Computex 2004: Graphics Cards Galore

Final Words

Hopefully, our graphics coverage has been enough to whet everyone's appetite for the inevitable onslaught of reviews to come. There are plenty of companies producing graphic cards these days, and with the sheer number of GPU SKUs available from both NVIDIA and ATI, we expect to be very busy.

Of course, this year, PCI Express was a recurring theme, but AGP has definitely not left the table. Most vendors had a little bit of both to show off, and no one quite seems to have a firm grasp on just how the battle will play out. Surely, the switch to PCI Express is inevitable, but will most people be early adopters, or will it be another GPU revision or two before we see a majority of the market shift its focus? Only time will tell, but NV45 is a very interesting indication that NVIDIA might think that the switch will occur faster than previously expected.

We did happen to notice that some of the vendors were touting the fact their graphics boards were only 8 layers. This is impressive as there had been rumors of previous generation high end graphics products possibly requiring 12 or 16 layers. We haven't had a chance to speak with our contacts on the manufacturing side about just how these boards have come together, but we will be exploring the situation further.

With Computex offering an early view of the "look" of the graphics card market for the next few months, performance still remains to be seen. Many vendors are already handing out reports that their high end parts will receive a bit of a performance face lift via overclocked speeds. Most vendors weren't quite sure of their final shipping clock speeds (especially for ATI parts), but it seems that we are consistently hearing 460MHz for 6800 Ultra "Extreme" cores. As always, noise and heat levels will be very important, and we just can't know what shape the playing field will take until we get our hands on cards.

The rest of the summer is stacking up to be just as exciting and interesting as our Computex coverage, so get ready for a wild ride!