Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280: does it rock our world?

[shaithis]

Yes, you can add a second or third GTX 280, but the game doesn't scale particularly well in multi-GPU mode.

It can't be that bad surely if the 9800GX2 showed roughly a 50% increase in framerate over a 9800GTX?

Still, £1 to £1.5k on a graphics card solution to game (which will last a year before a single card beats it) seems a tad excessive lol

[directhex]

just because it's "only" twice as fast as a 9800, that really doesn't make it a bad card

since i'm the only one who's happy about them, let's look at why.

- this is a clearspeed advance e620 accelerator card. it can do single and double precision, measuring in at about 66 GFLOPS, for £5000 a card.

- this is a mercury computers cell accelerator board. it can do 180 GFLOPS in single precision, or about 12 in double precision for £4000

a gtx280 weighs in at 933 GFLOPs at single precision, or roughly 116 in double precision. for less than £500.

it's the best bang-for-buck double-precision offboard accelerator card ever.

[WoLFe]

"The promise of silky-smooth Crysis gameplay at 2,560x1,600 remains just that, a promise.

The nature of the engine is such that the GTX 280 struggles at 1,920x1,200 HQ, and that's with no antialiasing or anisotropic filtering applied.

What's more, it's toppled by the twin guns of the GX2.

Yes, you can add a second or third GTX 280, but the game doesn't scale particularly well in multi-GPU mode. "

Oh dear.. That is an ABSOLUTE shocker...

Which makes you wonder, in general.. Why would you pay considerably more for something with poor price to power ratio compared to the legendary 8800gt or 9600gt? Both work well in SLI.

Anyone else shocked by this turn of events?

[Main]

a gtx280 weighs in at 933 GFLOPs at single precision, or roughly 116 in double precision. for less than £500.

it's the best bang-for-buck double-precision offboard accelerator card ever.

Doesn't that mean the Quadro (professional) version of this card is going to be much more expensive, or would you just use these ones? Are there different licence requirements or whatnot for using these things as dedicated accelerators in a professional environment?

[Tarinder]

It can't be that bad surely if the 9800GX2 showed roughly a 50% increase in framerate over a 9800GTX?

Still, £1 to £1.5k on a graphics card solution to game (which will last a year before a single card beats it) seems a tad excessive lol

Point taken, but it's more to do with the game engine than the hardware. I'd be amazed if three-way GTX 280 SLI gave more than 50 per cent on top and that would make 1,920x1,200 (no AA or AF) smooth.

Overall, Crysis scales reasonably well with two cards but is a stinker with three and above.

[Tarinder]

We need to break it down into two separate discussions - performance and value.

The GeForce GTX 280 is, without doubt, the best-performing single-GPU graphics card ever; it's around 50 per cent faster than a GeForce 8800 Ultra.

Should we applaud it? Some would say yes but I'd say no when considered solely from a gaming point of view. G80 Ultra was launched well over a year ago, based on an architecture that was already six months old by then, and we should expect a new generation of GPU to open a can of whoop-ass on it. If we're not seeing ~50 per cent gains at high resolutions, something's gone wrong, somewhere.

NVIDIA's path to single-GPU excellence is manifested by a GPU that's around 570mm². It's big and expensive to manufacture and NVIDIA's wanting payback in the form of ultra-high pricing.

So performance is where it should be, albeit achieved via brute force approach. Price, however, is the stumbling block, even for die-hard enthusiasts. Knock it down by, say, 30 per cent and we have a different complexion on matters. Surely, the days of near-£500 graphics cards are over?

[Tarinder]

just because it's "only" twice as fast as a 9800, that really doesn't make it a bad card

since i'm the only one who's happy about them, let's look at why.

- this is a clearspeed advance e620 accelerator card. it can do single and double precision, measuring in at about 66 GFLOPS, for £5000 a card.

- this is a mercury computers cell accelerator board. it can do 180 GFLOPS in single precision, or about 12 in double precision for £4000

a gtx280 weighs in at 933 GFLOPs at single precision, or roughly 116 in double precision. for less than £500.

it's the best bang-for-buck double-precision offboard accelerator card ever.

But then a Radeon HD 3870 can do double-precision on 80 per cent of its stream processors (the fifth SP in a block is used for transcendental work).

Double-precision is roughly half for an ADD and one-quarter for a MUL, so we're talking about around 125 GFLOPS of double-precision (FP64) goodness for £89.

[phill8800GT]

I will admit, these new cards are a big let down and even more so when a SLI'd pair of 8800GT's can keep up.. Worries me slightly as there's a big price difference between the two..

The GTX260 seems ok, but not ground breaking enough for me to go out and buy one... Definitely not plugging the amount of money that a GTX280 wants..

I await the ATI series and see whats best for my money. From what I hear, its already gone the other direction

[BlindMelon7]

The 3870 seems a bit like the x1950pro back in its day. Mine is still going strong

[directhex]

But then a Radeon HD 3870 can do double-precision on 80 per cent of its stream processors (the fifth SP in a block is used for transcendental work).

Double-precision is roughly half for an ADD and one-quarter for a MUL, so we're talking about around 125 GFLOPS of double-precision (FP64) goodness for £89.

yeah, but CUDA's an actually worthwhile API. the same can't be said of ATI's efforts. especially on platforms that high performance computation people care about (i.e. not windows)

crappy programming interfaces are why to this day, despite massive investment, nobody's taking FPGAs seriously for HPC

[Tidus]

Not what I expected, price / performance ratio compared to the 9800 GX2 is poor, only an option for those with very deep pockets. I'm even more interested too see what ATI have to offer now!

[Lightnix]

A GX2280, an amusing concept of a card. I could see that being downright amazing in many respects - record breaking power consumption for a consumers graphics card, four slot cooling - maybe three slot cooling if they make it out of ice or something, 6-pin + 2x8-pin power connectors. And the price, oh dear. That'd just be comical, walking into your average e-tailer, seeing £700 graphics cards on the shelves.

I think we're a die shrink or two away from seeing a dual-GPU GT200-like card. For now, other than nVidia unlocking an extra 16 shaders and giving a slight overclock, I think have reached their limit, disappointing for the green team. Time for AMD to play its cards (I know, I know).

Single core performance? Great card, fastest we've seen to date. Overall performance? Adds very little over the 9800 GX2, disappointing. Value? Awful, the similarly performing 9800 GX2 can be had for much less, and two 8800 GT's for even less if you have an SLi board. Definitely looking forward to the Radeon 4800 series, now, I couldn't imagine the R700 4870 X2 part not beating the GTX 280 to be honest, unless AMD really screws up.

[Blackmage]

I see to be the one of the few happy with these cards, a card which can beat the last gen dual solution

Yes it's really expensive NOW in a couple of months they will come down with reality, Have you seen benchmarks of them running in SLI? They scale pretty well, And i'm sure farcry wasn't tamed until the Nv6series came out. so that was 3 gen of cards.

[Biscuit]

Yes it's really expensive NOW in a couple of months they will come down with reality,

I hope so and i hope its more like A month rather than a couple otherwise they are going to lose a lot of customers to AMD (pending the benchies of their cards)

[shaithis]

I hope so and i hope its more like A month rather than a couple otherwise they are going to lose a lot of customers to AMD (pending the benchies of their cards)

If the AMD card is anywhere close in performance, while being substantially cheaper, then I am sure nVidia will drop their prices fast.

[LunarJetman]

My money will certainly be getting damp and sweaty and staying in my pocket.

I'll admit, I still use XP, and framerate increases aside; I'm still yet to see anything that makes me think my 18 or so month old 8800GTS OC was a worthwhile upgrade over the 6800 Ultra I was using previously..... So this card doesn't exactly float my boat with it's performance / cost ratio.

Or maybe i'm just looking at my monitor through rose tinted spectacles.