NVIDIA GeForce 8800GS 768MB First Look

[xfire]

I thought they set up a fab plant.
One thing to be observed here is how they aren't doing much to the drivers.
Look at the 2xxx series the regular driver updates brought out great performance in them but since they are not facing much competion now they seem to be relaxing. I am sure with proper drivers they woul beat the 8800GT or maybe the drivers are optimized or they are too busy with the x2.
I would like to see some one insist that their 8500 1GB model is better the 8800 512.

 

[Wile E]

I thought they set up a fab plant.
One thing to be observed here is how they aren't doing much to the drivers.
Look at the 2xxx series the regular driver updates brought out great performance in them but since they are not facing much competion now they seem to be relaxing. I am sure with proper drivers they woul beat the 8800GT or maybe the drivers are optimized or they are too busy with the x2.
I would like to see some one insist that their 8500 1GB model is better the 8800 512.

How do you figure they're not supporting them thru drivers? ATI only releases drivers on a once a month basis. We just got into January, so 8.1 will be due out sometime this month.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I am sure the manufacturing the 3850's and 3870's would become cheaper too since I am sure they recovered the cost to set up the fab plant. The 3850's and 70's will be cheaper to make due to smaller manufacturing process.Also the 3850/70 x2 would scale much better than "Nvidia's mutant ninja turtles"(referring to its green colour) due to high scalability of cross fire and single PCB.
This is the "That (38)70's Show"

Yep, again would have to agree but the difference here is simple, Nvidia can afford NOT to make a profit on 2 of it's cards if it suits there overall marketing strategy and takes a good proportion of sales away from the competition, that would mean they would have the high/mid/and low end sales pretty much tied up...........ATi cannot, it's losing money fast, has lost too much already etc etc, drawing even is not even an option for them, pretty much why, ATM they are not even trying to plump for the high end competition, concentration on the mid/low (and doing a good job ATM) because thats where the bulk of the market is...but only because they have the pricing advantage, once that goes they just have to have success.

As I said, this is of course just my thoughts, and genuinly not fanboism (I actually bought a HD3870 the day they were released) but if I was NVidia, I wouldnt be happy with more or less dominating the market for the last 18 months, I would want to completely finish off the opposition (from a business perspective only) but as a consumer.......I want the opposite of course, the stronger BOTH sides are, the better for me and my wallet.

I would have to disagree on the driver issue, ATi have always been strong on this point, IMO they have MORE competition now than anytime in the last 3 years really, it may be a case that they can only get so much blood out of a stone but they do not want to damage their reputation even more with the ATi enthusiast community. 2900 driver development was outstanding, the competition then was realistically just the 8800GTX and 8800GTS 640MB (before the Ultra came along), the HD3870 has to compete with the 8800 ULtra, 8800GTX, 8800GTS 512MB G92 and 8800GT 512MB G92........so in effect....more competition.

I would also doubt very much that in the short time the HD3000 series cards have been out, and their limited availability initially that they are anywhere near recovering their costs yet and wont for some time, especially when you look at their relatively small market share that still remains despite the launch of the 3870 and 3850.

 

[xfire]

@Wile E none of the later catalysts have upped the performance and infact the 7.11 have reduced performance from 7.10 and the 3850/70 have been supported from the recent 7.12
thats like about 2-months.
@tatty- Agreed that Nvidia can afford not to make any profit but that will never be their stratergy. As a proof take the asking the manufacturers to reduce PCB layers..., Agreed that it would reduce the manufacturing cost but Nvidia could have reduced the cost of the chips rather than using so many different models on the same chips.
On the contrary Ati reduced the prices of the cards around the holiday season.Ati's playing the underdog here.

 

[Wile E]

@Wile E none of the later catalysts have upped the performance and infact the 7.11 have reduced performance from 7.10 and the 3850/70 have been supported from the recent 7.12
thats like about 2-months.

That's about right. It took just as long for proper drivers on the 2900 as well. This all on they're normal timeline.

 

[xfire]

but with the HD2900 they actually tried. Here they arent doing much.

 

[Wile E]

but with the HD2900 they actually tried. Here they arent doing much.

Not really. The situation is almost identical here, believe it or not. I waited this long for decent drivers on my 2900XT. You also have to realize that a lot more stuff was happening when the 38*0 series released. Newer games that came out, and subsequently need driver optimizations. When the 2900 released, nothing else was really going on. I'm willing to bet 8.1 will have some of the improvements you're waiting for.

 

[Tatty_Two]

but with the HD2900 they actually tried. Here they arent doing much.

The cards been out 2 months! It took 6 months with the 2900 and 3 or 4 really good driver releases.

 

[xfire]

oh! I didn't know they were out for so long. Lets wait and see.

 

[Xaser04]

I don't get the point in 768 MB of memory on a 192 bit wide bus. It's like sqeezing a whale through the sewers much like how the 8600 and HD2600 cards had 512 MB variants on a 128 bit wide bus.

Whilst I would agree it does appear to be a little overkill I think we should wait until proper reviews are launched before saying its pointless. A 192bit memory bus hasn't been done before (IIRC) and it will be interesting to see how much it affects the performance.

 

[yogurt_21]

I don't get the point in 768 MB of memory on a 192 bit wide bus. It's like sqeezing a whale through the sewers much like how the 8600 and HD2600 cards had 512 MB variants on a 128 bit wide bus.

not to be cheeky but you do realize that you have 2GB of system memory through a 128-bit bus right? the amount through the bus isn't as important as the bus width plus the mem speed.
the amount of memory is more related to the amount of texture a card can handle before system memory kicks in (which is on that 128 wide bus at much lower speeds)
bus width and speed is related to bandwidth and performance in fps.

take quake 4 on ultra setting s for example, on my 2900xt 512mb it ran no better than on my x1800xt 512mb. this is due to the factt hat the rig runs out of texture memory and has to use system memory. now on a 1GB 2900XT ultra barely eevn dents it as theres plenty of memory to go around.

so the 8800gt 1gb cards make more sense in that instance. I'll give you this card as it won't be able to run near what the gt does.