December 2002
I put a load of links and information in about the ATI 9700 shortly. It's not favouritism, I'm just trying to work backwards through a healthily congested mailbox and, currently, Nvidia is news...
Inside the GeForceFX Architecture
GeForce FX's primary features
- TSMC's 0.13 Micron Process
- 125 Million Transistors
- 500MHz Graphics Processing Unit (1GHz (Effective) DDR2 Memory)
- 128-Bit Memory Bus
- 16GB Physical Memory Bandwidth
- 1GB Maximum Addressable Memory
- 8 Pixels Per Clock / 8 Textures Per Clock
- CineFX Architecture
- Intellisample Technology
- 128-Bit Floating Point Precison
- AGP 8X Interface
- Cg Shader Language
- Unified Driver Architecture
- nView
- Digital Vibrance Control 3.0
15th August 2002 update
Tom's Hardware has an excellent review of ATI's R300 based Radeon 9700. It ships Stateside in the next few days and will filter over to the UK towards the end of next month. Take it as read that it trounces even the Ti4600, so lets home in on the juicier aspects of this new convection heater...
Firstly it's 8x AGP. And that means? Well it's a tad faster for sure. Figures put it around 6-8% depending what you are actually doing. Generally, you have loads more bandwidth, so better hope the rest of your hardware is up to par to cope with it! Oh aye, bit of a stickler, there are very few motherboards that actually support 8x AGP. The only chipsets I can name are the new P4 based SIS648 or VIA P4X400 and on AMDs Athlon front, SIS746, Via KT400 and ALI's. m1687 There's not a hint of it in the Intel yard until next spring, nor do I believe ALI have a P4 version in the offing.
Still, it will run happily in 4x slots.
Secondly, it's pretty much DirectX v9 ready. Sure DirectX 9 is months away but from what I've read it will be the bees knees and will allow games to aspire to whole new levels of realism, far beyond the current games. Developers have been experimenting with it since May 30, 2002 and now have a whole new card to push it with. Consoles rock? Phah!
Thirdly whilst initially sporting 128Mb of onboard memory the R300 has been designed with the new, faster, DDRII memory in mind, so that future cards can be equipped with up to 256Mb of this upcoming memory type.
Finally, the "but". The thing has a 110 million transisters and draws a whack of power. Enough to need a power cable to back up what it draws from the AGP slot itself. I've no figures yet but I'm guessing it runs hot even with the fan and I'm really hoping that a portion of the $400 price tag has gone into quieting the fans, because the whine from the Ti4600's are beyond the pale as it is.
The acid test, would I buy one?
If I was back home in Canada about now I'd look and probably bite the bullet. As I'm not and as I already have a Ti4600 it puts a new slant on things. By the time it's available in Europe I'll have much more info on Nvidias' GeForce5 and the new generation boards.
Me, I'll wait and see what state the market is in for Christmas, but if you are in the market for a new card now, it's a must have.
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Until the next generation 8x AGP card come out next year, the best you can get (barring the insane workstation cards) is and will remain until at least towards Christmas 2002 the NVidia Ti4600. On these, the best of breed must go to Leadtek's Winfast A250 Ultra TD
(August 2002) Of course, this may change with the newly released ATI 9700, but that just adds to the dragon chasing it's tail with the Nvidia 5 mere months away. *Shrugs.* Got to bite the bullet sometime.
A list of manufacturers site can be found on my Computer Hardware Manufacturers page under Video Cards
I am also following the price of certain components - including ATI / Nvidia cards here
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