AMD and Nvidia extreme GPUs workout

Extreme PC Week At the very extreme end of desktop graphics are the dual GPU, frame crunching, power hungry monsters that you won’t give you much change from a grand. The extreme offerings can be a little difficult to find too, as most card vendors only produce a limited range. Instead, they prefer to concentrate on the next …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Nice

I must convince the people at work that the GTX 680 would sit very nicely in my desktop, if only to test some neat CUDA fluid dynamics code a student has just made (which works nicely on a dual GTX 590 machine in the lab). It is so nice we are getting humongous compute clout for such modest prices, compared to the old Cray J932 and SV1e we used to have.

[Brian Miller 1]

Re: Nice

You will find actually that the way they got so much grunt is by crippling the GPGPU compute parts for the 680 onwards.... They are gamer cards strictly and hobbled for compute.

And re: BenR ^^

These cards are also designed to allow actual gaming on tri-screen setups. It is not too much to ask for them to include triple monitor resolutions as I am certain they own 3 monitors.

[Bronek Kozicki]

Re: Nice

"They are gamer cards strictly and hobbled for compute."

I don't think so; granted GK110 is going to be much better for many compute applications but there is also GK104 based compute card GK10 TESLA with quite impressive single-precision performance figures. You may want to check out this comparison

[Alex Walsh]

Why are the tests run at such a low resolution? Surely at 1080p for most games out there, people could spend half as much as these cards only come into their own at higher resolutions?

[IHateWearingATie]

You're right...

... but I suspect most reviewers have a standard test rig (i.e. base hardware and fresh image of win 7) that they use for most hardware to allow comparisons between wide ranges of products. I suspect that it would take too much time to put together custom rigs to review every product.

[BenR]

Also, for anything more than a 1920x1080 resolution, you're talking silly money for the monitor to support it. Most of the 24"+ monitors run at this resolution - you're getting into £600-worth of Dell 27" for 2560x1440, and £950 for 30" of Dell 2560x1600...

[Jedit]

"£600 for a 2560x1440 monitor"

You're talking rubbish if you think a 2560x1440 monitor will cost £600. Yes, you will pay through the eyes for a Dell, but I have a perfectly acceptable Hazro 27" plugged into my PC running at 2560x1440 that cost me under £300 brand new.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: "£600 for a 2560x1440 monitor"

Who on earth are Hazro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "£600 for a 2560x1440 monitor"

The one with 72% NTSC colour? Not worth the plastic it's housed in. The reason the Dell screens are near £600 and the better quality Hazro too, is because they reproduce 110% NCST or 100% Adobe RGB.

If all you do is pew pew pew on your screen, your budget thing is OK.

If you want a screen with decent colour reproduction then the £600 panels are the way to go. I pew pew pew and I design stuff too so I use a 100% Adobe RGB panel. Colour reproduction is "mmmmmmmmm niiiiiiiicccceee."

You just can't compare quality with budget, sorry.... FAIL.

[Jedit]

"If all you do is pew pew pew on your screen, your budget thing is OK."

Yes, and as this is a discussion of high-end cards for gaming then "the budget thing" is a perfectly valid subject of comparison. Nobody's denying that top quality CAD/art monitors are better and necessarily cost more than a low priced gaming monitor, but your design work is wholly irrelevant to the discussion in hand and bringing it up only makes you look like a snob.

[Paul Shirley]

@Alex Walsh: I'm sure the gaming sites will have extreme resolution and AA tests, you're expecting too much from The Reg! They've done just enough to show there's not much difference in fairly typical gaming setups though a 16x AA test would have been informative.

@BenR: the high end gamers buying these cards aren't much worried about the price of the monitor(s), especially not compared to £800-900 for a pair of cards to drive it. Cards that will be updated more frequently than a good monitor and they'll pay for a good monitor because a cheap one can really screw up play.

[jason 7]

Found a Heavyweight legend yesterday.

Opened up a customers old Compaq off the shelf PC and took off the HSF expecting the usual Athlon64 3500+ or Sempron in it to find to my surprise a FX57.

That CPU retailed for around $1031 in 2005!

Anyone give me £5? £5 anyone? The gentleman at the back...? £4 then......

[robinlawrie]

Re: Found a Heavyweight legend yesterday.

ha.. i believe i have an fx-55 sitting around somewhere. man the time i spent trying to get that to run well with a fairly modest overclock. still using the watercooler from that rig with my i7 though. ended up being good value!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Found a Heavyweight legend yesterday.

Aren't they the ones with about 1g of gold in them? Got a blow torch lol?

(yes I know it's more complicated than that to extract the gold!)

[druck]

Re: Found a Heavyweight legend yesterday.

Sounds a bit much to me. Plating to a depth of 2.5um (which I believe is a lot more than is used this days), 1g of gold is enough to plate the entire surface of both sides of of 194 full size PCI cards.

[David Strum]

For a few Frames more.

Flippin – fan boy users – scum bags – riding on planetary meltdown – all for the sake of a few more FPS on Crysis. May you all die in a Day-after-Tomorrow scenario.

(I’ve got a GTX570 myself – still nice)