Has nVidia taken the crown??

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OTE

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So after reading the reviews out there I have come to the conclusion that were at a bit of a tie. nVidia wins once again in raw speed, but ATi is better in (IQ) AA and maybe AF, but they seem pretty close.

However I would still give the crown to ATi, when you buy a card like the 5800Ultra or 9700 you play with AA + AF. 2xAA is now pretty much 'free' and 4x AA still kills the cards a bit in busy sceens etc. Therefore it would be sensible to assume that most gamers with either of these cards would play at 2xAA+8/16 AF. the GFFX clear doesnt do 2xAA as well as the 9700Pro, hense my previous conclusion.

I know the card is still on beta drivers, but i doubt nVidia will be able to pull much more out of the hat.

just my $0.02 :D
 
Well drivers could have course be the key... the detonators and catalysts of the past have claimed to do wonderful things...

Compare the ATI 9700 Pro preliminary and standard performance for example, and the fact it wouldn't run properly for a while (so I am told)
 
yes they have 'claimed' to do amazing things. anyway im not sure wat you mean by 'it wouldn't run properly'. However if i recall there were similar artifact images in MOHAA similar to what the GFFX was doing in UT2003.
 
Originally posted by OTE
So after reading the reviews out there I have come to the conclusion that were at a bit of a tie. nVidia wins once again in raw speed, but ATi is better in (IQ) AA and maybe AF, but they seem pretty close.

However I would still give the crown to ATi, when you buy a card like the 5800Ultra or 9700 you play with AA + AF. 2xAA is now pretty much 'free' and 4x AA still kills the cards a bit in busy sceens etc. Therefore it would be sensible to assume that most gamers with either of these cards would play at 2xAA+8/16 AF. the GFFX clear doesnt do 2xAA as well as the 9700Pro, hense my previous conclusion.

I know the card is still on beta drivers, but i doubt nVidia will be able to pull much more out of the hat.

just my $0.02 :D

the one thing nvidia does have going for it is that it taped out on the 0.13 micron process earlier than ati... and has higher clocks than ati...

thats about it...

2xAA is not even any big deal now... 4xaa is what people play @... nvidia was trying to get benchies based on the 2xAA platform instead of higher me thinks... for good reason...

btw am not sure if the gf FX goes to 16x AF... ati has better support...

the battle for frame rates was not expected to be matched by the 9700pro... just the IQ and fps when LOD was increased... but clearer the architecture is FAR superior to what was expected..

the drivers will help but the minimum frame rates are PITIFUL...

people slammed the 9700 pro for minimum frames... but the gf FX has less than half the minimum frames in some cases...

not acceptable... and certainly something that will be addressed in the next high end nv3x iteration
 
well, actually I think ATi made a good decision waiting for nVidia to tape out on the smaller process, ATi can learn from all the mistakes, and make their smaller process GPU more cheaply, faster, and more reliably. They can build with a well established technology instead of it being state of the art tech.

Considering how much headroom is actually left in the R300 core there isn't much to the clockspeed anyway, almost like the AMD and Intel wars. The memory bandwidth is very important and the ATi got a 256 Meg bus working first also... also releasing the R9700 when they did gives them more time to work on the die shrink.
 
yeah, ati made the right move at the right time with their 9700pro... and nvidia made the wrong move at the right time. their product just fell short. i'm not really sure why something that has taken so much of their time and hard work, has all these never-before-seen technologies, and creates amazing amount of heat (and noise) can fall so short??

so, it's safe to say nvidia was the leader of the pack just 6 months ago... but a good move on ati's part then a stumble on nvidia's part will change things up a bit. just hope nvidia can regain it's footing.
 
Even if the 9700Pro and the FX were released at the same time, I think ATI still has the crown. Considering FX's much higher clock and smaller fab process, you would think there would be a substantial lead. I don't think simply optimizing the driver will have enough of an effect to have this card pull ahead by a comfortable margin.

I think this must be nVidia's prototype card. To really gain the crown, they need to use the 256M bus, figure out a way to keep the thing cooler without resorting to monstrosity they are using now (no matter how neat it looks), and do some more optimizations and tweaking to the GPU. Do all this and keep the clocks where they are and they might have a winner. But by then, ATI is sure to have something to compete with. GeforceFX2 anyone? :rolleyes:

If nVidia's cards get any bigger, they are going to have to include a seperate case and PS to house and power them. I thought GF4 was big! I can see it now: serial AGP cable from the system motherboard to another "video" box sitting underneath the PC tower. :)
 
Originally posted by Electronic Punk
Well drivers could have course be the key... the detonators and catalysts of the past have claimed to do wonderful things...

Compare the ATI 9700 Pro preliminary and standard performance for example, and the fact it wouldn't run properly for a while (so I am told)

take it u never read te links i posted for u :)
 
I prefer unbiased opinions ;)

I have had bad experiences with my last ati card, but hey that was 1996 and all graphics cards were frankly ****e.

I do like the fact that ati have released an 9700 pro and you know where you stand. There isn't an 9700e Pro or 9700 Super Pro 9700 MX (bleh)

nvidia seem to like confusing people more. I may have an nvidia card but am not an nvidiot... ( which in itself is offensive to nvidia users, whearas fanATIc, isn't)... ho hum, may not buy a video card in april after all, may get a secseh phone instead, will have to see what the market is like at that stage.
 
Crown for what

If its graphics cards then NO, the is no chance that I will buy a GF FX, but I am glad they are out now as other card prices will fall.

If its for Dust Busters, Lawn Blowers then yes, the GF FX is a pure winner there.
 
I don't really care how well it will perform with better drivers. That bloated jet turbine isn't gonna come near my computer! If they don't do anything about that I'm afraid it's ATI for me...

(I almost said "The card is good but the fan sucks", but that was too bad a joke. :D)
 
all i can say is $400!!! crazy. the performance didnt impressed me that much
 
Originally posted by Electronic Punk
I prefer unbiased opinions ;)

I have had bad experiences with my last ati card, but hey that was 1996 and all graphics cards were frankly ****e.

I do like the fact that ati have released an 9700 pro and you know where you stand. There isn't an 9700e Pro or 9700 Super Pro 9700 MX (bleh)

nvidia seem to like confusing people more. I may have an nvidia card but am not an nvidiot... ( which in itself is offensive to nvidia users, whearas fanATIc, isn't)... ho hum, may not buy a video card in april after all, may get a secseh phone instead, will have to see what the market is like at that stage.

:)

I posted 2 links for you... both from the same reviewer for consistency and all you can say is you like unbiased opinions?

come on... the first review was WHOLY skewed towards nvidia... every other sentence... the nv30 will be coming... the nv30 will do this... the nv30 will do that...

the reason being nvidia was directly interacting with many a site and giving them the same bs info... such as 8x2 architecture? come on...

even now if you read the pdf documents that ati has on the gf FX you will be shocked to see how much crud there really is in there...

I do not hate nvidia as a company.. and I have said that many many a time... its their marketing that I can't stand...

just look @ the nforce2... a very fine product and it stands by itself... no massive bs pr campaign or anything... it does what its supposed to do... eliminating bottlenecks and what not in the memory bandwidth and thereby providing better performance than some of the other solutions... and agp8x works perfectly on them...

but the MASSIVE bs campaign surrounding the gf FX means that few people who read the online reviews are going to be taking stock of the PR when it comes out next... waiting instead for the actions to speak for themselves..

btw fossil... the card is priced @ 399 dollars because it is a high end component with performance on a par/better/worse than the 9700pro in most tests... the 9700pro RETAIL price is 399 USD (probably will drop when gf FX hits the market)... why should the gf FX ultra be priced any different?

and would you say the same thing if you compared the video card with anything else on the market except the 9700/9700pro cards ?

the gf FX in itself is STILL a good card... its just not as fabulous as nvidia and nvidia fanboys said it was...
 
If you remember when the Geforce 3 came out Nvidia released drivers for it that increased performance 30% (which was relative) I wouldn't put it past them.
 
Yeah but they cant release drivers to make the card sound less like a jet engine.

I heard McDonnal-Douglas are planning to use GF FX cards for their new SuperSonic airliners as they can use 2 of them instead of the normal 4 engines.
 
Originally posted by Geffy
Yeah but they cant release drivers to make the card sound less like a jet engine.

I heard McDonnal-Douglas are planning to use GF FX cards for their new SuperSonic airliners as they can use 2 of them instead of the normal 4 engines.


LMFAOROTFL :D :D :D
 
i think that anandtech.com said it best in their conclusion. the card was brought out with soo much hype, and it fell flat is most benchmarks. they were not expecting a card that gave them 10% improvement sometimes, then lags benhind the rest. hopefully it is the driver set. one thing that i do not agree with nvidia is the clock speeds and the overclocker. what they are telling me is that " when your not running your games, you will run at a slower clock speed". i read on HardOCP that the core would revert back to the slow performance in the middle of the game when overclocked just a little. (nice failsafe though) but for something that was claimed to reach 20k in 3dmarks, this fell on its face.
 
Electronic Punk
The Godfather

wrote -

"I do like the fact that ati have released an 9700 pro and you know where you stand. There isn't an 9700e Pro or 9700 Super Pro 9700 MX (bleh) "

I know what you mean what the hell was that all about ($)
especially that MX crap not even a true Gf4!

Grym (and remembering dual Voodoo 2's running in Scan Line Interleave) blayd
 
Originally posted by Krux
If you remember when the Geforce 3 came out Nvidia released drivers for it that increased performance 30% (which was relative) I wouldn't put it past them.

most people expect around 10-20% overall performance improvements with more mature drivers BUT the problem therein is that the card is lagging in high LOD scenes @ high res with AA and FSAA by as much as 150%... it sure takes the lead in BASE images... but with anisotropic and anti-aliasing... you are looking @ big hits... when the IQ is @ the same level as that of the 9700pro...

I can't figure out WHY nvidia would drop their IQ when their marketing was based on making it the card that rendered the best looking cards out there...

sure the dawn demo looks nice but it is solely optimized for the gf FX... run any game with that kind of instructions load and boom... it will run @ a crawl... since it will not be optimized solely for nvidia's core...

its an unbalanced card... and its show very clearly in the benchmarks... it could have been great... heck I almost hoped it would be great... :(

but so goes life... now we wait for the nv31 and 34... (those who don't know what they are... look it up :) )
 
Actually, i think the fan idea is pretty good. if you think about it, why would you want a small fan on a card that is that fast if it doesn't cool the card down as much as possible? Look at older CPU's, they only really need a very small heatsink and a fan. now we have processors even from manufacturer's that have like a 2 inch deep heatsink and a somewhat large fan. even video cards are like that. you look at on-board video or VERY, VERY old 4 or 8 MB video cards that have absolutely no fan (unless you put a fan in your case to cool the whole thing down all together). now, 32 mb cards have fan's and they don't ALWAYS run too great depending on the manufacturer. All i'm really trying to say is that Why have that nice of a card, put too little cooling on it, ship it, then someone uses it and it fries cause of gettin too warm?
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
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