GeForceFX cards ? when ?

[drednox]

hi

does anyone know a specific date when GeForceFX cards hit the broad market ? I tried ging to manufacturers websites and came out emptyhanded. To the best of my knowledge they were supposed to be out this or next month and I am desperately looking for detailed info since I will be taking a vacation and geting a mostly new system in about a month or so. I have been informed that the GeForceFX have been pulled at the last minute and that Nvidia went back to the drawing board, any eta on their next chip based cards ?

Also looking for opinions on which is best chipset and RAM config for the latest Intel P4 based system. I did some research but I am very unclear on the differences between the various ones out there such as 845GE, 850E, E7205, etc. From what I understand the E7205 is the latest, but is it the best, and still dont know what are the specs.


thanks a lot

 

[RobD]

Well, I heard same, March(ish) time. But there is a guy on ebay selling one, and so far the bid stands at just over $600! Jesus, what dumbass wants one that bad!

I doubt many will make it onto the shelves, 'cos if the stories are to be believed, then there's only a couple of thou destined for circulation in North America, 1000-ish for Europe and 500-ish for Asia.

Not exactly a strategy of the confident is it?

I reckon Nvidia will pull the card and either re-work it and then release it, or wait for the next card (can't remember the name, NV31?! I dunno)

Either way, with ATI set to announce the release of R350 and RV350 within the next couple of weeks, then it looks like the FX will have the shortest lifespan ever.

<i>*EDIT: godamm dyslexia of the keyboard! I sukc!* </i><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by RobD on 02/27/03 09:31 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[LtBlue14]

are you gonna overclock? do you want upgrade-ability or just the fastest system?
if overclocking, i recommend the abit IT7 Max2 rev 2 motherboard with corsair ddr400 or 433 at cas2, whatever the best you can get or afford is
otherwise, the 850E with rambus1066 is the best stock performer, and you could go with a board like the Asus P4T533
don't get the geforce fx, either wait out radeon's new chips (which may cause a price drop in the current cards, i dunno) or just go ahead and get an R300 chip (the radeon 9500/9700 pro/nonpro series)
if you were looking at an FX then you're probably looking at top of the line, so a radeon 9700pro might be in order
if overclocking, you can try taking a 9500 to 9700 status with a hardware mod that you can find the details on anywhere, then overclocking to 9700pro speeds

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[drednox]

well, i will most likely run stock and not overclock, i'm not much into overclocking.

you are correct in your assesment that money isnt too much of an issue with me, i am mostly concerned with geting a fair mix of top performance at highest possible stability.

i have had extremely bad experiences with ATI cards in the past. in fact, few years ago I used to work as an actual game tester, i basically slapped together different systems and tested games on em. the ATI cards were always despised and hated, their hardware was substandard which i understand is not an issue anymore, however their drivers were and to what i have read still sometimes are very poor quality wise and cause a lot of problems.

so i am inclined to go with the intel/nvidia moreso then AMD or ATI route.

the boards that i like the best are Asus and surprisingly MSI after i have tried them out. i actually had some troubles with Aopen, they used to have some hardware conflicts way back dont remeber now what the issue was but it pissed me off enough to stay away from them because i couldnt get my box up and runing on an Aopen board so i poped in a good old Asus and it lit right up

last but not least, how much of an improvement and how noticable is it from GF4 4600 to ATI 9700 Pro ? i know the nubers, ive seen benchmarks etc. , but how practical and noticable is the difference when actually used ? another words how much of a real upgrade would i get ?

i might have a little more time then a month left, since basically, i am looking to get a top of the line, or close to, rig up and ready by time Star Wars Galaxies launches. any input on everything from hardware to software appreciated.

 

[jankphil]

*holds a GeForce FX Ultra just above drednox's head*
"come on boy, jump JUMP"
*lifts card up every time drednox trys to get it*

i finally got fed up with nvidia's games. I don't know why people keep playing it. I'm almost hoping someone will make a card and buy out Nvidia (sound like something in 3d Card History?) But the more company's making them, the cheaper they are and the better the technology.

"What kind of idiot are you?"
"I don't know, what kinds are there?"

 

[davepermen]

just relax on the drivers. most people owning ati cards don't have much driver problems with it, and in todays days they are really good.

on the other side, i followed my friends using their geforces, updating the drivers up to 3 times a week lately, and _NO_ driver worked as expected. nvidias newest drivers are very buggy actually, i am glad to not be in the need to mess around with that crap..

and remember, the first ati cards where about the first with agp! thats _AGES_ back.. and they where great those days actually. (working on an AGP presentation currently, seen the benchmark comparisons of ATI Rage against .. uhm.. some PCI from matrox)

money is not a big issue? then bether smoke it..

really, you wanna pay more for .. nearly no more? the ati card even has features wich get used yet and are standard for every dx9 card actually, but the gfFX doesn't have it (if you wanna know, check floating point cubemaps, or hdr cubemaps, floating point 3d textures, or hdr 3d textures, et.. espencially the hdr cubemaps are very useful and needed in gamedev for efficient usage of new features)

the gfFX lacks a very important technical feature, making stunning visual effects easily possible. you don't know how much i will miss that feature on gfFX..

anyways, get, what ever you want. just remember, there is about no point in buying that card. stability is not that great, think of the heat, power consumation, it produces/uses. (up to 140degrees on the backside, direcly under the cpu!!). and currently nvidia drivers are a mess.

"take a look around" - limp bizkit

www.google.com

 

[dhlucke]

The Nvidia drivers are only good if you get the WHQL certified ones. 40.72 is the last certified driver and it dates back 4 months. Everything else wreaks havoc on my systems.

Side note: I found this link at nvidia
<A HREF="http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20030218_9274" target="_new">GeForceFX voted best graphics card of 20002</A>

Not only is it still not released, but it sucks. I can't believe this crap.

<font color=red>
<A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">The French are being described as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.</A></font color=red>

 

[RobD]

WTF? I am stunned. What.... Does anybody know what drugs they are doing in Santa Clara, 'cos if they make THAT much of a difference to the real world, I friggin' want some!

Seriously, who the f*%k are they trying to kid? The amount of negative publicity regarding this flawed product...and they are talking it up as if it's the 8th wonder of the world! The only wonder is how the hell the doofus who allowed it into production keeps his job.

Nvidia, stick to chipsets, as ATI are going to continue kicking your ass as long as you produce shite like this.

 

[Twitch]

I think nVidia got fat and lazy from thinking they had no competition. They got that fat $200,000,000 advance from Microsoft to produce X-BOX core components, they starting making headway in chipsets, and they forgot about ATI sneaking up on them from behind.

nVidia should have started worrying about ATI when ATI came out with the 8500. Sure, the 8500 didn't set the world on fire, but it put ATI on equal footing with nVidia for a while, and nVidia hadn't experienced that feeling since 3DFX went under.

Maybe nVidia needs to fire some R&D people, completely destroy all 3DFX designs and concepts, and start from scratch on their next GPU. (Or maybe they just need a GeForce FX on a 256-bit memory bus, but I don't even think that would help them now.)

I want to move to space, so I can overclock processors cooled to absolute zero.

 

[RobD]

I think Nvidia are in trouble, GPU-wise at least. Like you say, they've been kicking back, basking in previous glory and their link-up with MS and never noticed ATI sneaking up in the outside lane.

What must really hurt them is the fact that ATI actually did some R&D and came up with a GPU that....PEOPLE WANTED! Shock move! Who does that these days anyway?

Nvidia's current path is moving them away from what the consumer and gamer wants (no, <i>needs</i>), while ATI has everything you <i>could</i> want. And with R350 about to rear its beautiful head....

They think it's all over for Nvidia? It is now!

 

[Twitch]

Side note: I found this link at nvidia
GeForceFX voted best graphics card of 20002.

Yeah, I saw that a couple weeks ago. I just laughed. How the hell can you win an award for "Best GPU of 2002" when here it is, almost March of 2003, and we STILL haven't seen the retail product yet. That's so ridiculous it totally discredits the organization that gave the award.

nVidia needs to get their sheit together. I really think they need to scrap FX Ultra, put nv 31 core cards on the market at the $180-$200 price point, where they'll probably beat the 9500 PRO speed-wise in DX 8.1 games, and just try to cut their losses. Circle the wagons and innovate. Remember when nVidia used to innovate? It's like they moved all their innovative people to Crush chipset development.




I want to move to space, so I can overclock processors cooled to absolute zero.

 

[drednox]

ok

whats the R350 and when is that hiting the wide market ? I might end up trying it out for a change. although stability is still a huge issue for me and in my current setup I have a GF4 on latest drivers and no problems whatsoever. I dont want any headaches, manula fixes, reg edit, etc. etc. Just download teh drivers and fire it up for it to work, stock and I am looking for what will be the best possible product available at the end of March, begining April.

 

[RobD]

OK, R350 = Radeon 9800 and the like
RV350= Radeon 9600

Or at least that's what I've read.

Check <A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8003" target="_new">here </A> for an article relating to it.

Now as that article states, ATI launch these sometime in March. This should drive the price of the R9500 and R9700 down, so that's your best bet. Wait a while if you can. Then make you move.

As for drivers, the latest catalyst drivers have given me no probs with my 8500Pro. But to be sure, always make sure you get the WHQL ones.

 

[vegandago]

i have no problems with ANY game w/ my ATI drivers...

and whoever said "money isn't an issue i just want the best possible performance... blah blah blah"

you're still using ill-logic... considering the performance gap between fx an 9700pro are negligible you'd be better off waiting for the next gen of cards and go with a 9700pro for now.

"There is no dark or light side, only power and those too weak to seek it."

 

[LtBlue14]

you won't have any stability problems with the latest ATi line
here's what you need, short and sweet:
asus P4T533 mobo
intel p4 3.06 with stock heatsink/fan
ATi Radeon 9700 pro (you WILL see a large difference between that and the 4600, and feel free to turn up anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering while you're at it. The radeon cards can handle them, the nvidia ones fall apart. i'm a geforce 4 ti4400 owner, so you know)
512MB RDRAM 1066
those are the basics, other than that you can probably figure out what size hard drive etc you want

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[eden]

Have you even seen NV31's 3d Mark 2003 score?
NV 31 and NV34 have both much below 3000 points, with NV34 IIRC scoring 879!
Yup, a Ti200 card's performance.
Sorry but those cards are not to be anticipated if someone here is waiting for the next nVidias.

--
This post is brought to you by Eden, on a Via Eden, in the garden of Eden.

 

[dhlucke]

I saw that today. WTF is going on with nvidia?????

<font color=red>
<A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">The French are being described as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.</A></font color=red>

 

[Twitch]

I wish I was a graphics engineer, so I would understand how the FX can beat the 9700 PRO in 3DMark2001SE and in *most* of the DX 8.1 and lower benchmarks, but give such terrible performance in 3DMark03. Maybe 3DMark03 gives more credit for higher quality? Does nVidia have ANY valid points in their complaints about 3DMark03?

I think we can now see without a doubt why nVidia doesn't like the benchmark. They may just be trying to conceal poor DX9.0 performance, but I would really like for someone in the know to analyze 3DMark03, to make sure it really is a fair system benchmark. After all, a lot of us will be eventually basing our decisions on what to buy on that benchmark, so I want to make sure it's accurate. I mean, what if nVidia's right, and the results of the benchmark simply won't correlate to performance in games? I mean, I don't spend $400 on a graphics card so I can run 3DMark03 in an endless loop.

It's obvious that FX is a disappointing product, but if you believe 3DMark03, it's only 60% as fast as the 9500 Pro? That just doesn't make sense. The 9500PRO is somewhat faster than the Ti4600 in most game benchmarks--especially with high quality settings, but according to 3dMark03, it's well over twice as fast? It does seem like the 3DMark03 mark is giving too much credit for something. I want the benchmark to translate to my screen in more than just the benchmark itself.

I've read a couple noteable sites who believe Codecreatures is the most accurate single benchmark for a quick-and-dirty appraisal of 3D performance. FX beat Radeon in that benchmark (in terms of framerate while Radeon one in terms of polygons). That tells me the FX will push slightly higher FPS at slightly lower quality. I really would not be surprised if that's how it is going to be in terms of real-word performance. After all, the FX should be faster in terms of FPS at lower quality settings because of its processor speed. The Radeon should be faster at higher quality settings because of its memory bandwidth. But really--is the 9700PRO really going to be TWICE as good as the FX? If you look at game benchmarks and Codecreatures, the answer is "no way." The answer will depend on if you prefer to give a little bit of quality in exchange for a little bit of FPS. That's why I have serious, serious doubts about 3DMark03.





I want to move to space, so I can overclock processors cooled to absolute zero.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Twitch on 02/28/03 10:31 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[LtBlue14]

when i take into consideration the driver optimization for games, and the differences in what the cards accel at (though, does NV30 really accel at anything??) it makes me realize that i will no longer use synthetic benchmarks for video cards
i just care what will play my games better, the games iiiii play. i'll look at those benches from now on

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I LOVE DANGER DEN WATERCOOLING, they went out of their way to both personalize my kit and change my order when i needed to, i had to change my sig to give them props

 

[eden]

The problem is the score is based on the 4 main tests, and the points scatter.
Firstly test 4 cannot be used on the Ti4600, so there you lose at least 1000 points.
Then, PS1.4 tests were initiated in test 2, so that is already a great advantage to the R9500PRO. If TI4600 had it, it would've had a serious gain.
And not to mention future DX 9 games will surely favor the R9500PRO over the Ti4600, so just wait.

--
This post is brought to you by Eden, on a Via Eden, in the garden of Eden.

 

[chuck232]

Well yeah Eden. The R9500 Pro is fully DX9 compliant, which means more than likely it'll beat even the NV31/34 in real games casue they're supposedly not fully compliant.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[Twitch]

I guess I just don't really care all that much about DX 9.0 performance right now. Maybe if a person is going to keep the card for over a year, it'll be important, but I will be upgrading again in a year--about the time we start seeing actual DX 9.0 games. And besides, the DX 9.0 games we do see probably won't even be USING P.S. 1.4, but rather, P.S. 2.0.

Here's a quote from Extremetech:

"Given the difficulty of programming in DX8, the greatly improved development tools for DX9, and the fact that this PS 1.1 vs. PS 1.4 issue goes away in DX9 thanks to PS 2.0 , it's unlikely that we'll ever see that many games using PS 1.4."

"This benchmark does overemphasize PS 1.4, and this probably wasn't the best way to go for all three tests. It might have been better to start with a PS 1.1 test, then move on to a PS 1.4/1.1 test (as they do now), and then finish with a PS 2.0 only test. This would more accurately model how games are developed now, and will be built in the future."

In other words, 3DMark03 doesn't even accurately predict how future games will be built.






I want to move to space, so I can overclock processors cooled to absolute zero.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Twitch on 03/01/03 07:25 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[nexus_alpha]

Honestly I don't think you will find a card more stable then the gforce 4 even the geforce fx has issues has noted in several reviews so if you go fx or r9700 some issues are bound to pop up.

 

[NE_Corridor]

I'm more anxious to see what SiS has to offer this year rather than Nvidia.

Yay, I'm a freakin' noob.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by NE_corridor on 03/02/03 10:18 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[chuck232]

You mean the SiS Xabre II? I'm still looking forward to R/V350 and R400... hehehe

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...