It's been a while...

Hello everyone it's been a while now...but finally I'm back and during my absence we saw a lotta changes taking place...the domination of the performance segment by ATI by it's new spanking HD4850 and HD4870 and the appearance of the 9800GT and the 9800GTX+. I will however now be in the scene...The games on guys! :)

Graphics on the Go

With all the hype of the high-end, mid-range, mainstream graphics cards, it’s easy to ignore the laptop-based graphic cards. Though certainly not as powerful as its desktop counterparts, it still provides a purpose of gaming on the go and also it’s easier for LAN parties. We got a whole lot of current and previous generation graphics on the table as well as SLI models as well for uber-high price tags, but what really is the norm for gaming? Since the majority of the laptops have IGP chipsets such as the Intel X3100 or the GeForce 7000M, playing current games like Crysis and Supreme commander is barely possible on these which makes it needed to step up on graphics performance. I will soon have a table and how it corresponds to gaming.

Current Graphics Line up

This is what the current line up looks like at the moment with all the segment battles between ATI and NVidia. The HD2000 Series has now been replaced by the HD3000 low/mainstream series. NVidia has yet to refresh the line of the GeForce 8500/8600 Series yet for that segment.

Segment	ATI	NVidia
Enthusiast	HD3870 X2	GeForce 9800 GX2 GeForce 8800 Ultra GeForce 8800 GTX
Performance	HD3870	GeForce 8800 GT 512MB GeForce 9600 GT
Mid-range	HD3850 512MB	GeForce 8800 GS GeForce 8800 GT 256MB
Mainstream	HD3850 256MB HD3670	GeForce 8600 GTS GeForce 8600 GT
Value	HD3470 HD3450	GeForce 8500 GT GeForce 8400 GS

ATI HD3830 Surfaces

It seems like the mainstream wars have just got hotter with another contender which is none other than the ATI HD3830, which will compete currently against the GeForce 8600GTS. NVidia will be no doubt countering it soon with new mainstream offerings of its GeForce 9-series which might be positioned to replace the GeForce 8600GT/GTS as its mainstream successor. It looks like the previous price hikes have been justified to make way for another sibling to ATI’s HD3800 Series. Heres the report from tech report:

As the rumor mill talks of price cuts AMD may apply to its Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 graphics cards soon, Hong Kong-based site HKEPC has posted a report that says the red team is also cooking up a mainstream Radeon HD 3830 for mid-April. This new card will be priced at $119-129, HKEPC says, which would place it well under rumored post-cut prices of $145 or less for the Radeon HD 3850 and $159 or less for the 3870.

Hardware-wise, HKEPC says the Radeon HD 3830 will be based on the same RV670 graphics processor as the 3850 and 3870, and that it will have the same number of stream processors, texture units, and render back-ends. The site doesn't mention any clock speeds, but it does say the width of the 3830's memory interface will be reduced from 256 bits to 128 bits. That reduction should cut memory bandwidth by half, or possibly more if AMD pairs the 3830 with slower memory than the 3850 or 3870.

At $119-129, this purported Radeon HD 3830 would compete more or less head-on with Nvidia's GeForce 8600 GTS. The 8600 GTS also has a 128-bit interface, but its G84 graphics processor has fewer shader processors, texture units, and render back-ends than AMD's RV670. Nvidia may very well have some lower-end GeForce 9 cards up its sleeve, though.

We now have ATI HD3650/70 running neck and neck onto the GeForce 8600GT, and the HD3690 variant is known to beat the GeForce 8800GS in some benchmarks, so it will be very interesting to see how the HD3830 pits against the GeForce 8800GS and the new mainstream GeForce 9-series in time to come. Another very good question would be how good will it performs in comparison its lesser cousins the HD36xx series given its 128-bit memory bus.

Source: Techreport

Where have all the goodies gone?

I was wondering why, oh why isnt there a single game with most of the GeForce 9800 GX2 cards or the ATI HD3870 X2 cards? For a top notch card of $599, I guess they should include something like UT3 or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars or something to go with the card. Back in the days of the GeForce 6800, Gigabyte used to offer Doom 3 back then THE game of the time. Even my GeForce 6600 had 2 games included in it. Some of the lower-end cards like GeForce 8600GT/GTS have games included (Company of Heroes is sufficient for that bundle), but for really-uber high end card like these we expect a really good bundle :)

One really good offer that comes in the midst of all GeForce 9800GX2s is the offer that Palit is currently giving away 3 months of free game hosting service on eligible servers for the first 200 customers who register their card at Primary Target. Thats a nifty offer, too bad it's just for the first 200. The eligible servers are pretty neat....lets see...they have COD4, Crysis, Counter Strike Source, UT3 and Team Fortress 2, which is a pretty nifty list. I wouldnt mind having 3 months of my very own server and the monster GeForce card to tag along :)

ATI Announces Price Cuts for HD3850/3870

Looks like ATI is gonna counter the mid-range with price cuts, according to the article on The Inquirer, the HD3850 is gonna cost below $145 and the HD3870 is gonna be $159 or so....talk about having a HD3870 Crossfire for 25% less than the price of a HD3870 X2 which is about $450-ish these days or better.

Read the article here

TigerDirect.com's EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2 Video Review

Heres a great video review of the Monster GeForce 9800 GX2 by Logan of TigerDirect.com, *drools* Look at the size of that thing! (Which gets me to the question on my blog...Is that a turbine cooler of is it just part of the GeForce 9800 GX2? :) )