NVIDIA Quad SLI Disappoints

Vigile writes "While the death of PC gaming might be exaggerated, it's hard not to see the issues gamers have with the platform. A genre that used to dominate innovation in the field now requires a $1200 piece of graphics technology just to participate, and that's just plain bad for the consumer. NVIDIA's SLI technology was supposed to get a boost today by going from two GPUs to four GPUs with the introduction of Quad SLI but both PC Perspective and HardOCP seem to think that NVIDIA drastically missed the mark by pushing an incredibly expensive upgrade that really does nothing for real-world game play and performance. If PC gamers are left with these options to save them from consoles, do they even have a chance?"

Oh please

You hardly need to spend $1200 to save your rig from the years-old consoles. Quad SLI is nvidia's top offering, not entry level PC gaming. A $200 card (and a $300 core 2 duo) can easily trounce anything the xbox 360 or ps3 can do.

Re:Oh please

Indeed, the death of the PC as a gaming platform is the new "year of desktop linux" prophecy around here.

Re:Oh please

The pc gaming and console gaming crowds are quite often the same people, which a lot of these doomsayers miss.

I do get the impression from high street games shops that consoles are the new wave. Pc games are mostly relegated to a few shelves, or one small section.

This actually shows something entirely different from that which is apparent at first glance.

The old way of games purchasing is dying out at a rapid rate for pc gamers. We don't need to go into shops, we have steam, or play.com, or amazon, to name but a few online locations. Most polls that talk of reduced pc game sales aren't taking these online sources into account. It's been several years since I bought a game in a shop, a bargain bin copy of Rise of the Middle Kingdom.

Console gamers have online shopping systems, but those are very much first generation, and in my opinion, not that good. Give it a few years of work and we might start to see high street console game purchasing dropping. What will they say is the new thing then? Mobile phone games probably.

Re:Oh please

The old way of games purchasing is dying out at a rapid rate for pc gamers. We don't need to go into shops, we have steam, or play.com, or amazon, to name but a few online locations. Most polls that talk of reduced pc game sales aren't taking these online sources into account. It's been several years since I bought a game in a shop, a bargain bin copy of Rise of the Middle Kingdom.

I think the biggest reason is for the most part PC gamers know what they want already. Console gamers see some pretty screenshots and art on the box and think hey, this Orange Box looks like a good deal.

PC gamers played TF back in 1998 and have been waiting for tf2 ever since, only to pre-order orangebox once it was available on steam and start playing the beta a month early.

Due to mod-ability and better multiplayer, PC games seem to last longer so you're more inclined to stick to the one you know and ride it out longer, whereas on consoles you're stuck taking more risks on whatever is available because you beat all that there is to beat on the game you have.

Re:Oh please

Yeah, this is among the most ridiculous things I've heard on here. Quad SLi is for the consumer just like a super computer is for the consumer. NVidia puts this sort of thing out to maintain its reputation as top dog in the graphics arena and to offer specialized niche users (read people that spend their entire day doing 3d modeling of some sort) an extra boost. This obviously isn't intended for average consumers when the motherboard you have to buy to support Quad SLi costs about half as much Joe Schmoe even wants to spend on his eMachine (not to mention the power supply and the cards themselves.)

Re:Oh please

You hardly need to spend $1200 to save your rig from the years-old consoles. Quad SLI is nvidia's top offering, not entry level PC gaming. A $200 card (and a $300 core 2 duo) can easily trounce anything the xbox 360 or ps3 can do.

And PC game developers are silly to make anything like that a requirement to even play their game at a decent level.

After all, if they concentrate on only the high-end market, their customer base will be quite small. And unfortunately, the higher end the market, the greater likelihood of piracy. As explained in an article about videogame piracy [slashdot.org], if you develop for the largest market, then you can ignore the pirates.

After all, once you've shelled out $1200 for a kickass card, you want something to run on it. Yet, you don't want to pay the $60 for a game you'll use as a tech demo, so you'll probably pirate it, go "wow, nice graphics", and that's it.

Go after the people with requirements that an Intel GMA950 can fulfill (basically every machine dating back a few years), and you'll sell a lot of copies, and if it gets pirated up the wazoo, well, don't worry about it. (Also, don't try to sell to markets filled with pirates - e.g., China - why spend all the money translating when you won't make it back. Let the pirates do it for you!).

Sort of how the Nintendo Wii is doing so well - they don't cater for the traditional gaming crowd too much (they do, but Nintendo doesn't focus there), but instead on the non-gamers. The Wii can't compete against the PS3 or Xbox360, so it doesn't. It goes after a bigger market segment of non-gamers. Which is probably why "casual gaming" type games are skyrocketing - non-gamers can play, even their 5-year-old work PC can run it decently, etc.

Re:How many players per PC?

How many PCs do you have to buy for four players? A console can accommodate more than one player per machine, either by splitting the screen (e.g. Goldeneye) or by using non-first-person game designs that put all players on the same view (e.g. Bomberman). This works in part because unlike most PCs, consoles come with instructions to connect them to a 24-inch or bigger TV monitor.

A PC can accommodate more than one palyer, too, if the game is designed for it. Most PCs come with at LEAST four to six USB ports and console-style controllers are not expensive at all. You can also hook your computer up to a TV too, especially with newer TVs that have compatible inputs.

And while you can get console-type controllers for your PC, not all consoles adequately support a full keyboard and mouse. Arguably a keyboard and mouse provide much better, or at least more flexible, controls in certain situations.

There's a reason consoles have been becoming more like PCs, rather than gaming PCs becoming more like consoles.
=Smidge=

Fishy

There's something very fishy about the graphics card market. Using a substantially faster video card in a PC doesn't provide nearly the performance of a slower spec'd console. The console isn't burdened by nearly as much overhead, but that should not affect the GPU noticably. The only factor that I can see in play is that games can be better optimized when the developers know exactly what hardware will be used (as is the case with consoles), but surely having twice the power should be enough to negate that.

Re:Fishy

Actually, most console versions of PC games have watered down poly counts and lower resolution textures. They've been able to get away with sub par graphics for years because standard def TV is only 640x480 at 24 FPS. Compare that to people running PC games on wide screens at 2048x1024 and pushing 60+fps.

As HD TV penetration rises, consoles will have to package more hardware to push the same picture quality. And thus the reason why we're seeing console going for $400-600 instead of $100-200.

-Rick

Re:Fishy

The 360 and PS3 are a bit slower with a little lower settings than my 18-month old mid price PC. The PC was a $500 upgrade of my 4 year old system (which was in turn a $500 upgrade of my 6 year old system, etc), and is about 1/2 the speed it would be if I spent $180 to put in an 8800GT. On my PC, Oblivion has 16x more pixels in each texture than on my 360 and PS3, draw distance is much higher than on my 360 or PS3, resolution is 1600x1200 (vs 720p or 1080p on the consoles, I'm not sure which mode they render in Oblivion), and I'm forcing AA and HDR to be on. The framerates are about the same between the systems, with a slight edge going to my PC, especially outside.

I alternate between the three systems. I'm currently in a 360 kick, and honestly when I'm console gaming it's almost always 360, but I'm sure I'll swing back to the PC within a few weeks now that I have it set up to output to my 52" LCD. PC Gamers with high end systems will always have a graphical advantage over consoles and midrange systems will have the advantage through 3/4 of the console product cycle. The important difference to me isn't graphics; it's games. Mass Effect was the original game that started my recent console binge, and then I played a bunch of rather low quality but still fun games like Halo 3 and Gears of War and then a lot of Oblivion on each system, just to compare them. Good PC games tend to beat good console games for quality of writing and nuance of gameplay, but at least half the time I just want a popcorn blockbuster game where I sit back and watch 1-dimensional characters do something simple. I'd hate to give up either type of gaming permanently.

Re:Little Nit to pick

The persistence of vision is 1/20th of a second. But that's ONLY vision. If you don't render faster on an interactive system, your control inputs will lag, because we compensate for the "slow" vision by being able to predict movements according to the rules that are set out. How else could a pitcher catch a ball hit directly back at him? Point is, there IS a very valid reason on games to do faster than 20fps. On movies, not quite so much, but anything interactive definitely so.

Re:Fishy

While NTSC technically does render 525 scanlines, only about 486* of them may actually be visible - the rest are used for the vertical blanking interval (which includes stuff like closed captioning), and some of the "visible" ones might get covered up by the frame around an old TV's CRT; thus, the vertical resolution is really only 480. Horizontal resolution, however, is somewhat indeterminate - I've seen numerous values, including 640, 704, and 720.

(* - this is the number Wikipedia quotes, and it mostly agrees with numbers I've seen elsewhere)

Re:Fishy

Using a substantially faster video card in a PC doesn't provide nearly the performance of a slower spec'd console. The console isn't burdened by nearly as much overhead, but that should not affect the GPU noticably.

Like pixels?

The XBox360 (which I own and love too), sortakinda does 720p. That's 1280x720. I say sortakinda because checking framebuffers on launch titles revealed some of them weren't even managing that... They were rendering fairly significantly lower resolutions and then upscaling to fill 720p in order to keep their framerates up.

Compare that to a $200 8800GT that laughs at 1280x720 for most games. Sure, there are some games with graphical effects WAY beyond anything I get on my console... but I can switch it down to console levels and play at full 1080p and beyond (I play most games at 1920x1200 on a 24" widescreen with the vast majority of settings maxed out).

Now it's true... An optimized system will always out perform a generalized one with identical parts when asked to perform identical tasks.

However, consoles also have absolutely zero room for upgrading over their five to ten year life cycles whilst PCs sit there benefiting from Moore's Law.

At launch, high end PCs usually match the console but for significantly more money. A year later, mid range PCs match the console for more money. A year after that, low end PCs tend to match the console for hardly anything more. From there on out, the only real arguments in favor of console performance come from comparing frame rates between a low resolution console with no AA (Forza, I'm looking at you) and a PC at dramatically higher resolutions, AA and AF maxed and a whole bunch of cool new graphical tweaks that aren't even an option on the optimized console version.

Both paths are equally valid. The PC, by going generic, has the ability to keep up with Moore's law and not wait on five plus year release cycles. Consoles, by going heavily optimized, can get the best bang for the buck at launch, translating in to greater profits for the makers/lower prices over time, and providing a single environment for games to be optimized for.

The bigger issue, however, is more likely how easy it is to download NOCD hacks, etc. for the PC and have one set of disks passed around a whole group of friends. Console gamers tend to need mod chips and, with Microsoft and Sony controlling the keys to the kingdom, can screw you the moment you go online and get the next forced patch. Game companies factor that in and would rather sell 2-5m units at $60 of Halo 17 with 3-6m turning up with copies etc. than sell 500,000 copies of Doom 18, at $30 a piece after Best Buy slashes prices, with 5-10m copies out there.

As a hardware medium, they're simply different choices. One gets more rewards up front, one pays them out over time. As a business medium for game makers, Microsoft and Sony tightly holding the keys to going on line makes consoles a FAR better investment.

More to games than graphics

This is a very narrow view of gaming. There is more to success than graphics. Themes, genres, plot, interface and repeat playing all affect how popular a game can be. While most of these points are available on any platform the PC still has an edge on interface. Keyboards, mice and flightsticks all offer a more advance UI than thumb levers.

What?

What on earth has Quad-SLI got to do with 'saving us from consoles' ?

You don't even need a single top-end card to provide an alternative to a console, let alone *four* top-end cards.

Requires? I think not.

As someone still quite enjoying PC gaming, I've got to take issue with "now requires a $1200 piece of graphics technology just to participate". You can play modern games on some very inexpensive hardware just fine. Yes, you *can* spend $1200 on graphics alone, easily, but the vast majority of us, I think, realize the futility of it.

Tech like quad-SLI is there for people with more money than sense, or at least more money than they know what to do with- and at that point, fine, if they want to spend that money and basically support the graphics companies' development costs, let them. The rest of us can continue as we have, working with normally-priced hardware that does everything we need it to. No, we can't play the latest games at 200 FPS on a 30" monitor with everything turned on- but then again, most of us don't even *have* 30" monitors, so... who cares?

Really? What has this become the 'People' of IT?

1200 dollar card to participate? IS the poster really that stupid?
I have a 150 dollar card I bout 2 years ago and it runs everything pretty damn well.

Don't let PC gaming die

No matter how much cheaper and prettier consoles get, they still won't be fully fledged computers that you can do with as you will.

With only consoles as viable games platforms, the modding scene will essentially die. Seeing as this is the primary source of independent games these days, then expect the standard of games to plummet as publishers have no real incentive to produce quality.

Furthermore, console makers have this tendency to lock you into their proprietary games networks, and unlike the PC it is not possible to get around this.

Clearly it's the end of PC gaming!

Someone released hardware that has yet to be taken advantage of! It must be the death of PC gaming forever! No successful industry has ever released a single product that flopped because it was before its time! clearly the failure of a single Nvidia product to deliver massive speed boosts to games that weren't made with it in mind, spells the doom of not only PC games, but the PC itself.

Misleading article

You don't need to spend 1200 dollars to be competitive.

9600 GTs went on sale for 130 bucks recently and they can play crysis at a modest detail level.

A decent gaming machine isn't expensive nowadays:

$100 processor
$100 mobo
$50 case
$150-200 videocard
$70 RAM
$50 PS

Bam you got yourself a gaming rig.

~600 bucks and that's not including the corners you can cut with upgrading.

This isn't the problem with PC's

I have to call B.S. on the article summary. The problem with PC's and gaming aren't because of these ridiculous high end graphics cards. Those are for the morons (like me) who like spend 3x the money to get a 20% boost increase. It has always been like this. I can't think of any games that require cards like these. If there are, the creators of that game are pretty dumb if they want it to sell. The real problem is the crappy Intel graphics cards that are put into many of the mainstream store-bought computers. The people who buy those computers will get screwed in terms of what games they can play. I think it's silly to say that the high-end graphics card is problem. That's like saying "Microsoft just released a new, more powerful, XBox-Super-Elite 360 for twice the cost, but it only adds 10% more detail to all your games. The original 360 is doomed!" No, stupid, you just keeping playing your games on your regular 360 and don't buy something you don't need.

Office computers

The peak of PC (& mac) gaming was the early 90s. Games like tetris, civilization, sim city, lemmings, kings quest, red baron, played fine on standard issue office computers, and the platform was targeted at adults rather than the under 25 crowd. At what point in the 80s did Apple IIs stop getting ports? Since grownups outside a dedicated fanbase generally do not care about the next iteration of graphics and twitch style play, this meant that games had to use either innovative gameplay, storyline, or compelling simulation to compete.

It was also wonderful that games had small enough budgets and man hours of development that games could be signed by individual creators. Virtually nothing made by committee is as interesting as the enthusiastic work of a dedicated artist.

All the "are video games art?" questions amuse me. Because the answer is: they used to be, now they're straight Hollywood, with opening weekends and everything, and if that qualifies as art or not really depends on individual taste. But they aren't terribly compelling art as storytelling mediums (Chrono Trigger is the only non-adventure story game I've ever played that might make a decent non-licensed-property paperback) and they don't match film for visual spectacle. Interactivity is the fundamental nature of the art. Tetris is ten times the work of art that Final Fantasy is.

While I'm complaining: what's with the totally jockish attitude toward games. I have so little interest in proving my skill against testosterone drive 15 year olds, I can't even begin to describe it. Competitive online content, which is seeing the most energy and creativity on both PCs AND consoles, is a turn-off to most people.

Rhythm games are interesting because much like adventure games, they have a basic interaction model that is dirt simple, but they appeal based on the surrounding context. If you'd told me at the time that Parappa the Rappa was one of the most important games ever made, possibly more so than Street Fighter II, I'd have thought you were nuts.

There's a lot of innovation on the PC these days though. It's all in Flash. If you haven't played Desktop Tower Defense, you're way missing out (say goodbye to your productive time and sleep schedule though, 100 level challenge is basically impossible but you just keep wanting to try). I'd relearn actionscript (haven't played with it since Flash 4) to make some games if I wasn't very well aware that any good game takes hundreds of hours to write and under the hood if you aren't using complicated physics or AI it isn't very interesting programming. I'd rather invent a language or fork Minix or something.

On the other hand, MMORPGs are very interesting. Though I worry that WoW defined the success model too well and experimentation is going to fall off (given the huge investment it takes to launch an MMORPG this isn't so much a worry as a certainty).

Back to the main topic: it's no accident at all that WoW runs playably well on 8 year old graphics cards. Games that require specced out systems have a bright neon sign that says "hobbyists only." If you want a game that crosses over, make it run on whatever piece of crap integrated graphics they put in $500 laptops these days. Hell make it run on OLPC. Graphics can scale down much farther than the currently do, and most people don't mind. Most games could be reduced to Halflife 1 level graphics and still convey the important ingame objects and map features. One thing that I'm constantly bewildered by is that designers use all these polygons not to populate worlds with more interactive objects, but to dress up the same low moving object count we've had since Quake 1. Halo would play perfectly well with 500 polygon characters.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because 1991 era action puzzle games were the last genre I was any good at. I beat Oh No More Lemmings! as a 10 year old, a fact that I'm still damn proud of.

But don't worry, PC gaming isn't anywhere near as dead as arcade games.

Beaten by Radeon

Beaten by ATI Radeon: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce9800-gx2.html [xbitlabs.com]

"If you have a 30-inch monitor that supports 2560x1600 resolution, then your choice is clear: ATI 4-way CrossFireX
outperforms the similar solution from Nvidia or runs at comparable speed offering acceptable gaming performance
in such titles as Battlefield 2142, BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and ompany
of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI platform, however, leads in Call of Duty 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of
Chernobyl and Tomb Raider: Legend. In other games, both quad-GPU configurations either work incorrectly or
cannot provide acceptable performance in 2560x1600 resolution.

So, the total score would be 5:3 in favor of AMD/ATI that offer better compatibility, scalability and fewer technical
issues for the users."

___

So, beaten by Quad Radeon in some games.

However, anyone willing to bet on the Linux 3D performance on Radeon? I'm not...

Re:$1200? Why not just go outside then..

The trouble is, in "real life", you don't respawn when you get shot.

Re:Consoles always been cheaper

Consoles have always been cheaper than PCs

That statement is invalid. The PS3 cost Sony ~$850.00 to make and was intentionally sold at a loss. Had they sold the system at a profit, the price to consumers would have been have been close to a grand(likely more). Consumers would have had a fit if they had to pay "PC" prices for a console, even if this device is essentially a proprietary "PC" with a more traditional console controller.

For the nay-sayers who think PC gaming is dead...
Maybe I'm missing the picture here but given the inner workings of both the XBox and the PS3, their PC-like peripherals (sans mouse), their network-ability and the mod-ability of both into Linux systems, I would argue that console gaming is dead. The only problem with that argument is that the Wii (as the only real console left) is doing pretty damned well.

On a side note, even Apple has realized the benefits of being more PC.

I'd say the PC is doing fine, 1200 dollar video cards and all.