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GF FX 5900 Ultra vs. ATi Radeon 9800 Pro

Posted by michael on from the money-to-burn dept.

Mack writes "OCAddiction.com has their GF FX 5900 Ultra vs. ATi Radeon 9800 Pro article online detailing which card is more powerful. Running a plethora of benchmarks we were anxious to see which card outperformed the other. Quite simple really. We take nVidia's top offering and pair it up against the current top offering from ATi and let them duke it out till the bitter end. Who will come out on top? Let's take a look."

11 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one.... by mrpuffypants · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who finds these types of articles really, really, really boring?

    Staring at graphs indicating a .03% increase in one card over the other is just tearingly boring to me. I often find myself skipping right through to the end just to see the final "verdict"

    Why, oh why, can't we get some interesting writing in the field of online hardware reviews?

    1. Re:Am I the only one.... by lakeland · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're right that the sub-results are largely irrelevant, except for a couple points.

      1) If they just gave the conclusion, you'd be saying "But they just made that up!" All those pages of boring numbers are there to convince you they went through a fairly scientific process and when they say "It is 0.3% faster", they know what they're talking about. Compare to the RIAA's statistics about a 0.3% drop in piracy.

      2) Some people buy thesse cards because their money is burning a hole in their pocket, but most people don't spend $500 on a gfx card for bragging rights, they do it because their it will improve either their work or their gaming experience. These people want to know how much more time/better experience they'll get. Those people need to find the benchmark most relevant to them, rather than the 'overall' benchmark. For example, I have a program that runs faster on a 800MHz Duron than on a 2GHz Pentium 4. Why? Because it has lots of jumps. If I had just looked at the overall benchmark then I'd have 'upgraded' and I'd be feeling pretty stupid right now.

  2. Re:Who Won by AceJohnny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that way, we are forced to have a look at the article, thus preventing uninformed rants. Yes, it requires a tad more effort, but I think Slashdotters need that =)

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  3. I prefer the Radeon 9800 by Travoltus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's cheaper, it apparently runs faster, and I also hear that it doesn't need TWO SLOTS like the FX 5900.

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    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  4. Thanks but... by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll do what I always do. Wait for my current card not to be able to keep up at the optimal resolution for my screens with the games I like, then pick a £100 card that does.

    *pats his shiney new GF4 Ti 4200*

    Sure, I have to upgrade more often, but it seems to be a lot less painful for me than for early adopters - and there are plenty of homes for older cards in my secondary and tertiary boxes, and then a final home put out to pasture in the render farm.

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    Beep beep.
  5. Re:Who Won by anotherone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Becaues the guy who submitted the article is from the website that wrote the article... He obviously wants a billion slashbots to raise their ad revenue. If he gave away the ending, fewer people would read his article.

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  6. ATI needs to look at Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry ATI, but I use Linux... If ATI supported Linux as much as nvidia does mayby I'd buy one. But till then I'll stick to nvidia, no matter if it's slower then ATI's card.

  7. Re:Synthetic Benchmarks? Incredible... by be-fan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Am I the only one who automatically ignores any benchmark whose result isn't in FPS? I learned a long ago, from PC Mags 3d benchmarks, that synthetic benchmarks are absolutely useless!

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    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  8. Re:You actually *believe* hardocp? by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are of course quite correct. Kyle is merely an idiot with a website, as are many others these days, who is acting as nVidia's PR puppet. He has been ridiculed by many, yet seems intent on maintaining his wicked ways. Unfortunately, thousands of less informed internet users frequent his site, propagating his misinformation.

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    Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
  9. Re:Synthetic Benchmarks? Incredible... by Distinguished+Hero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I learned a long ago, from PC Mags 3d benchmarks, that synthetic benchmarks are absolutely useless!

    And what exactly differentiates a real benchmark from a synthetic benchmark? While Futuremark does report the fill rate (both single-texturing and multi-texturing), it is simply extraneous information, which is in no way used to determine the resulting 3DMark score; the score is determined by running four game demos, which use engines akin to those used in "real games." The individual game results are reported by 3DMark, multiplied by certain coefficients, and then added together, rendering the result (3DMarks).

    The reason 3DMark03 is invalid is not because it is a "synthetic" benchmark, but because nVidia mucked it up with their shenanigans. The frightful truth of the matter is, however, that the same illegitimate "optimizations" (i.e. static clip planes) that were used by nVidia in 3DMark can just as easily be used in any and all timedemo. Hence, your precious "real" benchmarks are just as susceptible, and may be just as compromised and invalid as 3DMark03. To make matters worse, unlike 3DMark03, which offers advanced diagnostic tools that allowed nVidia's dubious actions to be exposed, "real" benchmarks have no such tools. Therefore, exposing cheating in "real" benchmarks is much more difficult; however, just because something cannot be proven does not make it false.

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    Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
  10. Tired of ATI and NVIDIA fanboys by GregoryD · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone else see a trend here? I have an ATI card, blah blah blah its so much better. I have a NVIDIA card, blah blah blah its so much better. Can't they just agree both are pretty much the same and both are good products? That the benchmarks are so close that it really doesn't matter whos on top? Just find what card is cheaper and buy it. And for the record, BOTH cheated on benchmarks. So unfairly saying one is better "cuz the other cheats in benchmarks" is retarded logic.