You call that power, this is power

[Grogyan]

nvidia today have announced the next gen GPPU (Graphics Physics Processing Unit)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_gtx_260.html

This thing makes Geforce 9 look a tired cat and I have the 8800GTS, bought only a few months back when it was leading edge tech

Its enough for one to wet themselves

[Nek'rahm]

Dude, my brother was gunna build me a new desktop computer next year too.

This is sweet, he's splurging to make up for 2 birthdays he missed while he was in college. This means I'm gunna have a top-o'-the-line computer now.

Woot!

[Ai'ron]

The GTX 260 has been out and available since late June . I'm really an nVidia fanboy, honestly, but you have to give credit to AMD for winning this round. The Radeon HD 4870 performs at roughly GTX 260-levels, but for 100 bucks less, with much better multi-GPU scalability.

[T_S_Kimball]

Actually I had my Q6600 paired with a tried-and-true 7800 GT until two weeks ago. The only things that ever stressed that card were Oblivion and SL (go figure on the latter).

I started on Uru (Jan 04) on an ORIGINAL Radeon card. There is no number (it was before there were numbers on it), so I assume today it would be the 7000 card.

Oh, and the current card? 8800 GT (1 gig mem) from Palit. Since its not a 'reference' card, I can't do anything funky to it (i.e. watercool), but the cooling setup they have for it appears to be just fine anyway. Besides, NewEgg had a really good deal for it...

--TSK

PS - don't bother with the 260 and their ilk, the wattage required for them apparently will overload a 20A circuit (at least in SLI). 8800 GTX or Ultra still are good cards for the enthusiast while being reasonable price, or as mentioned give ATI a shot (I can't since SL crashes more on ATI for some reason).

[Chacal]

I'm just about to order a pair of vid cards myself. I'm considering 8800GTXs or 9800 GTXs.

[Lontahv]

I upgraded from my old buggy (couldn't even run uru right) intel graphics last year.

I replaced them with a 7600GT and it's been great. I have next to no games that even start to get sticky on the highest everything (I have 512 sys mem so this is really amazing). This card was pretty cheap (150 USD I think I paid) and it's a really great one.

I think I might have gone higher is my MoBo or my power-supply had allowed--the bigger cards took more power than I had a ps for so I would have had to pay another $60 for a big enough ps, my computer would have been the bottle-neck with a bigger card.

So, if you have a comp from '04 then I'd highly suggest this card.

[Preachr46]

I have a Q6600, Gigabyte P35 mobo, 2gigs PC-1066 ram, Nvidia 9600GT 512mb, and two sata2 drives. Antec Trio 650W PSU.

Does what I need it to do with power to spare!

[Grogyan]

Does what I need it to do with power to spare!

Even real time hardware based physics?


Seriously though this sort of card and the ones after are for more next generation gaming than anything else as the app has to be tailored for that physics

[T_S_Kimball]

Seriously though this sort of card and the ones after are for more next generation gaming than anything else as the app has to be tailored for that physics

Actually I think that even Crysis is not happy with the X200 family yet. Linky:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334

Check out the comparison pic at the beginning. Eeep!

--TSK

PS - Graphics cards are getting so compute-dense now, that companies are starting to look at leveraging them to help as co-processor farms. nVidia released an architecture map for theirs, can't remember its name just now...

[Grogyan]

Not surprising really is it?

This is the first next generation of GPPU's, so hiccups are to be expected.
Though I do think that nVidia will have to look at 45nm to move forward, so maybe in March of next year price and power will be beatifical to both the company and the consumer.

Interesting in that article is that keep referencing it as a GPU which it isn't, so they didn't do a benchmark with UT3 which already has support for hardware based physics