nVidia Wants Everyone to Know : GPU > CPU

nVidia is flyin' high these days: 790i and Quad-SLI were recently launched, and the G92 cards are making a strong showing with the fastest single-GPU card, fastest multi-GPU card, and the fastest multi-card configurations. All of that only makes Jen-Hsun Huang hungrier, apparently. With ATI pretty well trounced (which was more Ruiz's doing than Huang's), it looks like the only way for nVidia to get more marketshare is to start grabbing it from Intel. The first shot has been fired: The Optimized PC Initiative (cue foreboding music).

[killer_trap]

i always thought that was the case. now I'm no computer expert but thats one thing that really bugged me with the ps3 design. why release a system a year later with a GPU that isn't much better than whatever the 360 one is called? i know the cell does a lot of the work the GPU does but wouldn't it be much easier of sony had a better GPU instead?

[Horny Melon]

What everyone seems to forget was that when Sony first started talking about the CELL it was suppose to be the only chip in the system. There initially wasn't suppose to be a graphics chip. They touted the cell as a floating points and physics monster also capable of rendering graphics. At some point this fell to the way side and they introduced a graphics chip. The RSX doesn't do all the graphics workload itself the cell processor is able to assist, heavily. At one point sony was parading around figures that showed what the cell was capable of and what the cell and RSX together were capable of. At the time, 2004, the numbers were crazy.

As for the graphics card being more important than CPU, I've known this forever. The last time I built a gaming computer from the ground up was 2001. I bought the most advanced motherboard and a 2nd tier proccessor I could find at the time. I only had 512mb of ram and a top of the line geforce 4. By just upgrading the ram to 3gig, the graphics card, and over clocking. I was still able to play most games at good settings two falls ago. Then a fan crapped out when I was at work and my g/f was on the computer. She didn't know and frrrrryyyyy. Really though I couldn't have taken it much farther AGP was holding me back. I can't remember what the graphics card was but it was one of the last good ones to come out for AGP.

My PC build strategy has always been: Top tier motherboard with onboard sound and network, scrimp on HDD size and Optical drive,cheap case that I cut ventilation holes in to add fans, 2nd tier processor, minimum ram for the times, and monster graphics card. Overclock as much as possible. I can usually undercut builds I see on the internet by about $250 and still get the same performance. I usually start throwing ram into it after a year.

[JsonHenry]

The video card in the Xbox is actually more advanced tech than what is in the PS3 (as far as the GPU goes).

The video card in the PS3 was a refresh and a generation old before the PS3 ever hit store shelves. But at the time it was certainly nothing short of powerful.

By todays standards in the PC world (since the video card is cut and paste from the PC industry into the PS3) the video card is ancient.