ATI cards in TH benchmarks

dartacan

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I've been looking at recent VGA guides in Tom's Hardware and I've noticed something strange in UT2003 results for the ATI cards

What's strange is that while all the settings seem to be the same in the guide written in 20/12/2002 as in the one in 14/7/2003 ( and indeed all the other cards covered in both articles get similar results) both the 9500pro and the 9700pro cards seem to have decreased sensibly in performance (about 11 %)

You can see this here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-12.html

and here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021218/vgacharts-04.html

I was considering buying an Ati card, but this bothers me a bit. Shouldn't cards experience performance gains instead of drops whenever new drivers are released? Or is there any reason for this other than using a newer (and apparently worse) set of drivers ?

I would like to know what people think of this, I mean, is the 9500pro as good a choice as it used to be, or... ?
 

Balderdash

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ATI cards are just fine; you don't need to let that sort of thing worry you. The UT2003 discrepancies you are talking about I think can be attributed to the 'optimizations' that were removed from the ATI drivers. The earlier results were 'tainted' much like the nV card’s drivers have been shown to be 'tainted' from time to time.

The ATI 9600Pro and 9800Pro cards are excellent cards, but I don't know about the 9500 series. I know a lot of people have had great luck with them, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I think that ATI must know something that we don't and that's why they killed that series in favor of the 9600Pros even back when it looked like the 9500's were beating the 9600's in benchmarks.
 

Ion

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R9500 was base on R9700 PCB so it was EXPENSIVE to produce the chip=low profit gain.

R9600 had new design to bring down cost so ATi can get more profit.

Lastly ATi killed R9500 they know if both cards priced about the same, who would want to buy the slower one? :tongue:
 

AMD_Man

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No, ATI has not had any "tainted" optimizations in their drivers. They did not remove anything. In fact, newer drivers are quite a bit faster than the older ones. The problem is that the old review is on a P4 3.06GHz and the new one is on an Athlon XP 2700+. Therefore, you can't compare the numbers directly.

I think that ATI must know something that we don't and that's why they killed that series in favor of the 9600Pros even back when it looked like the 9500's were beating the 9600's in benchmarks.
Not really, it's just that R9600Pro is right up there with R9500Pro (slightly slower in some cases), and the R9600Pro is cheaper to produce due to the smaller process.

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TKS

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I think that ATI must know something that we don't and that's why they killed that series in favor of the 9600Pros even back when it looked like the 9500's were beating the 9600's in benchmarks.
The price was just too high to produce the 9500 series so they killed it. Nothing more, Nothing less. And the 9500 Pro will kick the crap outta the 9600 anything. It has 8 pixel pipelines open whilst the 9600 only has 4 (but higher clock speeds...OOoO!!).

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TKS

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If you want a big piece of crap...go ahead and go with Nvidia. Check the new benchmarks for DX9 games coming out and you will find that Nvidia's performance is UNDERNEATH the 9600 Pro. And I'm talking the 5900 Ultra 128MB here...not some lame arse 5200. Check this forum...there are live threads now talking specifically about the flickering problem with Nvidia and the current low performance of Nvidia FX cards.

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ufo_warviper

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The 9500 series was BETTER than the 9600 series. The 9500 chips technically had 8 pipelines. They are identical chips to the 9700 chips in fact. The only reason they are labled as "9500" is because only 4 of the pipelines on the 9500 were tested to work, and chances are is that the remaining 4 pipes that are disabled by the driver could work with hacked drivers (ie. Omega). Most 9500 cards can "soft mod" to 9500 Pros or 9700s :eek: depending on which PCB (Printed Circuit Board)they sit on. But more often than not, the mod produces "artifects" that are randomly appearing/dissapperaing defects in the image quality and are annoying so the mod isn't worth it if you have artifacts. The 9500 Pros even have 8 pipes, but I think the chip sits on only a 128 bit memory interface. Software modding the Radeons does not damage the cards in anyway, but chances of non-artifact flawless softmodding is less than 50% chance of success. ATi probably cancled the 9500 series because softmods were becoming so popular and costing them money that people would otherwise spend on a 9500 Pro or 9700 boards.


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barnettgs

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9500 pro may be faster than 9600 pro but these reviews are based on direct 8.x games. I have been reading a couple of reviews online which runs on real direct 9x games like half life 2 recently and 9600 pro came out a bit better if not equal to 9500 pro.
 

ufo_warviper

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You might be right, but the results are similar to one another. There's not enough performance difference to scrap the 9500 line even if the 9600 does come out barely slightly faster in a couple cases. I still beleive the ATi's biggest arguement for dropping the 9500 line was the softmod epidemic that was probably killing some of ATi's profits.

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like the nV card’s drivers have been shown to be 'tainted' from time to time.
Understatement of the year.

And <b>Dartacan</b>, I wouldn't put too much faith in the THG VGA Buyer's Guide as it's been shown to be an anomaly, due the nV 'optimizations' Balderdash was refering to. The real UT2K3 performance is usually on par with their FX counterparts. we had a very long discussion about it when it was first released.

And obviously something else is going on in the benchmark (DDR400 v. DDR333?) as even the GTF4tis are down too, 4600 is down from 130.2 to 123.9 and the 4200 is down from 108.9 to 102.3 as well.

So I would look at a few more places first before making any purchase decisions one way or the other.

Wanna read about GF opitimizations in UT2K3 and elsewhere, then read the most vocal reviewer <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTAz" target="_new">Here</A> and <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTAw" target="_new">Here</A>.
And for one of the most complete views look at DigitLife's Articles <A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/gffx-16.html" target="_new">HERE</A> and <A HREF="http://" target="_new">HERE</A>.

In the end the question is what are the cards you are considering? I would say that the R9600P offers great bamg for the buck. Want another review from the same era that shows the performance of all the cards including the overclocked-out-of-the-box Gainward FX5600URev.2 (which I used to recommend to people wanting nV products), then take a look at <A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gw56ufc&page=9" target="_new">this one</A> (it's short and sweet, but a good look at alot of games with the major card.

Another <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTExLDM=" target="_new">recent review of the Albatron FX5900</A> from [H] might shed some more light for you too.

More recently there are many more reviews. Just go to the major sites (including THG and click their review links that take you to other sites). Try <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/" target="_new">Anandtech</A>, <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/index.html" target="_new">[H]</A>, <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/" target="_new">XbitLabs</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.tech-report.com/" target="_new">The Tech Report</A> for starters. Don't rely on any one site, or any one person's opinion, unless it's mine of course. :wink:

Do some more research and then decide where your needs/finances fit.


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UFO, also don't disparage my R9600P or I will bring a can of Overclocked R9600P whup-ass down on you! After having competed head to head with GW and his OC'd R9500P (to the death it seems), I can safely say that they both perfrom very well in their respective niches. Time will tell how the DX9 games treat them, but the future looks brighter than I thought based on the fact that in those recent HL2 benchmarks once or twise the R9600P beat the R9700P (the best you could expect from an R9500n-p mod), and that was stock R9600P not my 535/363 one.

So be nice! :tongue:


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ufo_warviper

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Dang you coded in about a dozen links
in there or so dude! I'll get around to checking them out. I've checked some of them out.

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ufo_warviper

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I almost forgot that the 9600 Pro is actually clocked faster than a 9700. I guess maybe those extra clockspeeds do help in certain situations afterall.

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