NV35Ultra Reviews here

[OC-Master]

Heh, I think it's partly all those rich guys in Boston and stuff who pull up the US average. But yeah, you guys should spend a little more up here to help us out.

Canada's doller is at a all time high. As of today, our Doller is worth 72 cents to 1 american doller.

Our minimum wage is soon to go to $7.50 with average career wages going from $16 to $23 over the next five years.

Canada's economy is growing while the american economy is slumping into the gutter.

Its because of the war, it costed the US Billions of dollers which they lost on stupid things. At this rate, the US and Canadian doller will be the same by 2010.


OC-Master

 

[DaddyB]

The Canadian dollar used to be worth more then the american dollar, so it's not exactly an all time high. At the begining of this year I believe the Canadian dollar was valued at 62 American cents, it's gone up 10 cents in 5 months - at that rate the dollars will be equal in less then a year and a half but as we all know things change as will the current rates of incline decline.

[segue]...Hmm, maybe its all of the ATi sales that is driving the Canadian economy...[segue]

Enough economics, back to computers... The 5900Ultra seems decent but I haven't finished reading all of the reviews yet but if both cards (5900 & 9800) were on the store shelf and I had enough to buy them it would be a tough choice.

 

[OC Noob]

War traditionally is very good for the economy because it creates lots of work for companies and people alike, but yeah. Enough economics. Sorry to get stuff so off topic. We can post in general chat and link it here if anyone wants to discuss it in depth.

I remember a few threads where people said they couldn't wait for the 256 mb version and I kept saying its not going to increase performance at all for a while.

Waste of money at this point.

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

The 256mb might come in very handy for future games or current games with very high quality settings.

Technically, 128mb isn't any faster than 64mb either, but the difference starts appearing with later games, high resolutions, and AA.

How can that be true if the 9800 pro 128mb and the 9800 pro 256mb are dead on in the biggest "future of games" Doom 3 benchmark?

 

[Evnas]

War traditionally is very good for the economy because it creates lots of work for companies and people alike,

Well, the last war that really did that was WW2. All the other wars since America has really had a plentiful number of supplies and hasnt needed to contract tons of companies boosting the economy

/end spam

Anyways, on topic, i think nVidia and ATi might start panning out like Intel and AMD did. Equal in performance and price relativly...it all comes down to personal preference (note: its not quite there yet )

 

[Captain Hilts]

Canada's doller is at a all time high. As of today, our Doller is worth 72 cents to 1 american doller.

Our minimum wage is soon to go to $7.50 with average career wages going from $16 to $23 over the next five years.

Canada's economy is growing while the american economy is slumping into the gutter.

Its because of the war, it costed the US Billions of dollers which they lost on stupid things. At this rate, the US and Canadian doller will be the same by 2010.


OC-Master

While the Canadian dollar was probably undervalued for sometime, part of the reason why it has gone up lately has been the interest rate differential. The other reason is probably a natural result of the US's large trade deficit. Even if the Canadian dollar reached the same level as the US dollar, it doesn't necessarily mean that real income will be equal. Also, a higher minimum wage would likely result in a lower average GDP per person.

It's not easy to measure the exact effect of the currency increases, but for ATi it could impact on their earnings since a lot of their sales are in the US, but much of the labour expense is in Canada. As a result of the increase in the Canadia dollar, their labour expense may increase as a percentage of sales.

 

[Cowboy X]

The 256 9800 has DDR2 ram which may well clock higher when overclocking which is another benefit . The problem with the increased latency of DDR2 has been offset by putting DDR2 with a slightly faster clockspeed on this 'new' 9800 Pro and thus achieving equal performance with the other card until the rare case that 256 mb is needed .

 

[RedSkull]

Well, the last war that really did that was WW2. All the other wars since America has really had a plentiful number of supplies and hasnt needed to contract tons of companies boosting the economy

/end spam

Anyways, on topic, i think nVidia and ATi might start panning out like Intel and AMD did. Equal in performance and price relativly...it all comes down to personal preference (note: its not quite there yet )

actually these two topics are quite similar

like the story on the o/c home page, in economy and computer tech. we are all waiting the fabled "trickle-down" that never seems to come (no political message intended)

I think like WWII being the end of war-time prosper, we have seen the end of cheap video cards (high-end)
I think by the time any of these cards are affordable , they'll be outdated

which begs the question; how do these cards REALLY effect the company's profits?

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

The 256 9800 has DDR2 ram which may well clock higher when overclocking which is another benefit . The problem with the increased latency of DDR2 has been offset by putting DDR2 with a slightly faster clockspeed on this 'new' 9800 Pro and thus achieving equal performance with the other card until the rare case that 256 mb is needed .

and now perhaps ATI is kicking them selves, seeing how DDR-II is only 128bit, where as DDR-I is 256 and NIVIDIA made the mistake of using DDR-II, now they go back to DDR-I and BAM they have a much better card with almost twice the memory bandwidth (27g as opposed to 16g)

Do you think ATI would turn back to DDR-I in there next set of cards? Do you think the 9800 would be far better off with DDR-I?

I was one who wanted the 256mb version, simply for future applications, but i really want a 256mb AIW version.

 

[DaddyB]

DDR2 can be 128bit or 256bit (or any number really), it's just that 256bit DDR2 was more expensive and when the 5800 was released 256 bit DDR2 was pretty much non existant (very hard to get in any real quantities). One of the reasons that the 5800 was delayed so much is that they couldn't get enough 128bit DDR2, if they had used 256bit DDR2 on the 5800 it probably wouldn't ave been released until now.

EDIT: I posted too soon after waking up, forgot to post some stuff:

The radeon 9800Pro uses 256bit DDR2, if it was only 128bit it would not even perform as well as the 9700Pro - it would be more like a 9500.

The radeon 9800Pro has a bandwidth of 22GB/s, the 9700Pro has 20GB/s and the 5800Ultra had 16GB/s.

 

[Cowboy X]

The 5900Ultra is at a whopping 27 gb !

 

[CrystalMethod]

...which begs the question; how do these cards REALLY effect the company's profits?

Not much. They make their money in the sales of lower end cards. High end cards is a very small market. You wouldn't outfit a company with 5600 FX's or Radeon 9700's. No, you slap in the the cheapest card you can find. An ATI Rage128, an Nvidia TNT2, or an SIS 315. Onboard is even better.