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.)

Re:Minor annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really rather quite simple. A small subset of 3D games are OpenGL games. These hardware accelerators are incidentally designed to adhere to standards defined by DirectX. They simply expose this functionality as part of their OpenGL implementation, either as vendor-specific extensions or otherwise. Doom 3 will make use of features standardized between DirectX 8 to DirectX 9 3D hardware. No one is going to enumerate every possible OpenGL extension the engine can be run with, as there're numerous render paths. They're not incorrect for using DirectX as a benchmark for functionality the engine will make use of, even if it doesn't use the API. Most 3D engines, though, actually do use DirectX. Source and Unreal both do, for instance.

Re:Minor annoyances

[Osty]

While UT2003 uses DirectX by default on Windows platforms, it does have an OpenGL renderer also. You can switch it to use OpenGL instead, and the Linux version (of course) uses OpenGL by default.

The Unreal engine, and more generally the guys at Epic (Tim Sweeney) operate under a different philosophy than the guys at Id. The unreal engine is quite modular. In fact, it was originally written focusing on GLIDE as the preferred rendering method. Today, DX is the preferred method, even though the current engine (even with all of its changes, which has surely included complete rewrites of components over the years) can trace itself all the way back to that GLIDE-inspired code.

Id, on the other hand, likes to start "from scratch". Between Unreal I and UT2K3/Unreal 2/Splinter Cell/Raven Shield/all of the other Unreal-based games out today, Id's gone through Quake 2, Quake 3, and is gearing up for Doom 3. Each one of those engines was different, and pretty much rewritten from the ground up each time (I'm sure there are some core components that theCarmack reuses, but essentially it's all new code).

Which approach is better? Depends. Epic's approach to incremental engine design lets third parties license their engine and benefit from on-going development, as well as getting the newer technology out there quicker. Id's approach caters to theCarmack's godlike abilities, and gives us something to look forward to with bated breath. The strength of theCarmack's code proves itself when the aging Q3 engine can still hold its own against the newest of Unreal-based games (for example, the upcoming Jedi Knight Academy game). I say let's keep 'em both.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure Unreal's audio engine is modular as well, supporting the proprietary Miles system, DirectSound, and probably also OpenAL. Same with the input engine (DirectInput, SDL).

ummm...dent?

[drwhite]

"...serious dent in their wallets."

Dont you mean 'hole'.

Re:Minor annoyances-Big Bills

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add to this. At $400-500 serious gamers better get use to eating Ramen noodles.

You know it's time to get more RAM

[ejaw5]

when a new video card has more memory than what you have in system memory

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! :)

You know it's time to get a new computer

[geeber]

When a new video card costs more than your entire system is worth.

Re:I really don't have a big choice between the tw

[jimbobborg]

ATI's drivers were given to the X crew, they didn't commit them. Check out their archives for more info.

Re:Please clarify...

[sjelkjd]

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.

Re:this stuff is getting crazy

[Savatte]

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.

Re: Radeon vs. NVidia

[AliasMoze]

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.

Re:I wouldn't hold your breath

[Verity_Crux]

"Really, John Carmack singlehandedly keeps OpenGL alive;" Uh, anybody purchased a nice CAD program lately that uses DirectX? Or any EDA tool? Or any math tool?