Holiday 2006 Shopping Guide: GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 13, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
High-End GPUs
Like we said with the Midrange GPUs, SLI and CrossFire probably aren't necessary even in the High-End GPU market these days. You can still look to buy one GPU now and plan on adding a second later, or if you already have one High-End GPU and you want to buy a second one now that is also reasonable. If you're looking to go out and buy a dual GPU setup right off the bat, however, in most instances you will be better off purchasing a single Extreme Performance GPU. We showed in our GeForce 8800 launch article that there are many instances where a single 8800 GTX is faster than X1950 XTX CrossFire and 7900 GTX SLI. Combine that with the fact that you don't have to worry about whether or not SLI/CrossFire will be supported in your game du jour, and once again we would take a single GPU that comes close in performance over two GPUs that may be faster in some cases, but will also consume more power and generate more heat and noise.
Not counting multi-GPU configurations, the High-End GPU market extends up to around $400. At the lower end of the price spectrum, there is a gray area where you could call certain cards either upper-midrange or lower-high-end designs. If we just forget about the semantics, though, the Radeon X1950 Pro is still one of the best overall cards. It offers competitive performance, and currently it is priced quite a bit cheaper than any of its direct competition. Most of the NVIDIA's 7900 cards are a bit difficult to recommend, given the current prices, making the 7950 GT the only GeForce card in this price range that we worth considering. Stock performance is going to be a tossup between the 7950 GT and X1950 Pro, but there are quite a few factory overclocked 7950 GT cards available and that helps to keep things interesting.
If you want more performance than the X1950 Pro, the X1950 XT 256MB cards cost about $40 more and give you a full 48 pixel shaders along with faster clock speeds, and they offer more bang for the buck than just about any other High-End GPU. If you want a 512MB GPU, Diamond and PowerColor make X1950 Pro 512MB cards that sell for around $270. X1900 XT/XTX cards with 512MB of RAM may also be available for $330-$400 if you can find them in stock. That's a pretty big "if", however, so you might find it easiest to simply move on to the X1950 XTX for about $375.
We don't have much love left for the 7900 GTX cards, as their prices are almost the same as the 8800 GTS cards and performance is definitely lower. If you're still after a 7900 GTX card, you might try picking up a 7900 GTO instead and give overclocking a shot. The GTO cards are becoming difficult to find, but for around $300 you can get near GTX performance. Some of the cards might even be rebadged GTX cards, so a BIOS flash would be all that's necessary to get them to behave like a full GTX. Your mileage may vary in such pursuits, and for most people we would recommend taking the next step and picking up a GeForce 8800 GTS rather than any of the more expensive High-End GPUs. After all, DirectX 10 and Windows Vista will be available in the next month or so, and the only cards that currently have DirectX 10 support are the GeForce 8800 models. If you can justify spending $300-$400 on a graphics card, you can probably justify spending $450 as well.
Once again, here's a quick summary of the High-End GPU market.
Like we said with the Midrange GPUs, SLI and CrossFire probably aren't necessary even in the High-End GPU market these days. You can still look to buy one GPU now and plan on adding a second later, or if you already have one High-End GPU and you want to buy a second one now that is also reasonable. If you're looking to go out and buy a dual GPU setup right off the bat, however, in most instances you will be better off purchasing a single Extreme Performance GPU. We showed in our GeForce 8800 launch article that there are many instances where a single 8800 GTX is faster than X1950 XTX CrossFire and 7900 GTX SLI. Combine that with the fact that you don't have to worry about whether or not SLI/CrossFire will be supported in your game du jour, and once again we would take a single GPU that comes close in performance over two GPUs that may be faster in some cases, but will also consume more power and generate more heat and noise.
Not counting multi-GPU configurations, the High-End GPU market extends up to around $400. At the lower end of the price spectrum, there is a gray area where you could call certain cards either upper-midrange or lower-high-end designs. If we just forget about the semantics, though, the Radeon X1950 Pro is still one of the best overall cards. It offers competitive performance, and currently it is priced quite a bit cheaper than any of its direct competition. Most of the NVIDIA's 7900 cards are a bit difficult to recommend, given the current prices, making the 7950 GT the only GeForce card in this price range that we worth considering. Stock performance is going to be a tossup between the 7950 GT and X1950 Pro, but there are quite a few factory overclocked 7950 GT cards available and that helps to keep things interesting.
If you want more performance than the X1950 Pro, the X1950 XT 256MB cards cost about $40 more and give you a full 48 pixel shaders along with faster clock speeds, and they offer more bang for the buck than just about any other High-End GPU. If you want a 512MB GPU, Diamond and PowerColor make X1950 Pro 512MB cards that sell for around $270. X1900 XT/XTX cards with 512MB of RAM may also be available for $330-$400 if you can find them in stock. That's a pretty big "if", however, so you might find it easiest to simply move on to the X1950 XTX for about $375.
We don't have much love left for the 7900 GTX cards, as their prices are almost the same as the 8800 GTS cards and performance is definitely lower. If you're still after a 7900 GTX card, you might try picking up a 7900 GTO instead and give overclocking a shot. The GTO cards are becoming difficult to find, but for around $300 you can get near GTX performance. Some of the cards might even be rebadged GTX cards, so a BIOS flash would be all that's necessary to get them to behave like a full GTX. Your mileage may vary in such pursuits, and for most people we would recommend taking the next step and picking up a GeForce 8800 GTS rather than any of the more expensive High-End GPUs. After all, DirectX 10 and Windows Vista will be available in the next month or so, and the only cards that currently have DirectX 10 support are the GeForce 8800 models. If you can justify spending $300-$400 on a graphics card, you can probably justify spending $450 as well.
Once again, here's a quick summary of the High-End GPU market.
| High-End GPUs | |||||||
| GPU | Pixel Shaders |
Vertex Shaders |
ROPs | Core Speed |
RAM Speed |
Memory Interface |
Price |
| 7900 GT | 24 | 8 | 16 | 450 | 1320 | 256bit | $246 |
| 7950 GT | 24 | 8 | 16 | 550 | 1400 | 256bit | $249 |
| 7800 GTX 512 | 24 | 8 | 16 | 550 | 1700 | 256bit | $460* |
| X1950 Pro | 36 | 8 | 12 | 575 | 1380 | 256bit | $206 |
| 7900 GTO | 24 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 1320 | 256bit | $310 |
| X1900 XT 256MB | 48 | 8 | 16 | 625 | 1450 | 256bit | $275 |
| 7900 GTX | 24 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 1600 | 256bit | $430 |
| X1900 XT | 48 | 8 | 16 | 625 | 1450 | 256bit | $335 |
| X1900 XTX | 48 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 1550 | 256bit | $400 |
| X1950 XT 256 | 48 | 8 | 16 | 625 | 1800 | 256bit | $259 |
| X1950 XTX | 48 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 2000 | 256bit | $378 |
| X1950 XTX CF Edition | 48 | 8 | 16 | 650 | 2000 | 256bit | $406 |
* - Prices for these parts are prone to fluctuation, as these are discontinued products.
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Jodiuh - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
The FR bought release day from Fry's had a 39C transistor and hit 660/1000. The AR ordered online last week has a 40C transistor and hits 630/1000. It may not be quite as fast, but I'll be keeping the newer AR w/ the 40C transistor...comforts me at night. :DJodiuh - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Reply from EVGA!Jod,
AR= Etail/Retail RoHS compliant
FR= Frys Retail RoHS compliant
All of our cards had the correct transistor value when shipped out.
Regards,
munky - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Again, this is completely wrong. The major difference between the x1800 and x1900 cards is that the x1900's have 3 pixel shaders per "pipe", whereas the x1800's only have one. If anything, the x1900 pipes are more powerful.
evonitzer - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Akin to my comment above, quads are the thing these days, so the 1900 series has 4 pixel shaders per pipe. And if you go back to the original article when the 1900 was released, you'll see that the whole architecture is closer to 4 x1600's than 3 x1800's, either of which would result in the 48 shaders that we see. I recommend you read the first few pages of the debut article, but I think we can agree that the shaders in the x1800 were probably more potent than the ones in the 1600, so the 1900 is probably a little wimpier per shader than the 1800. However, it has 3 times as many, so it's better.Also the comment was probably intended to dissuade people from assuming that the 1900 would be 3 times better than the 1800, and that there is a difference of architectures going on here.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Ding! That was a main point of talking about the changes in architecture. In the case of the X1650 XT, however, double the number of pixel shaders really does end up being almost twice as fast as the X1600 XT.
I also added a note on the page talking about the G80 mentioning that they have apparently taken a similar route, using many more "less complex" shader units in order to provide better overall performance. I am quite sure that a single G80 pixel shader (which of course is a unified shader, but that's beside the point) is not anywhere near as powerful as a single G70 pixel shader. When you have 96/128 of them compared to 24, however, more definitely ends up being better. :-)
munky - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
The 7600gt is 12 pipes. The x1650xt is 8 pipes with 3 pixel shaders each. You may want to rethink the statement quoted above.
evonitzer - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
What he meant were "pixel shaders", which seem to be interchanged with pipelines quite often. If you look on the table you'll see that the x1650xt is listed as having 24 pixel pipelines, and the 7600gt has 12 pixel pipelines, when they should read shaders instead.Also quads seem to be the thing, so the 7600 gt probably has 3 quads of shaders, and the 1650 has twice that with 6 quads. Pixel shaders, to be more exact.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
I have changed references from "pixel pipelines" to "pixel shaders". While it may have been a slight error in semantics to call them pipelines before, the basic summary still stands. ATI needed more pixel shaders in order to keep up with the performance and video was offering, indicating that each pixel shader from ATI is less powerful (overall -- I'm sure there are instances where ATI performs much better). This goes for your comment about X1800 below as well.Spoelie - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
why does nvidia always gets replaced to "and video" in your texts? here and in the article :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Speech recognition does odd things. I don't proof posts as well as I should. :)