DX10 for the Masses: NVIDIA 8600 and 8500 Series Launch
by Derek Wilson on April 17, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Performance
One of the more important tests we have in our arsenal is Oblivion. This game really pushes the limits of hardware with beautiful scenery and HDR effects. While the 8800 GTS 320MB owns this benchmark, the 8600 GTS comes in second well above the nearest AMD competitor and the current $200 NVIDIA part it is replacing: the 7950 GT. Even the 8600 GT comes in ahead of most of the pack.
There is certainly an affinity between Oblivion and the GeForce 8 series, and if this is any indication of the type of games on the horizon NVIDIA is in a good place. Unfortunately, we can't know if this will be typical of the future games or not; most likely, it will be true sometimes and not others. It's all really up to the game developers at this point.
One of the more important tests we have in our arsenal is Oblivion. This game really pushes the limits of hardware with beautiful scenery and HDR effects. While the 8800 GTS 320MB owns this benchmark, the 8600 GTS comes in second well above the nearest AMD competitor and the current $200 NVIDIA part it is replacing: the 7950 GT. Even the 8600 GT comes in ahead of most of the pack.
There is certainly an affinity between Oblivion and the GeForce 8 series, and if this is any indication of the type of games on the horizon NVIDIA is in a good place. Unfortunately, we can't know if this will be typical of the future games or not; most likely, it will be true sometimes and not others. It's all really up to the game developers at this point.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
It's not surprising that G84 has some enhancements relative to G80. I mean, G80 was done six months ago. I'd expect VP2 is one of the areas they worked on improving a lot after comments post-8800 launch. Now, should they kill the current G80 and make a new G80 v1.1 with VP2? That's up for debate, but you can't whine that older hardware doesn't have newer features. "Why doesn't my Core 2 Duo support SSE4?" It's almost the same thing. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a new high-end card from NVIDIA in the future with VP2, but when that will be... dunno.harshw - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
So ... to confirm, the card *does* let you watch HDCP content on a Dell 3007WFP at 2560x1600 ? Of course, the card would probably scale the stream to the panel resolution ...
DerekWilson - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
The card will let you watch HDCP protected content at the content's native resolution -- 1920x1080 progressive at max ...Currently if you want to watch HDCP protected content on a Dell 30", you need to drop your screen resolution to 1280x800 and watch at that res -- the video is downscaled from 1920x1080. Higher resolutions on the panel require dual-link DVI, and now HDCP protected content over a dual-link connection is here.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't care about this HDCP business. The players are still ultra expensive, and the resolution benefit doesn't really change how much I enjoy a movie. Also, a 30" screen is pretty small to be able to notice a difference between HD and DVD, if you're sitting at any typical movie-watching distance from the screen. Well, I would guess so at least.Spoelie - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
We're talking about 30" lcd monitors with humongous resolutions, not old 30" lcd tvs with 1386x768 something.Or do your really don't see any difference between
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or
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Myrandex - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
I loved it how the two 8600 cards listed 256MB memoy only however the 8500 card showed 256MB / 512MB. Gotta love marketing in attempting to grab the masses attention by throwing more ram into a situation where it doesn't really help...Jason
KhoiFather - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Horrible, horrible performance. I'm so disappointed its not even funny! I'm so waiting for ATI to release their mid-range cards and blow Nvidia out the water to space.jay401 - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Very true, and not only because the vast majority of gamers are still running XP, but also because no games out to this point gain anything from DX10/Vista (aside from one or two that add a few graphical tweaks here and there in DX10).
When there are enough popular, well-reviewed DX10/Vista focused games available that demonstrate appreciable performance improvement when running in that environment, such that you can create a test suite around those games, then it would be time to transition to that sort of test setup for GPUs.
Griswold - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
The real reason would that nobody wants to go through the nightmare of dealing with nvidia drivers under vista. ;)jay401 - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Derek you should add the specs of the 8800GTS 320MB to the spec chart on page 2, unless of course NVidia forbids you to do that because it would make it too obvious how they've cut too many stream processors and too much bus size from these new cards.Now what they'll do is end the production of the 7950GTs to ensure folks can't continue to pick them up cheaper and will be forced to move to the 8600GTS that doesn't yet offer superior performance.
gg neutering these cards so much that they lose to your own previous generation hardware, NVidia.