Clearly, the $600 I spent on the 8800GTX upon its initial release was money well-spent.

Is anyone else besides me not seeing the value proposition of the GTX200?

Note: I've just updated the theoretical GPU capacity table in this review to correct the fill rate numbers for the GeForce GTX 260. The revised numbers are slightly lower. The performance results remain unaffected.

As a gamer, the only thing that stands out to me is the much larger output buffer for geometry shaders. Was the G80 / G92 so poorly optimized or Nvidia (through it's developer's relation) know there'll be more geometry shader usage? It definitely feels like Nvidia is hiding something here when they still don't support DX10.1 (cubemap arrays) yet made the output buffer so much larger (geometry shader on cubemap arrays or just longer geometry shaders with more outputs). It is clear what Nvidia is expecting from this but we'll have to see how this plays out and how many title will the GTX200 benefit from this. The larger register file for shaders is nice too but I would prefer to be able to run shader faster in general instead of just playing certain games faster... I would definitely wait on buying a GTX 280 or 260.

As a programmer, I am not sure what to make of the less than 1/10 rate of double precision (78 GFLOPS) math vs. single precision (933 GFLOPS). I suppose that is probably still at least 2x faster than doing on the CPU? But seems like a really niche market out there that would bite the bullet for the trade off. The larger register file is pretty nice here though. I am a *edit* not die hard Nvidia fan so I would have to wait for the RV770 given is rumored to break 1~1.2 TFLOPS and see what kind of improvement they made.

EDIT: I am not a die hard Nvidia fan...

so the gtx280 was supposed to be faster than 9800gx2 and that could justify the price.

but now, each benchmark you see 9800gx2 is on top however gtx 280 costs $200 more!!!!

3870X2 results in Race Driver Grid are wrong.

If you rename GRID.exe to 3dmark06.exe and set catalyst AI on advanced you see double the FPS.

Even patch 1.1 didn't resolve the problem with 3870X2 cards (or even quad gpu).

I got 140% better performance with 2x 3870X2's.

i wonder if there are any information on how this card handles far cry 2??

PR Job only. to few people will affort this product to make it worth it. All it does is give nvidia the performance crown and push the requirements, important to generate sales.
the size of the chip is crazy and will generate a high ratio of 260 to 280.
I don't see AMD dead, only PR wise.
I like singlechip solutions better (I can be sure I get the most out of it for any game) but the dual chip on a board way is the better / cost efficient approach to the high-segment.
In the segment I'm buying from, there will always be the singlechip solution.
Sure AMD needs to ship something better than the 3870, but I would say they are only 2 months behind atm, nothing they can't regain.

It is just a freaking G9x on steroids.

Reminds me of Radeon X8xx. Company in question's attempt to stretch their basic architect to its practical limits.

FYI, X8xx were basically Radeon 9700PRO with more TMUs, pixel shaders, pipelines with minor tweaks. Likewise, how GT280 deep-down is a G80 with some tweaks, more steaming processors and a wider memory bus.

Performance is not stellar, but it is fast. It is another question whatever there is anything worthwhile on PC that truly needs its power. I am getting by with my aging X1900XT fine.

Scott, is there an SLI review on the way? How bout' 3 way SLI?

(please say yes, please say yes :)

Bah. "Card x is now outdated because it supports only DirectX n. Card y now supports DirectX n.1 ..." Anyone else tired of the perpetual obsolescence of PC hardware? Maybe I'm just getting to be an old man.

I think these card needs a x2900xt to hd3870 treatment

Such as
1. Die shrink (I know 55nm is being worked on, but is it enough?)
2. Ditch expensive 512bit GDDR3 and go for more efficient 256bit GDDR5
3. Card size reduction, power reduction and also cooler
4. Which all in all hopefully leads to a hefty needed price reduction

Nvidias new cards are way OTT even for most enthusiasts. The software doesn't keep up.

Whatever happened to the 'new single card will beat two older cards in SLI' mantra they had a while back?

New card out and the 8800 still doesn't work with UT2004. I have almost no interest in Nvidia's GPU's anymore.

Nice review, Scott! The animal metaphors in the beginning were particularly good. The article hit my RSS feed while I was talking to my girlfriend via Skype, and I read her the first three paragraphs while imitating Steve Irwin [1]. She's not normally interested in desktop graphic2], but she almost fell out her chair laughing. Thanks for a good piece of journalism that lightened our day :)

[1] May he rest in piece.

[2]She's been spoiled by the Cray where she works, CUDA has yet to win here over.

"...with 'the approximate surface area of Rosie O'Donnell.' Cricky, I wouldn't want to wrestle her..."

Wow what games can I run on it, that really can use it? Only $469 at newegg, gees what a bargain.

Makes that PS3 I want to get look cheap.

Maybe this was a typo in the system setup, but were different driver versions really used for the GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards (177.34 and 177.26, respectively)? If so, why?

meadows: porkster of 08.

what is that chip near the I/O shield? is that a separate I/O chip as seen on the early iterations of the G80 cards? might have missed a description of it in the article...anyone care to point out what that chip might be? thanks! =)

That idle power draw is rather incredible, IMO. The beast is just a bit above a 3870! It's twice the size of G80 and yet pulls ~half the power at idle! Granted, load draw is pretty nuts, but this single card is much more efficient while doing nothing than those dual GPU boards.

I'm excited to see what ATI brings out. If only they can match 8/9800GTX and be impressively priced. Matching GTX 260 and putting the hurt on price (and watts) would be even better. NVIDIA appears to be considering ATI's new stuff a threat to GTX 260 with their pricing.

Oh, and 8800GTX still performs beautifully. Talk about longevity for a 19 month old 3D card.

Crysis appears to just be ahead of its time. The GTX 280 scales against 8800GTX as well as in other games, but it doesn't amount to much in framerate increase really. Putting two GTX 280s together ought to help out those who really, really want to make it go fast though. May be a major investment, but it will probably do the trick.

My 8800 GTS 320 is doing fine for me right now. Mass Effect looks amazing, WoW has never run better, and Source based games are looking birlliant.

Can the 200's SLI with the previous gen cards? It would be cool if one could still use their old video cards with new in SLI mode.

I love my nvidia cards but I would like to see ATI (AMD) get some damn foothold again just for competitions sake and to keep AMD alive.

Scott, the new graph colors look excellent. They are much more legible than before. Good job on that.

And Scott, an extra special thank for probably spending a lot of Father's day on this article. I know you have young ones. I spent yesterday squirting my kids with the hose and having a cook out with the family. Your hard work and sacrifice are appreciated.

This is an excellent article. Job well done. Excellent detail and writing and explaination. I hope you have a chance to take a couple of days off.

As for the card itself, it is exciting, but far beyond my budget limit. Good job Nvidia.

Where as very few games have actual DX10.1 support I find that AMD being better in this area at this point in time to be irrelevant.

I'll stick with DX9 on XP, thank you.

I'm not sure whether all these ridiculous, disappointing, incremental gains in performance are more about technical challenges or market manipulation. Being a glass-is-half-empty person, I'll say the latter.

Give me 60 FPS in Crysis already!

I have an 8800 GTS, and I still don't feel like this new "generation" is the killer upgrade I've been waiting for.

Nice review. Guess it goes to show what a pile of crap Crysis is code wise.

It's the Kim Kardashian's butt of the GPU world.

I had to read that twice to make sure I saw what I thought i saw . . .

The new graphs do indeed look great...nice one TR!
The results on this new card are good...not too much power draw and noise for its size but much too expensive for most people I would think.
HD4850 looks to be the go to card this round if early reports prove correct...for $200 it makes these new green cards look overpriced.

It's a nice card but dear God in heaven...650 dollars for a card? I just built a friend of mine a nice midrange system for that much (including a decent monitor). I'm loving my 8800GT more and more the more I see of this next generation.

Anything is better than my lowly 2900XT at this point but I think I'll wait for the 4870 to pop up before I give Newegg my hard earned cash. The GT200's price is a direct result of that enormous die. The cost of production is ridiculous. For once, AMD may end up with a better performance/dollar due to a superior process and no need for over-engineering. AMD will be the "Intel" of GPUs if they can keep this up (well, we'll see how the R700 performs, eh?). I think the price is right with the upcoming ATI cards. I can't wait to see how they do next week.