The state of play of those 3D Accelerators...

hamster

I was browsing Komplett to get an idea of the variety of 3D cards out there today and I'm amazed at the selection out there now.

It used to be so simple when the Voodoo cards ruled and then Nvidia came along with there GeForce 1 and 2, 3 and afterwards ATI had a bash. I looked the other way for 2 minutes and then wham! it's a universe of them now! What on earth with all memory types, heatsinks with PCI-E and SLI support! Some of these things should come with their own power supply! And wow you can spend crazy on these babies....and the noise.
ie, Komplett are offering a XFX GeForce 6800Ultra 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express for 524 euro! Holy Moly! And the guys in the comments bought two for SLI! Arrgh! :eek: Wonder do you get a free tv voucher too?

Ah to be fair, I guess the bleeding edge filters down and it helps to keep innovation going. I imagine you can get a decent card for 150-200 euro these days for say a P4-3Ghz system?

Actually I'm curious despite a bit of googling I have a yet to see a site that shows a decent table or comparsion between the various cards out there showing the weakest up to the strongest. A history line. Anyone come across any good insights? I still actually have my old trusty Geforce 2 from december 2000 and things like Celestia and Morrowind do well on it. I'm sure Far Cry would a different story.

I started out with a Tseng ET4000 (1Mb) 2D card for my 486 in 1993.
In 1995, I ended with a 2Mb Trio
In 1996, I upgraded to a 2D Matrix Millenium (great card)
In 1997, I got my 3D card.... Voodoo I (Righteous 3D by Orchid)
In 1998, A Voodoo 2 (Creative Labs) - Finally ditched the 2D card wahey!
In 1999, A Voodoo 3 (2nd hand - But OpenGL was broken)
In Xmas 2000, A Geforce 2 (32Mb.... oooh stand back

What's cheap/competitive for your standard 3Ghz P4 these days? I'm not looking for a crrazzy card... just a card that would be decent enough for most games (and celestia of course ... oh let's say 150-200 euro? Would that be a good price range?
Interestingly enough - how would that compare to a Geforce 2? Thats why I was wondering about if such a website would have a history and comparsion of power in the history of these cards? May something like Toms Hardware pages without having to view over 20 pages...

I'd also to be interested in how others experienced card upgrades over the years.

airetam_storm

AGP i assume?

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305188&cks=PRL
Cheap and can be flashed to pro(but if possible get a pro Sapphire version and flash to XT)

Or higher up the scale but still a good bargain
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307192&cks=PRL

Nukem

There are loads of places that rate old cards to new ones. Try the stickies on this forum. But places like www.techreport.com www.anandtech.com www.tomshardware.com www.hexus.net are good places but there are loads.

Nukem

hamster

Nukem wrote:

There are loads of places that rate old cards to new ones. Try the stickies on this forum. But places like www.techreport.com www.anandtech.com www.tomshardware.com www.hexus.net are good places but there are loads.

Nukem

Thanks Nukem, will do. I'll see if I can find one that keeps it tidy and gives an idea of power from card to another. Hard I know with apples/oranges.

And oh I just came across another card: XFX GeForce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3, HDTV 450MHz, PCI-Express,Dual-DVI/ViVo ...this going for 660 euro at Komplett...oh sweet lord!

airetam_storm

hamster wrote:

And oh I just came across another card: XFX GeForce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3, HDTV 450MHz, PCI-Express,Dual-DVI/ViVo ...this going for 660 euro at Komplett...oh sweet lord!

Cutting edge will always cost that much and more... :rolleyes:

cregser

Wow '93 was your first graphics card. I got a GeForce 2 MX with a Dell in about 2002/3 and quickly went shopping for a new one. So that's when my knowledge of graphics cards pretty much begins (leaving out the STB Powergraph 64 I had in '97).

airetam_storm wrote:

AGP i assume?

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305188&cks=PRL
Cheap and can be flashed to pro(but if possible get a pro Sapphire version and flash to XT)

Or higher up the scale but still a good bargain
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307192&cks=PRL

I'll second those recommendations and lean towards the second one. The ATIi Radeon 9800 was a great card for it's generation (nvidia were in the GeForce 5xxx's for that generation - and didn't do well). I got a 5600 which became out of date a little too quickly. But that was 2003.

2004's generation was 6xxx's for nVidia and Xxxx's for ATI (the big X being 10). They're pretty much matched performance wise but nvidias are a bit more future-proof - in that they support the latest shader model. I got a 6800GT (for €400) and am very pleased with it. Don't think I'll spend that kinda money on a computer part again though!... well, maybe.

2005's generation is IMO a transitional period. On one side you have plenty of games that are not nearly taxing current generation cards (i.e. 2004) and in the forseeable future there will be games that will blow the hell out of anything today (Unreal's new engine). I'd say that explains why both companies have slowed the release of new graphics cards.

I don't think anyone calls them 3D Accelerators anymore . The new cards that might be big in a few years are Physics Accelerators - to let you have a crazy amount of realistic physics in games.

delly

I'm having a similar problem at the moment in terms of wondering what to get. Up until last month i had a nvidia TNT2 32MB card, which served its time well.

I recently got my hands on an AGP ATI 9250 256MB for cheap enough, but i'm figuring that since it cost 80 quid, it can't be up to much on the gaming side. I was probably working on the old theory that more memory = better performance.

Anybody know off hand if i'd be better off with a "128 MB PCI Express™ x16 ATI Radeon™ X300" for gaming purposes. TBH I can't really tell what to look for in terms of overall performance.

DemonOfTheFall

No, the X300 is the new equivalent of the 9250. Not much faster at all.

Youd want to stretch to a 9800 pro, 6600 or x600 for good performance

delly

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

No, the X300 is the new equivalent of the 9250. Not much faster at all.

Youd want to stretch to a 9800 pro, 6600 or x600 for good performance

Thanks for clearing that up then, its just that i may be getting a new PC with that card as an option, but if its just the same than i can do without it.

DemonOfTheFall

If it's the Dell x300 one just get it with integrated graphics then drop in your own card later on. Dell severely overcharge for the x300, especially if you take it as an upgrade.

Remember with dell to pick the base model above what you want rather than the cheapest model then upgrade

KdjaCL

hamster wrote:

Thanks Nukem, will do. I'll see if I can find one that keeps it tidy and gives an idea of power from card to another. Hard I know with apples/oranges.

And oh I just came across another card: XFX GeForce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3, HDTV 450MHz, PCI-Express,Dual-DVI/ViVo ...this going for 660 euro at Komplett...oh sweet lord!

Nice isnt they , dont click this link unless you want to cry.

http://www.modtheater.com/forum/showpost.php?p=211216&postcount=1

kdjac

astrofool

my brother was still using my old geforce2 gts relatively successfully till about 2 years ago.

Basically, power wise, its roughly doubled every generation at the top end, and the mid end became the older generations top end.

If I remember correct, the geforce2 gts had 2 pipelines, with 2 textures per pipeline, at 250mhz (hence GTS or giga-texel shader, 4x250=1000). The geforce 3 was actually very very similar, but at higher clocks, and with vertex shaders. The geforce4 had 4 pipelines, the 5800/5900 fx series sort of had 8, and the 6800 had 16. So roughly, the €500 card you looked at is 8 times as powerful as the card you have, if it were at the same low clock speeed (it's actually about 80% faster clock speed as well), + has alot of fancy features (dx9, sm3 etc.).

A mid level card, such as a 6600/gt, would be at least 4 times as powerful, and support the fancy stuff in new games.

Nukem

KdjaC wrote:

Nice isnt they , dont click this link unless you want to cry.

http://www.modtheater.com/forum/showpost.php?p=211216&postcount=1

kdjac

Ya i needed some Kleenex after then (for my eyes smart asses) . Just read a review on them in SLi and its depressing. Anyone got any idea if there is a game or program that actually uses all that power.

Nukem

Mutant_Fruit

Well, for benchmarks they're now having to use max resolution to distinguish between the speeds of the cards... so not really. Nothing out there can actually use all that power unless you're on max res and max details. Even then, you get fairly good performance.

At 2048x1536, using 4x AA you can still get over 50fps in battlefield 2.

hamster

astrofool wrote:

my brother was still using my old geforce2 gts relatively successfully till about 2 years ago.

Basically, power wise, its roughly doubled every generation at the top end, and the mid end became the older generations top end.

If I remember correct, the geforce2 gts had 2 pipelines, with 2 textures per pipeline, at 250mhz (hence GTS or giga-texel shader, 4x250=1000). The geforce 3 was actually very very similar, but at higher clocks, and with vertex shaders. The geforce4 had 4 pipelines, the 5800/5900 fx series sort of had 8, and the 6800 had 16. So roughly, the €500 card you looked at is 8 times as powerful as the card you have, if it were at the same low clock speeed (it's actually about 80% faster clock speed as well), + has alot of fancy features (dx9, sm3 etc.).

A mid level card, such as a 6600/gt, would be at least 4 times as powerful, and support the fancy stuff in new games.

Interesting... quite a jump over the years... in theory 8x times faster. The Geforce2 was a great card. Thats an exciting leap. One of these days if I get some time...

DemonOfTheFall

You have to spend 1300 euro just on the graphics cards to get those speeds though mutan_fruit.... Not quite the same as the 150-200 euro budget that this guy seems to have

Mutant_Fruit

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

You have to spend 1300 euro just on the graphics cards to get those speeds though mutan_fruit.... Not quite the same as the 150-200 euro budget that this guy seems to have

Nope, you can pick em up for 1/3 of that price.

Only 550 euro. Not a bad price for a topend card, only jsut released by a few days.

DemonOfTheFall

Yes, but in the article you linked you needed them in SLI to get those scores, so 1100 euro. Still a ton more than he's thinking of.

Mutant_Fruit

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Yes, but in the article you linked you needed them in SLI to get those scores, so 1100 euro. Still a ton more than he's thinking of.

Opps Didn't realise that i was reading SLI scores. I thought i was reading single card scores. Damn, that 7800 isn't as good as i thought!