Conclusion
What’s the take-away? Generally speaking, if you’ve got a piece of software that takes decent advantage of CUDA, you’ll realize a strong degree of performance scaling by stepping up in the number of stream processors. There are some mysterious exceptions, as we saw with Super LoiLoScope, but the norm looks more like Badaboom. In situations like the 9600 GT vs. 9800 GTX, where only $20 separates double the number of stream processors, you’d need to get your head checked if you took the lower-end option.
There’s no question that CUDA delivers, even near the bottom of the price band. It would be interesting to circle back and see if similar results spring from Nvidia’s mobile GPU products (or even the recently-released Ion platform), but I suspect this would be so.
AMD now has a grave challenge at its feet. With the next batch of ATI Stream drivers due out soon, can the red team deliver similar or better GPGPU improvements across all price groups? We know that the emphasis in its upcoming release is on improving the image quality of its transcoder software rather than scaling performance. At the same time, we also know that the company is planning on showcasing its own batch of third-party partners who've taken advantage of its architecture.
One thing is certain: this performance exploration is merely the tip of an iceberg. Within the next couple of weeks, you can expect a follow-up with numbers from the other team. We can't wait to see how this plays out. And regardless of which hardware architecture is faster, it's clear that enthusiasts (mainstream and hardcore) are going to be the biggest winners here.
Latest Graphics Cards News
- 20/05 – Qualcomm Hires Former AMD CTO Demers
- 18/05 – Nvidia Responds to GeForce 600 Series V-Sync Stuttering Issue
- 18/05 – Behold: Here Are The First Unreal Engine 4 Screens
- 17/05 – Nvidia Debuts GK110-based 7.1 Billion Transistor Super GPU
- 17/05 – GE Announces Kepler Graphics Card for Military and Aviation
Latest Graphics Cards reviews
- 18/05 – Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: May 2012
- 10/05 – Best Graphics Cards For The Money: May 2012
- 10/05 – GeForce GTX 670 2 GB Review: Is It Already Time To Forget GTX...
- 09/05 – Video Teaser: Radeon HD 7800 Series Remains A Solid Value
- 08/05 – Benchmarking AMD's 768-Shader Pitcairn: Not For Public...
Good article. Very interesting. Pity you can't spell measuRing!
Great article!! I ran Seti@home on my GPU alone for quite a while. Although it is not a powerfull card in the slightest, a 8500GT, it still completed workunits faster than my CPU could (even more using the optimized apps). However, it has damaged my system as there are a few problems with running it. The heat generated from running the card processors at full all the time is a real pain. The fans on the lower end cards simply are not good enough to cool the cards, even if manually upping the fanspeed to 100% with RivaTuner. Secondly, if you allow it to use your GPU when you are using the computer, total utter graphic lagg even when reading webpages.
Overall, it is a good technology, still has a few bugs which need to be solved and also the lack of support for ATI cards fustrates me. I am an avid BOINC user, I crunch Rosetta@home on all of my CPU's however I now let the GPU's run idle because the problems it causes. I will probably re-enable GPU usage if I upgrade my card in the future.
Cuda will never be suported by ati,its a Nvidia thing.
Also an 8500gt is just not powerfull enough for cuda+multitasking a pc.IMO. Hell thats a under $50.00 gpu.
Lumpy, even an 8500 would be advantageous considering the speed hike..what's so bad about the CPU getting extra help from something that would otherwise just be displaying raster graphics or waiting for Crysis to fire up?
But look at AMD's platform solutions: highly integrated, highly efficient..can't say the same for Intel. I'd rather wait a bit longer for the software to be stable rather than use the GPGPU equivalent of an Intel GMA chipset trying to run GTA IV..
But look at AMD's platform solutions: highly integrated, highly efficient..can't say the same for Intel. I'd rather wait a bit longer for the software to be stable rather than use the GPGPU equivalent of an Intel GMA chipset trying to run GTA IV..
OpenCL is AMD's answer