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GeforceFX (vs. Radeon 9700 Pro) Benchmarks
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Looks like they guys at Maximum PC got lucky -- they scored the first ever GeforceFX benchmarks via an Alienware prototype machine. Two 'marks to notice: The Geforce FX scored 209 FPS in Quake 3 (1600x1200x32) and 41fps in 3dMark Game4 demo, while the Radeon 9700 Pro attained only 147fps in Quake 3 yet came back with 45fps in the 3dMark test. It seems that the GeforceFX is the clear leader in pure processing power, but in memory bandwidth the 9700 Pro is still king."
ATI has had some notoriously bad drivers that should not have shipped though... (ask some early owners of the various AIW cards...)
I'm willing to bet that there's another 20-30% in the FX due to driver tuning. nVidia typically releases a new product, then, after about two to three months, releases a driver that actually makes the card fast.
Plus, if this is the first of the GigaPixel cores, then there should definitely be more in it, and the fact that it's down on memory B/W shouldn't make much of a difference.
Aside from all the other things being mentioned here, another thing to take into account is motion blur. When you watch a movie at 24 fps, or television at 30 fps, motion blur makes sure you don't miss anything between frames. If the action is moving fast enough, it will appear as a blur in a single frame, so you're not missing anything "between" frames. Not so in a videogame. In a videogame, if the action is moving too fast there will be "gaps". So even though, technically the eye can't see anything above a certain frame rate, you can't really directly compare television or movies to video games as far as framerate is concerned.
This is total bullshit. Why was this idiot modded up? Because his username is X-BOX LIVE DEV TEAM? Nvidia drivers from beta to final have had *dramatic* speed improvements in the past.
Most major manufacturers (Hp, Compaq, IBM, Gateway...) use S3, SiS, Trident, and other cheap video cards and NOT ATI/Nvidia for their base and average PC's. Only the more mid-level to high-end machines have NVidia/ATI cards in them. I've seen some new Pc's with Geforce2's but there it's is not the mainstream shipping card by any means.
You are neglecting several other key brands of cards which are used in some cases way more then NVidia / ATI. Matrox for instance is used primarily for Digital Editing, and general 2D Graphics work because of it's fabulous image quality. 3D Labs makes great 3D CAD/Imaging (as in Production Rendering) cards which give all sorts of shader/gl extension benefits not scene on regular cards. Evans and Sutherland make good Cad cards. SGI makes good rendering cards, same as Sun.
Nvidia and ATI are good gaming cards, but they are not the only manufacturers of video cards. Their cards are built for gaming. They may work your latest pirated copy of 3d studio max/maya/animation master/lightwave/truespace, but it doesn't mean it's good at it. Far from it actually.
Early doesn't come into it... I've got a Radeon 8500DV. Even the current set of drivers and software is buggy. (snif)
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
In all seriousness... In Quake 3, the physics model is tied to your framerate (i.e. a new snapshot of the "world" is computed at each frame). It is well known among avid quakers that the physics is different for different framerate, and that there is an optimum at 125 FPS. This has nothing to do with the visuals. You can go faster and jump higher when getting 125 FPS. In one-player mode, it is possible to separate world snapshots and visual frames, but not in multi-player mode. So most gamers will in some ways try to achieve above 125 FPS and then cap it (using the com_maxfps in-game variable) to 125 FPS. It is then important that the card do above 125 FPS in all maps, all occasions (moreover in heavy battles involving many models and thus many polygons).
I can't talk for other games, but since the Q3 engine is widely used, that may be the case for some of them too. That partly explains the "need" for high-FPS.
So even if the GeForce FX is a bit slower for some things, those games that are using full DX9/OpenGL features will get better looking graphics thanks to the increased hardware precision. People using 3D programs like Maya with the Cg plugin will notice the biggest difference especially IMO. And at this point, NVidia's shaders are far better geared to the professional 3D graphics industry than ATi's *current* offering. This might encourage many developers to take advantage of extra GeForce FX features instead of ATi features.
(Source URL for Quote:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/areyouready
I have to agree; I like the look of ATI's 16x oversampling along edges better than 4xFSAA in general. ATI's rendering just looks better to me.
I can still tell which arcade machines use 3dfx-derived/built chips; the graphics just look different. I want my games to look amazing; what good is moving grass if its pixelated??
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The page you linked to says that AMD _have_ lost the CPU war. (Although it took my an hour to read it all heh)
HP and Compaq now only use Geforce 4 MX 420/440/460s on their higher end machines (HP 763N, 863N, 873N, 883N, Compaq 6370US).
The rest of them use either Intel Extreme Graphics (which are ok (HP 753N, Compaq 6350US)) or a lower grade intel card. They also use cards like the S3 ProSavage (HP 523N, Compaq 6320US)).
Sony uses crap S3 (or is it SiS?) video cards in all of their desktop computers. Which is disappointing. For their laptops they use mainly ATI Radeon derivatives.
Suprisingly, you are much more likely to find an ATI or nVidia card on a HP/Compaq/Toshiba laptop than a desktop, probably because their is still some profit margin left in laptop computers (unlike desktops). Compaq's mid-range 1500 series is all ATI Mobility Radeons, as is HP's mid-range 4000 series and high-end 5000 series. Toshiba's base 1410 series uses Geforce 4 420 Go chipsets, their mid-range 1900 series uses the 440, and their high-end 5200 series uses the 460.
And yes... in case your wondering, I do currently sell computers =)
Casual Games/Downloads
I'm the author of the story you're talking about, and I generally don't respond to criticism like this, but I think it's important to here.
We looked at this board during the second week in December. It was a very early board, and simply didn't run a large number of applications. The situation is a pretty common one for print pubs. Since we have a lead time that ranges from 2-6 weeks between the time we write stuff and the time that magazines get to readers, we occasionally take a look at preview hardware with special terms negotiated with the the vendors in advance. Unlike some other mags, we ALWAYS make it abundantly clear that this is a preview, not a full review. Furthermore, we always make it clear when a vendor specified we run specific benchmarks in these previews. Naturally, in our full reviews, we run whatever benchmarks we please at whatever resolution we like.
Anyway, Alienware wanted nVidia to get this sample in time for our preview story, but the drivers were very raw. In order to make our deadline and get an early look at the board, we agreed to only run a small subset of benchmarks, with a big huge disclaimer that said "Hey, nVidia would only let us run these benchmarks", which we did.
A nVidia rep hand-delivered the board up the same day that the Alienware system arrived, watched me install it, installed the drivers, watched me set up and run the benchmarks, then pulled the card, obliterated the drivers and went on their way. After that, we restored the pre-nVidia hard drive image and benchmarked the Radeon 9700 in the exact same machine.
We don't run other people's benchmarks in Maximum PC. If you see a number on the website or in the magazine, it was run by a staff member in our lab. Period.
I can't understand why you'd think this is a positive thing for nVidia. The overall tone of the story was that the performance is a little weak for something that will cost an arm and a leg, and take up two PCI slots. Heck, it doesn't even beat the 6 month old Radeon 9700 in the programmable shader test, which is the only one that really matters in my eyes. I don't care about 30 more fps in Quake 3. I want a card that will be fast in programmable shader games later this year, and the GeForce FX doesn't appear to be that.
Will Smith