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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."
Competition like this kicks ass. The big players taking turns taking the lead. I only wish Matrox were making a larger effort than the Parhelia.
What I am surprised about though is that prices are so high for graphics cards still even with relatively good competition in the marketplace. I mean even the Parhelia debuted at like $400 didn't it?
It always seemed to be that the benefit of having AMD competing with Intel, was that I could get a really good CPU pretty cheap. (Though now it seems AMD is taking it easy for awhile, so that benefit may have been short-lived.) Yet I don't see the competition driving video card prices down.
There's some evil conspiracy afoot here, I know it!
3dMark 2001 is a guestimate on how fast things will work, its meant to torture your card and Game 4 (nature) is just that, the most punishing thing they could come up with.
But it is actual game performance that is important with most people, so while you may get better 3dmark scores, most people aren't running that a whole bunch to see those nifty graphics, they'd rather be running games.
Also, don't forget to mention that all these tests were run with 2xFSAA on.
And if you really twisted our arms, we'd bet money that it will be running on a 0.13-micron core and using 256-bit DDR II memory.
And if we grab your nuts and twist, you'll confirm this? And if we threaten to cut them off... I think you'll scream just about anything...
So let me guess, they know what's coming from ATI... But like they said, its not about bandwidth, its about GPU processing power, so how will a even bigger pipe that ATi isn't filling going to help....
Tournament Management Online &
Conversely, simply having a higher average fps number doesn't guarentee that the highs and lows will be better than the lower average fps.
There's nothing in that single number to say that the higher average fps doesn't suffer from a number of wildly varying large peaks and valleys in performance, while the lower number could be much more steady, with relatively low variance in the number across its peaks and valleys.
It only makes you wish that these benchmarks, especially the "real world" Quake 3 tests, had a graph of fps throughout the test to see how performance was at any particular point.
Which is why in the article they say that the drivers are beta and as such the results should be viewed as beta too.
Come on, read the article.
The reluctance of NVidia to allow them to test the higher levels of AA is more telling if you ask me.
jh
While humorous, once upon a time it did matter how fast you could scroll text, and cards would be benchmarked based on how fast they could do it in a window (doing it in a FS text session was a non-issue).
;)
I won a Number9 Imagine128 card at Comdex back in the early 90s... I distinctly remember being amazed since for the first time ever it was faster to scroll text in a window than it was full-screen.
Nowadays it's a total non-issue of course.
Oh, and I get far better FPS in Nethack. You're just a slow typist
So what they are saying is that even at a ridiculous resolution, either card is capable of a higher framerate than your monitor, and your eyes.
With frame-rate to spare, you can achieve really silky-smooth images by syncing with the monitor's refresh. This prevents those ugly redraw lines that can occur from the next frame being drawn right as the display refreshes. So, having a rate higher than your refresh can be useful.
Why bother.
Hey, why don't we test it with Quake1? Bet we can come close to 1000 fps.
And, yet, even with Q1 running at 1000 fps UT2k3 only runs at 140 fps. Wonder what something with even more complexity than that would run at... oh, look, there's a benchmark that only did 41 fps.
Or go look at CodeCult.com's Codecreatures, which does a lovely 6 fps on a 2.5 GHz P4 w/ Radeon 9700 at 1600x1200 anti-aliased and ansitropic filtering. And it still doesn't look real.
Until we have holographic imaging that's indistinguishable from reality the cards aren't there yet. If you don't need/want it, then fine, don't buy it. But whining that it's clearly beyond what's needed is, well, stupid.
Without the goodies on, even the Ti4600 can "outperform" the R9700.
Hard to imagine a 'serious review' site would neglect to test these features. I don't give a crap about 400 average FPS in quake, but I do care if it drops to 14 with all the enhancements turned on. But then they were trying to make the GeForceFX look like it's leaps and bounds better.
I'd imagine it's still the case - the 9700 is still the bandwidth king. Personally, I don't care about faster (when its already faster than my monitor can display and brain can process). My next upgrade will be motivated because it will look better.
The GeforceFX isn't something thats going to leave the 9700 in the dust - it's something that should have come out 6 months ago to compete head-to-head with ATI.
At any rate, after putting together a couple of cheap flex-atx pcs with onboard S4s (shared memory - Shuttle FV25 in case anyone cares), I'm surprised at how little GPU horsepower is needed to actually play most games.
Even UT2k3 is playable on these little guys (albeit not 1600x1200 with all the goodies turned on, but playable). I'm pretty sure my "outdated" radeon 64vivo will play Doom 3 when it goes gold.
Anyhow, my point is that cards have been displaying 'fast enough' for awhile - I mean we don't measure a cards performance in polygons anymore. They need to "look better", as in more natural, smoother, more TV-like.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
These benches are more of the same passed-around mush that nVidia's been handing out since October. Wake up and smell the coffee, people--these are the same programs nVidia handed out in the October handouts for benchmarking. Did the reviewer have a gun to the back of his head, so that he couldn't mange to run *anything* else? How convenient.
By the author's own words, this was no review. There are no 6x, 8x FSAA tests, at all, although these are supposed capabilities of GF FX--there are no screen shots for comparison--in otherwords, there is absolutely nothing to prove this ever took place. There are no anisptropic filtering tests, we don't know what cpu system the Radeon 9700 benchmarked on--nothing--absolutely nothing of interest that you would normally see in a real review is present. Even if you believe the author--he says unapologetically he was under direct duress by nVidia as far as what he was permitted to show AND SAY.
Already people on the Rage3D forums are talking about how much slower the 9700P speeds are in this promotional propganda piece than they themselves can get with their systems at home.
Also....what, pray tell, would Alienware be doing with a NVIDIA beta prototype? As a small OEM I would expect that if anything Alienware would have an OEM beta version of the card--possibly. Certainly not a nVidia version of a prototype card! If nVidia needs Alienware to beta test its upcoming card this must mean nVidia hasn't even finished the prototype reference design yet and nVidia's OEMs haven't even begun production!
Here's what I think it is: a paid-for promotional piece which is designed to deter people from going ahead and buying an ATI 9700 Pro. What it most certainly is not is an actual review of the product--by the words of the author himself. What I still can't get over is that these are the very same benchmarked programs nVidia was handing out in October!
When nVidia starts sending out cards to reviewers with driver sets and saying, "Have at it--review it any way you like!" that's when I'll start listening.
Hate to break it to you, but having just spent some days researching this, I concluded that there is nothing that the GeforceFX will support that the Radeon 9000 series won't. nVidia's web site may say differently, but that doesn't make it so.
The FX may do it faster (though this remains to be seen, of course) but it probably won't do it with better image quality. If anything, I'd say ATI cards have historically produced nicer output where there's any difference at all.
Hell, even the drivers for the Radeon 9700 are getting good reviews. I thought the season of miracles was a couple of weeks ago. ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.