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 The HD2000 Series has now been replaced by the HD3000 low/mainstream series.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? :) )

The dual-GPU Monster – GeForce 9800 GX2

Well you read it correct guys, the dual-GPU monster has arrived and it’s non other than the GeForce 9800 GX2. This king of the hill has topped the charts now as the fastest card in the market as of now. Its really gonna give you a hell of a lotta power you’ve always wanted to play games like Crysis at maxed out detail and solutions. It has 256 streaming processors and a whopping 1GB of on-board GDDR3 memory, which is on a memory interface of 512-bit.

These are the specifications taken from the NVidia Official GeForce 9800 GX2 web page

Stream Processors	256
Core Clock (MHz)	600 MHz
Shader Clock (MHz)	1500 MHz
Memory Clock (MHz)	1000 MHz
Memory Amount	1G
Memory Interface	512-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	128
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	76.8

Intel E4500 vs Intel E8400

I was like wondering what it would be like to replace my Core 2 Duo E4500 with a Core 2 Duo E8400. It would most make sense to go for a Core 2 Quad but well I don’t seem to have the budget for it. There are a lotta benchmarks around that show that the E8x00 Series is much faster than the E6750 which is beaten is most of the gaming benchmarks. Most of the upper end E8x00 Series have the 6MB Shared L2 Cache as well in comparison to my E4500 which has only 2MB Shared L2 Cache. The major differences are that the new Wolfdale Processors come with a 1333MHz (as opposed to 800MHz), it also comes in 45nm fabrication process (as opposed to 65nm) and the cache size difference as mentioned before.

Below is a table summing up the differences between my current and the new Wolfdale Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor.

	Intel Core 2 Duo E8400	Intel Core 2 Duo E4500
Core	Wolfdale	Allendale
Front Side Bus	1333 MHz	800 MHz
Clock Speed	3.0 GHz	2.20 GHz
L2 Cache	6MB Shared	2MB Shared
Socket Type	LGA775	LGA775
Thermal Power	45W	65W
Fabrication Process	45 nm	65 nm
No of Cores	2	2
Intel VT	Yes	Yes
Hyperthreading Support	No	No

It’s just a matter of choice, FPS (and extra $$$ to throw in)

Major question guys, which one to buy?....hmm, There are a lotta reviews on the web about mixed reviews on whether to buy the GeForce 9600GT or the ATI HD3870.

Toms Hardware guide has a good comparison on the article "The Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money: March 2008"

This shows that GeForce 9600GT and the ATI HD3870 both are on a tie for the ~$180 segment which is where I'm aiming at, but with a little $$$ upto ~$230 I could get the GeForce 8800GT which beats both of these, but oh well :)

The roots of graphics…

I’ve come from the roots of owning a:

• S3 Virge - 1998
• S3 Trio 3d 2x - 1999
• ATI Rage 128 Pro - 2000
• S3 Savage - 2001
• GeForce 2 MX - 2002
• GeForce FX5200 - 2004
• ATI Radeon 9600SE - 2004
• GeForce 6200 - 2005
• GeForce 6600GT - 2006
• GeForce 7600GS - 2007
• GeForce 7900GS - 2007
• GeForce 9600GT - 2008 (soon) :)

As you can see most of them are not really kick-ass cards more of the low-medium end, the real thing came when I bought a GeForce 6600GT to play Quake 4 back in 2006 and has been my trusty card till it gracefully aged in the fall of 2007 which I got my 7900GS to play Bioshock (at least in medium settings) at 1024x768.

The dumbest upgrade I got was the FX5200 card thinking it would be pixel shader supporting and give good FPS in Doom 3, but hell I was wrong! I got like 15-20 FPS at 640x480 - low/medium settings. Even the ATI 9600SE was too puny to handle Doom 3, but at least i got it up to 800x600 on medium, Ah so well...some of us learn things the hard way :)

The reason for upgrade is mainly because I’m getting myself a 19” Widescreen LCD and I’m looking for decent frame rates at 1440x900. One of the really great RPG games I’ve played in a long long prolly after Diablo 2, is The Witcher, and well you can see when it comes to Act III, things start to lag big time due to the heavy use of shaders and shadows, where my FPS dips to less than 10 at 1024x768/high settings.

So hopefully I’ll be able to play a great and final Act V and epilogue and finish The Witcher in style (with good FPS)  with my spanking new 9600GT

*Update 19-03-08* I've already finished the Witcher with my current 7900GS woohoo! (expect my remarks on it soon)

GPU-Z Snapshot

Here’s my GPU-Z snapshot, it shows the basic info about my 7900GS

Your system requirements don’t meet the recommended... (bummer)

I just thought of posting the details of my rig which I recently got in January this year, it’s a bit mid-range to say the most, but oh well it plays most of the games pretty well so there’s no need to panic or upgrade, but it’s always nice to have something better :) 

My Rig

Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.20GHz (800MHz FSB/2MB Cache)
Motherboard - Foxconn 45CMX/Intel 945GC Chipset
Memory - 2GB DDR2-667 Value Ram 5-5-5-15
Video Card - GeForce 7900GS 256MB PCI-e
Sound Card - Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Value PCI
Hard Drive - 80GB SATA HDD
DVD-ROM - Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Casing - Generic 450W Power Supply
Speakers - Genius 5.1-surround speaker system

This thing runs Crysis at 1024x768 at ~25 FPS with everything turned to medium and Bioshock at ~25 FPS at 1024x768 as well. It runs Enemy Territory Quake Wars at 1280x1024 on High with 8x AF really really well without any stutter.

“Is that a turbine cooler or is it just a part of your graphics card?”

Hello everyone this is my blog about video cards and other tech stuff I find interesting and my journey into getting a spanking brand new NVidia GeForce 9600GT for my existing gaming rig to squeeze out some more FPS than my ageing 7900GS. I’ll be giving a lotta info about my thoughts about the new GeForce 9600GT and of course the monster 9800GX2 which is due in the near future *drool*.

For starters heres some basic info about the GeForce 9600GT in comparison to the past graphics i've owned

	GeForce 9600GT	GeForce 7900GS	GeForce 6600GT
Stream Processors	64	N/A	N/A
Core Clock (MHz)	650	450	500
Shader Clock (MHz)	1625	N/A	N/A
Memory Clock (MHz)	1800	1320	1000
Memory Amount	512	256	128
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)	57.6	42.2	16.0
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	20.8	9.0	4.0

Soon I’ll be linking some more pics, site reviews and a few other comments, stay tuned for more