Fastest Graphics Ever, Asus ARES Rips Benchmarks 208
MojoKid writes "Over-the-top, killer graphics cards are always fun to play with, though they may not be all that practical. With a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single PCB and 4GB of GDDR5 graphics memory on board, the recently released Asus ARES is one such card that can currently claim the title of being the fastest single gaming graphics card on the planet. This dual-GPU-infused beast rips through benchmarks, besting even the likes of a Radeon HD 5970 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480. You can even run a pair of them in CrossFire mode, if you're hell-bent on the fastest frame rates money can buy currently."
OpenCL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but what about OpenCL performance?
Some of Anandtech's Fermi benchmarks put it 4x+ behind in GPGPU tests.
Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Asus ARES commands a hefty $1200 MSRP.
What the fuck
limited edition (Score:3, Insightful)
Have other cards been offered as 'limited editions'? I was reading the review and thinking "cool, I'll have that in a year..." but then noticed they're only shipping 1000. Then I thought, no way, it might be _that_ card that's just 1000 units, but I'm pretty sure one almost like it will follow.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry, nobody is forcing you to buy one, besides only a thousand will be sold in the US anyway, I am sure this Ferrari of a video card will find it's buyer.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
I only spend ~$100 on average on my videocards.
I got a GTS 250 for $100 close to a half-year ago. A friend of mine just got a Radeon 4870 for $100!
Great. Now what does this have to do with anything?
Flying fuck. (Score:4, Insightful)
How relevant is that for a gaming card?
Remember, this is a product that comes with a GAMING MOUSE thrown in. It's like asking how much of a load the latest supercar can haul. It's irrelevant, as long as there's no games using OpenCL. Trust me, when OpenCL is a big thing in gaming, these cards will be long forgotten.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
What price range were you expecting for 'fastest video card'?
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe anyone has seen a spoked wheel [wikipedia.org] in a movie and never wondered why it rotates backwards.
This "debunking" shown in your first link is not showing the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. Considering the fourfold symmetry of the rotating square, what it's actually demonstrating is that 7.5 fps looks choppier than 15 fps.
There will always exist some particular geometries that will appear choppy at any frame rate. The right way to make it smooth is not by increasing the frame rate, but by motion blur [wikipedia.org].
As for your second link, it proves exactly the opposite of what it meant to: there's no practical difference between 24 fps and 60 fps. They are using the same arguments audiophiles use to justify paying $500 for a network cable [google.com]: I have eyes/ears that are so much more accurate than yours that I wouldn't be satisfied with that cheap gear you use.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Movies do just fine with motion blur and so does Crysis.
But if you are a pro online FPS gamer who gets loads of cash then the extra frame that half renders without vsync can make that tiny important difference between who shoots first in a crytical encounter.
But when you are not a pro FPS gamer playing for money on a LAN then higher than 30min - 60max FPS is totally bullshit.
Besides, all hardcore gamers play in a little less high res and everything but lightning, reflection and model detail is as much downscaled as possible. And then there are hardcore gamers who believe gameplay is so much more important than HD graphics.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
For video editing that is crucial so that you can get overlapping frames inside of that 24fps timeframe.
Games however do not work like this. They crank out as much frames per seconds and your HW can handle and then without vsync it is all hit and miss. Ask your movie expert and he'll tell you why that is.
And don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OpenCL? (Score:3, Insightful)
My first question is what is openCL(blahblahblah googlit), my second question is why is it important on a card where I'm going to be using it for gaming in a super-dominated DX market as it is? Because as it stands, I don't see it.
Re:Am I a cheap bastard? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry, nobody is forcing you to buy one,
You'll eat those words upon the next release of the Crytek engine...
Re:Go Back in time with it (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it tedious this need to equate happeningness with innovation.
Cell phones would look pretty pathetic if not embedded in an ecosystem which made it possible to efficiently produce the software and content and phone designs you implicitly rave about. Just about every great innovation that makes the modern cell phone possible was developed primarily on giant PC workstations.
Just like it's easier to have a lot of spare cash in early adulthood (and the coolness associated with that) if you still live in your parent's basement and leach off the free utilities.
It was the same thing with the success of scripting languages on the back of the nasty compiled languages such as C/C++. When Python runs fast, which language to you think is doing the real heavy lifting?
Standing on the shoulders of giants and poaching the low hanging fruit is a time honoured tradition, but why is the hulking giant always portrayed as a dim gallumph? It's like saying peaches are cool, but peach tree step ladders aren't.
Coolness ends up being how much newness one can take credit for, while disregarding long years of hard work by the better established that made the niche possible in the first place. OpenCL based media encoders running on massive GPUs is only going to make your cell phone decoder even more cool and bit efficient.
So I get your message. There's nothing happening on the PC platform because the cell platform has figured out how to take all the credit on the unassailable logic that the most important component in any technology ecosystem is the pocket-sized gratification device.