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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."

13 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Who Won by bsharitt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why didn't the poster tell who won? Now I have to actually read the article.

    1. 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.

      --
      Username taken, please choose another one.
    2. Re:Who Won by KDan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well the site is crawling by now, had several timeouts already, but managed to get to the conclusions (wasn't really worth the effort tbh):::

      Conclusion

      Let's break down performance of both cards and see which one comes out on top.

      UT2k3 - FX 5900 Ultra - While both cards perform well, the FX 5900 comes out on top

      AquaMark - R9800 Pro - The R9800 takes home the gold in this real-world benchmark

      Comanche 4 - R9800 Pro - The R9800 also wins out by an edge for this nearly obsolete benchmark

      Specviewperf 7.0 - R9800 Pro - This one is really close but the #'s lean to the R9800

      Code Creatures - FX 5900 Ultra - The 5900 beats up the R9800 pretty good in this intensive benchmark

      Splinter Cell - R9800 Pro - Hands down, the R9800 takes it in this awesome game from UBISoft

      ShaderMark - R9800 Pro - While the FX 5900 Ultra makes a good showing, the R9800 wins this one

      3DMark 01 SE Build 330 - R9800 Pro - The R9800 takes top honors with this tried and true synthetic benchmark

      3DMark 03 Build 320 - FX 5900 Ultra - Should we include this? Possibly not, however the FX 5900 wins with WHQL Det Drivers

      3D Visual Quality - R9800 Pro hands down

      And the winner is.........The FIC ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. We compared these cards in every category we could think of and in the end, we saw better performance overall from the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Did the FX 5900 fail to impress us? No, not at all. We believe both cards are worthy of any good system but we do have to tip our hats to the excellent performance that the Radeon 9800 Pro has showed us here today.

      --------

      Daniel

      --
      Carpe Diem
  2. 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.

  3. Time to upgrade! by Xeth · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, damn! Four more FPS! For only $499 (plus tax ans S&H)! Where's my credit card...

    --
    If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
  4. Nvidia is dying... by illumin8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see here, they compare two cards that shouldn't compare in real life.

    The GeForce card has:

    * Twice as much memory (256 MB vs. 128MB)
    * More memory bandwidth (27 GB/s vs. 21 GB/s)
    * Faster memory (3 ns vs. 3.8 ns chips)

    And the GeForce still got it's ass handed to it by the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, which, by the way, doesn't even need a leaf-blower attachment just to keep it from overheating!

    Is anyone still buying Nvidia cards any more these days (other than the blindly trusting fanboys, that is)?

    --
    "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
    1. Re:Nvidia is dying... by niko9 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apparently the Radeon Mobility is not supported under Linux either - this has made my search for a new laptop very difficult.

      This statement is false. The Mobility Radeon has been supported since Xfree 4.2.

      I have been using this chipset with a IBM Thinkpad X22 for almost a year now, and that's with GNU/Debian Linux. ;) People using more cutting edge distro's have been using it longer.

      You wan't a great, cheap, superlight laptop with decent 3d support?

      Please visit the IBM eBay Store

      Laptops are brand new in the box, full warranty, are almost 50% retail, and you are buying directly from Big Blue.

      The catch? They're slightly behind the newest models, but hey, with linux support, that's the best way to buy hardware.

  5. Who would buy this anyway by puntloos · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see now.

    1/ Both cards can display current games at 2 quajillion fps, the winner beating the loser by 3fps
    2/ The economy of well, the world, is in the dumps
    3/ Quite a few cool and very demanding games (Doom3, Halflife) will come out Soon(tm) but Definately Not Yet(tm). (Personally I wouldnt be surprised if it would be @ christmas time
    4/ At X-mas time (or whenever these demanding games start to come out) newer, faster cards will be out, and/or these cards will be cheaper.
    5/ At X-mas time people will actually have some money set aside to buy rad new videocards for.. eh.. their girlfriends.

    So who would buy this?

    (No, I haven't actually -read- the article :)

  6. 3dmark scores, GF FX IS SOO MUCH BETTER! by Eric(b0mb)Dennis · · Score: 5, Funny

    3dmark2003

    GF FX: 999999
    Ati Raedon: 40394

    Weird outcome! It was strange though, because during the gf fx test, it just flashed and gave me my score! Awesome speed!

    Keep up the good work, NVIDIA!

    --
    Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
  7. I call shenanigans on OCAddiction.com by hackshack · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is the second blatantly karma-whoring article I've seen this weekend. The article submitter, Mack, also wrote the damn article.

    I guess I wouldn't be as pissed if it was a genuinely interesting article, rather than a collection of specs and benchmarks.

    --
    Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
  8. Article summary. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    9800 has a faster transform engine, is slightly ahead at lower resolutions.
    5900 has a higher fill rate, is slightly ahead at high resolutions.

    Otherwise there are no real differences between the benchmarks and it all comes down to differences any layperson could understand:

    The 5900 takes up 2 slots (WTF?) and the 9800 is $100 cheaper (although $399 for a graphics card is still nuts if you ask me).

    BTW, the ATI 9800 won the "shootout".

  9. 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.