivers overall; they NEED TO DITCH .NET! What's next, writing low level drivers in C# or Jaba (that's big, fat, slow Java for the uninformed)? I know the .NET stuff is just for the UI, but it still blows, and I get about a 45 second delay after Windows loads while the ATI driver starts up. If I weren't running CrossFire, I might not have as many issues with ATI's drivers, though.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
As a side note, Neverwinter Nights 2 appears to require/use .NET 2.0, and for those who have played the game that probably explains a lot of the performance issues. I'm not sure if CrossFire/SLI support is working yet, but I do know that my CrossFire X1900 XT config can't handle running with antialiasing, and/or water reflections/refractions at resolutions above 1280x1024. Seems decent without the AA and water stuff at 1920x1200 with the latest drivers and patch, though.PrinceGaz - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Something seems to be missing from this part of the last paragraph on page 8.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Weird speech recognition there, I guess. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be "they are" instead of "fair so"... but I can't honestly remember if that's what I said or not. LOLgerf - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
On the second page, were should be "where."BTW, good article. Laptop integrated's good enough for me though (ex-gamer).
Noya - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Chart of best values jumps from about $100 w/rebate to $200+, while a highly overclockable 7900gs can be had for $145 after rebate (about $35 over a 7600GT).