New ATI cards

[Gorgias]

So what do you guys think of the new reviews of the ATI cards. I'm kind of disappointed. I expected a major performance lead over the GeforceFX. I will still by a 9800pro as soon as they come out but I'm not that impressed.

Also the reviews have tended to seem a bit biased against the FX lately when interpeting results. All results that are in favour of ATI are usually decribes as big differences but when it goes against ATI the differences are very small or excusable due to different factors, even if the differences in pure numbers are about the same.

Just my $0.02.

 

[speeduk]

The reviews put a big smile on my face actually, i have a 9700 pro and it out performs a standard 5800 . As for the 9800, the increase in performance is only slight so i think i wont need to upgrade for another 6 months atleast.

 

[RobD]

The 9800 is a 9700 with more bells and whistles on basically, but the 9600 should be cool. .13 microns and all.

The testing shows just why Nvidia bitched about 3DMark03, and indicates that they did indeed wander off the beaten path. With NV31 and NV34 though, they are making amends somewhat, and when they launch, its gonna be interesting.

Seems like a fanboy war coming!

 

[CaptainNemo]

Gawd - I hate fanboy wars...

I just buy the best graphics card for my budget, which was a Radeon 9000 Pro three months ago (I am very pleased with it).

Hopefully, the new ATI cards will mean price drops on the 9700; I have no idea what they are up to with the 9600 though.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by captainNemo on 03/06/03 08:31 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[RobD]

Yeah, you've done the right thing. Buy the best you can afford. If it runs the games you play well, then, hey, you've got the right card!

I've got an 8500Pro, it's killer. Will keep it until it goes fubar. Then I'll look at other cards.

Prices? Well, recently with the unmitigated disaster that was Nvidia's GF-FX, ATI's prices stayed the same, and in some cases, I heard people say the price has gone <i>up</i>.

Now with the 9200/9600/9800 AND Nvidia's cards, it <i>should</i> bring the price down, as the 9500/9700 will no longer be the be-all and end-all of cards, and of course, ATI and their partners will be looking to move on old stock so they can start producing the new cards.

At least, that's the theory!

 

[CaptainNemo]

There was recent price hike on the 9700 Pro cards (crucial put their up by a small amount anyway); it could be due to supply (too small) & demand (too high).

Doom III should throw a few spanners in the works too. I imagine that isn't too disimilar from the FPS benchmark in 3d Mark 2003; my 9000 could barely kick out 5FPS (970 score overall). Demand for ubercards is going to rocket.

 

[nesnejeba]

As far as them being biased in the testing.. I just quote this from the conclusion~

In addition to its more compact design (single-slot solution) and its simpler (and much quieter) cooler, the Radeon 9800 PRO is also much faster than the FX 5800 Ultra in all important disciplines (FSAA, anisotropic filtering) and offers the best image quality with those features enabled.

Perhaps they were hyped because the 9800 beat the FX in every discipline they consider <b> important </b> .

I'm not a fan boy at all (I've used both brands), but I'm just glad to see that the next generation of Cards isnt going to the gigantic duster buster look and sound of the FX. Screw getting a 9800 I'll get a 9700 pro when the price drops. Supply and demand does have me a bit worried though as far as pricing goes. I bet there will be a big demand for the 9700 pro once the price drops.

 

[RobD]

Well, take your pick of the big bad cards. ATI has a raft of them now, and Nvidia has it's offerings....Big dust up on the way!

Crucial did at one point <i>lower</i> the price of the 9700. Then it shot back up again.

I agree, with Doom III's GPU-hungriness, it's all going to kick off with some real aggressive marketing.

Fanboys, take your corners!

 

[capstah]

From the review it looks like the GFX is king of the multi-texturing, while the ATI pretty much takes the prize in all other categories. Does anyone know how often single texturing vs. multitexturing is used in current games?

 

[BigBiggist]

I cant wait too see how that 256 MB DDRII Radeon performs. I dont really know if the ton of extra memory will have a huge performance increase in all that image quality stuff, I dont really think you need that much memory right now though. Kinda a waste. My 9700 Pro can run everything except 3dMark 2003 on max settings. It cant even run 3Dmark 2003(last 3 demos)ith 2x aniso without choppin :frown:

 

[davepermen]

go over to anandtech and the card rocks. they don't even use the gfFX in all tests anymore because its just not capable of the highquality images..

and about the multitexturing. the card is fast enough for all games that need good multitexturing. new games will not need fast multitexturing, but fast pixelshaders. and there the ati card, again, rocks

the card is great.. i can't wait to get my hands on it, wanna get the unlimited pixelshader instruction count.. will be great.. finally i can do what ever i want, how ever i want something nvidia could not offer as well with its board..

and the 9800 is technical and bruteforce winner.. and this is still .15

"take a look around" - limp bizkit

www.google.com

 

[Twitch]

If you go to Anandtech, it also sounds like Anand believes the NV35 core is going to come soon and will be significantly better than nv30. Here's the quote:

"NVIDIA will not have a chance to respond to the Radeon 9800 Pro for another couple of months, with their NV35 part. NVIDIA has NV35 up and running and it is already significantly better than the lackluster NV30; although we're not sure if it will be able to outperform the Radeon 9800 Pro, at this point we can say that from what we've seen, NVIDIA has regained some of our confidence."

A couple months? What does that mean? A couple months until paper release? I really want to see if NV35 is what I think it's going to be (256-bit GeForce FX-Ultra without the noise issues) and how it will perform. I was a little bit disappointed in R350 reviews, but I guess we can't expect ATI to improve performance by 40% EVERY time the release a new chip. R300 was the exception.

Did you notice how FX suddenly kicked A$$ in the Serious Sam benchmarks? Didn't the FX get worked in the original becnhmarks? They said something about "forcing" the FX to run 24-bit Z-buffer. Yet, over at Anandtech, the new 9800 beats the FX. I wonder if the end user will have the ability to choose 24-bit Z-Buffer.

Anyway, it really looks like FX needs to improve memory bandwidth and it will be able to make a better showing against R350. Still not sure what my next graphics card will be.




<-----Insert witty sig line here.

 

[flamethrower205]

Several things from that review tho: In games w/o aa and aniso, fx beats the 9800 in many cases. When we look at cases with opengl, we see it really rocks, which leads to beleive it prolly is tweakable to quadro FX (won't that be grand!) Finally, certain areas of the benchmarks lead me to beleive that the nv drivers for the fx still have a few features disabled, and we'll be seeing a sizeable performance increase when they are enabled (gf3 had something like that too). Time will tell.

Hilbert space is a big place.

 

[Ghostdog]

OK, a few opinions.

I was a bit dissapointed about how much faster the 9800P is over a 9700P. This is mainly because of the rumours that have been flying around the net, suggesting a bigger improvement. On the other hand it makes me happy that I own a 9700Pro, so that my subconscious won´t force me to upgrade to a clearly faster card.

Since the high-end market is so small I think the 9800Pro is sort of designed to re-take the crown and showcase some tech-advances (F-buffer mainly).
9800Pro: A good card for someone who is buying a new card right now, but not for someone who already has a 9700Pro.

but the 9600 should be cool. .13 microns and all.

I´m sorry, I just have to ask: Do you think that simply a new manufacturing process produces higher performance?

I cant wait too see how that 256 MB DDRII Radeon performs. I dont really know if the ton of extra memory will have a huge performance increase in all that image quality stuff, I dont really think you need that much memory right now though. Kinda a waste.

Well this is the card I´m waiting to read about.
You see, someone told me he had compared the performance of a 9700Pro and a FireGL X1 (R300 chip + 256MB DDR) in UT2003, and that the X1 proved noticeably faster when using all the goodies.
So I think that the need for 256MB on-board memory is already here. Not to mention that DDR-II should be able to clock nicely.

The R350 is a middle-stage to re-take the performance lead before the next gen (R400) chip arrives. The R400 is said to be a bigger leap from the R300/350-generation than the R300 was from ATI´s previous chips. So that is the one I´m really waiting for. Let´s just hope ATI doesn´t rush it out the door like *cough* someone else did.
It should also be interesting to see what kind of tech Nvidia will bring us this year and the next.

<font color=red>I´m starting to feel like a real computer consultant.</font color=red>

 

[Skidudek2]

I am confused did they test a 9800 or 9800 pro, because of the following statement:

"Although all R350 chips are DDR-II ready, according to ATI, only the 9800 PRO model, due out later in H1/03, will use the newer memory."

Seems to me they tested the 9800 i would think the 9800 pro would be a little bit faster, or maybe im just confused. What do you think?

 

[baldurga]

My first impresion of 9800 Pro has been "not that much". But then looking at Mhz increase but especially at Anandtech analsys (Performance/Mhz) I realize that in fact it scales very well and improvements are done on areas that owners are suposed to demand from that type of card (aniso/FSAA).

I was also thinking if currently GPU & RAM frecuencies are balanced or one of both are acting as bottleneck. Any idea? Any review that shows it?


Still looking for a <b>good online retailer</b> in Spain :frown:

 

[RobD]

The reason for what I said about .13 microns? It's good to see ATI and Nvidia going down a different route, rather than over the same old ground. As they exploit it, it should make for better cards in the future.

 

[dhlucke]

I was impressed. I'll be even more impressed if R9700 Pro prices drop. They rose and have stayed high since the GeForceFX was released. Kind of screwed me.

This doesn't make the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra a bad product by any means

What does he mean? The FX is the definition of a bad product. It fails in everything from performance, drivers, image quality, noise, heat, size, to weight, etc etc. How long will Tom continue to soften the blow for Nvidia? Why shelter a card that performs so miserably and still hasn't even made it to the market? I really think the FX should be described for what it is: crap, until Nvidia improves the card.

[/rant]

<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>

 

[flamethrower205]

You see it doesn't. Your bias makes it appear like that to you. If you will notice, with the exclusion of the aa/aniso benches, fx holds very well up to the 9800, and in some cases when res goes up it performs better comparitivly. Then in the 3d sector, it blows the x1 away. Furthermore, what's up w/ the 1.4 shaders not working right? Performance downgrade there for sure, and drivers should remedy that.

Hilbert space is a big place.

 

[dhlucke]

Let's face it....everyone but you values image quality, FFAA, and AF performance. We value our ears and our wallets.

<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>

 

[flamethrower205]

Funny u talk about image quality when AA messes it up.

Hilbert space is a big place.

 

[LtBlue14]

personally i prefer an image with anti aliasing to an image with ugly jaggies
it "messes it up" by softening the edges, and makes a NICER picture

--------------
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

 

[flamethrower205]

Thing that pisses me off is that things arn't as sharp anymore, I really notice that (o, and that does happen on ati cards too before someone b!tches that it's b/c my quadro dcc). Anyway, when I run at a res one notch higher, there are no ridgies.

Hilbert space is a big place.

 

[flamethrower205]

hehe, just noticed ur Chris also.

Hilbert space is a big place.

 

[Crashman]

No, it's not bias, it's the actual size of the differences. For example, a 3% Loss on one test is much larger than a 1% win.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>