NVIDIA, MSI, and Lucid speak about Hydra delay

[Rollo]

TSMC have at least found the fault with the low 40nm yields, and set a date of 6th Dec for fixing it, though by the time that filters down into retail, it'll be late January before we see lots of 40nm silicon.
Maybe the demand for nvidia cards did go up, but if the ATI part prices are going down, add the fact that there are plentifully-stocked new DX11 versions of the old GPUs with low footprints, I really don't see nvidia getting that many sales over the christmas period. The GTX275 and GTX285 are still massively overpriced, and the GTX260/GTS250 have the HD5700 series to compete with.

You still make it sound like buying an HD5800 series card is impossible, which is not the case at all. You just have to get past the out of stock mentality and realise what the word 'pre-order' means.

Yeah I pre-ordered my ATi X800XT Phantom Edition, ended up cancelling after 2 months and buying a used one. When the stock is dribbling out like this, only the very patient are getting cards.

[sammorris]

because the X800XT PE was produced in a quantity of hundreds, not thousands. The longest I've heard of someone waiting for an HD5800 is 2 weeks. Not everyone's chronically impatient.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well,the 8800GT was in chronic shortage for many weeks in the UK when it first came out. Even the 256MB version was very difficult to get hold off(luckily) and the 512Mb was selling for something like £180 or more. The moment they came into stock they were sold and there was also plenty of pre-ordering too. Even the 8800GTS 512MB and the HD3870 GDDR4(which was much cheaper than the 8800GT 512MB) were also in short supply. Considering the cards were released nearing Christmas and also the fact that Crysis was released around the end of November meant many people were upgrading there systems. It was only months later into the new year when supplies became more plentiful.

[sammorris]

Wow, the 256MB 8800GT, I'd forgotten all about that (And thinking back, from what I remember of it, just as well...) An nvidia card with 256MB of memory is like an ATI one with 192MB... ugh, that doesn't bear thinking about.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Wow, the 256MB 8800GT, I'd forgotten all about that (And thinking back, from what I remember of it, just as well...) An nvidia card with 256MB of memory is like an ATI one with 192MB... ugh, that doesn't bear thinking about.

It was like the 384MB version of the 8800GS/9600GSO 96 shader version. The 768MB GDDR3 version was a great performer which was better than a 9600GT 512MB IIRC.

[Biscuit]

i had the 384 vbersion and it was fantasic value!

[sammorris]

To be fair, the 384MB 8800GS/9600GSO was actually a decent value card. In those days it was competing with the 512MB HD3870 directly, and was pulling it off, because the HD3870 was rather mediocre. 384MB on a GPU that powerful is plenty. 896MB on a GPU as powerful as a GTX275, especially when there's two of them to bump up performance, just doesn't cut it, not with nvidia's memory management at least.
I still maintain that if nVidia had released a 2x1GB or 2x1280MB GTX295 (or better yet, 2x1792MB) and sold it for a higher price tag they would have got loads of sales. Instead, people were forced into buying pairs (or trios) of GTX285s, which often meant nForce. ugh.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 9600GSO 384MB could only compete with the HD3850 and HD4670. This has been proven by multiple reviews. The fact that the 768MB version was comparable to a 9600GT and at times was slightly faster whereas the 384MB was far slower indicated how gimped the 384MB version was. The 768MB GDDR3 version of the 8800GS/9600GSO 96 shader version was around 15% to 30% faster than than the 384MB version This has been proven in reviews too. The 9600GT was ahead of the HD3870 GDDR3 and GDDR4 when AA was initiated. Without AA the HD3870 was slightly faster. This has been debated at length on Hexus before. Everyone knows that the R600 and RV670 had a massive performance hit with AA was initiated.

[sammorris]

I remember exactly how the HD3870 vs 9600GT tradeoffs went, but I never remember the 384MB 8800GS being that bad. Oh well....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I remember exactly how the HD3870 vs 9600GT tradeoffs went, but I never remember the 384MB 8800GS being that bad. Oh well....

The first version of the 8800GS/9600GSO had 96 shaders and a 192 bit memory access as opposed to the 64 shaders and 256 bit memory access of the 9600GT.Once you started increasing the resolution and started using AA the 384MB version of the 96 shader 8800GS/9600GSO lost a lot of performance which the 768MB GDDR3 version tended not to do. The 9600GSO 768MB was difficult to get hold of since it would have reduced sales of the 9600GT which was probably cheaper to make.

[Biscuit]

(i was thinking of the 320MB 8800GTS which i had... whups)

[sammorris]

Some of my friends still do have the 320MB 8800GTS, they're all like "it's an 8800". They don't seem to understand....

[Biscuit]

if you dont have a big screen then they still aint bad cards. Yeah they are getting old now but you can still play modern warefare at ok framerates low - mid settings

[sammorris]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...ormance_1q08/3

[badass]

if you dont have a big screen then they still aint bad cards. Yeah they are getting old now but you can still play modern warefare at ok framerates low - mid settings

I gave my 8800 TS 320 to my younger brother. TBH the only reson I replaced it was because the lack of VRAM was hurting it in modern games far more than the GPU was.
I love the 4870 1GB I have replaced it with - it's still worth as much now as what I paid for it!

[Biscuit]

see - thats high settings turn a few additional features off and your ok. I know people who play with much worse cards then a 320MB 8800GTS