Category: Nvidia

DX10 AGP Card, G84 AGP

The G84 (8600) chip by Nvidia will be going AGP in April. This is big news for all you old school AGP users out there who would like to either get a little bit more horse power in their current set up or would like to upgrade to Vista with a little bit more ease.

The cards will be selling for around $125. This will replace the current AGP top end on Nvidias side the Geforce 7600GS. The chip is very AGP compatible so it does not need any converting chips to bring it down to AGP, similar to the 7600 and 6600 chips.

Here are some details on the chip.


(PCIe card shown)

Nvidia Releases 32-bit Vista Drivers

Nvidia has released drivers for all you 8800 users out there who have Vista, no more beta drivers for you, unless you like to be on the cutting edge. This is the official WHQL driver for Vista, supporting all 8800, Geforce 7 series, and 6 series GPUs.  But, what about SLI support, well thats a different question entirely. I’ll quote Nvidia:

“DirectX 9 and OpenGL NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs and DirectX 10 NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available in a future driver”

There is however DirectX9 support and OpenGL support in the driver for 8800 SLI but its not supported under Vista. Looks like they still don’t have love for SLI under Vista.

They did add this little paragraph at the bottom of the downloads page howerver:

 “These NVIDA Windows Vista drivers are under development. This version is not fully optimized for full 3D performance and may not include all available features available on different operating systems. NVIDIA, along with the industry, is continuing to update its Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add support for features. These drivers are provided “AS IS.” NVIDIA MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WHATSOVER AS TO MERCHANTABILITY, COMPATABILITY, PERFORMANCE, APPLICATION OR FUNCTION, AND DISCLAIMS ALL SUCH WARRANTIES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW.”

I guess that was aimed straight at the heads of those with the class action law suit.

If have Vista and an Nvidia card you may want to head on over here and grab the drivers, they should work better then the previous one.

Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 320MB for $299

The now cheapest DirectX10 graphics card available. At 500MHz core and 1600MHz memory the card is quite fast for the price. The card was released today and is available at many of the online computer stores.

DirectX10 is now available for most now because of the price. This is going to put a bunch of pressure on ATI in the DX10 space. ATI needs to act fast or Nvidia may be too ahead of ATI.

The card is available at these stores right now:

Amazon
Newegg
Tigerdirect

Weekly Picks

This week I there was only one thing I actually wanted. It all started when I installed Vista, then I wanted a little more graphics horsepower. Not that I didn’t have enough, I am running a Geforce 7800GT but I wanted to upgrade to DX10 for the upcoming games and the extra horsepower for Aero Glass wouldn’t hurt.

EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 640MB

(image courtesy of newegg.com)

at 500MHz core and 1600MHz memory this thing is fast and doesn’t carry quite as high a price tag as its big brother the 8800GTX. It even has HDCP built in so when we all end up with Blu-ray or HD-DVD drives in our computers I’ll be able to watch the videos with no problem.

Details about Geforce 8k series

There is some new info about the Geforce 8k series with the brand new DirectX10. Nvidia is going to be releasing 4 new cards around March time. Heres the details:

8300GS 500MHz Core 1000MHz Memory 256MB RAM
8300GT 500MHz Core 1200MHz Memory 256MB RAM
8600GT 350MHz Core 1200MHz Memory 256MB RAM
8600Ultra 500MHz Core 1400MHz Memory 512MB RAM

8300GS $79
8300GT $99
8600GT $150
8600Ultra $180

The 8600 will be built with 80nm process and have 300 million transistors. I can’t wait and might pick up a 8600GT because I’d like the nice DX10 graphics with my new Windows Vista OS box.

[via Guru3D]

Geforce 8800GTS with 320MB memory $300 in Feb

Nvidia is rumored to be releasing a new Geforce 8800GTS card with 320MB of memory for $300 or less. The card is supposed to have similar clocks to the regular 8800GTS just with less memory.

Nvidia is planning to have all of their first generation DirectX10 graphics cards out in the next few months.

I’m excited about how Vista will go and I am planning on upgrading my old gaming machine to DirectX10 soon so I might be purchasing my own 8800GTS.