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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20583 |  GX-Brandon (266) Jun 22, 2008 - 09:42 am
| | I think that the game settings are pretty reasonable for every game except Crysis. That game is a unique situation that just doesn't scale all that well regardless of what you throw at it. Now maybe I should just test in a less intensive area (I use the rescue map with lots of foliage), but I really don't want to turn down the settings any further. Going from 0xAA to 2xAA in the game really only drops fps by 10% max, so even if I turned that settomg down the 8800 GT still wouldn't score 30 FPS in the area I test in. Flag this | Edit this post |


| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20583 |  GX-Brandon (266) Jun 21, 2008 - 07:42 pm
| Did you not notice the price cuts on Friday??
Hit up Newegg, Tigerdirect, zipzoom, etc for NVIDIA's response to the 4850. There you will find that NVIDIA has slashed prices on their entire GeForce 8/9 series GPUs as they obviously saw the price/performance that the 4850 was bringing to the table.
And in the past 12 months we've ran sponsorships with AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA, so I'm not sure where you're going with that argument either... Flag this | Edit this post |

| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20583 |  GX-Brandon (266) Jun 20, 2008 - 09:35 am » Edited on Jun 20, 2008 - 09:36 am
| We actually received our 9800 GTX+ cards before the Radeon 4870s, which arrived yesterday.
When we get boards though is by no means an indication of when they'll hit retail, as 4870s should be available shortly while the 9800 GTX+ won't hit retail until sometime in July.
EDIT: I will try to get some 8xAA scores in the final article next week. I just wanted to get some quick scores up for yesterday remember? Flag this | Edit this post |




| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20418 |  GX-Brandon (266) Apr 29, 2008 - 01:31 pm
| The greatest benefit we editors here at FS get from 3DMark is testing stability of our OCs. The CPU tests are great for stressing OC stability, as are the game tests. For those of you who don't know, we will typically run them looped to test stability.
For that purpose, 3DMark continues to be a great tool. Flag this | Edit this post |






| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20136 |  GX-Brandon (266) Mar 25, 2008 - 10:08 am » Edited on Mar 25, 2008 - 10:09 am
| I think the fact that I stepped up to 16xCSAA might have helped show the quad in a better light. With lower settings the additional GPUs wouldn't scale as well.
I don't know about OC'ing. I ran some OC'ed numbers in last weeks article but didn't have a chance to do it with the cards running w/Quad. My guess is that the OC scaling wouldn't be quite as good.
Regarding 3 OC'ed Ultras: I think you'd be pretty crazy to do that. Simply because there is so little room between the 3 cards that the uppermost card and the middle card have no room for airflow. Remember that you've literally got just a few cm separating each card. Flag this | Edit this post |

| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20136 |  GX-Brandon (266) Mar 25, 2008 - 10:03 am
| | Because even on high settings the performance in Crysis isn't all that great on an 8800 GT. If I were just running tests with the 8800 GTS 512MB SLI setup or better it would be okay, but the slower cards tend to really chug at very high settings in my FRAPS walkthroughs. Flag this | Edit this post |

| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 |  GX-Brandon (266) Mar 19, 2008 - 06:59 am
| Yes, as others have stated the reason we don't include Quake Wars is because the engine is so old. To be honest, the only reason Source benchmarks are still included is because the games are so popular -- there are tons of ppl online still playing CS: Source. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Quake Wars and games based on that engine.
Once Assasins Creed comes out, I may have to drop another game from the list so I can have enough time to run my benches. Most likely that game will be F.E.A.R. Flag this | Edit this post |


| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 |  GX-Brandon (266) Mar 19, 2008 - 06:55 am
| | I'm probably not going to have enough time to include the 9600 GT. I'm having a hard enough time getting all the configurations in the $300+ price bracket included as it is. Remember I've got to test 2, 3, 4-way SLI nowadays, which adds to the time it takes to generate an article. Flag this | Edit this post |

| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 |  GX-Brandon (266) Mar 18, 2008 - 08:19 am
| | Sorry I couldn't include all the cards I wanted in time for this article guys. I was extremely pressed just to get these GPUs in there as it was. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the next GPU release is going to be any better, but I will try to get as many as I can included. Flag this | Edit this post |


| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19684 |  GX-Brandon (266) Feb 21, 2008 - 02:38 pm
| I tried to get a sample for review prior to this launch but didn't have any luck unfortunately. Now that the 9600 GT is here I think the 8800 GS wouldn't be a wise upgrade. There are only 2 board partners that made cards for the North American market and I believe the card is EOL, so if you wanted to combine 2 for SLI your window to upgrade is going to be very narrow: once supply dries up it won't be coming back. Also remember that the 8800 GS was limited to a 192-bit memory interface.
Bottom line is that I think the 9600 GT would be a better upgrade long-term. Unfortunately I don't have the benches to validate this theory, but I think it's a safe assumption. Flag this | Edit this post |

| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19684 |  GX-Brandon (266) Feb 21, 2008 - 11:56 am » Edited on Feb 21, 2008 - 11:57 am
| Yeah I managed to sneak it in there this time. I even tried to do some of my Crysis FRAPS runs with it running DX9 mode, but I just didn't have quite enough time to include it.
I wanted to get it in as many graphs as possible because I figure this is the last article I will likely include it. From now on the 8600 will be the baseline.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to answer your original question. FSAA+Bloom... Flag this | Edit this post |


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