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programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
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Hello, my name is Jeff Atwood, and I'm an addict.
I'm addicted... to video cards.
In fact, I've been addicted since 1996. Well, maybe a few years earlier than that if you count some of the classic 2D accelerators. But the true fascination didn't start until 1996, when the first consumer hardware 3D accelerators came to market. I followed their development avidly in newsgroups, and tried desperately to be the first kid on my block to own the first one. And boy did I ever succeed. Here's a partial list of what I remember owning in those early days:
(This is only a partial list, ranging from about 1996 to 2001 -- I don't want to bore you. And believe me, I could. I mean more than I already am.)
These were heady times indeed for 3D graphics enthusiasts (read: PC gamers). I distinctly remember playing the first DOS-based Tomb Raider on my 3dfx Voodoo using the proprietary GLIDE API. Sure, it's pathetic by today's standards, but the leap from software 3D to fast hardware 3D was quite dramatic from the trenches -- and far more graphically powerful than any console available.
This was a time when you could post a thread on a usenet newsgroup about a brand new 3D card, and one of the creators of the hardware would respond to you, as Gary Tarolli did to me:
I first want to say how rewarding it is to read all your reviews after having worked on the design of Voodoo Graphics (the chipset on the Orchid Righteous 3D board) for over two years. I am one of the founders of 3Dfx and one of our goals was to deliver the highest quality graphics possible to the PC gamer. It was and still is a very risky proposition because of the cost sensitivity of the marketplace. But your reviews help convince me that we did the right thing.I thought I would share with you a little bit about what is inside the 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics chipset. There are 2 chips on the graphics board. Each is a custom designed ASIC containing approximately 1 million transistors. Although this number of transistors is on the order of a 486, it is a lot more powerful. Why? Because the logic is dedicated to graphics and there's a lot of logic to boot. For example, bilinear filtering of texture maps requires reading four 16-bit texels per pixel (that's 400 Mbytes/sec at 50 Mpixels/sec) and then computing the equation
red_result = r0*w0+r1*w1+r2*w2+r3*w3wherer0:3are the four red values andw0:3are the four weights based on the where the pixel center lies with respect to the four texels. This is performed for each color channel (red, green, blue, alpha) resulting in 16 multiples and 12 additions or 28 operations per pixel. At 50 Mpixels per second that is 1,400 Mops/sec. The way this is designed in hardware is you literally place 16 multipliers and 12 adders on the chip and hook them together. And this is only a small part of one chip. There are literally dozens of multipliers and dozens of adders on each of the two chips dedicated only to graphics. Each chip performs around 4,000 million actual operations per second, of which around one third are integer multiplies. These are real operations performed - if you were to try to do these on a CPU (or a DSP) you must also do things like load/store instructions and conditions. In my estimation it would take about a 10,000 Mip computer (peak) to do the same thing that one of our chips does. This is about 20 of the fastest P5-200 or P6-200 chips per one of our chips. Not exactly cost-effective. So if you want to brag, you can say your graphics card has approximately the same compute power as 40 P5-200 chips. Of course, these numbers are more fun than they are meaningful. What is meaningful in graphics is what you see on the screen.Now of course, if you were writing a software renderer for a game, you wouldn't attempt to perform the same calculations we perform on our chip on a general purpose CPU. You would take shortcuts, like using 8-bit color with lookup tables for blending, or performing perspective correction every (n) pixels. The image quality will depend on how many shortcuts you take and how clever you are. Voodoo Graphics takes no shortcuts and was designed to give you the highest quality image possible within the constraint of 2 chips. As your reviews have shown, it is evident that you can see the difference in quality and performance.
There's nothing quite like having a little chat on usenet with the founder of the company who created the 3D accelerator you just bought. Like I said, it was a simpler time.
Just imagine something with the power of forty Pentium-200 chips! Well, you don't have to. There's probably a CPU more powerful than that in your PC right now. But the relative scale of difference in computational power between the CPU and a GPU hasn't changed -- special purpose GPUs really are that much more powerful than general purpose CPUs.
After that first taste of hot, sweet GPU power, I was hooked. Every year since then I've made a regular pilgrimage to the temple of the GPU Gods, paying my tithe and bringing home whatever the latest, greatest, state-of-the art in 3D accelerators happens to be. What's amazing is how often, even now, performance doubles yearly.
This year, I chose the NVIDIA GTX 280. Specifically, the MSI NVIDIA GTX 280 OC, with 1 GB of memory, overclocked out of the box. I hate myself for succumbing to mail-in rebates, but they get me every time -- this card was $375 after rebate.
$375 is expensive, but this is still the fastest single card configuration available at the moment. It's also one heck of a lot cheaper than the comically expensive $650 MSRP these cards were introduced at in June. Pity the poor rubes who bought these cards at launch! Hey, wait a second -- I've been one of those rubes for 10 years now. Never mind.
This is the perfect time to buy a new video card -- before Thanksgiving and running up to Christmas is prime game release season. All the biggest games hit right about now. Courtesy of my new video card and the outstanding Fallout 3, my productivity last week hit an all-time low. But oh, was it ever worth it. I'm a long time Fallout fan, even to the point that our wedding pre-invites had secret geek Fallout art on them. Yes, that was approved by my wife, because she is awesome.
I must say that experiencing the wasteland at 60 frames per second, 1920 x 1200, in high dynamic range lighting, with every single bit of eye candy set to maximum, was so worth it. I dreamt of the wastelands.
In fact, even after reaching the end of the game, I'm still dreaming of them. I've heard some claim Fallout 3 is just Oblivion with guns. To those people, I say this: you say that like it's a bad thing. The game is incredibly true to the Fallout mythos. It's harsh, gritty, almost oppressive in its presentation of the unforgiving post-apocalyptic wasteland -- and yet there's always an undercurrent of dark humor. There are legitimate good and evil paths to every quest, and an entirely open-ended world to discover.
No need to take my word for it, though. I later found some hardware benchmark roundups that confirmed my experience: the GTX 280 is crazy fast in Fallout 3.
Of course, we wouldn't be responsible PC owners if we didn't like to mod our hardware a bit. That's what separates us from those knuckle-dragging Mac users: skill. (I kid, I kid!) First, you'll want to download a copy of the amazing little GPU-Z application, which will show you in real time what your video card is doing.
A little load testing is always a good idea, particularly since I got a bum card with my first order -- it would immediately shoot up to 105 C and throttle within a minute or two of doing anything remotely stressful in 3D. It worked, but the resulting stuttering was intolerable, and the fan noise was unpleasant as the card worked overtime to cool itself down. I'm not sure how I would have figured that out without the real time data and graphs that GPU-Z provides. I returned it for a replacement, and the replacement's behavior is much more sane; compare GPU-Z results at idle (left) and under RTHDRIBL load (right):
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Fortunately, there's not much we need to do to improve things. The Nvidia 8800 and GTX series are equipped with outstanding integrated coolers which directly exhaust the GPU heat from the back of the PC. I'd much rather these high powered GPUs exhaust their heat outward instead of blowing it around inside the PC, so this is the preferred configuration out of the box. However, the default exhaust grille is incredibly restrictive. I cut half of the rear plate away with a dremel, which immediately reduced fan speeds 20% (and thus, noise 20%) due to the improvement in airflow.
Just whip out your trusty dremel (you do own a dremel, right?) and cut along the red line. It's easy. If you're a completionist, you can apply better thermal paste to the rest of the card to eke out a few more points of efficiency with the cooler.
Extreme? Maybe. But I like my PCs powerful and quiet. That's another thing that attracted me to the GTX 280 -- for a top of the line video card, it's amazingly efficient at idle. And despite my gaming proclivities, it will be idle 98% of the time.
I do love this new video card, but I say that every year. I try not to grow too attached. I'm sure this video card will be replaced in a year with something even better.
What else would you expect from an addict?
Haha.. yeah. Graphics cards are one thing that I've always felt to be a waste of money, but worth investing on ;-)
I wish I had the moolah for a GTX 260 though. For now I have to satisfy myself with my mobo-inbuilt Radeon HD3200 :(
~Raj
Rajorshi on November 11, 2008 5:01 AMI wish I had the money for something better than a shitty Geforce 7300 :(. In Argentina video cards are ridiculously expensive, they cost nearly twice as much as in the US, so you need at least 1000 dollars for a GTX 280 and 550 dollars for a GTX 260 :(. This is why there is no SLI or Crossfire over here, in fact, owning anything better than integrated crap is a luxury for the rich. Over here a Geforce 8800 is high-end, I AM NOT KIDDING (I don't think it's still high-end in the US, right? It's two series behind.)
Alex on November 11, 2008 5:11 AMAlex, isn't the strategy there to buy used video cards from American eBay sellers who are willing to ship internationally? Factoring in crazy expensive shipping, you should come out ahead. The incredibly weak dollar probably helps as well.
I know starting about 3 years ago about half my eBay items would regularly sell internationally, if I ticked that checkbox..
(Yes, I do use eBay to sell my old video card addictions before they become worthless. Did I ever tell you about the one time I accidentally shipped the video card that was supposed to go to Paris, to Chile, and vice-versa? Oh, that was bad. Very very bad.)
Jeff Atwood on November 11, 2008 5:18 AMI still think glide is impressive.. I was replaying unreal 1 which I got with my first ever graphics card (a voodoo 3 3000).. I noticed instantly how assy the game looked and I thought.. this cant be right, it wasnt that bad was it? sure enough it wasn't .. I found a glide emulator and ran the game again.. wicked!
I remember glide especially because I spent ages not actually 'playing' the game, but stood staring at puddles of blood that had animated ripples.. or mirrored floor rooms where you could actually see yourself moving around in complete fidelity..
Undoubtedly they had some interesting tricks for doing the reflections.. its extremely rare today to find a dx/opengl game that has reflections.. most of them go for pre-calculated cube maps.. so you only really see low fidelity world reflections.
This is why I'm somewhat interested in what ray tracing can bring to the table.. theres plenty of hacks that work really well with raster rendering.. but ray tracing can just implicitely give you lots of other cool effects for 'free' due to the considerably more 'pure' less hackyness of it.
Stephen on November 11, 2008 5:21 AMMy pc-gaming has come to a halt over the last year so I haven't bothered with a gpu upgrade thus far. I used to be incredibly interested in the latest greatest card though. In AUS we pay around the $1000 mark for a new top of the line card at and around launch. I can still remember my brand new nvidia 6800 ultra OC @ $900. Worth every penny.
`Josh on November 11, 2008 5:22 AM"powerful and quiet" is probably what most of us would ideally like to have.
Personally I'm prepared to sacrifice a little bit of power, for a bit more quiet, so I'm a big fan of the Gigabyte SilentPipe graphics card which are entirely passively cooled.
Ideally I'd like a graphics card that would be silent and happy being passively-cooled for basic Windows use, but would switch on some fan-cooling when I start to stress it with a game.
Graham Stewart on November 11, 2008 5:32 AM> would switch on some fan-cooling when I start to stress it with a game
Almost all modern (mid-range or higher) video cards already do this -- they scale fan speed to actual GPU temperatures.
Jeff Atwood on November 11, 2008 5:42 AM> However, the default exhaust grille is incredibly restrictive.
The grill might be so restrictive because larger openings would not meet the FCC emissions requirements, and a wire mesh is expensive.
> That's what separates us from those knuckle-dragging Mac users: skill.
I'm going to studiously ignore this comment. Why you chose to include it in the article is beyond me.
DGentry on November 11, 2008 5:45 AM"I'm Matt, and it's been 3 years since my last video card upgrade."
Why must you tempt us with such sweet juicy graphic power!! Now I have to find a way to justify spending more on a video card than on an entire game console system...
Matt Dubs on November 11, 2008 5:59 AMI remember the birth of hardware 3d very fondly. I had the first 3dfx card, that was a pass-through card, you actually had a vga jumper from your original video card to this one so that it could take over the output when you went into an application using it.
Then there was the explosion of games that took advantage of it. Many of them got very creative with their lighting and effects. While today's games are certainly much more sophisticated and detailed, there was just something about that time period I think we've lost. Maybe it's just the initial wonder of it making me nostalgic. I remember buying games just because they supported the 3dfx card, so I could see what they were doing with it.
Alex on November 11, 2008 6:00 AMI don't really care about the graphics card stuff, but I just want to say, those are amazingly cool wedding invitations. Any woman that would go along with that is a keeper, that's for sure.
It's fun to juxtapose your comment above about PC/Mac users (PC users are better because of the ability to get under the hood and tweak things, to understand how things work) and your opinions about C and higher level languages (I don't need to know how it works, I trust my language/framework designers to do it right for me).
I kid, I kid.
jj33 on November 11, 2008 6:11 AMI remember having all of those cards too, although I started, before the wonders of Voodoo, with an S3 Virge, which had hardware acceleration for like two games, total, and you had to be told what to look for to see the difference ;)
One point of confusion - does that card seriously eat 160 watts in idle ? My ENTIRE COMPUTER under FULL LOAD only eats 80 watts!
J. Stoever on November 11, 2008 6:23 AMand how i always want someone to start on this topic :)
Ahhhh...those were the days... those pixelated beeping DOS monsters.... the sleepless nights...configuring the irqs the dmas...and praying that the game will somehow work... and hopefully with the sound...
this is the very reason of my existence in this computer industry:)
i still do play some DOS games like stargunner on emulators, not only because it makes me nostalgic but for the sheer gameplay that we'd lost...but thanks to penny arcade games on xbox they're back. And one can get all those 'Abandonware', as theyre lovingly called, from websites like www.the-underdogs.info/
Although todays computer games have no doubt surpassed the my wildest of dreams of how this industry will turn out to be... but i still reminisce the good old days of those DOS beepers...i guess we had run into a bad era of gaming somewhere around 2000 where the focus shifted from gameplay to graphics(none the less, there were a few good games always)...but today we're in best phase i could think off...awesome graphics and gameplay too...games like HL2, Bioshock, Oblivion...COD4...they just make your jaws drop in disbelief....i consider myself as some very lucky people in india to experience these titles and in full glory...
I sadly never owned any gfx card back then, cause it was unheard of in india....although today im a proud owner of an 8800GT which i had to import from USA(courtesy a good friend), due to its ridiculously prohibitive pricing in India, just like in Argentina. I wish the hardware along with the games be a little cheap out here.
BTW Jeff i think you should start writing a little more on games. We would love to read that also :)
I'm sorry...i couldn't control my emotions
:)
I'm not an addict, and I pretty much insist on passive cooling, but I just upgraded from an 8600 GT to a 9600 GT for a cool $150 (Canadian) and was amazed at the difference in performance. Probably gets about half the FPS that yours does at the same perf settings, but nevertheless, I didn't even realize how sluggish some games were until I tried them on the new card.
I wish you hadn't posted that comment about Fallout being Oblivion with guns, because that makes me want to try it and I've already wasted enough productivity cycles at home.
Aaron G on November 11, 2008 6:30 AMi will have to second on alex post...graphic cards are also so expensive here in egypt , iam still using the old AGP fx5200 !!!...also the most modern graphics card i heard about was geForce 8800 which one of my friends got from emirates :)
Ahmed kotb on November 11, 2008 6:35 AMweak sauce.
John Ferguson on November 11, 2008 7:05 AMI've had a few of those cards you mentioned and I too found it amazing going from 3D software to hardware. The first game I did that with was Quake 2 which went from a so-so graphical experience to a kick ass experience.
I never buy top of the line when I get video cards, I always buy a couple models down... it may not be the fastest card on the block, but it's often $100 or more cheaper and with only minor performance differences. To a cheap bastard like me, that's worth it.
Need to get a new video card now that I'm thinking about it... don't have PCI Express though, so it somewhat limits what I can do these days w/o upgrading my mobo and processor and ram... which I'd like to avoid for another year or two.
Kris on November 11, 2008 7:08 AM> I wish I had the money for something better than a shitty Geforce 7300 :(. In Argentina video cards are ridiculously expensive, they cost nearly twice as much as in the US, so you need at least 1000 dollars for a GTX 280 and 550 dollars for a GTX 260 :(. This is why there is no SLI or Crossfire over here, in fact, owning anything better than integrated crap is a luxury for the rich. Over here a Geforce 8800 is high-end, I AM NOT KIDDING (I don't think it's still high-end in the US, right? It's two series behind.)
It's the same in Brazil. I (actually my brother who still live at my parents house) own a GeForce 8600GT, and that is high-end for our standards. I can even play Fallout 3! Well not in the same Capital Wasteland as yours Jeff.
Anyway. Eletronics in general are really expensive here and now that the dollar skyrocket it's value we are pretty much screwed. I'm on my second year of Computer Science and during the first year I didn't even had a computer, my dad had to save money so he could buy it.
I was planning on buying myself a PSP on christmas after saving for 5 months, needless to say I gave up the idea. Thank you US, I hate you.
Hoffmann on November 11, 2008 7:13 AMi thought that programers play solitaire only :D ( or at least a geeky game that doesnt need an expensive vga )
i was so wrong :D ...
That reminds me. I should probably "sell" the rest of my TDFX shares... *That* was a bust. Seemed like a good idea back in 2000 (or whenever I bought them.)
Joe on November 11, 2008 7:29 AMInteresting screenshot of the game. The ground textures don't look as detailed as they do on my PS3. Do they have a comparison between the games graphics on those two platforms?
Akira on November 11, 2008 7:39 AM>"I'm Matt, and it's been 3 years since my last video card upgrade."
>Why must you tempt us with such sweet juicy graphic power!! Now I >have to find a way to justify spending more on a video card than on >an entire game console system...
>Matt Dubs on November 11, 2008 05:59 AM
Matt's comment points out exactly why I don't do more pc gaming, I just can't afford it. I've always been more of a console gamer. I'm weird like that almost everybody else I know who codes is a pc gamer. I just couldn't justify $2000 dollar gaming rigs and $600 graphics cards. I've been able to get an enjoyable gaming experience on my xbox 360 and ps3 for much less with out spending that much dough. Console gaming is much simpler too. I can just pop a game in and go without worrying about having the latest driver updates for the graphic card or any of that other madness.
o.s. on November 11, 2008 7:44 AMThere is no faster or surer way to get me to tune out of a conversation than by talking about video cards. I'm still rocking whatever came in my 2003-era Dell, and I do not know or really care what it is.
I am a programmer, but a stranger in this land. I've just never been a hardware geek at all; I don't care what's in the box as long as it's serving my purposes without dragging.
Of course, this is the list of PC games I have played: Dark Forces, One Must Fall 2097, Myst, Riven, MegaZeux...
Evan on November 11, 2008 7:47 AM@John Ferguson - You beat me to it. Jeff needs at least one of those ($3500 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 w/ 4GB RAM).
Bratch on November 11, 2008 7:51 AMHow does the removal of half the back plate affect the physical stability of the card in respect to the case? Does it wobble a lot more than it did pre-mod? It seems like removing that much metal would significantly decrease stability.
Michael on November 11, 2008 8:00 AMBe very careful about selling your computer hardware on ebay to non US citizens. That could very well be an ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) violation, and could get one in significant amounts of trouble should the government take notice.
See http://www.osp.emory.edu/shared_web/policies/export/Export_Control_Full.pdf for more information (note that "Accelerator or Coprocessor; Graphics" is on the Commerce Control list in Appendix 2). YMMV, I am not a lawyer, yadda yadda yadda.
Tom on November 11, 2008 8:04 AMJeff,
take a look at this mythbuster live demonstration about the difference between GPU and CPU:
so does this mean you're going to play World of Warcraft now??
Jin on November 11, 2008 8:11 AMI remember the first time I played Space Quest with only a CGA card but a color monitor -- Sierra cheated quite well to have 4 colors almost look like those magical 16 EGA colors.
Now that was some graphics experience!
Compare that to Monkey Island in black, white, cyan and magenta.
So anyway, what's that 3D thing you talk about? :-)
The joys of games developed using Gamebryo.
They look awesome, but you need the most advanced graphics card with a customized setup to get them to achieve high quality and good performance. I've also heard the claim that Gamebryo tends to be CPU intensive, any experiences with Fallout 3 or Oblivion that would counter or support that claim?
Delmania on November 11, 2008 8:30 AM"so does this mean you're going to play World of Warcraft now??"
As I said in my earlier post, Fallout 3 (and Oblivion) were written using the Gamebryo game engine, which is why they look so good.
World of Warcraft uses a proprietary engine, that was developed by Blizzard (and is used in Warcraft 3), and it's intentionally lower quality to ensure it will run on lower end systems.
So, assuming Jeff wants to play games that look like Fallout 3 did, WoW is not one of them (plus Kaplan is a jerk).
Delmania on November 11, 2008 8:36 AMFanboyism aside, the 4870 X2 is currently the best single-slot card by far when properly scaling.
Ryan on November 11, 2008 8:40 AM> Almost all modern (mid-range or higher) video cards already do this -- they scale fan speed to actual GPU temperatures.
True, but they never seem to switch the fan off completely. They just rev it down a little.
And IME the fans seem to spin up unreasonably quickly (and noisily), even at fairly light loads.
My (admittedly quite old now) Gigabyte Radeon X800XL copes admirably with Company of Heroes without needing any dedicated fan-cooling, but if you ran it with a fan-cooled card then I'd bet the fan would be shrieking away at full speed.
Graham Stewart on November 11, 2008 8:56 AMAnyone want my old Diamond Monster 3D add-on cards? Just for nostalgia's sake?? Ha! I had two back in the day and they kicked ass for Quake2. The gamer in me is almost ashamed to say that today's uber hi-res graphics are almost wasted?? Game action is so fast these days you can't really enjoy all the effort put into the looks.
It's almost getting Hollywood where the graphics just don't impress anymore because people assume anything can be done. Motor heads can appreciate it, but I think the mystique of high end graphics cards have been lost.
Morning Toast on November 11, 2008 9:14 AM"So if you want to brag, you can say your graphics card has approximately the same compute power as 40 P5-200 chips"
it should be:
... the same compute power as 40 FPU chips
because a GPU is a farm of FPU chips
Nikos on November 11, 2008 9:48 AMI loved my Voodoo cards so much. It has to be one of my favorite cards of all time.
I also own a GTX280 and love it as well. Good to hear you are also enjoying it.
Colin on November 11, 2008 10:12 AMHopefully we will start being able to use the graphics card for more than just games with DirectX 11 and Windows 7 and obviously for the mac users snow leopard.
Gives me another excuse to spend all that money on a new one.
pete on November 11, 2008 10:13 AMJeff,
Can you come up with some nice contest to use those incredible calculation power for some general purpose? I mean: having a GPU fetish is nice and all, but it would be a shame to only use it for games. We as a developer community in CH and SOF should be able to come up with some pretty neat applications other then games for the unmatched power residing in our laptops, workstations and mobile phones (yes,my cell has a GPU too!)?
Ruudjah on November 11, 2008 10:14 AMHey Jeff, I never really gave it some thought, and I know that this comment's gonna be quite off-topic, but what software do you use to run this blog? Mind sharing with us?
Andrew on November 11, 2008 12:05 PMYou should see what we're doing with Folding@Home. 4x 9800gx2 in a single boxen. It's insane and beautiful all at once.
Kevin on November 11, 2008 12:07 PMI think the grill is "so restrictive" because of the electro magnetic radiations. Different countries have different rules here and demand hardware to be manufactured in such a way, that the radiation sent out by the card is below a certain level... on the other hand, they will also require, that the card "blocks" radiation generated from outside by other devices up to a certain level (meaning it should operate flawlessly, even if the surrounding radiation is beyond certain levels). This is the reason why usually most vendors use metal cases. They are also good for cooling of course. However plastic cases, glass cases or similar will not block enough radiation and make it hard to meet the requirements to have the equipment sold within certain countries.
Small holes in a metal slot allow air to pass (through the whole), but not radiation. See your microwave oven. The glass in front is shielded by a metal plate. This plate has holes, so you can look inside. But the holes are chosen so small, that 2.4 GHz radiation can't pass through it (otherwise you wouldn't want to stand close to a working microwave oven ;-)
I still think the whole PC case design sucks horribly. If they would make the design completely different, most devices could have their heat sinks outside of the case (this will not lead to more radiation. Heat sinks are made of metal themselves, they are blockers themselves, they need no case around them). Much more could be cooled in a 100% passive manner if not everything was in a crowed case that is like a sauna once your PC runs.
Why doesn't the top of a PC case looks like this:
and the CPU is directly pressed against the inner side of it? Of course it can get hot and you can burn yourself if you touch that. Yeah, I guess it will not pass certain consumer institute tests if the hot parts are not within a case where they are protected. But guess what, your hot plate in the kitchen gets much hotter and it may be sold.
Power adapters with external heat spreaders like this one
can be cooled passively >80% of the time. They may only require an internal fan to power up in case your computer is under 100% load for longer than 15 minutes and constantly stays at this level.
Mecki on November 11, 2008 12:11 PMWhat OS are your running this card on? I'm trying to find a card like this that has x64 drivers to install into a Server 2008 machine that I'm using as a workstation...
Guy Ellis on November 11, 2008 12:55 PMI too like the fact that the GTX e260/280 class of video cards have a "2D" mode which makes them efficient when idling.
However, note that this only works when you are using only one monitor. For some reason, the card goes into "3D" mode when you start using dual monitors. Hopefully this is just a driver revision or 2 away from being fixed. For now, I just disable my other monitor when I don't need to use it to make the card go in 2D mode.
cyclo on November 11, 2008 12:59 PMwtf? 142 watts idle still sounds like a lot to me...
Nicolas on November 11, 2008 1:05 PMFallout 3 has over 30FPS on my 150$ ATI 4850 512MB with a 2 year old Core2Duo E6400. It's not a good test for the graphics card. Try something like GRID (I can't max AA on it) or the first Crysis.
I usually buy a new graphics card in the 150-200 range every 6 to 9 months. It's cheaper and I enjoy about everything to the max.
But I am not an addict ;)
Ovi on November 11, 2008 1:48 PMThis right here is the main problem with pc gaming; sure the screenshot looks amazing; and I would LOVE to play fallout 3 looking like that. The problem is that the hype is built around images like that, when the reality is that most pc's wont be able to handle it. And then most gamers either don't have the money or are not willing to spend it in a graphics card. I sometimes believe this to be unfair to the average pc user
And that's why i think consoles are so successful, because you buy your really expensive console and then you get the new games with a decent quality without having to worry that its too old and wont be able to handle it. And the lifespan of a console is of around 5 years, so i think is a good deal.
I KNOW that the pc will always have better graphics, and I also know that what I say only applies if you have a current gen console, but I believe it to be a valid point
Eduardo Meade on November 11, 2008 2:38 PMFastest? Not so fast Jeff. Take a look at ATI Radeon Gainward HD 4870 X2. In two tests it beats NVIDIA N280 GTX hands down.
3DMark 06 --> ATI: 14812 (1600x1200) vs NVIDIA: 12407 (1600x1200)
3DMark Vantage GPU --> ATI: 9240 (1600x1050) vs NVIDIA 7520 (1600x1050)
Interesting blog, but I wonder, which fallout artwork was on the invitation?
Byron on November 11, 2008 3:47 PM> 142 watts idle still sounds like a lot to me...
Sure, but we're talking the absolute highest end single video card. And by that metric, it's a fantastic idle number. If you want efficiency and decent 3D performance there are better choices -- notably the 9600 GT.
> Take a look at ATI Radeon Gainward HD 4870 X2
Yes, but that's "SLI on a stick" -- not quite the same thing. SLI doesn't always work in every game title, has double the power requirements, complicates multiple monitor setups, etc etc.
Jeff Atwood on November 11, 2008 4:17 PMJeff, god I hate you. I was already jones-ing for a gpu upgrade and I have absolutely no way of justifying this with my other half. You ruined my day man. You are now required to play an extra hour of f3 for those of us unfortunate enough to have to use the medium settings
matt on November 11, 2008 5:45 PMJeff,
If I were you, I would get in another video card upgrade before your wife's due date... It may be your last.
And not because you can't afford it. It will be because you no longer have time to use a computer for anything more than email & programming.
And yes... I am jealous.
Adrian. on November 11, 2008 7:03 PMYou used to meet the best people on USENET. Once, I posted on alt.games.duke3d to ask about a bug in the Build level editor. I got a reply from none other than The Levelord, Duke Nukem 3D's level designer, saying "We never solved it either."
Jonathan Drain, Dungeons & Dragons Blogger on November 11, 2008 8:45 PMHmm... would you mind showing me what this beast does for a game like Far Cry 2 ? Which just got released a week or two ago ? I've been hooked on the game since it was released, but unfortunately I am actually in the market for a new card since it always complains that my ATI X1300 is too old, and granted it is archaic, but seeing your card playing FC2 would be a rush!
Cheers
Patrick on November 11, 2008 9:30 PMThe question is why do we still spend so much on a cutting edge gfx card than on a console...since almost all titles released today are for all 3 platforms, that there is no exclusivity left except for a few titles?
Samrat Patil on November 11, 2008 10:43 PM> I too like the fact that the GTX e260/280 class of video cards have a "2D" mode which makes them efficient when idling. However, note that this only works when you are using only one monitor.
I can't duplicate this. I'm seeing 190 watts on my wattmeter at idle, whether I have one monitor enabled or three. Under load (RTHDRIBL) I see 333 watts, so the card uses 143w (!!).
> How does the removal of half the back plate affect the physical stability of the card in respect to the case?
None, the top bracket / screw is perfectly sufficient. The 2nd screw can also support the single bracket, too, if you're worried.
Jeff Atwood on November 11, 2008 11:41 PMHello, my name is Jake, and I'm an addict.
firstly, i'm glad you are bringing that stackoverflow.com addiction under control.
>That's what separates us from those knuckle-dragging Mac users: skill
this really killed me because lately this is more true than 2005 when you took the first swipe at them. have you seen http://hackint0sh.org/ ?
correct me if i'm wrong but those are pc enthusiasts venturing into mac.
F3 is great especially on maximum settings.
I do get a yellow-ish ghost around all models when playing in the dark though. But I think I had the same thing with Oblivion. Got latest drivers and all..
Also, except for having great gfx, I think f3 is way more then Oblivion with guns. It's Oblivion with Story (notice the capital S).
Npcs that don't talk about the mudcrabs they saw yesterday but instead talk about things that are actually relevant. Quests that are not just the same generic irrelevant quests all over again. More then 2 voices for ALL the characters around.
It's like Oblivion was fallout beta. Where they focussed on the engine and used the last week to cram in some quests. Where now they could spend their budget on great voice actors and good quest/story writers.
And yes, gfx cars are great too.
Boersnoes on November 12, 2008 12:47 AMF3 is great especially on maximum settings.
I do get a yellow-ish ghost around all models when playing in the dark though. But I think I had the same thing with Oblivion. Got latest drivers and all..
Also, except for having great gfx, I think f3 is way more then Oblivion with guns. It's Oblivion with Story (notice the capital S).
Npcs that don't talk about the mudcrabs they saw yesterday but instead talk about things that are actually relevant. Quests that are not just the same generic irrelevant quests all over again. More then 2 voices for ALL the characters around.
It's like Oblivion was fallout beta. Where they focussed on the engine and used the last week to cram in some quests. Where now they could spend their budget on great voice actors and good quest/story writers.
And yes, gfx cars are great too.
Boersnoes on November 12, 2008 12:54 AMStop ruining jokes and wasting time by typing (I kid, I kid!).
asdf on November 12, 2008 2:35 AMI tend to upgrade my video card about once a year, also, but I tend to wait until the price/performance on a new line of video cards is at the right place. I'll never pay $600 for a video card when I know I'll be able to get it at half the price if I wait a few months.
I was tempted by the 280, but they have a new 55nm process series of cards that are coming out in September (Oh? It's November? Meh.) which should help resolve one of the biggest issues I have with my 8800GTS, which is the crazy heat output. It doesn't bother my computer any -- the fans on my computer blow copious amounts of air through the case, it's *me* that gets bugged by the heat, since all that hot air enters my bedroom, and turns my place into an inferno. I had to place my computer under the central air vent so I didn't just sit there and sweat all day long when doing work. Price? About $250 a month during summer months to keep my bedroom at 80 degrees (and the rest of my house at about 65, which goes to show you how bloody hot the 8800 is).
Cheers.
Bill on November 12, 2008 2:44 AM> Stop ruining jokes and wasting time by typing (I kid, I kid!).
Even with the disclaimer, there were complaints. That's all I'm saying.
Jeff Atwood on November 12, 2008 3:05 AM>>Also, except for having great gfx, I think f3 is way more then
>>Oblivion with guns. It's Oblivion with Story (notice the capital S).
>>Npcs that don't talk about the mudcrabs they saw yesterday but instead
>> talk about things that are actually relevant. Quests that are not
>>just the same generic irrelevant quests all over again. More then 2
>>voices for ALL the characters around.
Don't forget the game mechanics. Oblivion had one of the worst game mechanics systems of all times. I'm tempted to write a 10 page rant about how horrible it was, and how the game was easier to beat at level 1 than at 30, but I'll just leave be, and say I was immensely surprised to find that Fallout actually has brilliant game mechanics. Nearly every skill, stat, and perk, is important and a viable option in the game, making character design interesting and challenging.
Bill on November 12, 2008 3:25 AM@akira -
Gamespot, Eurogamer and others have comparisons. The PC version is generally regarded the best with regards to controls, graphics and loading times, though some people claim it is also the buggiest version.
LarsW on November 12, 2008 4:22 AM> Yes, but that's "SLI on a stick" -- not quite the same thing. SLI doesn't always work in every game title, has double the power requirements, complicates multiple monitor setups, etc etc.
That´s a "crossfire on a stick", and the crossfire has far less problems with multiple monitor setups than the SLI
Vinicius on November 12, 2008 4:24 AMnooooo!
fantastic artwork for the weedding invites!
Yeah, highend graphics card are cool...but have you checked out the new era of flash based harddrives?
How about a 80GB disk connected directly on the PCIx bus with performances of read/write @ 800/600 MB/s...and 100.000 IOPS when a standard disk gets like <100 IOPS
Something for stackoverflow? :)
http://www.fusionio.com/Products.aspx
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34065/135/
Copy a DVD in 4 seconds? (is that to and from same disk? same bus)
you're not folding with that beast?
hometoast on November 12, 2008 7:03 AMMan, I wish I had the cash for an upgrade. I hate being a student, paying out £3145 to study for a year, plus anothr £3705 for accommodation, plus however many thousand it costs to buy food for over the year. It just means I have to content myself with everything I could upgrade before I came here, namely, an OCed E6300, 2Gigs of RAM, and a HD 3850. It's not a bad system, but if I had the cash, it would be upgraded in the time it takes to type in my debit card details.
Still, maybe I should concentrate on the work, then I could possibly get a job that pays well enough to not need to worry about this issue again.
lol I've owned every single one of the cards you mentioned in your first list as well. I still have a few of them in some dusty box somewhere. I always got them when they first came out too. I've probably spent 20 gran on video cards since around 1996 too, aside from the ones I got for free when I worked for EA.
I've toned it down lately, since I've forced myself to ease off on the games in pursuit of a social life. The PC I'm on now is running a $59 8500GT, and it's really all I need at the moment. However, I'm currently negotiating a contract for development of a new game engine, so if that goes through I'll probably end up making myself a long Christmas List of cards to purchase by the end of the year so I can play around with all of the cutting edge DX and OpenGL features. I'm secretly salivating for that :) Being able to do HDRL in realtime with good framerates should be fun!
Gerald on November 12, 2008 7:16 AMI certainly relate to the addiction of buying a new graphics card every year or two and doing the odd mod (I even own a Dremel). A few years back I decided to break this pattern and try out the console world by buying myself a 360. It really lived up to my expectations. It was cheap (compared to buying a new GPU), quick startup, no technical problems and, at the time, awesome bleeding edge graphics. However, there is one thing that has always grinded with me (and this applies to both the WII and PS3); new game prices are practically double those on the PC. I know the argument goes something along the lines of Microsoft subsidising the console and recovering costs from game sales. However, the console is designed to thwart piracy (not sure how big an issue chipped consoles are), appeal to a market less inclined to pirate and can no claim bragger rights regarding GPU performace. So why aren't console game prices coming down?
Richard Dorman on November 12, 2008 7:22 AMSweet Jebus... 157 Watts.. at idle!! That's enough to power my 3-year old ThinkPad - six times over. Or watch a 40 inch widescreen flat-panel TV. Insane power wastage.
@Richard, new game prices for consoles are only about $10 more than PC games. i.e. Fallout 3 is $59.99 for the Xbox 360, and $49.99 for the PC. The extra licensing costs for publishing games on consoles probably explains the extra few dollars.
Ahh, conspicuous consumption! Hope you get your mortgage bailout - not.
So what kind of SUV do you drive?
shebezers on November 12, 2008 8:10 AMYou buy a new graphics card every year? Can I have last year's? :D
Seriously though... Graphics card porn has gotten old for me. I'd rather hear about what you're doing with the old ones.
Ryan Fox on November 12, 2008 8:43 AMHey Jeff, time to upgrade again:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/10/nvidias-quadro-fx-5800-with-4gb-graphics-memory-is-the-most-po/
mark brents on November 12, 2008 10:35 AMJeff - I feel you man! I am addicted too. I've owned all of the cards on the list - but currently I am topped off with my GeForce 9600. Too bad games have slowed down - it doesn't really justify the updates these days.
Alan Bollinger on November 12, 2008 12:27 PM>I can't duplicate this. I'm seeing 190 watts on my wattmeter at idle, whether I have one monitor enabled or three. Under load (RTHDRIBL) I see 333 watts, so the card uses 143w (!!).
Hi Jeff, if you check the power efficiency chart you linked to, the GTX 280 was using 159.1 Watts which I suspect is in 2D mode. Your reading of 190 watts might be in idle 3D mode. Your card for some reason my not down clocking to 2D mode. As I mentioned, I had to switch off the second monitor from Vista's display properties for the card to kick into 2D mode... otherwise it stays in idle 3D mode.
How do I know it goes into 2D mode? By using the EVGA Precision fan control/overclocking utility that also displays, among other things, the GPU core speed, shader speed, and memory speed in real time. I noticed that in 2D mode, all these 3 down clock (especially the memory) to less than half of their default values. The temps also go down from mid 50 C to mid 40 C when in 2D mode... I have an EVGA GTX 260. I believe you can also use the EVGA utility for non EVGA cards.
cyclo on November 12, 2008 1:48 PM> if you check the power efficiency chart you linked to, the GTX 280 was using 159.1 Watts which I suspect is in 2D mode. Your reading of 190 watts might be in idle 3D mode
Yes, but I have another video card in my PC (to run 3 monitors -- the 8500GT), an overclocked CPU, and two hard drives. That's why the idle number is higher.
Even with the 9600 GT installed, a far more frugal video card, this same system was pulling 150w idle.
With the 8800GTX installed, which has *horrible* idle power management, this system pulled 250w idle.
The card is definitely downclocking; there's no way we'd get to 190w if it wasn't.
Jeff Atwood on November 12, 2008 4:35 PMJeff,
I forget. Are you running 64-bit? Since these cards have 1GB of RAM, that affects the total RAM available to the system in 32-bit world, no?
I have 2 8600 GT cards in my machine (primitive compared to yours) and they both use 512MB. Combined, they take away 1GB from my 32-bit system. I have 4GB installed, but the OS (32-bit XP Pro SP3) only sees 2GB now.
Coleman on November 12, 2008 8:43 PMDammit Jeff...I had just about convinced myself my 7900GT is fine.
Although I have been noticing frame rates on newer games is starting to approach unplayable at higher resolutions.
Just double checking you're running Vista x64 drivers with no problems?
Leon Breedt on November 12, 2008 11:41 PMYes, 64 bit is pretty much mandatory once you start talking about video cards with 1 GB of RAM.
64-bit Vista is extremely mature, and I've had no "bitness" issues whatsoerver, as I remarked here:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000994.html
Jeff Atwood on November 13, 2008 12:31 AMFWIW/Fallout3: Yes, I do say that like it's a bad thing, and for a very simple reason: different levels for the inside of buildings.
I mean, come _on_ - it's 2008. We ought to be beyond that.
(Sorry for flaming)
FeepingCreature on November 13, 2008 3:17 AMoooh cutting off the rear plate is such a good idea. I'm going to go home and do that tonight to both of my 8800 gts 512's!
James on November 13, 2008 9:08 AMAh, you use these cards for graphics?
You've obviously not seen the uses the cryptography people put them to. I don't do either - I stopped gaming years ago because my time started to disappear down holes I didn't want it to - used to play stuff like Civ, which doesn't need the lunatic graphics anyway.
Like I say - I'm sure there's other stuff you can do with that massive parallel processing power.
Francis Fish on November 14, 2008 2:07 AMD'oh
Map reduce? Using racks of these cards instead of racks of blades?
Hmmm
Clever enough to think of it (ha!) but don't ask me how you'd even begin to make it work
Francis Fish on November 14, 2008 2:12 AMI bought a GeForce 4 for 500€ ... and 2x Geforce 6800 for about 800€. But then, along came the Xbox360 and for the same money i got two 360s and some change left for a decent video card for my PC.
I used to love playing the modern games silky smooth with my new setup. But is it worth all the money? In hindsight i would say no. The GeForce 4 is now in a machine that can barely be used for casual gaming. Of the two 6800s one is defect, the other in a 3rd class machine mainly used for watching videos and the occasional 4 year old game.
I must admit ... I've become reasonable. And i don't know why. Gotta be the age. Gotta be. I'm 33 and i'm becoming sensible ... already? Noooo, i don't want to!!! :}
I'm just pissed that as fast as the tech advances, we figure you only get to be cool for about 6 months before something way better blows your stuff out of the water.In a way it's great, but in another it means you better have some serious cash to lay out to stay in 'the game'(wonder how many results that would turn up? Wanders off to go see...)
Reviculous on November 15, 2008 11:35 PMnice :)
and what about watts ? ^^
I'm curious to know if you have beaten Fallout 3 yet?
If you have, then what are your thoughts?
I beat the main story and am a little disappointed.
However the game itself, especially the environments(Towns, Wasteland, etc...) was incredible.
Do you have a three-monitor-setup, and if so what do you use to hook up that third screen?
raph on November 19, 2008 5:26 AMI was originaly going to get a 2-monitor setup but I definately think I'll go for 3 now.
I was a little put off by all this SLI rubbish but after finding out its not compulsary 3 monitors and 2 cards is the way to go (Unless you can run one from onboard graphics).
Seriously though... Graphics card porn has gotten old for me. I'd rather hear about what you're doing with the old ones.
http://viewstroy.ru/
| Content (c) 2009 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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