ATI Radeon 9800 Pro vs. NVidia GeForce 5900

HardcoreGamer writes "Today ATI shipped its Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB DDR-2 card in time for E3 and nVidia announced the NV35-based GeForce 5900 which will be available in June. Early tests seem to say that while nVidia edges ahead of ATI in specific areas, overall ATI still has the better card. The caveat is that the next generation of DirectX 9-based games (like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, demonstrated with ATI at E3) will truly determine which is the better card. Lots of coverage at PC Magazine, PC World, The Register (ATI) (nVidia), ExtremeTech, InternetNews, and Forbes/Reuters. Either way, at $450-$500, serious gamers are about to get another serious dent in their wallets."

Comments

Minor annoyances

[DetrimentalFiend]

Just a small note, but one that's been bothering me with all of these reviews: Not all 'next generation' games are 'dx9.' Though the new cards are dx9, many games (coincidently, most of the best games) use OpenGL. Unfortunately, it's much easier to incorrectly call Doom3 a dx9 game than to cite the OpenGL extensions (like shaders) that are used.

(Also, I'll note that Doom3 may be technically a DirectX9 game because its sound and input MAY use it, but in the context that people have been talking about dx9 games, it is still incorrect.)

I really don't have a big choice between the two..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid until ATI starts producing better Linux drivers, I'll have to stick with nVidia's cards for the time being. nVidia has really gotten their act in gear as of late and their latest drivers work great for me under Linux. I see on ATI's website that their drivers don't even support XFree 4.3 yet. Weeeeakk! :)

under linux there are no doubts: NVIDIA rulez ...

[DataShark]

closed source or not, the fact is that the NVIDIA drivers on Linux are as good or better that it's win* counterparts ...

ATI is starting to try but has anyone tryed ATIs drivers and compared them, both fetaure-wise, performance-wise and stability-wise with the NVIdia ones ?

so unless /. started covering HW 99% focused on MS platforms the duel is a non issue :-) Nvidia wins by K.O.under linux, and under even BSD :-) ...

I wouldn't hold your breath

[Trepidity]

As much as I'd like that to happen, it doesn't seem very likely to happen anytime soon. Really, John Carmack singlehandedly keeps OpenGL alive; if he didn't have such a strong preference for it, DirectX would have just about all the major games out there and hardware support would be significantly worse.