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NVIDIA 3-Way SLI review roundup
No use kidding around: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 3-Way SLI kicks benchmark ass. Reviewers across the board found the setup to be far and away the best money can buy when it comes to graphics, but the price is certainly steep. Not only are the cards super pricey -- you're limited to the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra -- but you'll need a 1000+ watt power supply, and pretty much a fresh system from the ground up unless you're already running the nForce 680i SLI motherboard. PC Perspective crunched the numbers, and you're looking at about $2828 in costs before you even get to the case, hard drive, DVD drive and all that other superfluous stuff. That said, the third card really makes a big difference, since performance scales surprisingly well with the addition. You probably don't need this kind of power if you're not trying to game at full-res on a 30-incher, but if you don't mind dropping $3k on a system purely designed to play Crysis at Very High, then you just might have some 3-way SLI in your future.Read - bit-tech.netRead - HotHardwareRead - PC Perspective
Dell XPS 720 specs, pics revealed
Well wouldn't you know it, we're just strolling down the street today minding our own business, when what do we happen to trip over but a field tech manual for Dell's upcoming XPS 720 and 720 H2C performance gaming rigs. According to the confidential, hundred-plus-page document, the pricier (but cooler, literally) H2C edition will sport a jet black bezel with a glossy black chassis, while the regular version will be offered with either jet black or formula red bezels and brushed aluminum chassis -- though you can rest assured that both models feature a number of seven-color LEDs to properly set the mood for your epic quests and/or murderous rampages. We'd already heard that these overclocking-friendly machines would rock your choice of Core 2, Core 2 Extreme, or Core 2 Extreme Quad processors and SLI-capable NVIDIA nForce 680i chipsets, but we didn't know that 800MHz DDR2 RAM (between 512MB and 8GB, with optional 1066MHz DIMMs from Corsair also available), RAID 5 and 0+1 HDD configurations, digital coax outs, and 300-watt graphics power sources would be on board too -- all improvements over the soon-to-be-dethroned XPS 710. Graphics options include the GTX and GTS flavors of NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 card, and you can also throw in any number of TV tuners along with a Creative X-Fi sound card, though the built-in 7.1 channel audio will probably suffice for most. Obviously these training manuals don't come with any sort of pricing or release info, but if you're curious about such things as replacing the 720's processor heat sink, let us know in the comments and we'll see what we can do. Keep reading for a larger pic...
PC Koubou offers up a gaming rig on the cheap
Sure, PC Koubou's new Amphis MT729C2D-NV8 isn't going to give you the same blazing performance as a Crossfire- or SLI-equipped machine, but at only €1,100 ($1,445), you're also entering a price range that the Alienwares, Voodoos, and XPS's of the world don't even attempt to approach. Still, don't think you're being saddled with crappy components here: this Vista-powered machine sports a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600, your choice of a 320MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS or 768MB GeForce 8800 GTX, either 2GB or 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, DVD burner, and six USB 2.0 ports. Of course the down side is that you're gonna have to hoof it over to Japan to pick one of these up, but hey, you really deserve a vacation anyway.
NVIDIA's GeForce 8600 series brings DX10 without breaking the bank
If you want to join the ranks of the cool kids with one of those nifty DirectX 10 cards for promoting Vista shenanigans, but don't want to sell any vital internal organs to purchase a GeForce 8800 GTX or one of those upcoming ATI R600 cards, then you might be happy to hear that the price of entry is about to get a whole lot cheaper. Details of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce 8600 series have been revealed, with the 8600 GT going for roughly $150 and the 8600 Ultra demanding a $180 pricetag. Considering the fact that an 8800 GTX will cost you about $600 at the moment, this is good news indeed. The specs aren't anything to sneeze at, either, with both 8600 cards being built with an 80nm process and 300 million transistors. The GT runs at 350MHz, with 256MB of RAM to call its own, while the Ultra sports a 500MHz core, with 512MB of memory. The launch is supposedly timed to coincide with the R600's launch, will certainly steal a bit of ATI's thunder.[Via Guru 3D]
NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 can fold too
While some ATI graphics cards are already doing double duty crunching data for the Folding@home project, they could soon have some competition for the gigaflop crown, with Custom PC reporting that the mighty G80 GPU at the core of NVIDIA"s new top-end GeForce 8800 graphics card is also capable of folding. In fact, according to Folding@home's Vijay Pande, the project's GPU code was originally developed for NVIDIA GPUs, but the they shifted their focus to ATI when its cards proved more powerful than NVIDIA's. While there doesn't appear to be any major changes required to get the code running on NVIDIA hardware, Pande says it will need to be tweaked in order to get the best performance possible -- meaning you'll have to put all those gigaflops to other, less productive uses for the time being. It's also not clear exactly how much of a performance gain the NVIDIA GPU will net, although if its gaming performance is any indication, it looks like it could potentially rack up points like nobody's bizness. While the NVIDIA-ready client may not be available yet, that shouldn't stop you from getting a head start (on the Engadget team, if you chose), even if it's a bit of a slow one.
Nvidia releases graphics card with physics ability
Nvidia launched a new line of GPU and motherboard products today, the GeForce 8800 and nForce 680 respectively. The hardware looks good, but these sorts of press events are big on hype; we'll have to wait until the card and motherboard make it out to the wild for detailed assessments. The wait, at least, will be short; all products will be shipping to retail today.Nvidia's 8800 card comes in two versions, costing between $449 and $649, but we weren't expecting a bargain. For that price, you get a DirectX 10 card that can compute physics tasks in addition to its polished graphic touches. Nvidia also says that the card dynamically allocates its processing power, so idle silicon that would normally be shading a fully-shaded scene, for example, can be used for other 3D tasks. The card also includes a 2D video accelerator to draw HD and other video.At the San Jose launch event, Nvidia demonstrated the card, creating live smoke and water effects by plotting the 3D movement of the particles, in addition to rendering the graphics. Before the game demos, Nvidia showed a realtime tech demo of an 8800-created version of model Adrianne Curry. This demonstration looked a little creepy, watching the avatar model skimpy clothing with a slightly robotic gait. But when standing still, the character looked realistic; her hair and face were especially believable. Overall, the character didn't quite look like a real person -- the animation probably threw us off. Years ago, "photo-realistic" got undeservedly tossed around so much, the term went out of style, but parts of this demonstration were as close as we've seen. We're interested in how the GeForce 8800 (and nForce 680) perform in the real world; the event certainly made a lot of promises. As an aside, we also give Nvidia PR kudos for dovetailing the announcement against its multi-day LAN party. The gamer audience, high on Bawls, cheered and pumped its fists with each announcement.More pictures after the break.
NVIDIA busting out liquid-cooled GeForce 8800 in November?
As if the world of high-performance gaming graphics wasn't already out of control, NVIDIA is rumored to be working a their next-gen "G80" GeForce 8800 card, which will be liquid cooled, and purportedly chows down on 300 watts of electricity to push its pixels. The news comes our way via [H]ard|OCP, which has spy pics of the monstrosity, and DigiTimes, which pulls on their usually cadre of shady insider sources for dirt on a mid-November launch. The card is designed for DirectX 10, allowing for beefier graphics and the offloading of some CPU duties, but DigiTimes is hearing word that DirectX 10 won't be ready in time for Vista's launch (it'll instead be available for download from Windows Update at a later date), and since the new graphics API won't be available at all for previous versions of Windows, a November launch seems a pretty risky move for the GPU builder -- though we're sure the DirectX 9.0 speed gains won't be non-existant. And of course there's always the pure, unadulterated geek cred of having a liquid-cooled supercomputer dominating that PCI-E x16 slot of yours -- not even Vista can take all the fun out of that.[Via I4U]Read - NVIDIA launching GeForce 8800 mid-NovemberRead - G80 spy pics
