Bioshock strongly favors the ATI Radeon

See Gamespot last benchmark: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6177688/p-6.html

Interesting to see the HD 2900XT win the performance crown, beating the 8800GTX by approximately 10%.

What is much more interesting though is how the X1950Pro trumps its direct competitor, the 7900GS. I've always thought that the X1950Pro had more long-term potential, well, this 40% victory is proving it.

Note, however, that the HD 2900XT is currently doing much worse in Windows Vista. The wide discrepancy between XP and Vista results suggest that Vista performance could be improved in a subsequent driver release. NVidia's drivers look much more mature in this benchmark.

Note to those who've been recommending the 640MB version of the 8800GTS "for high resolutions": it performs significantly worse than an overclocked 320MB at 2048x1536...

Some of the weirdest benchmarks I've seen lately. Thoughts?

People on neowin.net told me this is a "The way it's meant to be played" nvidia-sponsored game.

HAHAHAHA!!!!

It is because the lower mb versions of video cards use better ram. 4 fps isnt a big dif, where do you see ati whipping nvidia by 10%??

My question is, why would you have a top of the line graphics card if your not running dx10? DX10 numbers are all that matter to me. All the other benchmarks Ive seen have nvidias cards winning too.

Bioshock DX9 and DX10 modes show only negligible differences, both visually and in the framerate, as FiringSquad and Gamespot show.

Uh, the tests were done under XP with Gamespot and under Vista Ultimate on Firingsquad. Big difference. It pays to actually read the small print before you start throwing baseless accusations around. I'll give you that Firingsquad is a little bit more reputable when it comes to hardware, but that doesn't mean that writers at gamespot are getting paid off by anyone either. That being said, I wish they would have benched with a quad core to see if it offers any advantage, though I seriously doubt it, I don't think the unreal engine supports more than 2 at this point.

Since most people are using XP at this point, I think this is a rather impressive showing for the 2900XT, although it is only one game and could be a fluke. We'll see when Crysis and some of the other big fall titles start making their appearances.

I call this bull simply based on the fact that it's from Gamespot. They gave the game a 9.0/10, which is the same rating they gave Perfect Dark Zero.

I saw a review about DX10 on this site that showed ATI doing pretty good during DX10 games. DX10 is sooo young still.

It's been said a million times. the new ati drivers do make a difference.

Interesting, but doesn't mean much.
I'm enjoying Bioshock just fine on my 8800 GTS 640mb, so no regrets here.

Haha, gamespot benchmarks. Why don't we just post everyone's little sisters benchmarks also, she's as reliable.

I am playing with the DEMO, have not bought the full version yet and will wait a bit before I buy. See my sig for specs. I have everything set a max, (DX9) and I have not checked what frame rates I am getting, but the game runs and looks just great. Very smooth and quick with my x1950pro and overclocked X2.

Wait till the Nvidia drivers to overtake the Ati drivers!

I think it is cause the R600 in the xbox got a nice work out on unreal engine 3 in gears of war, so that means that it is going to kick *** in ut3 cause it is nicely tuned for unreal engine 3 and in case you have not noticed a LOT of games are using unreal engine 3. To all of those of you who said the R600 would suck... Like Nelson says: HAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA for now, somehow i see nvidia sorting this out very soon.

might also point out the worlds hugest flaw in your analysis, you see, the 2900xt that has 512mb of gddr3 ram may have less capacity and bandwidth but its latencies are atleast 2x faster tha those of the gddr4 1gb varient, which would easily account for that difference.

[quotemsg=1740544,1,63296]See Gamespot last benchmark: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6177688/p-6.html

Interesting to see the HD 2900XT win the performance crown, beating the 8800GTX by approximately 10%...quotemsg]

I looked at it and I think that largest gap is only 8.3%... and then the other is about 5%. We are talking about literally 3 or 4 fps more. That is not really going to do anything for the game. Also, where they running the drives Nvidia came out with for Bioshock? What drives were they using??? What were the video quality settings, whats turned on in video settings and whats turned off? Also is, what version of the 8800 GTX are they using, same for the HD2900 xt? I would be shocked to see their best HD2900XT beat a BFG OC2 or XXX.

Personally, this seams bias and just have discredited and credibility to me. Yes DX9 is still here, but shouldn't we only really care about DX10. Isn't that the direction we are heading, whether the game developers like it or not?

And for you who did not read the "benchmark", the GTX out performs the XT in DX10 by 29% (43/60 = |.7166666666-1| = .29 = 29%), or a difference in 17 fps (60-43=17).

Right.... you do know that the Xbox 360 dose not have an R600 chip in it right. Its called a Xenos chip, with only 48 unified shaders vs the R600 64 unified shaders.

how does it seem bias?there are no opinions puts forward here,only numbers,numbers cannot be biased.

the point here is that the 2900 while being significantly cheaper than the 8800gtx, still manages to beat it in dx9 in this game.and dx9 is still the dominant interface and will probabaly be for the next 18 months.so unfortunatly,the argument put forward here just does not fly.

secondly,whoever said 5fps is not gona make a difference is wrong.the difference between 25fps and 30 fps or even 35fps and 40fps in my opinion is fairly noticable.its especially noticable when you are getting those extra frames out ouf a card thats about 40%cheaper haha


bottom line,if i had just bought an 8800gtx id be kicking my own ***

Ok, first... We are not talking about 25 to 30 fps, nor are we talking about 35 to 40.

Second... I stand corrected about the drivers. In the small print they do list the drivers. I missed it on my first read through.

Third, half a year later AMD better have released a good video card. If it was worse then a card that was out for more the 6 months before... that would be the end of them. Sorry if Nvidia is release hardware quicker then AMD can.

And fourth, what’s up with this "Intel 975XBX2, eVGA 680i SLI" (scroll to the bottom where is gives the system setup) ? They used two different motherboards! From my understanding, when comparing hardware like video cards, you want to have all the same hardware other then the video cards comparing. All this shows is one hardware configuration with either or may do better or worse. Which benchmarks go with what motherboard?

You're obviously trying to be sarcastic, but check out: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page4.asp

It takes careful examination to reveal any actual difference between the DX10 and DX9 modes of Bioshock. Extra eye-candy is good, but this is almost insignificant. We're not talking about the difference between Half-Life 2's DX9 and DX8 paths here.

and what about dx10 ? i see the gtx killing the hd on this one, not to mention recent games like World in Conflict. I agree the HD2900 is an excellent card and probably the best bang for the buck though.

In DX10 the all the 8800's beat the 2900. Also in dx10 the 8800's get a performance gain with higher settings! This is an accomplishment in my mind for Nvidia with all that we've seen with DX10.

For these high end cards that are all DX10 why do all these reviews show DX9?!? If its a DX10 game than show it in DX10, especialy when there are noticable differences. Even if they are little, it should be shown.

Who the hell reviews something and turns of certian settings to make a biased conclusion on who is the winner?!?

OH MY GOODNAESS AND THE R500 is NOTHING EVEN REMOTELY LIKE THE R600 IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER so they could *NEVER* in a billion years have figured out how to use unreal engine 3 on the R600 from that now could they?

what about af and aa are the 2900s still having a miserable time with these two features enabled.i noticed that firing squad and gamespot did not enable these.

Ok.. enough of all the serious talk, I am tiered and my brian hurts now. I also agree with you that it dose take a lot of effort to notice the differences, I had about 4 people looking when comparing the PC between the 360. They PC (in DX10) had a little bit more detail, ran smoother, and reacted faster. I completely agree that this is not a jump like dx8 to dx9. I fear that those days are gone now

No I did not check out firingsquad. I will have to look at that in a bit.

Goldenboy, that you for agreeing with me and I also agree with you. I would be dumb to not post the best. I just hope that the drivers will fix everything.... the next batch.

Not that I'd expect objectivity in this thread, but some people need to read up first before commenting.

Isn't it also amazing that while the nV cards have a higher average and actually increase performance using DX10, yet in general have lower minimum FPS? I know personally I'd want the higher min fps even if the 'average' favoured the other option. Neither drops too low, but the min FPS of the XT is noticeably higher than the GTS, and the Ultra is only slightly higher than the XT, where is the GTX? Or as you imply was Firingsquad paid off for their review? Since I know folks over there, I doubt it's bias, I'll just say it's a choice for space, even if it wouldn't be my choice.

As has been mentioned the R600 is not th R500/Xenos, many differences, and add to that that it's M$ that does the Xbox drivers, their experience in Gears and other titles (like Lost Planet) don't necessarily translate to the HD2K line. Associating the two for desktop PC gaming performance/benefits is naive.

Which means they also had 6 months to work on drivers, both have weaknesses and sofar AMD's is hardware, and nVidia's is software/drivers.

Most sites do that now, and it's wrong. they both should be tested on a single platform the variance is too great, and both FirigngSquad and Gamespot are guilty of that.

They should do single card tests with the same mobo, and then later do Xfire vs SLi tests separately.

Guess you never heard of Chevy, Lincoln, Gatorade, Tropicana, Pizza Hut, etc?
AMD is the owner of ATi now, but it still exists as their graphics division and the name they sell their cards under; so either you're ignorant or obtuse, neither of which is an admirable trait in someone posting about credibility.

In the end I think both reviews compared/contrasted and internally show that Bioshock favours neither maker exclusively. And based on how well it scales, either choice would be fine for this game.

I'll find out for myself shortly enough once I have the laptop up to speed (imagine that a ton of drivers issues with Vista [and I'm talking about more than just graphics] ).