My rant on graphics cards.

[psyconius]

I just have been thinking about how expensive graphics cards are and how we just buy them anyway

I was thinking in the spirit of everything being so highly priced to begin with, why isn't there a company making
either a)a PCI card that does ALL anti-aliasing routines on its own so a graphics card would not have to think about
that and waste valuable 'gpu' power, or b)the same type of product, but as a chip that video card makers could put on their card.

Having discussed this with a friend he seems to think this is highly possible, just would be outrageously expensive and unattractive to gamers. But I seem to think that, as I said above, we pay an arm and a leg for video cards as it is.

But basically I just wanted to rant, and see if anyone has any insight to this being possible or not.. if latency would defeat the purpose and it just be as slow as it is already

 

[BFG10K]

Not only would that option be slower, it would also cost more too. The best way is to keep everything together on one board.

 

[Robor]

Top of the line video cards are way overpriced same as other types of top of the line hardware. However, you can still pickup a very good card for a fair price if you do some research. Why go for a 9800XT when you can find a regular 9800 for nearly 1/2 the price and the performance difference is minimal?

 

[nRollo]

Video cards anger me as well.
:frown:

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Robor
Top of the line video cards are way overpriced same as other types of top of the line hardware. However, you can still pickup a very good card for a fair price if you do some research. Why go for a 9800XT when you can find a regular 9800 for nearly 1/2 the price and the performance difference is minimal?

Because the more 3DMarks you have, the bigger your penis is.

- M4H

 

[KGB1]

Your rant is warranted, however you have to take into consideration of MEMORY (no pun) used in gFX cards. The memory used these days are not the run of the mill SDRAM. gFX use highly advanced memory configuration, in which the (mainstream) cpu world has not yet seen. GDDR3 memory, DDR2 chips, newer more expensive packaging technology. All this comes at a price. Plus the number of gFX memory makers are not as many as it were back in the day's of GF/GF2.

Mainly Samsung (WORLD'S leading memory manufacturer) makes most of the DDR memory speeds of 3.6 and under. Plus the newer chips mentioned are also made by them. The whole monopolizing of the gFX memory market has really hurt us in the pocket book. I don't suppose a Geforce FX/ or Radeon R350 costs no more that a mere $15 in high production volume, however the memory used (either 128/256 configurations) would raise the price considerably.

(plus a high performance, most bad @ss gFX card deserves the high price... just as a corvette is priced much superflouisly than a S-10)

 

[psyconius]

My point seems to have gotten lost in my rant.

I see why there video cards are so expensive, and yes it is like owning a corvette. The price was just a side not to support my theory that if the AA card/extra chip were possible, the price would not matter. People would buy it for the 4X anti-aliasing at the speed of no AA

I just wanted to know if anyone found this feasible. Why does the main 'GPU' have to calculate the AA? Why can't they throw on an extra chip to do that for it? (or like I said, make it an add-on card)

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Think of graphics cards in this light...

You get a "cpu" chip more complicated than a standard desktop CPU
You get the fastest RAM for the "cpu"
You get the ram and cpu on a motherboard that is setup in the fastest possible configuration (well the highend cards at least)

Now when considering an actual rig you might think $200 for a high end CPU, $100-150 or so for a high end motherboard, and $200-400 for a lot of high end ram and you're set back $500-750 for a flagship rig. Yes, $400+ for a new video can be pretty absurd, especially when a card half the price with bring you withing 5-10% of the performance, but that's the thing, $200 for a top notch card is not a bad price at all.

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: psyconius
My point seems to have gotten lost in my rant.

I see why there video cards are so expensive, and yes it is like owning a corvette. The price was just a side not to support my theory that if the AA card/extra chip were possible, the price would not matter. People would buy it for the 4X anti-aliasing at the speed of no AA

I just wanted to know if anyone found this feasible. Why does the main 'GPU' have to calculate the AA? Why can't they throw on an extra chip to do that for it? (or like I said, make it an add-on card)

You can't do AA in a seperate PCI card. The framebuffer is held within the video cards own internal RAM and there's no way a seperate card could access that memory without doing some CPU access to read the framebuffer (which is horribly slow). Not to mention the bandwidth required to access this amount of memory every frame would clog down the PCI bus to the point your system would be pathetically useless. Oh, and then you would have to transfer this data back to the GPU's memory so that the RAMDAC's could display the memory out to your monitor. The point of a GPu is to send over relatively small amounts of data (vertices, textures) and let it run full speed turning that "small" amount of data into millions of individual pixels on the GPU's side to limit bandwidth consumption on the bus.

If you want fast free AA, buy a LCD panel with a native resolution of 1280x1024, and run all your games at 1024x768.

 

[Insomniak]

Rabbit Smarfs.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
Think of graphics cards in this light...

You get a "cpu" chip more complicated than a standard desktop CPU
You get the fastest RAM for the "cpu"
You get the ram and cpu on a motherboard that is setup in the fastest possible configuration (well the highend cards at least)

Now when considering an actual rig you might think $200 for a high end CPU, $100-150 or so for a high end motherboard, and $200-400 for a lot of high end ram and you're set back $500-750 for a flagship rig. Yes, $400+ for a new video can be pretty absurd, especially when a card half the price with bring you withing 5-10% of the performance, but that's the thing, $200 for a top notch card is not a bad price at all.

I think that the 9700 Pro has like 2x more transistors than a P4.
And the high speed RAM needs lots of high-speed interconnects between it and the GPU.

Plus, the card has a short lifespan, before competition forces the companies to come out with even faster things. Lots of R&D, fairly limited market = high prices.

 

[VIAN]

My point seems to have gotten lost in my rant.

I see why there video cards are so expensive, and yes it is like owning a corvette. The price was just a side not to support my theory that if the AA card/extra chip were possible, the price would not matter. People would buy it for the 4X anti-aliasing at the speed of no AA

I just wanted to know if anyone found this feasible. Why does the main 'GPU' have to calculate the AA? Why can't they throw on an extra chip to do that for it? (or like I said, make it an add-on card)

High end cards are so expensive because no one buys them.

If you had an extra card or chip to do AA, there would possibly be too much latency and it would be slower that way. On top of that, there would be more complications. Just look at dual chip cards, very complicated and very expensive and pretty much - stupid. It's cheaper and faster to do it in single chip. Plus AA is done while making the graphics, using more pixels and then compressing it, I don't see how it could be done on another chip. AA performance drop is pretty much free anyway for people who play at 1024x768. And don't forget, those high-end cards aren't only used for AA.

 

[rbV5]

My last gaming card cost me $69 (ti4200) You can get a 9700pro at newegg for $140...you don't have to spend a bunch of cash for reasonable performance. Going forward, you may just see multiple video cards in your rig though, and not just for multiple display support

 

[BenSkywalker]

People would buy it for the 4X anti-aliasing at the speed of no AA

Watch for the PowerVR series 5 chip, that will give you what you are looking for.

With any immediate mode renderer there is no viable way to do what you are talking about, and cost really isn't the big issue- complexity is. The only way to reasonably give 'free' AA in terms of performance on an IMR is to have a full size buffer embedded on the chip, you transistor count for that would be somewhere north of a billion(roughing it in my head), way the hell beyond anything we can do with current fabrication processes. It is possible that GPU makers could move to TBR and indeed give free AA, however they have their own set of drawbacks where increasing geometry beyond a certain point will result in significant performance declines(which IMRs wouldn't hesitate with). There is a chip coming that will offer 'free' AA in terms of performance, and that won't be the NV40 or R420.

 

[psyconius]

Cool.. thanks.. That was the kind of insight I was looking for

 

[mikeford]

What seems to be the best site for reviews of video cards?

 

[Flyermax2k3]

Originally posted by: mikeford
What seems to be the best site for reviews of video cards?

You're reading it AT or X-bit are my personal favorites for the majority of hardware reviews. Of course, I generally take their recommendations and read off-site reviews they link to as well...