Computex 2004: Graphics Cards Galore
by Derek Wilson on June 5, 2004 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Introduction
Even if we can't publish pictures and descriptions of all the countless booths and companies here at Computex, our endless desire to provide a high quality of vicarious trade show experience forces us to try anyway. This installment of our continued Computex coverage comprises all the information that we could find on what graphics card vendors are up to these days. As such, the following pages contain a look into the not-so-distant future for graphics products, including parts that we haven't been able to test from NVIDIA and everything we've seen announced this week from ATI.
But, just because it's on the show floor, it doesn't mean it will be showing up at your local 7-11 anytime soon. We've had quite a few interesting discussions about the availability of new parts, especially with respect to NVIDIA.
The underground buzz we heard is that the 6800 GT parts wouldn't be that scarce in the near future, but that channel allocation of the 6800 Ultra parts was somewhere between 50 on the low end to 100 on the high end. Not that such small numbers really need perspective, but when we heard that allocation was low, we expected to hear that it was only a couple thousand. This begs the following question: NVIDIA launched the 6800 Ultra in May, and if less than a hundred cards are in the channel today with mass production coming in July, are we talking about a paper launch? To be fair to NVIDIA, although ATI's supply of X800 XT Platinum Edition parts isn't that low, it's still nothing to write home about.
As we have previously touched on, the sheer size and complexity of these chips will no doubt have an adverse impact on yield. We don't have any reliable numbers to report on yield rates, but these tiny shipments seem to confirm our early assumptions that getting the 6800 Ultra (and even the 16 pipe X800) out the door in volume would be an arduous task.
Aside from availability, we've seen everything from the standard reference-card-with-custom-sticker to massive uberheatsinks and flashing lights strapped on to the latest and greatest graphics silicon. In the following pages, we bring you the most up-to-date information that we can on as many of the graphics vendors who we could track down on the floor.
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EddNog - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Okay, who FUBAR the photos?!?J/k ;-)
-Ed
Illissius - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Damnit, I wanted to see MSI's 6800s :/.Oh well. Can you just say whether they had any nBox-esque coolers on them? Best coolers evar (possibly) excluding the Silencer and Zalman's stuff.
jiulemoigt - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
I had to laugh what happened to ATI's responce that shader 3.0 weren't useful and not going to be implmented? it just goes to show that it's more about PR that about what is useful, this is the second time in as many months ATI is having to pull the foot out of their mouth... when's nvidia going to get caught? or has it finnaly come down neither company should be throwing stone in the first place as they both live in glass houses... for the record I like nvidia's cards but hate both PR deptments!kristof007 - Sunday, June 6, 2004 - link
Wow I can only imagine what kind of overclocking will be avalible with coolers like PowerColors fan (at least I think it was PowerColor). This should be very exciting summer.orion23 - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
Hi, did anybody notice a picture of an ASUS ATI X800 PCI EXPRESS video card with support for Shaders 3.0?Also, how many different X800's are out there, 2 or 3?
X800 450MHZ
X800 XT 500MHZ
X800 XT PE 520MHZ
orion23 - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
NeedSpeed - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
Alienware has been shipping 6800 Ultra's from at least May 14th when I got mine. They announced the card a month earlier.Its not cheap, but it is very fast. The drivers are still not perfect.
DerekWilson - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
doh!!HIS is working on a dual DVI solution, but they aren't sure about the market yet. I essentially told them "if you build it they will come" ...
they did have a sample dual dvi board (I believe an x600 though I could very easily be mistaken), but the very important fact slipped my mind since I didn't have pics of it...
Sapphire also mentioned working on dual DVI solutions for the future (of course, they've told us this in the past as well).
I'll add an update to the article.
Lonyo - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
I take it you missed the captions on Asus' booth saying both the 5900 and X800XT are the fastest PCI-Express cards? ;)RyanVM - Saturday, June 5, 2004 - link
#5, my thoughts exactly. Not one single manufacturer felt the need to stray from the ATI reference design far enough to go dual DVI? Pathetic.