Nvidia is doing really well with chips for smartphones / tablets. And the roadmap looks amazing.

There is heaps more "action" in smart phones compared to desktops. Performance is making huge leaps just like in the good old PC days.

What I hope for is that we will have docking stations throughout the house and at work and we just dock our smart phone. That way you can have a nice 27" LCD with keyboard, mouse, printer and all that jazz. But able to take it with you and have everything on your smart phone.

Intel doesn't have anything in that area. Atom is very slow and the graphics are poor. A ton of people buy the iPhone/iPod/Ipad for gaming.

Tetrium wrote:

I think it's because they have little options left. NV lost their GPU dominance to ATI (not counting the onboard stuff here) and their formerly successful chipset division is all but gone now.

Losing the chipset business was a big blow and a sad one too... I remember the NF3 and NF4 chipsets very fondly.

But they still make some damn good GPUs, trouble is the good ones are pricey and most of the low-end/ mid-range are truly shitty. But then again Nvidia's low/ mid-range has been generally very shitty (with few exceptions) for a looong time- while AMD's keep getting better.

sgt76 wrote:

But they still make some damn good GPUs, trouble is the good ones are pricey and most of the low-end/ mid-range are truly shitty. But then again Nvidia's low/ mid-range has been generally very shitty (with few exceptions) for a looong time- while AMD's keep getting better.

This is a gripe for me as I always buy mid-range. I used a Radeon 9600 for years before upgrading to a GF7600GS and thought the GF7600GS was actually a disappointing upgrade. The HD4670 and HD5670 have been very good to me though, even though the HD4670 didn't perform it's primary task (which was to give some extra life to my aging AGP box).

The GF7600GS wasn't a bad card, it's more that the improvements weren't as good as I was hoping for and it ran a lot hotter then I had originally anticipated (I bought 2 GF7600GS's btw, both AGP and both with the very large "passive" heatsinks...which are pretty much inadequate btw. Compare those to the much smaller passive heatsink on the Radeon 9600's).

I'm only upgrading cause i need to since my foxconn destroyer motherboard was sucky my cpu and cooler were running hot and my case was dated.

Tetrium wrote:

This is a gripe for me as I always buy mid-range. I used a Radeon 9600 for years before upgrading to a GF7600GS and thought the GF7600GS was actually a disappointing upgrade. The HD4670 and HD5670 have been very good to me though, even though the HD4670 didn't perform it's primary task (which was to give some extra life to my aging AGP box).

IMHO you don't get much value from the lower mid-range or from the absolute top . Try settling on cards from the so-called "upper-mid", i.e. the crippled versions of the absolute top or mid-range implementations of such cards.

Some recent examples of super-duper cards that sold for mid-range (or even low-end prices) are Radeon X800 GTO- in '06-early 07 these were sold at 6200 money due to lacking SM3- still very fast for HL2/ Far Cry/ FEAR though, Radeon X1950GT - in '07 these were going for 8500GT money, Radeon 2900GT/ Pro - early '08 at 8600GT prices, 3850/ 8800GT/ 9800GT/ GTS 250/ Radeon 4850- last prices were always around $100, GTX460 768mb was quick to fall from grace due to the 1gb model but performs the same at anything except 1920x1020 res & above- sold last year at Radeon 5770 prices and currently the 5850 is really cheap.

My barometer for selecting the above cards is that they must be able to play the latest titles from their generation at least at high settings- which all of them do- at low-end/ mid-range money.

For AGP cards I've had the 4200ti and 9600 Pro which were super for their era, then 6200 both 64 bit and 128 bit both which were absolute shit, then 6600 vanilla which was hardly any better (also a bag of runny shit).

Only when I went to the 6800 level did I feel any difference and my last AGP card bought new was a Radeon 3850- which was of course ball blisteringly quick and a top card. 'course you need a reasonbly beefy cpu to extract it's full potential- another common trait which the later 4650/70 AGP require. Mine were on a Athlon 3000+ clocked at 2.4ghz/ DFI NF3 Ultra -D/ 2gb ram and Intel E2180@2.86ghz/ Asrock 775i65G/ 2gb ram.

sgt76 wrote:

But they still make some damn good GPUs, trouble is the good ones are pricey and most of the low-end/ mid-range are truly shitty. But then again Nvidia's low/ mid-range has been generally very shitty (with few exceptions) for a looong time- while AMD's keep getting better.

It depends. Nvidia usually has some killer card once in a while.

For example the 8800GT was simply the sxxx. 8800GTX performance for 200 bucks.

And lately here was the GTX460 768. I bought this card, because it offered amazing performance for a low price. The 768 version doesn't exist anymore, but the 560 and 560TI is even faster.

AMD had similar cards like the Radeon 4850. I also had one of those. The 5770 was a bit of a letdown, not much faster compared to the 4850 and more expensive.

At the moment the 6850 is very good value.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

It depends. Nvidia usually has some killer card once in a while. […]
Show full quote

It depends. Nvidia usually has some killer card once in a while.

For example the 8800GT was simply the sxxx. 8800GTX performance for 200 bucks.

And lately here was the GTX460 768. I bought this card, because it offered amazing performance for a low price. The 768 version doesn't exist anymore, but the 560 and 560TI is even faster.

AMD had similar cards like the Radeon 4850. I also had one of those. The 5770 was a bit of a letdown, not much faster compared to the 4850 and more expensive.

At the moment the 6850 is very good value.

We share similar taste. I'm an 8800GT and GTX460 768mb owner. My GTX is o/c'ed to 880/2100 mhz at which point it's simply levels above it's otherwise lowly station. I paid the same for it as what a 5770 costs at the time.

Unfortunately, I bought the 8800GT when it was very new so I paid a bomb for it, more like nearly 300 than 200. But I was determined to play Oblivion at max settings with all the mods at the time, so I had to have the best regardless. Learned my lesson though....

Hehe!

I also paid through the nose for the 8800GT. They where in short supply in Australia and Crysis just came out. I paid AUD 400 for a Zotac 8800GT AMP! edition (very highly overclocked) just so I could play Crysis because was in love with the demo. I played that demo level over and over and over and couldn't wait for the game.

I think Crysis was awesome, just that zero G level and the aliens was a bit average.

Pics from back then. Rigg was a Core 2 Duo E6600. That CPU KILLED the Athlon 64 and EVERY gamer moved to Core 2 Duo. I was speechless when I saw the E6600 benchmarks and it just showed how much the Athlon 64 was holding back video cards.

Yes, they were in realy short supply for a time- everybody and his dog was trying to grab one. Mine was an Asus with the big fan (forgot what it's called). I held off a planned upgrade to a Radeon 1950 Pro for it (which was, before the 8800GT, the only card family that could play Oblivion at 30fps, high at 1280x1024)...glad I did, price premium or no, it was a quantum leap ahead of anything before it.

BTW, Is that an Asus P5A?? My C2D rig is using one, with an E5700 and a GTS250... 😀

3 generations of obsolete Intel hardware

P5B

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/408

Came with that Q front panel adapter.

IMO the best invention since sliced bread 🤣

Shame they don't give you these anymore. Or maybe only for the premium boards?

Sorry, my bad..I meant P5B of course. P5A is ss7. 😦

Q connector? Dunno about recently but my '09 M4A78Pro came with one.

sgt76 wrote:

IMHO you don't get much value from the lower mid-range or from the absolute top . Try settling on cards from the so-called "upp […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

This is a gripe for me as I always buy mid-range. I used a Radeon 9600 for years before upgrading to a GF7600GS and thought the GF7600GS was actually a disappointing upgrade. The HD4670 and HD5670 have been very good to me though, even though the HD4670 didn't perform it's primary task (which was to give some extra life to my aging AGP box).

IMHO you don't get much value from the lower mid-range or from the absolute top . Try settling on cards from the so-called "upper-mid", i.e. the crippled versions of the absolute top or mid-range implementations of such cards.

Some recent examples of super-duper cards that sold for mid-range (or even low-end prices) are Radeon X800 GTO- in '06-early 07 these were sold at 6200 money due to lacking SM3- still very fast for HL2/ Far Cry/ FEAR though, Radeon X1950GT - in '07 these were going for 8500GT money, Radeon 2900GT/ Pro - early '08 at 8600GT prices, 3850/ 8800GT/ 9800GT/ GTS 250/ Radeon 4850- last prices were always around $100, GTX460 768mb was quick to fall from grace due to the 1gb model but performs the same at anything except 1920x1020 res & above- sold last year at Radeon 5770 prices and currently the 5850 is really cheap.

My barometer for selecting the above cards is that they must be able to play the latest titles from their generation at least at high settings- which all of them do- at low-end/ mid-range money.

For AGP cards I've had the 4200ti and 9600 Pro which were super for their era, then 6200 both 64 bit and 128 bit both which were absolute shit, then 6600 vanilla which was hardly any better (also a bag of runny shit).

Only when I went to the 6800 level did I feel any difference and my last AGP card bought new was a Radeon 3850- which was of course ball blisteringly quick and a top card. 'course you need a reasonbly beefy cpu to extract it's full potential- another common trait which the later 4650/70 AGP require. Mine were on a Athlon 3000+ clocked at 2.4ghz/ DFI NF3 Ultra -D/ 2gb ram and Intel E2180@2.86ghz/ Asrock 775i65G/ 2gb ram.

Match the card to the games you play and what level of detail and framerate you consider acceptable and you'll save a lot of money. Shelling out a lot of money for a high end video card that you won't be able to really unleash is a waste. Unless you're running a 30 inch LCD or a multi-monitor configuration, you don't really need the pixel pushing power of a high end video card or multiple video cards. Most mainstream gamers are still stuck at 1680 or 1920 resolutions so a GTX590 or HD6990 isn't going to give them any better performance than a much cheaper video card would.