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Update July 2004 Yes, I know, tardy!
There will be a large update when I finish this revision, especially as regards PCI-Express video cards.

If you want advice buy I get round to it just email me and I'll get back to you...



Update August 2003 News is finally filtering through about specific PCI-Express cards from Nvidia and co.
Think well on this - next June, give or take a few weeks, this due ultra bus bus, coming as it will on the Intel Gratsdale motherboards, WILL replace the AGP slot based cards... Trust me on this, short of an unimaginable disaster, if you are the breed that must have the fastest overclocked system you'll be throwing out your shiny P4 3.4Gb Prescotts next summer when you see what's coming!

I've not looked for details yet, but I guarantee AMD, with Via, SiS etc will also have boards for the 64 bit Opterons and Althlon 64's

Needs a links section! I'll put it in shortly.

NV News - No surprise, it's especially good for graphics card news, notable Nvidia.

There's a brilliant preview of the GeForce FX at NV News too.

Check out this page on PVC Console, it's excellent. It details the main graphics chips starting with DirectX 9 cards like the ATI 9700 and working back through to DirectX 5 and and era of separate 3D accelerators like 3Dfx's VooDoo cards and the PowerVR. For those who don't remember, all graphics card's where pretty much 2D and 3D accelerators used a feedthough signal. Happy days!

If you are into consoles, another set of pages lists the details of them, from the first Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 (O^th generations through to 6^th generation XBox and PS2's.


June 2003
Besides the PCI-Express cards next year, I'm kinda waiting on a Sapphiretech 9800 Ultimate Pro or even 9900 Ultimate Pro (is such proves to be the title).
I want better graphics (largely for 2D refreshes) - but I have begger all any tolerances for the turbine whine and hums of fans. What is it with these pillocks? Sapphiretech can manage it, albeit at a small premium, Zalman have no problem turning out a video heatsink for a mere £20. Given we are talking cards costing in the £300-600 range I really don't think a few extra quid on a decent soundless fan/heatsink is too much too ask. I guess they are spending too much time falsifying drivers to pass benchmarks instead of passing muster, hmmm. Have I mentioned I grossly detest con artists...

For now I'll put up with the Ti4600. Anyway, he says grumbling aloud, here's a few articles at Tom's hardware on the juiciest cards of the month...

NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900 Ultra (NV35)

Here's a few extracts:

"and operates at a much more bearable volume"...
"While still not exactly what we would consider quiet..."
"And lastly, it is still by far the louder of the two cards." (vs Radeon 9800Pro)
Translation - it's STILL too damned noisy!

Radeon 9800 256 MB
Here's the salient points, I reckon:
"the Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB didn't show any advantages over the 128 MB variant."
"In addition, the card generates an extremely high amount of heat."

Radeon 9800, 9600 and 9200 series (from March 2003)


Here's a thought, and one no-ones yet give me a straight answer too. I'm fussy with monitors, can't be doing with flicker, yet I know folk that tolerate refresh rates as low of 72Hz even the default 60Hz and yet overclock a £400 graphics card to get a few extra frames per second. Let's be serious here. I can spot a monitor at 60Hz* from twenty foot away, but I deny any begger to look me straight in the eye and say they can tell the difference between 163 fps and 176 frames per second!

(* Go lazy, bone idle college technicians. What, can't take a few extra seconds to set the machines up? Blah!)


May 2003
As mentioned on my news pages, there's lots of news circulatingabout Nvidia's NV35 and NV40, the latter which, you'll find will prove to be on a PCI-Express board. Just remember you heard that here at Ackadia first, eh :p

Anyway, here's the numbers for you.

NV35

• 256MB DDR-I 2.2ns
• 256-bit memory interface
• 450/450Mhz core/memory clock
• DVI, VIVO and VGA outputs
• Launch in Mid May
• Card Availability in June ~ $499

NV40:

• 350 million transistors
• 0.09 microns
• Core @ 800MHz
• 16MB DRAM
• 8 Pixel Rendering Engines
• 16 Vertex Shader Engines
• DDR-II
• 512MB
• Mem @ 1.4GHz
• 44.8GB/s bandwith
• DX9.1 or DX10 features
• 2nd half of 2004 (After the olympic games!!)

Please bear in mind the following figure are benchmarks - which I've never trusted wholly* - and they apparently use (beta) Detonator 50.xx drivers which throws another wrench into the works. However, whether figures are bang on or the true speed is even faster, I'm not pushing them until Nvidia learn to quieten the beggers. All very well having a R&D budget to fuel a small country but the millions are wasted if they can't develop a silent heatsink. Not like the technology isn't out there, hmm?
Nods happily towards Sapphire and Zalman

* Historically, and still today as can be read in this Inquirer article vendors and indeed the benchmarks companies have this nasty tendancy to curry favour. It's too far back to try and remember the details but before Quake and Quake III, Doom was the industries darling. And one card in particular stomped all over the competition. There again, it would. As I recall it was hard wired to run Doom and certainly benchmarks of the day. Give it anything else and it was the runt of the litter. Benchmarks are a useful indication, but they are in the same league as statistics and politicians...

Anyway:

Out of interest, there's news and rumours floating around about Sapphire's Ultima 9800. Will they, won't they and is this the one they will preview at E3? Well D'oh. What's the big mystery? It was an absolute given Sapphire would release one and I had confirmation of it's release (given as mid-May after E3) and price (trade circa £289) back in March! It's been on my Custom PC build nearly that long. I'll just waiting on official release and availability to get my sample.

200 frames per second with everything turned on is all well and nice, but I'll take a silent runner over benchmarks any day of the week.

NV40 specs!!! Yeah!!!
Warp2Search (have / had) GeForce FX 5900 Ultra benchmark pictures
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Benchmarks



Pottering about and utterly losing my battle keep up with even a fraction of all the email I recieve I found this article on Sapphire's 9800 Pro. I'm tempted to rush out and buy one. Well I would be but I'm waiting for Sapphire's Ultima version with the fanless heatpipe, that and the new Radeons and GeForce on the horizon...
*Sigh*
My Ti4600 is good enough for now. I spend half my time typing on the kids system anyway. Flashy graphics are wonderful, but will it make me type faster with my text editor?

I'll run a load of benchmarks off later this month if I get time, the web is sorely in need of them!

"Waddya mean, all the best site 'ave benchmark results comin' out their ears".

Absolutely, yep, that they do. I spent £300 on a Ti4600, as much again on a ATI's 9700 Pro, then again on a GeForce FX Ultra like the one reviewed here by Digit-Life (in your dreams Nvidia!). You see my point? Nearly every review is by and, lets be honest, for speed mad gamers who are willing to shell out another 300 quid every six months. I know what the future holds and I'm loath to keep playing that game any more.

I'm wandering again, aren't I! Anyway, this will be real world tests, on whether it's time to convert yet another fortune in hardware to a doorstop or not. Probably I'll pit a PIII 733 against a Duron 900, maybe a 2Ghz P4 and an obscenely fast 3Ghz P4c when it's ready.
(*Mutter*) Forget the Duron, I gave it away!

To be perfectly honest, on a day to day basis, unless I load up a graphics intense game I can't much tell the difference between a PIII 550 and a 2Ghz P4. That said, there are days when I've an unhealthy number of apps open at once, then it is telling.


Out of interest, ever wondered why high end video cards need plugging into the mains, so to speak, and literally in a few cases? Well, the AGP slot is only good for 25 Watts and monster like the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra need closer to 100 Watts. On the (real) next generation boards this will be increased to 60 Watts for upcoming PCI-Express boards. Hopefully better card designs with balance things out and reduce power output.

April 2003
Touched, run, heard, run away. Yep Nvidia's FX 5800 Ultra is too noisy for me to consider buying and according to form a lot of the main players aren't happy with it either. I was in the process of sourcing Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimates (silent, fanless beauties) when I got talking with an overclocking nut at one of my suppliers. Apparently it's replacement, the NV35 (or GeForce FX 11600 as it may be labelled) with be available mid May, is twice and fast and half as noisy! News to me as I didn't expect it until late summer, but I can't be everywhere at once, eh! All to do with the fact that they don't want troucing (again) by the Radeon 9800's

Anyway, bounced around a bit from an article in The Inquirer and found the following details. Bear in mind this is gossip and / or unsubstantiated, but it gives you a clue:

I don't wholly trust benchmarks as folk in the past have been known to design cards to meet tests and not real world use, but they you go. Seems a heck on a jump mind.

More scary yet is news of the following Nvidia NV40 - according to XBit Labs it's 150 million transisters will eat a stonking 120 Watts of power! While I can't find any evidence yet, I believe this will also be available as a 16x PCI-Express bus rather than the aging 8x AGP slots. We shall see!

March 2003
From every single review I've read, screaming graphics not withstanding, I won't touch the GeForce FX with a proverbial bargepole. The ruddy great fan needed to cool the card not only takes up two slots, it's also just too darn loud. Who wants to pay to be disturbed ?
Here's a few links:

PC World said the new NVidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra card disappoints and was loud, large, and lackluster.