The PC gaming industry is undergoing a transition period, but that isn't slowing down the pace of graphics innovation. The industry is shifting from retail to digital distribution, and the current generation of consoles have adopted many features previously available only on the PC, such as HD graphics and pervasive online multiplayer support. The current consoles are much stronger competition in this time around, but the PC platform is up to the challenge. Industry heavyweights including Microsoft, Activision, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD have formed the PC Gaming Alliance to reinvigorate PC gaming by making it easier and more accessible to gamers. The PC still has its greatest advantage, a steady stream of new CPUs and GPUs that ensure that the PC platform's computational power is always several generations ahead of the consoles. Nvidia has increased the PC graphics lead one step further with today's release of the first GeForce 200 series GPU, the GeForce GTX 280.
The GeForce GTX 280 takes over for the GeForce 9800 GTX as Nvidia's latest and most powerful DirectX 10 GPU. The new GeForce GTX 280 actually compares best with the GeForce 9800 GX2 which has two GeForce 9800 GTX processors on a single card. The GeForce 9 series might be the most short-lived Nvidia GeForce generation we've ever seen, but the GeForce 9's brief life span makes sense when you consider that the GeForce 9800 GTX GPU was basically a die shrink of the GeForce 8800 GTX with some minor memory-interface revisions. Shrinking the die is an efficiency play that moves an existing chip design to a newer manufacturing process and results in smaller chips. The die shrink reduces costs because more chips can fit onto each silicon wafer, and it can often increase GPU performance because smaller chips can achieve higher operating speeds.
The GeForce GTX 280 has 240 stream processors, almost double the number of processors on the GeForce 9800 GTX, and Nvidia has optimized the new chip architecture to squeeze even more performance out of each processor. Nvidia bumped up the onboard memory to 1GB for a single GPU and widened the memory interface to 512-bit to improve performance at high resolutions with antialiasing enabled. The performance doesn't come cheap--the GeForce GTX 280 comes with a very top-of-the-line $649 MSRP. However, the GTX 280 is only half of the GeForce GTX 200 launch. Nvidia plans to release the slightly less powerful, but much more affordable GeForce GTX 260 next week on June 26, 2008. The $399 GeForce GTX 260 will have 192 stream processors, 896MB of memory, and a 448-bit memory interface.
The GTX 280 continues Nvidia's commitment to evolving the video card into a more consumer-friendly product. The entire dual-slot card is encased in a glossy, molded shell, and the new design hides the card's SLI connector and audio port beneath rubberized covers. It's really only a matter of time before a designer extends out the shell to hide the PCI Express connector, the last exposed portion of the card's PCB shame.
| GPU | GeForce GTX 280 | GeForce GTX 260 | GeForce 9800 GX2 | GeForce 9800 GTX |
| Current price | $649 | $399 | $499 | $269 |
| Processor cores | 240 | 192 | 256 | 128 |
| Processor clock | 1.3GHz | 1.24GHz | 1.5GHz | 1.69GHz |
| Core Clock | 602MHz | 576MHz | 600MHz | 675MHz |
| Memory | 1GB | 896MB | 512MBx2 | 512MB |
| Memory Clock | 2.2GHz(DDR) | 2GHz(DDR) | 2GHz(DDR) | 2GHz(DDR) |
| Memory Interface | 512-bit | 488-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
Nvidia added more open space around the 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors to accommodate larger power plugs. The GeForce 9800 cards had less clearance around the power connectors, which forced users to either find a power adapter or snap off the extra plastic to get power cables to seat properly. Nvidia recommends using a 550W power supply with at least 40A on the 12V rail for a single GeForce GTX 280. Cards will work in 2-way and 3-way SLI, provided you have an SLI-enabled motherboard with the appropriate number of PCI Express slots.
The card has two dual-link, HDCP-compliant DVI-I outputs and a 7-pin analog connector that can output S-Video as well as composite and component with the appropriate cable dongle. HDMI output comes via a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, but you'll need to jack a SPDIF audio feed to the top of the card if you want to get sound integrated into the HDMI-out. As with all recent Nvidia GPUs, the GeForce GTX 200 series has PureVideo support that provides full decode acceleration for all popular HD file formats.
The GTX 200 GPUs also have smarter power management features that can automatically detect and throttle the chip's power depending on how much 3D-performance the system needs. According to Nvidia, the GeForce 280 GTX will only consume 25-35W when running in desktop mode or while playing a Blu-ray movie, but it can ramp up to full power, approximately 236W, when it's time to fire up Call of Duty 4. The GTX 200 GPUs also support Nvidia's HybridPower feature that can switch all graphics work over to the motherboard graphics chip for low-intensity, nongaming applications provided you have a motherboard with an nForce 780a or 790i chipset.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 Performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
The performance tests show us that the GeForce GTX 280's 240 stream processors are very capable of taking on 256 processors from the previous generation. The GeForce GTX 280 only has a slight lead over its competition in Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2, but the newest GeForce shows what it can do in our most challenging tests, Crysis with high-quality settings and the new 3D Mark Vantage. Crysis has been the most graphically demanding game in our benchmark suite since its release late last year. Most cards struggle to maintain playable framerates at higher resolutions at the best image quality levels, but GeForce GTX 280 handles high-quality, 1600x1200 without a problem and actually makes antialiasing a viable option. The card does particularly well in the 3DMark Vantage Extreme test which sets the resolution to 1920x1200 and increases all shaders to “extreme” levels.
The video card isn't just about gaming anymore, either. Nvidia is currently working on expanding the video card's usefulness outside of graphics applications. The process started in the last generation with the launch of the CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) initiative with the GeForce 8 series. CUDA opens up the GeForce GPU's processing power to non-graphics applications such as video transcoders, image manipulation programs, or any other work that can benefit from parallel processing. CUDA-enabled consumer applications are still rare, but there are a few promising programs on the horizon.
Software start-up Elemental Technologies is developing video transcoding software that uses the GPU to accelerate transcode times 10 to 20 times faster than CPU transcoding, and users participating in the Folding@Home program will soon be able to use their CUDA-enabled GPUs to start racking up the points at an incredible rate. If these two programs are a sign of things to come, it's not difficult to imagine a time when everyone will need to take non-gaming software support into account when buying a new video card.
The GeForce GTX 280 is your only choice if you're looking for the most powerful single-GPU available today. The GeForce GTX 280 matches up well against the dual-GPU GeForce 9800 GX2 in current games, but it seems like many of the 280's engine improvements won't become apparent until games start adopting 3DMark Vantage-level graphics workloads. The card also has plenty of non-gaming upside with its pending CUDA applications, but that also applies to all CUDA-enabled GeForce 8 and 9 series cards. The GeForce GTX 280's primary downside is its hefty $649 MSRP--pretty steep considering that you can get a GX2 for just under $500. For what it's worth, the GeForce 280's advanced power options will make the card more affordable to operate when you're not gaming.
AMD announced and started shipping its ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 cards in late June of this year, but the company wasn't shy about revealing its plans to ship a high-end dual-GPU Radeon HD 4870 card as early as August. The graphics companies--all companies, really--are usually pretty good about not announcing new products too early, particularly when those new products are anticipated to outperform the company's current product lineup. Upon learning about upcoming products, customers, being the smart cookies that they are, tend to hold off on purchases and wait for the new models to come out.
AMD wasn't worried about revealing the dual-GPU X2 card early because the single-GPU ATI Radeon HD 4870 offered more performance value than its previous-generation high-end card, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. Nvidia, on the other hand, had just started shipping its high-end GeForce GTX 280, and AMD had no problem letting potential GTX 280 buyers know that the new X2 was on its way.
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, like the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, features a single-board, dual-GPU design. The board has two ATI Radeon HD 4870 GPUs and 2GB of GDDR5 memory, or 1GB for each chip. The card has a new PCIe Gen 2 interconnect that offers increased GPU-to-GPU bandwidth and brings back PCI Express 2.0 support.
The X2 should perform about the same or slightly better than a two-card Radeon HD 4870 setup given that the X2 has the same GPUs on board. However, the X2 does have double the GDDR5 memory per chip compared to the single 4870, and you don't have to deal with getting a CrossFire motherboard and a power supply with enough power connectors. The X2 also retails for $549, a little less than what two $299 Radeon HD 4870 cards will cost you.
The X2 card only requires a single x16 PCI Express slot, so you won't need a CrossFire-enabled motherboard unless you want to run two X2 cards together for quad-GPU fun. Each X2 card has an 8-pin (2x4-pin) and 6-pin (2x3-pin) power connector for external power. ATI recommends using a 650W power supply for a single card and 1000W for two cards.
The X2 offers the same Avivo HD video support and video output options as the single-GPU 4870, which includes ATI's hardware-accelerated UVD 2 unified video decoder for high-definition video, accelerated video transcoding, DVD upscaling, and full HDMI output with sound.
We put our Power Color Radeon HD 4780 X2 card up against its closest single-card competition, the GeForce GTX 280. However, we must mention that the X2 retails for $549, about $50 more than the GTX 280's $499 suggested retail price. Of course, we also have to mention that Nvidia originally launched the GeForce GTX 280 at $649 before dropping the price in advance of the X2's launch. In addition to single-card comparison testing, we were also able to test a dual-card Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFire setup against a dual-card GeForce GTX 280 SLI system. We filled out the rest of the field with single- and dual-card Radeon HD 4870 setups to show how the X2 compares to its smaller sibling.
Radeon HD 4870 X2 Performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
System Setup: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775, Intel D5400XS, 4GB FB-DIMM (2x2GB), Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, 750GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA Hard Disk Drive. Graphics Cards: PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB (1GBx2), ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB (1GBx2), PNY GeForce GTX 280 1GB, Radeon HD 4870 512MB. Graphics Drivers: ATI Catalyst 8.552, Nvidia ForceWare beta 177.79.
The 3DMark Vantage tests confirm that four Radeon HD 4780 GPUs can work together in a Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFire configuration. It's shocking to see a five-digit score so soon, when scoring half as much in the Extreme test was considered excellent just a few months ago. Call of Duty 4 scales well when you throw additional 4870 GPUs at it, but the results indicate that the GeForce GTX 280 offers a better cost per frame value. Crysis also remains an Nvidia stronghold. Frame rates didn't budge when we tried adding more Radeon HD 4870 GPUs in our Harbor Assault benchmarking, while doubling up on GTX 280 cards yielded immediate frame rate increases. The Radeon HD 4870 cards beat the GeForce GTX 280 in Team Fortress 2, but frame rates in the CPU-limited game didn't increase as we added more GPUs. A single Radeon HD 4870 card will be enough to give you the GDDR5 benefits in TF2.
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 performs just like a dual-card ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire setup without any of the multicard hassle. Increasing the on-board memory to 1GB per GPU didn't produce frame rate increases in our game tests, but it did help the X2 pull away from the Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire in the forward-looking 3DMark Vantage benchmark. The $549 ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 put up the best performance numbers we've ever seen in 3DMark Vantage, and it scaled well in Call of Duty 4, but the Radeon's nonexistent dual- and quad-GPU performance gains in Crysis remind us that multi-GPU configurations rely too much on graphics driver updates and game patches to unlock the full potential of the hardware.
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