Albatron 9800GX2 Pictures and AMD 780G Update (new)
by Gary Key on March 4, 2008 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
Albatron was kind enough to send a few pics of their upcoming 9800GX2-1GX video card. Unfortunately, we are still under NDA as to the actual specifications on the card but the power requirements and bracket configuration already tell quite a story.
AMD 780G Update -
We just received several retail 780G boards and started testing for our upcoming roundup in the next few days. In the meantime, AMD dropped the 8.3 Catalyst build on us today along with version 2 of the AOD utility, both of which will be released in the coming days. While the 8.3 Catalyst drivers have generated some headaches for us in early CrossFire X testing, their improvements have been dramatic in some areas for us during 780G testing today.
In fact, the improvements in Hybrid CrossFire compatibility, HD playback/image quality, HD and SD HQV testing, along with general bug fixes from the 8.47 RC driver releases has given us enough reasons to retest all of our applications on our 780G launch board from Gigabyte. So with that, we will start our coverage late today with the chipset introduction, followed by an in-depth analysis of video out-put quality and performance, and then wrapping up it all up with a mini-roundup (ASUS, Gigabyte, J&W, Biostar) of 780G boards with comparisons to the current NV and Intel chipsets.
Unfortunately, the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce 8200 will not be included for a couple of reasons, first, retail boards on not available yet, second, the drivers are still immature to the point of needing separate builds for either PQ or Performance. After several conversations with the motherboard suppliers, it appears the GF8200 should make its first appearance by the end of March in the retail channels, provided drivers are ready. Not bad for a chipset semi-released in January. ;-)
In the meantime, the AMD 780G boards should be showing up in volume this week for the Americas and European markets. While Gigabyte, ASUS, J&W, Biostar, and others will have boards "officially" ready this week, it appears we will not see retail boards from the likes of Foxconn, MSI, ASRock, and abit until later this month. However, we do have pictures of early boards we have been testing from Biostar and MSI below.
Update - Final 8.3 Catalyst driver testing is complete, first results later today.
MSI K9A2GM -
Biostar TA780GM2+
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Myrandex - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
That picture really looks like MSI's crappy 690G motherboard. I installed the Giga-byte 780G board into my system 2 weeks ago, and it is very nice! I would never return to that 690G piece of garbage in a motherboard form factor from MSI again unless they seriously tweaked their bios.FireTech - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
Thanks for the update Gary, certainly looking forward to your full reviews.MadBoris - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
I'm still underwhelmed that after 15 months the 9800GX2 is the best nvidia could come up with as generational successor to the 8800GTX.I wonder if video card performance increases will start to slow down due to, in part, lack of serious competition. Also the demand in PC gaming may just not be there due to consoles fixed HW requirements because todays and tomorrows multiplatform games will keep game requirements pretty static for a while. Obviously there is other improvements to make other than raw speed, which could be good for a change too.
fic2 - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
It looks like both of these boards still contain PS2 connectors. Does anybody around still use/have PS2 keyboards and mice? I certainly would have thought that everyone was using USB by now.mino - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Yes, many, many people do. And not there is nothing wrong with PS/2 beeing 30yrs old. Our typing speed has not improved anyway ;).Myself, after experiencing tens of problems with USB keyboards not comming up and so I have even reverted to PS/2 for my non-notebook kayboard/mouse combo. It just works. USB also works, usually ...
mino - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Yeah, should have read the mess after myself ...BTW, those tens of problems were on tens of different MB and chipset platforms ...
Not to mention a popular situation when Your server does not know Your USB keyboard yet, but to let it install the driver (automatically), You first have to skip some other driver installation dialog box which You are not able to skip as the keyboard does not work, of course ...
icthy - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
What are the DRM issues for the 780G? Will Linux users have a chance to uses these boards?smitty3268 - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
There's currently no crossfire support in linux. Obviously, though, the other functionality will work.http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am...">http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am...
mamisano - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Can't wait for these boards to finally be released. I have been holding off on building an HTPC so I can use one of these new boards!Any word on the DTX form factor and 780G boards being produced?
Fallen Kell - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Just wondering why in the world you are building a HTPC on an AMD based CPU at this point in time. Power/cooling savings? Seriously, I am just now rebuilding my HTPC to get off the AMD platform due to performance issues. But then again, I do have 4 tuners and will soon add HD as soon as Haupauge releases their HD component capture device in the next few weeks/months.