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GeForce FX Reviews Roll In
Defender2000 writes "GeForce FX NDA lifted today, reviews are up at ExtremeTech, Tom's Hardware, and HardOCP. So far, it is indeed better overall than the 9700Pro, but not enough for it's price. Perhaps NVIDIA has something up its sleeve for the long term?" There's also a review at Anandtech, about which reader StrongBad writes "Unlike the rest of the reviews, however, wonderboy
gets down and dirty with the FX's antialiasing and anisotropic filtering methods
using some nifty on mouseover java commands."
The geforcemx noise levels are ridiculous. I can't believe how voodoo5/3dfx-goes-out-of-business the card seems. Brute force instead of finesse, they went more overboard than I can believe, and the results aren't very impressive.
Whale
The Nvidia FX is amazing, but it will be interesting to see what ATI can do with the next gen Radeon if they too can get down to .13 microns...
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
1) It's cheaper than the new Geforce FX.
2) Performance on average is almost as good.
3) It doesn't sound like a jumbo jet.
4) It doesn't gobble up a PCI slot
I'm amazed nVidia have "released" this card now (well, a vapour release... you can't actually buy them yet). The performance is barely faster than the ATi card... when ATi released their 9700 it would WAY faster than nVidia's fastest (Ti4600).
It's also interesting to note that ATi's drivers seem to behave better than nVidia's... now that's something I didn't think I'd hear myself saying 12 months ago.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Anyone who is buying this is just wasting their hard-earned money and time. Especially since it costs near $400.
All the GeForce FX does it improve effects using the DirectX 8 dynamic pipeline improvements, and it's been 2 years and 3 generations of cards since DirectX 8 came out, and there have been only 2 cards using the dynamic pipeline.
Also, the GeForce FX is a monstrosity. In order to keep it cool, there is a huge fan mounted on it, which causes it to take up an AGP slot and PCI slot, and the card still isn't cooled adequately.
In short, if you're buying this, you're either rich and/or stupid. It doesn't even support Linex fully yet.
So many new cards seem to accentuate their 3D performance, is there anything done to really make for excellent 2D performance, or is that langiushing?. I know there is a much bigger market for 3D and its the sexy exciting thing, but is there more than can be done for the 2D work too?
Every nVidia card I have had suffers exactly this problem. Geforce2 MX200/400, tnt2, Geforce4. With the open source driver they are an absolute dream; with nVidia's driver - crashes of varying degrees. I would imagine that since the linux and windows drivers are now from a unified code base that exactly the same problem occurs under windows but noone notices because windows crashes so much.
How can they allow the open source X driver to be better? I mean seriously - what are nVidia doing? This sort of thing does not instill confidence. Open the source, if you can't because of patent issues then open the parts of the source that you can open. Hire the guys writing the open source driver as they are clearly infinitely better at it than your current lot.
Essentially we are buying graphics cards from a hardware company - the fact that we need drivers is an inconvenience that we all live with because the convenience of being able to mix and match our pc hardware outweighs it. I am not interested in the internals of your drivers - I just want the card to work. Here is an easy business plan for all hardware manufacturers:
Linux is coming, accept this and get ready to jump on the bandwagon.
Now they are putting out cards that apparently don't perform much better than their competition. This is a dangerous position to be in. Just one year ago, this would have been laughable - nVidia produced cards that were cheaper and better than everyone elses. Now... no one is blown away. This is a company that is on a downard slope.
Carpe Daemon
Sapphiretech is able to build a state-of-the-art ATI Radeon 9700 Pro without any active cooling. Seems nearly unbelievable if you compare these to the new FX cooling monsters.
Check it out for yourself.
Combine these with a good, noise dampened case, Verax coolers and a Barracuda V and you should get a PC that is much more quiet than most of the PCs on the market and faster than these too.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Let's see:
-It's huge (eats a PCI-slot) and noisy
-It costs more than 9700
-It's not available yet
-It has inferior AA and AF
-When using AA and AF it usually loses to 9700
-According to Anandtech, it's minimun FPS is alot lower than 9700's (it even loses to non-pro 9700!)
So how exactly it's "better overall"?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
You assume incorrectly, at least as far as stability under Windows. As a matter of fact I'd hazard to say that nVidia's drivers are a HUGE selling point under Windows. At least they are to me and most other people I know who use their home PC for more than word processing. nVidia's cards have been solid 3D performers since the TNT, but I like many others want a graphic card in my PC that just works. What other graphic card (or any other component manufacturer for that matter) has managed to increase performance by 40% with the driver alone?
I will agree the Linux binaries need help. Up until recently I ran a dual boot Mandrake/Win98SE install as my main rig. After upgrading to XP I have yet to reinstall a distro, though I'll get around to it. The nVidia drivers under Mandrake seemed almost as if they had come from a different company, given my favorable experiences under Windows.
Now that ATI not only has a product with comparable performance ~$100 cheaper than nVidia's latest but ALSO has stable drivers things are really starting to get interesting.
Don't write nVidia off yet though - far too many people did the same to ATI a few years ago.
Ask your average ford tempo owner if their car is "fast enough" and they will say "of course! It gets me around"
Now go tell a porsche owner "Hey by the way, a ford tempo is fast enough" and they will look at you like you are a drooling idiot.
Your video card may get you from A to B and maybe for your needs that is sufficient but no, a tempo is not comparable to porsche by ANY stretch of the imagination.
- Toby
Somewhere in Canada there is a lot of high-fiving going on today. Plans for reducing the price of the 9700Pro are being scrapped. Due to recent NVidia incompetence, the ATi profittaking is about to begin... which means we the customers lose.