9600 reviews are out;

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

New one here at Tom's and one at HardOCP, Beyond3d, HotHardware , Tech-Report;

<A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDU4" target="_new">http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDU4</A>

<A HREF="http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/rv350/" target="_new">http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/rv350/</A>

<A HREF="http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/r9600_pro.shtml" target="_new">http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/r9600_pro.shtml</A>

<A HREF="http://tech-report.com/reviews/2003q2/radeon-9600pro/index.x?pg=1" target="_new">http://tech-report.com/reviews/2003q2/radeon-9600pro/index.x?pg=1</A>

Guess the NDAs lifted this morning. Either that or they all had good timing.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! <font color=red>RED</font color=red> <font color=green>GREEN</font color=green> :tongue: GA to SK

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

My personal conclusion.

It laggs the 9500P in some areas and wins in others. Overall better than the FX5600 IMO. All with no extra power connector.

Gonna get me one as soon as I can! But remember I want cooler, and more power efficient so people make your own decisions.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! <font color=red>RED</font color=red> <font color=green>GREEN</font color=green> :tongue: GA to SK<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheGreatGrapeApe on 04/16/03 09:32 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[CasualCat2001]

I'm going to get one too, mainly since it doesn't require an extra power connector. Given the well documented monetary advantages for ATI to replace the 9500pro with the 9600pro you think ATI could make the difference in MSRP a little more than $20 ($219 and $199 respectively). Maybe they are just trying to make up for the money they have "lost", but it seems to me if you have the extra power and the little bit of extra cash the 9500pro still seems the way to go...

(added below statement)
Hopefully the upcomming overclocking tests of the 9600pro will narrow the gap in the areas in which this newer card has lagged behind<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by CasualCat2001 on 04/16/03 11:19 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[selfbuilt]

From my reading of the reviews, I would actually be more tempted to go out and get a 9500 Pro for my son's computer while they are still available. Until the price drops significantly on the 9600 Pro (and I don't see how it can in the short-term, since they have the 9600 nonpro and upcoming 9200 to price as well), the 9500 Pro still looks like a much better bargain. Especialy since the 9500 Pro seems to hang in better when the cards are really stressed to the max (one of the great features of the 9500 Pro).

Where does good judgement come from? Experience. Where does experience come from? Bad judgement.

 

[Tonto]

Quite a difference in HardOCP's and Tom's reviews. Guess it's hard do compare apple to apples anymore.

Tom seems to pick similar settings and does the benches showing similar speeds but 9600 has better Image Quality.
HardOCP tries to match the IQ first and then do the benchmarks.
Makes a BIG difference too.

Man, nothing is simple anymore

T.

 

[OICAspork]

I wonder about Lars... his handling of the 3DMark03 initially outraged a lot of people because of its NVidia slant... then he came back and presented the other side of things, thus regaining credibility... and here again I have to question his methodology...

He discusses, a bit, how at given settings the ATI product looks better than the NVidia... and then runs the benchmarks with NVidia's much lower quality settings, which in turn put the 5600 Ultra in the best possible light...

That said, it is possible to compare apples to apples... as seen in HardOCP's review. NVidia's current texture filtering scheme is grossly dishonest. They adopted ATI's terminology for AF settings, but those settings are not even REMOTELY comparable. ATI does trilinear filtering by default while the ONLY way you can trilinear on the GFFX line is by setting the filtering to "application" which in turn makes the frame rates truely plumet...

This makes me wonder... is Lars unaware of NVidia's sneaky AF naming scheme, and taken in by it? That would indicate that it wasn't an intentional oversite on his part... but it would also indicate that he isn't well enough informed. On the other hand, if he is aware of that and didn't mention it... it seems to once again indicate an NVidia leaning in his reviews here...

My suggestion, would be to put two bars in each graph for the 5600 Ultra, one with the setting set to application, and the other with the same driver setting, be it "performance" or "balanced" as the ATI card is set to in drivers, then no one could complain about the biases of the article.

I would ask Mr. Weinand to go back and edit these into the article to give a better comparison of the cards performance at equal settings. It is sad that such a credible site as Tom's consistantly creates questionable graphics card reviews.

 

[Tonto]

Well he stated that ATI also has an optimization in their aniso also, so maybe that's why. But after the writeup at HardOCP seems that ATI's is less of a lossy method. IMO I think you should match the IQ as closely as possible and then bench.

I'v browsed the reviews (added another one below) and they all use Nvidia's Application mode to get the aniso evened up... so Tom seems to be alone here using quality.

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q2/radeon-9600pro/index.x?pg=2

 

[kmolazz]

-and what is the deal with:

"We're still waiting for both NVIDIA and ATi to release official and WHQL-certified drivers before we make any final judgments on image quality."

All ATI's drivers since the Catalyst release have been WHQL certified.


And on the subject of image quality, maybe he sould mention that the detonators he is using are not complying with DX9 specs as to shader precision...

 

[Borsti]

Hi,

I see your critics and understand your concerns. But I think it´s the wrong way to try to "match" IQ first and bench afterwards. Who decides? In what situations/scenes/angles? What about texture LOD settings? Are they different? Is the mipmapping in some cases different?

Well, we allready had such discussions when the battle 3dfx vs. NVIDIA was going on. There´s no real good way to try to balance the quality. Everything depends on too many factors. That´s why I match the settings in the driver menu comparing NVIDIA Quality vs. ATI Quality. If NVIDIA has another idea of what "Quality" is, they simply loose here. This is the default setting so this is the setting almost 80% (guessed) of the people who will own such a card will play with. That´s the performance they´re getting. The quality is lower than ATI´s - That´s what I´m saying in the IQ part and that´s what I´m saying in the conclusion. So everybody knows that FX5600 has a lower IQ. Where´s the problem?

Everybody can take a look at the screenshots and descide if he can live with that - or not. We allready had such discussions when you tried to compare cards with SuperSampling FSAA with MultiSampling cards. There´s no way to do it "right".

About the 3DM stuff... you should take a look in the R9800 and FX5600/5200 article. I was one of the few who benched the NV30 with the high precision drivers (43.00) while others only used 43.72 or 43.63 with reduced precision. I was not able to do so here since 43.00 simply does not support FX5600/5200. I mentioned those reviews several times in the article. Regular THG readers are aware of that I did those tests. So... what´s your problem with 3DM 2003 in this review? Ok... I could have talked about the same story for the third time. But I said that I´ll take a look on IQ when WHQL drivers (mainly from NV) are available. This is when it becomes really interresting.

Lars

 

[GeneticWeapon]

I actually agree with him....this time. But Lars, how come you always show up here AFTER you write an article, and never hang with us during normal days?

My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[Borsti]

You´re right. I should visit the forum more often :-/

I promise to do so in future!

Lars

 

[jihiggs]

i think its great that you do care enough to visit the forum at all. same with david and omid. i cant think of a better way to see what the people think and want.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

 

[GeneticWeapon]

thanx.

My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[Willamette_sucks]

Lars theres just one thing im sad about, THG is totally intel now I know intel currently has the highest performing cpu/chipset combo w/their new 200mhz fsb p4s, that basically wipe the floor w/the top of the line athlons in most things.
But at what price? I got an amd cpu(2700), ram(pc3200), and a mobo(a7n8x) for less than the best p4 when it came out.
Im interested to see how the 200mhz Barton will perform, im wondering how high theyll take the line... 3600?
Neways you guys benched a 2700 and a 2800, but the 2800 was the barton, everyone knows that in MOST situations the non--barton 2800 performs better because of the faster clock speed, you really didnt show AMDs very top of the line that would have been the AMD leader in some of those situations.
Oh well.

Long live ATI.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Awww...dont be sad pumpkin :frown: ..your my little Addict now!
My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[Willamette_sucks]

lol, DAMN RIGHT!

Long live ATI.

 

[Makaveli]

hey would it be to much to ask that you use the application mode in the nvidia drivers when your doing specific image quality comparisons. And then use the regular settings for just game benches?

 

[GeneticWeapon]

I'd say yea...thats probably too much to ask...

My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[Willamette_sucks]

The review had screenshots using all modes of both cards, so, uh... stfu.

Long live ATI.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

stfu?....heh

My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[Willamette_sucks]

Gen you really are eager for posts to raise your status huh?
What do you like click "view all users posts" on me or what?
lol ur always right where i am.
not that i mind i guess.
AHHAHAHHA im addict and ur not! lol.

drugs are bad.

Long live ATI.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Post deleted by GeneticWeapon

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Seriously though, I saw you on another board, telling a poster that you were only throwing him a cheesey answer, because you were trying to quickly raise your status...(shame)

My Score..<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6258104</A>..Pic's of my pc before I pimped it.<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html" target="_new">http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/Genetic_Weapon.html</A>

 

[kmolazz]

thanks for answering..

it's always good to know "you" show up in the forum to talk to your readers.

 

[Willamette_sucks]

u better be j/k.
that was my friend Chris, i know him in real life.
it wasnt meant to be an insult.

Long live ATI.