Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.)
"...serious dent in their wallets."
Dont you mean 'hole'.
I'd like to add to this. At $400-500 serious gamers better get use to eating Ramen noodles.
when a new video card has more memory than what you have in system memory
$cat
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! :)
When a new video card costs more than your entire system is worth.
Download my free songs!
Hmm, spend $500 for a video card or eat this month. Video card or food, video card or food. Hmm...
Anandtech and Tom's Hardware are more reputable sites than the story poster mentioned. They also perform more comprehensive benchmarks, including Doom 3 and Unreal 2, at multiple resolutions, with and without anisotropic filtering. The other reviews just seem shallow by comparison.
I'm not impressed with the Radeon 9800 Pro. What I really want is the Radeon 9500 ASC. The price is steadily coming down. Mmmmm, I can't wait to play Nethack in full 3D :-)
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
This is using unoptimized nvidia drivers on a pre-release card. I saw benchmarks that were pulled due to NDA that showed that with the Detonator 50.xx, the NV35 chip performs SO much better than with the current drivers. I say wait, before judging the performance of NV35.
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 :-) ...
ATI's drivers were given to the X crew, they didn't commit them. Check out their archives for more info.
Definitely, I don't care if -any- ATI card has a 2%-5%-10% performance advantage, having absolutely great drivers from NVidia (for Linux & windows) far outweighs any small performance gains the ATI card might supposedly have.
:)
If the situation is like this (where the cards are pretty much neck & neck) the balance swings even farther towards buying NVidia. The only NVidia card I'd have never ever considered buying would have been the dustbuster...
Given that I'm running an (ancient) dual p3-450 bought 3 years ago, I guess this Fall it might be time to upgrade
-- the cake is a lie
Every graphics engine since Quake 1, that John Carmack has made, has used OpenGL. In his latest .plan update he makes many comments about using OpenGL, though the most obvious is this: "Trying to keep boneheaded-ideas-that-will-haunt-us-for-years
out of Direct-X is the primary reason I have been attending the Windows
Graphics Summit for the past three years, even though I still code for OpenGL." Anyway, if an interesting read is his .plan update when he was first experimenting with OpenGL in quake. Basically, there are not as many problems with DirectX anymore, but he still uses OpenGL. Personally I like OpenGL better because of its design philosophy and because it's cross platform. Anyway, some links are below for those interested.
. html
http://www.bluesnews.com/plans/1/
http://www.exaflop.org/docs/d3dogl/d3dogl_jc_plan
People call games "DX9 games" because the various DirectX revisions give a rough dilineation of the different generations of graphics hardware. Roughly, they are:
DirectX 6: Software Transform and lighting. Most games from this category use lightmaps for lighting, rather than goraud(per vertex) shading.
DirectX 7: Hardware T&L. All those new T&L enabled games you heard about belong here. The opengl equivalent is calling glTranslate, glRotate, etc do to transformations, and using glLight to do lighting
DirectX 8: Vertex and Pixel Shaders. Let's you program the vertex transform and lighting part, and to a lesser extent, the pixel processing part, of the graphics pipeline. Corresponds to the OpenGL extensions NV_VERTEX_PROGRAM, NV_TEXTURE_SHADER, and NV_REGISTER_COMBINERS(for nvidia, similar extensions for ATI)
DirectX 9: Highly programmable Vertex and Pixel Shaders. The old pixel shader model let you do something like 8 operations max, while the new model greatly extends this number. OpenGL extensions are ARB_VERTEX_PROGRAM and ARB_FRAGMENT_PROGRAM.
This is really only a brief overview, there are many, many more OpenGL extensions(which you can see here, some of which have no DirectX counterparts. It's easier to tell non-graphics programmers "It's a DX9 game" than "Oh, it uses OpenGL 1.4, ARB_VERTEX_PROGRAM, ARB_TEXTURE_PROGRAM, etc", especially since DirectX is a well-known name. People generally aren't as aware of the various revisions of OpenGL(which are mainly exposed through extensions).
Doom 3 uses OpenGL for its graphics. In fact, the basic tech required is really DirectX 8 level(bump mapping and stencil buffer), but it looks better on DirectX 9 hardware(due to the higher programmability). It likely uses other Direct X APIs for sound, networking, etc on Windows.
ATI has never wanted to trouble themselves with Drivers. Historically they have abandoned hardware as quickly as they thought they could get away with. I got bit by this back with the introduction of the "new" windows driver model. A card less than two months old was "unsupported". I made the mistake of buying an ATI PCI TV Wonder while experimenting with HTPC setups. Fortunately that one is still quite useful in Linux. ATI dropped windows support for IT over a year ago. Shortly after I purchased one NEW. The ATI Windows apps still don't work right. Every time they invoke Windows scheduler to set up a scheduled show, they GPF.
I will never forget or forgive that blatant attempt to obsolete brand new hardware. The fact that they can't be bothered to stay current with Xfree doesn't help their case in my eyes.
The only windows box I have left is the one that I play most of my games on. Every machine I own runs only NVidia hardware. The fact that NVidia's drivers support every piece of hardware they've made back to the original GeForce (and I think the Riva) makes me much more comfortable in investing in hardware from them.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Here we go with the "my first PC thread"... Before long, it will certainly get to "My first PC was actually an abacus constructed by Wu Chen of the Ming Dynasty". It's almost like a geek version of reductio ad absurdum. Well, here goes with my contribution:
256 MB RAM??? My first freakin' PC had 20 meg HD.
My first PC had 8k of RAM and 30 min of storage (cassette-tape -- don't know how many k that was, but it wasn't much). A good old Apple ][ without a floppy drive.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I have had a handful of video cards since my original trident 8900. Pretty much every time I plug the card in, boot to VGA resolution, install the drivers, and reboot. Everything is done.
I just got an ATI 9500 pro--my first ATI card. The driver installation was a five hour nightmare of crashing Windows, exception errors, hangs, and black screens. When I was done, I couldn't set the refresh rate. Nothing I did (including installing the latest drivers, and trying to use the 'secret' max. refresh setting in the ATI display controls--it wasn't there at all) could get me off of 60Hz.
Games crashed. Windows hung. Horridness. I talked to the manufacturer, and they said it was a bad card--get an RMA, and ship it back. This I can believe.
The problem is, I can no longer set the refresh rate on my OLD video card anymore! These damned drivers screwed up my system substantially! Removing them didn't help at all. I'm going to have to dig into the registry most likely.
If the replacement ATI card doesn't work any better (hardware AND software), then I'll be going back to nVidia permanently, or at least for another two generations. At least their stuff works.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I bought my first 3D card from canopus because it had 6 meg. It was the absolute best 3DFX card available. It cost around $250 at the time. It was a sweet card but within 6 months a better and cheaper card came out and I decided I would never buy the latest and greatest card again. My rule of thumb is to stay 2 generations behind the best and you will have a card that can play any game out there. This may change as soon as a DX9 game comes out but I really can't see a game company "require" anything greater than a DX7 card or they wil really linit their audience....
This is the cardinal rule of technology -- buy the newest and the best, only do it 12 to 18 months later. Works for lots of things -- Games, computers, HDTV, processors, cell phones, OSes, PDAs, and video cards. Heck, even cars.
Let some other schmuck take the depreciation. Take your cue from me, and you can't go wrong. As soon as the prices come down on those swanky new 286s, I can finally get rid of my PCjr.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
My first PC had 8k of RAM and 30 min of storage
my first chick had 8k worth of "enhacements" and a 30 min timelimt.
I see the Radeon 9800 on the shelf. I see the GeForce 5900 on the shelf. They're comparable in speed. Each supports next generation games. But I think the biggest feature, the thing that makes the choice for me, is the size of the box. That's what determines which one I steal.