Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
If anyone actually made it this far without skipping around, please let me express my sincere appreciation to your dedication. This article has definitely been an entity with a mind of its own, and it continued to grow regardless how much we hacked at it. There are benchmarks we had to leave out, and there is still so much more I want to do with these cards and games.
The 5950 hasn't been shown to perform much better than the 5900, but it definitely has an acceptable performance increase for a Fall refresh product. So far, we like what we have seen from the 9800XT, and we are anxious to test out ATIs OverDriver feature.
The new 52.14 drivers are much better than either the 51.xx or the 45.xx series. The image quality issues are corrected from 51.xx, and a lot of speed has been inked out over the 45.xx drivers. We have actually been very impressed with the speed, image quality, and playability enhancements we have seen. As long as NVIDIA doesn't take a step backwards before the official 50 series drivers are released, we think everyone who owns a GeForce FX card will be very pleased with what they get. NVIDIA should have never pushed the press to benchmark with the 51 series as no one used it for Half Life 2 and in the end the bugs in the drivers did nothing more than tarnish NVIDIA's name. Regaining the credibility they have lost will definitely take NVIDIA some time.
If you made it all the way through the section on TRAOD, you'll remember the miniboss named compilers. The very large performance gains we saw in Halo, Aquamark3, X2 and Tomb Raider can be attributed to the enhancements of NVIDIAs compiler technology in the 52.xx series of drivers. Whether a developer writes code in HLSL or Cg, NVIDIAs goal is to be able to take that code and find the optimum way to achieve the desired result on their hardware. Eliminating the need for developers to spend extra time hand optimizing code specifically for NVIDIA hardware is in everyone's best interest. If NVIDIA can continue to extract the kinds of performance gains from unoptimized DX9 code as they have done with the 52.14 drivers (without sacrificing image quality), they will be well on their way to taking the performance crown back from ATI by the time NV40 and R400 drop. NVIDIAs GPU architecture is a solid one, but it just needs to be treated the right way. From our angle, at this point, compiler technology is NVIDIAs wildcard. Depending on what they are able to do with it, things could go either way.
Right now NVIDIA is at a disadvantage; ATI's hardware is much easier to code for and the performance on Microsoft's HLSL compiler clearly favors the R3x0 over the NV3x. NVIDIA has a long road ahead of them in order to improve their compilers to the point where game developers won't have to hand-code special NV3x codepaths, but for now ATI seems to have won the battle. Next year will be the year of DX9 titles, and it will be under the next generation of games that we will finally be able to crown a true DX9 winner. Until then, anyone's guess is fair game.
ATI is still the recommendation, but NVIDIA is not a bad card to have by any stretch of the imagination. We still urge our readers not to buy a card until the game they want to play shows up on the street. For those of you who need a card now, we'll be doing a value card round up as part of this series as well.
Keep in mind that ATI's Catalyst 3.8 drivers are coming out this week, and rest assured that we will be doing a follow up as quickly as possible to fill in the gaps. To say this has been a very interesting month in the graphics world would be a definite understatement. If this hasn't been an overload of information, stay tuned, because there is so much more to come.
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
I'm impressed. I've never seen a review that actually has the games I play most frequently in it. I've been un-interested in FPS games since Quake II.In particular, I like Neverwinter Nights, C&C Generals, SimCity 4, and to some extent WarCraft III (and by extention, their expansions). I was under the impression that SimCity 4 was CPU bound under almost all circumstances, it's useful to have that shot down.
I also like AA and AF. You can imagine the slideshows I play with my Athlon 2100+, 1GB DDR, and Radeon 64MB DDR (a.k.a. 7200)
Now I just need to see the ATI AIW 9600 Pro reach general availability.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Thank you so much for this review... the detail is spectacular. After reading and lookig at all 60 pages... I am really tired. Thanks again for your dedication!Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Um why are there no comparisons using two monitors with diffrent cards running . Gabe of valve said there is a set of drivers that detect when an screen shot is being taken. Or did anand just get duped by nvidiaAnonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
I would like to know:1. Why fps was left out of TRAOD
2. Why the weirdo never seen before TRAOD PS2.0 percent loss graph? How about giving us good ole fps which is what we have been seeing for years and what we are use to, at least have both if you are going to introduce new graphs.
3. How the reveiwer seems to know "Nvidia is aware of it" and never seems to know if ATI is aware of problems? I mean he would have had to talk to Nvidia to know this. Did Nvidia pre read the review and then tell him they are aware of a problem and will fix it??
4. What motiviation does the reviewers have for helping Nvidia or at least seem optimistic. What has Nvidia done to earn this tip toeing around type of review? If anyting they have dug themselves a well deserved hole. I'm talking about Nvidias horrid behaviour as a company in the past 6 months. Why would they reward a company that pulls the stunts they have lately? Do they feel sorry for them?
All I can say is the tone of this review leads me to think there is more to this than meets the eye.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
#52 yeah im sure people play games in window mode.How can u see the differences from such a small screen shots. Its well known that Nvidia hacks or shall I say "optimises" for benchmarks giving no thought to IQ. This article displays Blatant nvidia @ss kissing. There was good reason Gabe didn't want his game to be benched with det.50xx, take a guess, more hackery from nVidia. Also Anand mentions certain anomalties with the geforce fx on certain games but does not try to exlpore what those errors are and assumes nothings wrong. In homeworl the Fx isn't even doing FSSA. Geez wish the nvidia fanboys would get a clue and crawl out from under that rock the've been hiding under.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
This is the most interesting article I have ever read for sometime.. First of all, I agree with #41.. I think including this many games into benchmark prohibits Anand/Derek to make detailed analysis of the games.. But there is something more interesting..It seems that Anand and Derek tried to put an article that hides the problems with both cards.
They also deliberately try to avoid giving one company favor. In one sentence, they claim ATI is best, in the next line, they state otherwise.
As for the IQ comparison, many of screen captures are either dark or can not reflect what AF+AA intended to do.. If I just check the small pictures, I would say that the IQ are really similar. However, more detailed analysis reveals other problems. Besides, the review of the TROAD is the wrost I have ever seen.. If they post the frame rates, I am pretty sure that everybody will be shocked to see the results.. How won't they.. Think about it, the performance percentage loss of FX5950 is 77.5% for 1024x768 noAA/AF. Even if the game runs at 50 fps with PS1.1, the frame rate would drop to 10 fps when you switch to ps2.0 in this case.. However, refering to Beyond3d is interesting, because that site has a very detailed benchmarks of both 5900 and 9800 with this game ( I strongly recommend to anyone to see these articles who really wants to learn the actual performance of NV5900 and R9800 in the PS2.0 scenarios)
But I totally disagree with Anand in one thing.. TROAD performance is a real indicator for the future games that will uses PS2.0 by default. The games v49 patch also uses HLSL to compile directly to ps2_0_x which is actually the Nvidia's NV30 architecture, and the compiled code runs faster than Cg compiled code. Even in this case, 9800Pro still runs much faster that 5900 ( I am talking about 70 fps vs. 35 fps.).
I guess nobody want to see that his/her 500$ graphics card would crawl in the new games which uses ps2.0 by default just one year after he puchased the card.. And no! I am not a ATI fanboy.. Just a tech fan who does not tolerate to see how some sites really misdirects the readers because of their connections to the IHVs.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Oh, come on, fanboys, stop yelling at Anand for not making nVidia look bad enough. His job is to benchmark, not to rant. Jesus Christ, you people annoy me. Try printing out the three images from any given test WITHOUT looking at which one's the Radeon.And no, I'm no nVidia fanboy, nor am I defending nVidia. I use a softmodded Radeon 9500 and I absolutely love it. I have never, ever put a GeForce FX in my system, and I'm happy to say this. But can't you people just let go?
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
FIFA 2004 !!! That alone make this worth while !!!Rogodin2 - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
You should use IL-2 Forgotten Battles with "perfect" detail settings (pixel shaded water and a system knee-bringer) for a simulation benchmark.rogo
Dasterdly - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
I could see IQ differences on the dune buggy left side top. The ATI pic has better detail.Please add 3dmark benchmark.
Good review so far almost 1/2 way thru :)