DX10 for the Masses: NVIDIA 8600 and 8500 Series Launch
by Derek Wilson on April 17, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Prey Performance
This OpenGL game represents the Doom 3 engine and is heavy on the texture and z/stencil operations. There are quite a few factors that could cause this game to run poorly on the G84 (clearly G80 has no real issues here). The reduced memory bandwidth or fewer ROPs (which means fewer z/stencil ops/clock) are likely culprits, but without more information it would be hard to nail down the reason we see such poor performance.
The 8600 GTS is able to keep up with its competition from AMD, but lags quite a bit behind the 7950 GT. The 8600 GT isn't able to hold its own against current $150 offerings, but it does at least stay ahead of the 7600 GT which held the $150 line for quite a while.
Both the 8600 cards fall further than other hardware when AA is enabled. Neither of our early generation DX9 games paints an attractive picture of the 8600 hardware. Let's take a look at our final test to round things out.
This OpenGL game represents the Doom 3 engine and is heavy on the texture and z/stencil operations. There are quite a few factors that could cause this game to run poorly on the G84 (clearly G80 has no real issues here). The reduced memory bandwidth or fewer ROPs (which means fewer z/stencil ops/clock) are likely culprits, but without more information it would be hard to nail down the reason we see such poor performance.
The 8600 GTS is able to keep up with its competition from AMD, but lags quite a bit behind the 7950 GT. The 8600 GT isn't able to hold its own against current $150 offerings, but it does at least stay ahead of the 7600 GT which held the $150 line for quite a while.
Both the 8600 cards fall further than other hardware when AA is enabled. Neither of our early generation DX9 games paints an attractive picture of the 8600 hardware. Let's take a look at our final test to round things out.
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erwos - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
</font>I'm wondering if I can fix the disappearing text problem.
PrinceGaz - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Please remove or edit my above post to remove the (H) bit which caused a problem, I'd do it myself but we have no edit facility.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
That should hopefully fix it - you just need to turn off highlighting using {/h} (with brackets instead of braces).
defter - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
You need to take into account that 7900GS will be soon discontinued and X1900 series will face same fate as soon as ATI releases RV630 cards.Cards based on previous high-end products like 7900 and X1900 based cards are great for consumers, but bad for ATI/NVidia since they have large die sizes and 256bit memory bus (= high board manufacturing costs).
hubajube - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
I wouldn't replace my 7800GT with these but it would be fantastic for a HTPC.PICBoy - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
I think a lot of people is waiting to see some DX10 bechmarks really bad because that's what makes G80 and G84 special.If the 8600 GTS can't run Crysis at AT LEAST 45 FPS with 1280x1024 with full details and a moderate 4xAA then it's not worth it in my own humble opinion.
Same for the 8800 GTS 320MB, if it can't run Crysis at 60 FPS with 1280x1024 with full details and full 16xCSAA then it sucks...
BTW 8800 GTS 320MB gets near double the performance at 50% higher price and when 4xAA is enabled a little over double. Think about that everyone ;-)
Staples - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
My reaction to. Do you play PC games? Very few games can be run at 60fps with full detail even with top of the line hardware. I expect the 8600GTS to get about 20fps in Crysis.PICBoy - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
The only games that I don't see get that amount of fps at 1280x1024 with current mainstream hardware (7900GS) are Black & White 2, Oblivion and of course Rainbow Six Vegas. The rest of the games get 60 or more, excepto for Splinter Cell which gets 52 but that's almost 60 to me. Only 3 games gentlemen and I'm taking this info from Anandtech. If 200$ can get me descent performance at good quality at DX10 then I don't think it's worth it and XFX 7900GS XXX would rock!DerekWilson - Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - link
The issues is still one of the direction the industry is going. Games are going to get more graphically intense in the future, and different techniques will scale better on different hardware.Rainbow Six: Vegas is very important, as it is an Unreal Engine 3 game -- and Epic usually does very well with licensing their engine ... It's possible many games could be based on this same code in the future, though we can't say for certain.
It's not only a question of DX10, but future DX9 games as well -- how will they be implemented, and whether more shader intensive DX9 code lend it self better to the G8x architecture of not.
gramboh - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - link
Are you joking? 8800GTS 320 in Crysis with max details and 16x AA at 60+FPS?I'm not expecting more than 40fps on my system at 1920x1200 less-than-max-details no aa/af (E6600 3.4GHz, 2GB ram, 8800GTS 640MB at 600/1900)