Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX

Well Rob beat me to a blog about the recently announced (have you guys noticed there was very little Nvidia hype about this product, especially compared to the GeForce 6800?) next generation Nvidia GPU, called the GeForce 7800 GTX. Not only did he write about it, he ended up purchasing one! I have to say congratulations brother, this looks like one heck of a graphics card. With it's fourth-generation CineFX engine to it's 64-bit texture implementation this card has all the latest bells and whistles. The benchmarks available at third party websites show that it excels not only on today's games but should perform extremely well on upcoming ones. Rob told me about the available high definition video's on Nvidia's website which showcase the graphical capabilities of this new GPU in a most impressive manner (Attn Mac users: unfortunately you need a fairly powerful Windows XP based system to view them).

I like the fact that this card was redesigned from the ground up to be more efficient rather than just increasing the clock and memory speed to get additional performance. This allowed them to create a single slot solution that runs cooler and quieter than the previous generation and it won't require a separate power supply as many rumor sites predicted.

Actually what impressed me most was the fact that Nvidia did away with the horrible practice of paper launching and announced immediate availability of this new card. CoolTechZone did an excellent article regarding this and deserves a good read. Hopefully ATI will follow Nvidia's lead and eliminate paper launches as well.

Another interesting fact is that the 7800 GTX was created as a pure PCI Express part and they quietly announced that they have no intention of making an AGP version unless the consumer demand requires it. Now normally I wouldn't mind this, especially since my PC has a PCIe graphics slot but I was hoping that a PowerMac version of this card would be created. As I'm sure you all know, all Apple PowerMac's use an AGP 8X slot for their graphic cards. With Apple increasing using the power of the GPU for its software (CoreImage, QuartzExtreme, Motion, ect..) I was looking forward to upgrading my PowerMac with the latest generation GPU. A recent MacWorld article touches upon the same questions.

Nvidia GeForce 7 Series -Finally!

One year, two months and 1 week. 434 days. 10,416 hours.

Anyway you look at it; this is the amount of time between Nvidia's public announcement of the GeForce 6 series and yesterday's introduction of the GeForce 7 series.

After purchasing my HD monitor and workstation last year, I foolishly decided to wait for the next-generation of video cards. A long wait indeed! During that time, Nvidia made the decision to break their grueling but reliable schedule of 6 month product releases. (This schedule was actually broken with the GeForce FX (5 series) but I mostly blamed that as a result of switching to the 0.13 micron die process.)

So why not just buy a GeForce 6 series? Well I would have, but the nasty paper war between Nvidia and ATI made waiting for a genuine, on the store-shelves-now, PCIe version seem like an eternity. And when they finally did arrive, vendors were charging a hefty markup way above MSRP- bump that!

So as you can guess, I was a happy camper when yesterday morning I checked Nvidia.com to read about the introduction of the GeForce 7800 GTX, immediate product availability (shocking) and the $599 price tag (gulp).

Normally, being of sound mind and body, I would read the specs, watch the video demos and say “Cool, I’ll just wait for the lower performing but lower cost version to come out and pick one up then.” But then I met Luna.


Creepy yet enticing. Luna struts her stuff.

Like Nalu, Dusk, Dawn and even the Wolfman before her, Luna serenaded me with her siren song of HDR, subsurface scattering and PureVideo decoding, dashing my common sense onto the rocky cliffs of graphics envy. So after quickly checking the system requirements, I bought the BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC at ZipZoomFly with free 2nd day shipping.

Did I regret the purchase? Sure I did! I got cold feet just a few minutes afterwards on the way to work. But like anything I suppose, I justified the purchase as still being way less expensive than any “Pro” card ($799 for the slower, half the RAM, last-gen, Quadro FX 1400). Plus I get the added benefit of a pure digital DVI connection and maybe some decent frame rates on Doom 3 now. ;) Maya should run much snappier too.

Well I’ll let you guys know when I receive it and if I hadn't decided on E-Baying it for a quick profit. (Some people are trying to sell their cards for as high as $850. Nobody’s currently biting at that price.) My biggest concern will be the noise factor after I install it but thankfully some reviews I’ve already read say that the 7800 consumes less power and is less noisy than the 6 series. Is that saying much though? ;)

Nvidia Next Generation

According to GameSpot, Nvidia is going to formally announce its next generation GPU, code named the G70 on June 21st. I think that's pretty funny considering the current gen GeForce 6800 series cards are finally becoming available at BestBuy.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/02/news_6126883.html

Apple - Intel Inside

Hell hath frozen over yet again. Unless you have been in Siberia recently I'm sure you are aware that Steve Jobs just announced that Apple will be transitioning their entire Mac line from PowerPC's to Intel based processors.


A sign of the end times?

I've been asked by my coworkers if I'm upset about this news, especially since they know I purchased a new Power Mac G5 last year. At first I did feel cheated by Jobs, especially since they've taken so much pot shots at Intel over the years (remember the G4 supercomputer commercial with the tanks?). Good thing for Google, it gives you a chance to read some of the articles they posted over the years. Also who can forget the famous Megahertz Myth speech by Senior VP of Hardware, Jon Rubinstein? After all this I felt that Apple was abandoning the very platform I invested so much money into. Then I realized well its really OS X that I invested in, as long as the applications that I buy will continue to run on the G5 (hopefully optimized as well) then I will be OK with it. It's still a new announcement so all the details will need to be sorted out.


Proof positive that it works.

So why would Steve make this drastic change all of a sudden? My guess is that he was absolutely fuming about IBM not being able to produce the G5 in terms of quantity and in clockspeed that they promised him. I bet that IBM originally showed up some fantastic roadmaps, including a rapid speed increase within a 2-3 year period so he went out and committed his company to making the G5 the basis for all future Mac's. It's good that he had the secret x86 builds of OS X going on as a contingency as we all know, IBM was only able to increase the speed of their flagship desktop processor a measly 200MHz in a one year period.

So why not AMD instead of Intel? I think because although AMD makes some excellent processors, they too are hitting the edge of how fast they can make their CPU's. If you look at the specs of their latest Athlon 64's you will notice the internal MHz does not increase much, so they have to resort to tricks like increasing the amount of cache in order to get more performance. Also Intel makes the absolute best (but highly underrated) notebook processor, the Pentium M, which was designed from the ground up to be a low powered and cool running notebook CPU. Apple is dying to get the next generation PowerBook off the ground and they must feel that this chip (or it's future incarnations) are the best platform to base it off of.

Here are some of the funny postings I've read on various web forums (the first comment only makes sense if you have watched Episode 3)...

• Steve! you were my brother! you were the chosen one! you were supposed to destroy the X86 not join them!"-IBM-wan kenobi
  "I hate you!"-Steve Jobs

• I felt a great disturbance in the mac world, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. ...

• what's next? 3 button mouse ???

My Predictions:

1. Current sales for Mac hardware will dramatically slow during the next year. Remember this happened last time Steve made the prediction that the G5 would reach 3GHz within the following year, there was a large group of people that said they would wait until then before purchasing their next PowerMac. Well it looks like Steve will hit beyond 3GHz, just not until 2006-2007 and with something called other than the G5. My recommendation for anybody who is about to buy a high end Power Mac or PowerBook is to wait until the Intel models are out. If you can't wait until then an interim iMac or iBook should fit the bill.
   
   
   It's been 2 years Steve...
   
   
2. I also predict that Apple will use a new case design. Because of the relatively cooler running processors (most likely dual core), Apple won't need all the space the existing G5 heatsinks take up just to cool the processors. With the extra room they will be able to easily fit multiple optical media drives, and at least 4 internal hard drives.

You can catch the entire WWDC 2005 Keynote here. It's worth watching to see how deathly quite the audience gets after Steve announces the Intel partnership and to see their pale faces after the keynote is over. They're walking around with a zombie-like stare just like how I felt after experiencing Super Star Limo at DCA. The best part of the entire presentation was watching Microsoft's very own Roz Ho. It just isn't a keynote without her!


She seems nervous as usual...