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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Radeon 9800 Pro really rocks with DBPro...

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DMXtra
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 01:59
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I made a bump mapping demo of planet earth and on a Geforce 4 I got 310 frames per second.

On a Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 megs of ram, I got 820 frames per second on the same exact demo! Amazing...

Its like that for everything now, not just those.

The CSG demos using simple shapes ran about 350 frames per second on my geforce 3, now run at 1200-1380 frames per second on my Radeon 9800 Pro.

This clearly is the best card for DBPro at the moment and its about to be replaced in six months, awesome!

DBPro at its best seems to be...

o Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (plus all other updates)
o Radeon 9800 Pro
o ATI Catalyst 3.8 Video Drivers
o Direct X 9.0b
o Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum
o Latest Sound drivers for the Creative Sounb Blaster Audigy 2
o 100 Megabit Ethernet
o 510 Megs of ram or greator
o Intel Pentium 4 2+ Ghz

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 02:50
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hardly my fx5200 gets 825fps under the bumpmap demo, you don't even want to know what my fx5900ultra gets
the Radeons are nice but there no geforce ... also remember it relies alot on which detonators your using.

currently the fastest for standard operations is 44.04 and for fragment operations is 51.75 - 45.23 are just too buggy to even bother with.

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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 04:04
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That's odd - according to all the hardware reviews I've read, the top of the line ATI and nVidia cards are - big surprise - about the same.

Congrats on upgrading your video card!

John B.


PS - If anyone is interested, some facts to support my statements can be found here:

Tom's Hardware compares the ATI 9800XT to other ATI & nVidia cards.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030930/index.html

Anandtech tests ATI & nVidia cards for Fall 2003.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1890

XBit compares the speed of ATI and nVidia cards when overclocked.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/extreme.html
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DMXtra
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 04:06
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Raven, would you believe that I was a Nvidia fanboy before all of the crap that happened this year? I switch to ATI from my Geforce 3.

I am sure that Geforce FX's are fast, but ATI 9800+ is where its at if you want to run DX 9.

Blew my mind though. I mean can you imagine when we get the new hardware by 2005 how things will be?

Like all of this stuff...
o Pentium 5 CPU (due in late 2004)
o Direct X 10 (beta in 2004, release in 2005)
o PCI Express bus instead of AGP(AGP video cards/bus being phased out) (due out by mid 2004)
o Windows LongHorn (due in 2005)
o Serial ATA 2.0 (due in 2004)
o Radeon R500 DX 10 video card
o Nvidia NV50 DX 10 video card
o 1.2-1.6 Ghz front side bus (2004/2005)
o DDR2 RAM for computer memory

In the meantime prices will fall.

This will be my next system. Well worth it IMO.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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DrakeX
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 04:42
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"In the meantime prices will fall."

yep, that computer will be about $200 and come on a bubble pack

stop looking at me!
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Guyon
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 04:48 Edited at: 11th Oct 2003 05:15
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Tom's Hardware page say that that Radeon is MUCH better. "Geforce is not what they used to be." Right now Radeon rules
That's not me talking but the experts.
Geforce is suppoed to look better on paper but there is something that graphics get cloged up in.

There there was a better card than Radeon for the big shoot out.

BTW: DMXtra, I wish I had a Radeon 9800pro, Have fun with it!!!!!
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 06:42
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Quote: "I am sure that Geforce FX's are fast, but ATI 9800+ is where its at if you want to run DX 9."


GeForceFX cards with the exception of RXT are the ONLY true DirectX9 card... quite frankly the online tests are a waste of time to even bother looking at.

All the real-game tests prove that although it is close the GeForceFX line is faster than the Radeon equivilants.
The benchmark tests again are very very close...
The Image Quality tests - quite frankly Tom's Hardware is a good case and point where he claims the Radeon is a clear winner, but there is a reason why he didn't try to capture the same area ... you want that reason look at the guns - it is very very clear which has better quality.

The so-called loss of quality within 45.23 -> 51.75 drivers isn't real either ... in one picture Texture Sharpening is turned on, i the other it is turned off. Just goes to show what one little feature on the nvidia cards is capable of.

as far as shader based games go - the ONLY game this seems to be a problem with is Half-Life2, 3DMark 03 / Doom3 Alpha / Tenebrae / Angel of Darkness... all have far far higher performance rates on the GeForce cards (not just FX ALL of the cards!)

Even brand new titles designed for both, Unreal Tournament 2003 - Jedi Academy - Enclave - Gunmetal - etc... have alot of Radeon users crying out of bad FPS rates, Gunmetal being the worst as it is apparetly almost unplayable on a P4-2.5 w/Radeon 9800pro - yet even my Duron800 w/FX5200 can handle the game with full graphics at a steady 45fps

... Pitting a GeForce3 and GeForce4 against the fastest radeon and they declaring that it rocks is just plain stupid.
The GF3 even the Ti200 is 1/4 the speed, it only has 2pipelines, 1/4 the ram, only capable of AGP4x, is DirectX 8.1 compliant (meaning i Dx9 it slows down) ... not to mention the chips is almost 4years old now.

It would be like comparing the GeForce4 4800ti with the Voodoo3 3000 ... you just can't they're in completely different leagues.
And you don't note if the GeForce4 you used was mx or ti - that makes ALOT of differece as the ti version is almost 3x the speed of the mx version.

The FX isn't just an on paper card, hell the fact that you Radeon 9800pro and my FX5200 are pushing similar speed is proof, especially as this card is the lowest of the low on the gfx card food chain.

Not trying the dampen your spirits about your new card, just don't try to make out that it is some wondercard within DBP over the GeForce line... because quite frankly it isn't.

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Guyon
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 07:55 Edited at: 11th Oct 2003 08:01
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I am sorry Raven you are right, as usual. please for give me...
..maybe that will save another volume?
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Guyon
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:00
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Oh what the heck, direct quote form Tom's Hardware page:

GeForceFX 5200:
With the NV34, NVIDIA introduces DirectX 9 features into the low-budget market segment and replaces the GeForce4 MX (DirectX 7) line of chips. As far as DirectX features are concerned, the FX 5200 offers everything its bigger brothers offer. However, NVIDIA has reduced the number of pixel pipelines to four. The memory interface also differs from that of the other FX cards, as the 5200 is still equipped with GeForce4 Ti memory technology. The vertex shader performance has been limited as well. The 45 million transistor chip is produced on a 0.15µ process.

Considering the chip's limited performance and its comparatively low clock speeds, the DirectX 9 support is more of a paper feature than a real bonus. In practice, the chip is simply too slow for DirectX 9 calculations at resolutions of 1024x768 and above.

Thanks to the memory interface it has inherited from the GeForce4 Ti, as well as its average anisotropic (trilinear) filtering performance, the chip nonetheless offers very solid performance for an entry-level chip. Beware the cheaper non-Ultra versions, though - some are only equipped with slower, 64-bit memory chips.
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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:28
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Ok - your card is obviously the the fastest one ever made.

I'm sorry - I was stupid to think that multiple 'hardware experts' might know something about it. I guess I mistakenly thought that JKII, TRAOD and NWN were real games they used in their comparisons. I was also wrong to think that for a fair comparison, you would need similar computers, operating systems, driver versions etc. and I realize now that you must have already obtained a copy of the same demo program he wrote for himself.

Quite frankly, I regret that I ever doubted you - you said your card was faster so that must be the way it is. I'm quite certain everyone who reads this thread will be impressed with the unbiased way you used facts and logic to prove the rest of us wrong.

Well done!

John B.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:30
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Guyon, i would strongly suggest you checkout the pdf whitepapers from developer.nvidia.com on the FX series ...
alot of what is mentioned is a load of crap, and honestly ALL of the current cards are hardly cut out for DirectX9 1024x768 performance - you combine this with the additional vram needs that dx9 demands.

Whatever spin and such you want to put on it... the fact of the matter is, my FX5200 (not even a ultra) is capable of being just as fast as alot of the Radeons out there, and the fact that i have it on a pathetic little Duron rather than a P4 2.0ghz+ w/HT just goes to show the raw power.

Infact the most interesting piece of crap i hear is that the GeForceFX lines are't good at high resolutios - however in my experience with them 640x480 -> 1024x768, produces almost ZERO speed difference.

Although DBP reports a drop from 1200fps to 380fps, using FRAPS the real FPS produces remains a very very steady 310->290fps ... which might seem like a big leap, but this is a percetage change, because games like Jedi Academy go from 61fps to 52fps between the resolutions - and within Dx9 titles suchas Angel of Darkess, i ca have full graphics running at 32fps and switch upto 1024x768 and i get essentially identical 29fps

as for reducing the number of pixel pipelines, the Radeons ONLY have 4 ... the FX58/5900 have 6 ... the FX5600 only has 4.
So how have they reduced them?
We add to this that the Radeons are only capable of 800mpx/sec whereas my FX5200 can push 650mpx single pass and 1,200mpx on a multipass, the more pixel levels you use the quicker it will go.
The FX5900 can push even more!

as for the filtering, you have Bilinear - 2samples (8levels)
Trilinear - 3samples and Aniostropic which is a float based adveraging which is a realtime effect as opposes to a sampled effect from the closest precal.

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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:36
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Now Guyon, that's tantamount to heresy. We've been proven wrong already. Don't go trying to confuse the issue with quotes from false prophets. (Hey - that could be a Hercules joke!) Tom, Anand, XBit and the others have clearly been bought out or blackmailed in some kind of conspiracy to convice us all that ATI isn't charging too much by asking similar prices for vastly inferior video cards.

John B.
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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:38
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See - I told you we were wrong. It says so in the white papers.

John B.
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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 08:43
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After all, "The FX isn't just an on paper card...".

John B.
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DMXtra
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 13:57 Edited at: 11th Oct 2003 13:58
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Well I didn't want to start a fight over a video card, but I was a die hard nvidia fan, but I read over at www.beyond3d.com forums and everyone else from Tom's hardware to nvnews.net and nobody denies Radeon is faster and nvidia was caught cheating many times on tests and you have to optimise the code so that it runs fast specifically on Nvidia hardware... etc... etc...

The sad thing is that the Radeon is at .15 microon chip and way under clocked compared to both NV30 and NV35, but yet manages to beat them both done.

Check out Pixel shader 2.0 support and speed for both Nvidia and ATI cards, which is really needed for both DBPro and Half Life 2.

Please no flaming, just check the sources in every magazine or website and you will find the truth as I did. Nvidia is spreading themselves way too thin and they even admit they are not focused on 3D chips anymore.

I was really suprised that the Radeon 9800 pro was so much faster than a Geforce 4, yes I know its next generation, but going from 310 frames per second to around 820 frames per second just by changing out the video card, amazing. This is also not a one time deal, I have done many tests and found its just way faster.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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DMXtra
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 14:10
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While we are at it, here are some real specs of the Radeon 9800 Pro.

Source: http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/9800_256/index.php?p=2

Chipset R350
Silicon Process .15µ (TSMC)
Transistors 107 Million
Pipeline Configuration 8x1 (Pixel Pipe lines x Texture Sampling Units)
Memory Interface 256-bit interface DDR/DDR II
RAMDAC 2x 400MHz 10-bit DAC's
165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant) and TV Out
Bus Standard AGP 8X

Board Configuration Radeon 9800 PRO
Core Clock Rate 380MHz
Pixel Fill-rate 3G Pixels/sec
Texture Fill-rate 3G Textures/sec
Geometry Rate 380M Triangles/sec
Memory Speed 350MHz DDR (700MHz Effective)
Memory Bandwidth 22.6GB/sec
Frame Buffer Size 256MB

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 16:01
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the Radeon 96/97/9800pro chips are all 0.13 and the XTs are 0.11
before you start pushing the bull on these sites checkout the ATI first and do ya damn homework!

the nv30 isn't a general user consumption card, and infact it runs on a .15 too as it was the prototype for the 52/5600 cards and the dropped 5400.

the nv35 is the FX5800 Ultra, the card which had a bug in almost 90% of the card variations which ment that it was always running at its lowest speed, you add to this the fact that the card was still only MARGINALLY beaten in tests (apart from the pretty infamouse HL2 tests which quite frankly it is obvious why)

As for the cheating ... for build 330 this was all fixxed for ALL of the drivers and with nvidia now part of the beta team again there won't be much of that, and even without the speed hacks the cards are performing WELL above the Radeons - but every reviewer is dismissing this because it shows TOO much of a gap.

Quote: " was really suprised that the Radeon 9800 pro was so much faster than a Geforce 4, yes I know its next generation, but going from 310 frames per second to around 820 frames per second just by changing out the video card, amazing. This is also not a one time deal, I have done many tests and found its just way faster"


you've still not metioned WHAT GeForce4... because as i said the GeForce4mx 480 and 4800ti are in TOTALLY different classes.

-- -- --

quite frankly i'm sick of this crap about the GeForce cards, the Radeons are only marginally quicker than the GF4ti series ... unless you overclock them (which is what the Cat 3.5+ do)
The GeForceFX have proven themselves across the board in the industry benchmarks from companies suchas FUTUREMARK, EPIC, ID SOFTWARE that they are quicker - in quite alot of case FAR quicker.

the nv30 vs the R350 yes is pretty equal speed... but considering the fastest card is the nv36 GeForceFX 5900 Ultra, not the v30 which is the prototype card - this over that the 5900ultra is almost 33% faster than the FX5800 Ultra's that did work, which is almost 2x faster than the nv30.
Ontop of this the nv30 was reported albeit marginally to beat the R350 ... somehow though a far more advanced and proven quicker card is loosing to the exact same card!?

you wanna be proud of your new Radeon then be so... i just don't want to come into this forum and see crap like this sitting around.

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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 19:13
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DMXtra, you're clearly missing the point. Raven has already told us that the specs and benchmarks posted on all those web sites are wrong. This must be true because all those sites disagree with him or contradict his statements. They wouldn't do that if they weren't a bunch of liars. He's the only one who knows anything about the video cards so there's no point in arguing with him. Instead, we should all admire him for his tactful arguments, brilliant use of logic and uncanny ability to find indisputable facts that nobody else could. I for one deeply appreciate his valiant and selfless efforts to stamp out the posts he disagrees with on these forums. Clearly they are all crap because he says so.

John B.
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Barliesque
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 21:31
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I don't particularly want to get involved in this ridiculous squabble, just looking for some information. Seeing as there's so much information flying around here... I've got an NVidia FX 5800 (not the Ultra). I was unnerved when, soon after I got it, the 5800 line disappeared. Everything seems to say there was a problem with the Ultra, but I can't find anything that tells me about my version. Does anyone know where I can find a reputable source of info on this subject? ...a non-NVidia site, obviously.

CPU: Pentium 4 3GHz, w/ Hyperthreading, 1GB DDR RAM
OS: Win XP Home, SP1, DirectX 9.1b
GPU: NVidia GeForce FX 5800, 128MB
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WarHunterX
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 21:38
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I have an ATI Rage 128
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Ian T
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 22:10
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Barl-- There were major speed problems as well as a critical error in the manufacturing that makes it about as loud as a John Deere.

ATI is on top, that's a fact; all the experts say it, and even nVidia has said it in that video cards are no longer their main product line.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

A very nice %it, indeed.
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Guyon
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 22:25
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Nope I don't want to get in a big debate either. DMXtra came on excited about his VERY nice graphics card and some wet blankets try to rain on his parade. What's the point? He obviously has a great card why spend your energy shooing him down. But I guess that is your personalty and no specs will change that.
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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 22:31
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Hey - There's nothing wrong with a bit of squabbling evey now and then. I can't speak for the others but I'm not taking any of it seriously (or personally).

As for the FX5800... If memory serves, it was very quickly updated to the 5800 Ultra and then replaced by the 5900 series. (That was from memory so don't teke it as gospel.) I don't think there's anything wrong with the 5800 series or anything - it just got caught in a particularly fast development cycle. Information on the non-Ultra 5800 cards is kind of hard to come by. That said, these links might be useful to you.

John B.


http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1779
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8580
http://endian.net/details.asp?tag=NV30
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Guyon
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Posted: 11th Oct 2003 22:54
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Barliesque,
Tom's Hardware page is considered the best.
http://www.tomshardware.com/
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 12th Oct 2003 08:23
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the problem with the 5800 range was simple...
it had a variable speed, unlike the 52/54/5600 cards the 5800 was capable of running alot cooler and was synced with the ram better because it could variate from 250mhz core to 800mhz core.
(this is also the technique that AMD Athlon\Druon processors use which allows them faster speed at lower clockspeeds)

the only problem was, unless the cards used were designed EXACTLY to nvidia specs - they're hardware chip which regulated the speed wasn't able to change the speed... and so it was perminantly stuck in the lowest speed setting.

Which although was only 250mhz could still keep up with the 5600ultra
the 5900 cards actually had this problem fixxed, and alot of new updates were also thrown into the bag as a result.

Quote: " DMXtra came on excited about his VERY nice graphics card and some wet blankets try to rain on his parade. What's the point? He obviously has a great card why spend your energy shooing him down. But I guess that is your personalty and no specs will change that"


You people seem to be forgetting, i don't come on here and devote and entire thread specifically to mouth off how awesome my GeForceFX 5900ultra is ... no one else who has Radeons has felt the need to sit there and create a thread to specifically belittle GeForce cards.

I don't give a s**t if anyone you used to like nvidia or not, you can be excited about your card all you bloody like ... there is just no call to come online and specifically attack another manufacture just because you are all thrilled about it.

Quote: "Raven has already told us that the specs and benchmarks posted on all those web sites are wrong. This must be true because all those sites disagree with him or contradict his statements"


they must be because they contradict the white papers released by the manufactures... which if you snot nosed lil brats would bother to actually do your homework would also know this.

-- -- --

I'm not going to dispute the lastest Radeons are good, what i am going to dispute is the fact that ya'll seem to think they're the be all and end all of gfx.

Within DirectX, time after time they're only marginally beating the FX cards... withing OpenGL there is no competition between them it is obvious which is ontop.

To hear "nvidia are no longer focusing on thier gfx cards" is quite frankly stupid, just because they're ADDING new products to thier line DOES NOT mean that they've given up within the 3D Theatre.

AMD makes Ram and Motherboards now, and they've talked about thier diversification ... it doesn't mean that thier Processors are not still thier No.1 Consern, nor does it mean that they're going to just give Intel the crown.
There has also been alot of crap in the press about AMD as well against the Pentium4's - funny how not as many of you seem to all up against AMD right now for that.
Oh but wait, that probably because Tom's Hardware page hasn't told you to hate them have they ... nothing more than mindless friggin' sheep when it comes to hardware, bet most can spout of the stats but you haven't got a bloody clue what they mean.

bet none of you even know the differnces between CineFX 2.0 and SmartShader 2.0

-- -- --

at the end of the day, i don't give a crap what card you have ... you want to be excited about it - then crack open bloody Quake3 and play it at the most extreme res with full FSAA, there is no need to come online and go...

"oh my Radoen is SOOOO much better than all GeForce cards, in everything it does it is always so much better!"

the majority of users here have GeForceFX cards, if they're so much worse than the Radeon's then why don't most of them have Radeons instead... and don't give me bull about the FX being cheaper
because you can pickup a 9200 for the same price as an FX5200, a 9600 cheaper than an FX5600 and a 9800pro for around the same price as a 5900 ultra

price wise thier almost on par, so it just comes down to what you want and what ya'll think is better. The Radeon users might be louder about what they have and like, but quite frankly the stats speak for themselves ... nvidia are shifting 3:1 units over ati.
nvidia have recieved several awards for speed, compatibility, ease of use, development abilities, performance 2D & 3D, innovation, etc... all over ati.
the ONLY game which shows any true difference in speed is Half-Life2 - the online tests of Angel of Darkness have not only been dismissed by the industry but by Eidos as well (and there was a full story about it on Eidos a little while back on ati's driver cheats)
we add this with nvidia recently becomming a member of the OpenGL ARB

Oh yeah and not forgetting they are almost literally the ONLY Professional Graphics Solution as wellas the industries leading Mobile Graphics provider ... oh yeah and also the worlds leading gaming machines (reknown for thier speed) come with a GeForceFX 5600 bundled as standard, something all of you entering the competition will know about.

... Oh but yet somehow these tech websites who seem to have the fact and figures all screwed up for the cards thier processing - when both companies print the fact quite CLEARLY on the side and back of the boxes as well as on thier sites ... somehow the industry is wrong and these tech heads are right?

next i'm sure you'll be telling me Britney Spears is a virgin

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DMXtra
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Posted: 12th Oct 2003 11:34
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Quote: "
next i'm sure you'll be telling me Britney Spears is a virgin
"


Well she was, and then she met me.

Quote: "
the Radeon 96/97/9800pro chips are all 0.13 and the XTs are 0.11
"


Raven, you need to read up with things dude. You sound like a redneck trying to look edumacated. :p

I was an Nvidia fanboy, I thought the NV3x was going to kill the Radeon, but I think that Nvidia is in trouble, they are spreading talent out too thin and I think by buying 3DFX they have carried the curse over.

If Nvidia was da shizznit, then why is Microsoft using ATI in their next Xbox 2 and why are they using ATI technology in DX 10?

Yeah, I thought so...

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 12th Oct 2003 13:15
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well for one the current build of DirectX is 9.1 ... there are still no plans for a 10 so where the hell you get that crazy idea from is beyond me.

secondly Microsoft didn't choose ati over nvidia for the Xeon, nvidia turned them down back in September 2002.
Reason standing is that Microsoft quite literally stole nvidia's nv21 chip design and claimed it as thier own (hense why the GeForce3 is known as the nv21-a) ... nvidia also lost $100billion because of Microsoft who rather than taking the brunt of the XBox's initial failiar they stopped financing the R&D costs.

The chip that cost nvidia $250billion to make, microsoft ended up only paying them $150billion for ... you add to this the fact that they were NOT allowed to use it as thier own chip design anymore.
under the same claus mircosoft also took control over the origina nForce2 chipset design, which is why the design was replace with the nForce2 233 and updated to the 4x0 series recently.
Although bareing the same name as the XB chipset, the actual chip numbers are different as the XB's is the nForce2 Southbridge 815 whereas the nForce2 you'll find in the shops now is the Northbridge 818.
The speed is relatively the same but this cost nvidia a further $10billion in redevelopment costs.

But dude you wanna feel that Microsoft somehow decided that ati was by far the only choice for the xeon that has actually been in development since the XB was put off the line then gohead.

the only curse that nvidia have around them atm is morons believing what they read in the press, and ATI have understood this ALL to well ... why do you think everything you hear recently is Pro-ATI and Con-nvidia
you somehow think that it is just co-incidence that ati happen to be the overwhelming best card for Half-Life2 after a partnership with valve is forms (the Radeon division of ATI is part of the Valve Corportation, something that isn't exactly splashed all over bother sites)

All of the current comments from well respected and known developers suchas John Carmack (idsoft) and Tim Sweeney (epic) that are pro-nvidia are being swept under the rugs, and what they've saying is being taken completely out of context.
Hell i saw one interview with Tim Sweeney recently noting about the use of the GeForce and how the Radeons limitations is causing a much longer development of Unreal Tournament 2003 than they want ... which was side tracked because the full interview at Quakecon was a good 3 paragraphs about the current differences, yet Beyond3D.com compacted those 3 paragraphs into 2 sentances.
Paraphrasing alot of things when it came to how the GeForce performed.

quite frankly although GeForce have been slandered something chronic, the fact still remains they're still out selling the Radeons
personally i despise what ati are flooding into the market atm, not product wise but presswise... if they can't stand behind the pure power and features of thier cards they have no right to be selling them at all. All it is doing is causing discord with all of the gamers who actually listen to the crap online.

so much pathetic Radeon chest beating - yet i still don't see the Radeons sales close to GeForces, i don't see ati with any of the industries awards, i don't see ati being praised by any other company than those they've made deals with, i don't see John Carmack telling the world that the Radeons are better - although i've seen alot of chopped up interviews attempting to get him to say it, and he is admiting the GAP has closed ... he hasn't gone on record yet to say that they are actually better yet.

and quite frankly he is one of the most prodminant developers who has never cared about what the public thinks about something.
infact NONE of the id software programmer or graphics artists have said that the Radeons are better yet.
there is alot of crap that Carmack and id are just a bunch of nvidia fanboys - but quite frankly they don't give a crap about which everyone likes more, they know what they prefer to develop with and which they think is faster...

and quite frankly i'm going to believe them over and entire pandora of glory hunters any day

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DMXtra
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Posted: 12th Oct 2003 14:05
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Quote: "
NVIDIA Licenses Breakthrough 3D Technology to Microsoft

Strategic Agreement Enables Key Innovations and Advanced Features in Microsoft DirectX 8.0

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 2000--In a continuing effort to drive the evolution of 3D graphics technology, NVIDIA(r) Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA - news) today announced it developed and licensed enabling 3D features to Microsoft Corp. for their new DirectX 8.0 3D application program interface (API). NVIDIA contributions were in the areas of programmable vertex shaders, programmable pixel shaders, and rect/tri-patch support for high order surfaces. These features allow software content creators to use more elaborate artwork and flexible 3D rendering techniques in their applications and games.
"


Yeah, Raven, Microsoft stole the code.
Microsoft doesn't even make chips for 3D.

Quote: "
well for one the current build of DirectX is 9.1 ... there are still no plans for a 10 so where the hell you get that crazy idea from is beyond me.
"


Well DX 10 comes out with Windows Longhorn in 2005. So while you may not have it yet nor other developers, they are working on it.
Just because you are clueless doesn't mean they are.

Quote: "
nvidia also lost $100billion because of Microsoft who rather than taking the brunt of the XBox's initial failiar they stopped financing the R&D costs.
"


Thats why they made money from the Xbox last quarter because xbox was a failiar (as you put it).

Carmack did say that the NV3X had to be optimised more and actually underperforms compared to the Radeon series video chips.

I wish you were right Raven, I really do, but Nvidia has been caught cheating and lying all through this year and its a little too late for trying to make up.

I was an Nvidia fanboy and I was once like you only not as uniformed as you.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 12th Oct 2003 18:38
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Quote: "Yeah, Raven, Microsoft stole the code."


they stole the processor designs... although they don't make the processors/xboxs themselves, they still own the intellectual properties to them, perhaps if you bothered to read properly you'd of understood this.

Quote: "Well DX 10 comes out with Windows Longhorn in 2005. So while you may not have it yet nor other developers, they are working on it.
Just because you are clueless doesn't mean they are."

Really? ... funny because on MSDN Subscriber there is no such thing as DirectX10 not even within microsofts planned developments.
I don't doubt there won't be one but there isn't one yet...

as for it comming out with Windows 'Longhorn' .Net 2005, don't make me laugh ... the Win.Net's base will be finalised by January, maybe March at the latest with the new WinFS and Dx9.1 combo - considering Dx9.1 isn't even close to finished yet, i think you have an over active imagination.

Quote: "Thats why they made money from the Xbox last quarter because xbox was a failiar (as you put it)."


MICROSOFT made money, and this is 2years after the console was released ... nvidia is STILL $100billion down.

Quote: "Carmack did say that the NV3X had to be optimised more and actually underperforms compared to the Radeon series video chips"


he said it still OUTPERFORMS, it only underperforms when using the standard ARB2 base ... and this is only due to fragmented drivers causing everything to run at the wrong settings, meaning that the FX had to do 2x as much calculations as the Radeons (especially considering the Cat driver cheats setting everything to 16bit calculation)
and the FX was still only MARGINALLY beaten.

nvidia might've been caught cheating with 3DMark, but even with the cheats out thier cards are still outperforming the Radeons on 3DMark ... seriously you want to get into driver cheats, check the Radeons - what makes me laugh is that people keep saying the Radeons are better quality than the GeForceFX which is just total bollocks, ati have been caught red handing halving the processor load, this is ontop of thier 2/3 shader processing load.

The Radeons end up only doing 32% of the works the GeForceFX are actually doing, and the kicker is that the GeForceFX aren't exactly loosing by lengths to the buggers

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DMXtra
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 12:43 Edited at: 13th Oct 2003 12:45
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This is all I am going to say on this thread...

Go here and start reading...
[href]
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=db0f8f62f6d4c90d66e7b670fafe133a
[/href]

This should help clear your head by a ton, if you are open minded.

Beyond3d is a website that has professionals from actual companies such as ATI and Nvidia, they also have game developers there and a bunch of other folks in the know.

This will really teach you something and really give you the real deal on whats going on with-in the industry itself.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 16:53
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Quote: "Beyond3d is a website that has professionals from actual companies such as ATI and Nvidia, they also have game developers there and a bunch of other folks in the know"


really? thats amusing because thier Radeon 9800 vs FX 5900 ultra was totally biased ... it even had nvidia complaining because they used a top of the range ATI card against a budget version of the FX card. The cards were very close in comparison scores, although the Radeon just took several of the tests - the FX totally wiped the floor with it on the Futuremark 330 tests, and it was duely dropped because of "suspected cheating" even though they used the uncheatable version of 3dmark 03 ... and then on the visual comparison tests the FX was totally ripped to shreds with alot of zommed pixels to show some jaggies and then the lame excuse that they couldn't possible capture the same area with the Radeon.

But if you check the guns the FX quite obviously not just has better FSAA but its textures are also more vivid and better blended.

It was a bloody joke of a comparison!

-- -- --

the comments posed when confronted with they they didn't choose a PNY or Creative Europe card for the tests which are known to be the best versions was that they wanted a fair street level comparsion ... but if thats what they wanted then why the hell did they used the Asus card which is the best Radeon developer and the most expensive Radeon card.

.. .. ..

i don't get the results i need for my work with ATI and NVIDIA though online sites and sources, and the biggest joke in the whole damn world is that somehow they believed that running the shader tests for the FX within Cg would've given it an advantage.
When Cg is actually designed NON-SPECIFIC, should bloody know the current 1.14 compiler is my build being used - and if they bothered to check the compiler's open source code they'd realise there is ZERO card prefference.

All Cg is there to do is give everyone no matter what Graphics APi your using the ability to use ShaderC on any given system.
nvidia unlike other companies have been willing to share thier technology openly, CgFX Viewer works with ALL graphics card, Cg/CgFX works with ALL graphics cards over Dx/OpenGL/MesaGL on any given OS, also their NV30 Emulator works on ANY computer with ANY Graphics cards.

Yet it is still a common believe that Cg is primarily for nvidia cards - which is total bulls**t

the only things nvidia have kept to themselves are the demo's they've created for the FX line ... and this is not because THEY chose to - as ALL of thier demo's are externally developed.
It is because the DEVELOPER chose to, and oftenly this was not out of choice but out of the fact that the Radeons aren't capable of what the FX are!

wake up and smell the coffee, ever since the FX5800 fiasco all 3rd parties, ati and ati subs have made it thier sole mission to put down and annihilate the GeForceFX cards when ever and where ever they can.

just like you with your GeForce4 results, yet you are reluctant to sit there and admit which GeForce4 card you have ... and my money is riding on an MX card which aren't that much faster than a GeForce2 or 3!
and this is pitted against a top end Radeon.

personally i think its pathetic how ya'll feel like taking your little pot shots.
you don't like nvidia anymore - fine don't like them, theres no need to help ruin someones reputation because of YOUR personal dislikes ... no sodding better than ATI or Valve and it makes me sick

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 17:01
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question being is who is wrong? DarkBASIC Pro or FRAPS?
and before there is a big hoohar about it only running at 184fps there, thats with FSAA6xS AF8x TS all on with Media Player 9 also on blaring away, it wasn't suppose to be any test of speed ... just a speed comparison

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SquadraCorse
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 21:18
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How many times are you going to try to push that UNFAIR comparison?

You can't compare the video cards fairly unless everything else is the same - cpu, motherboard, RAM, OS and not least of all, the test program itself. Obviously most people can't afford to do this but that's why there are sites like Tom's Hardware Guide, AnandTech, XBit & Beyond3D. Plenty of links to these sites have already been provided.

ALL of the links have shown the ATI cards to be about the same speed as the nVidia cards in most cases (+/- a few percent depending on the application and settings).

Raven has provided NO links to 3rd party comparisons that support his claims that nVidia is vastly superior to ATI. He has further claimed that ALL the links contradicting him are wrong (but not provided any proof of this).

Sorry man, but one thing is not necessarily better than another just cause you like it best or paid more for it.

This thread has gone from somewhat amusing to just plain sad. I'm sure Raven will post a reply stating (without proof) how wrong and biased we all are. It's funny how having the last word doesn't mean much if there's no truth to it.

Congrats again to DMXtra on getting such a cool video card tho.

John B.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 21:47
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Quote: "ALL of the links have shown the ATI cards to be about the same speed as the nVidia cards in most cases (+/- a few percent depending on the application and settings)."


and yet you read what the review of the card comparisons are ... normal people look at the numbers and just glaze over, so it all comes down to what the actual reviewer says.

Go head READ THE F**KING REVIEWS and EDITORIALS PROVIDED, the cards are pretty evanly matched ... IF you go by the actual results.
IF on the other hand you go by what is said - the cards appear to be totally mis-matched.
AND THAT is the major problem.

There are also NO tests shown on these sites from GLMark or such, which test the OpenGL abilities - just because fewer and fewer games are being devved in OpenGL now doesn't mean it isn't still a hugely important aspect.

... ... you want links the follow the damn links ya'll already have, look at the scores then at the reviews - look at which cards are being tested against each other ... no the every day joe doesn't have the ability to playtest hundred of cards.
But there is no point in bulling alot of people by pitting top-end makes against the low end ones.

Hell its like pitting a Honda Civic over a Ford Focus against a P307 - the focus and civic might be both running on the same engines, but they're totally different ends of the spectrum as to thier quality.

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Dreamora
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Posted: 13th Oct 2003 22:09
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Graphiccards have been tested enough the last time, the only comperative FX card is the 5900 which can compete with the 9500 or so but there is no matchup for the 9800Pro, especially when it comes to quality.

Even the newest NVIDIA drivers have cheats in there again as the newest benchmarks prove. They still trick their garbage to make it look better than it is from the graphical tricks they use not to tell ...
The performance problems have a simple reason: the FX Cards can only handle 24bit precision for calculation, while ATIs running at 32bit, so the FX get some problems because besides HL2 which has a special FX code to solve that problem, nearly no team would make such an effort to programm 2 codes only because NVidia is stupid like **** and inventing a chip basing on 24bit.

NVidia is better only in one thing: OpenGL, because ATIs drivers and cards have still problems with the OGL 1.5 abilities etc but OGL isn't that important on the homeuser sector and more important on the CAD sector and therefore the FireGL etc cards are made.

Dell Inspiron 8200,P4-M 1,7ghz, GF4 440go (45.23 - DX9b), 512mb RAM
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Neophyte
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Posted: 14th Oct 2003 00:16
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@Dreamflower

"The performance problems have a simple reason: the FX Cards can only handle 24bit precision for calculation, while ATIs running at 32bit, so the FX get some problems because besides HL2 which has a special FX code to solve that problem, nearly no team would make such an effort to programm 2 codes only because NVidia is stupid like **** and inventing a chip basing on 24bit."

I think you have your cards confused.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021118/geforcefx-13.html
Quote: "
High-Precision Color

Besides supporting eight-bit color depth per channel, the GeForceFX also offers 16-bit and 32-bit (floating point) modes. This lets the FX's pixel shaders process calculations with 128 bits for best quality, or with 64 bits when performance is needed. Developers can also use both modes in conjunction, allowing for a great degree of flexibility. Although ATi's R300 also supports 128 bits, these are really only 24 bits per color channel - in effect 96 bits that are expanded to 128 bits when written to the frame buffer.
"
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Velorien
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Posted: 14th Oct 2003 14:35
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Geforce FX is not a true DX9 card. Actually, thats the reason why GF FX 5900 Ultra is so slow in Half Life 2. Radeon uses the generic DX9 while Nvidia uses some stupid combination of DX8 and DX9 so the result is bad image quality and some stuff like that. Also, ATI's cards can have TRUFORM(N-patches) and that's a big plus. Imagine, you can visualy improve your scene with just a click of a mouse button. And don't get me started on FX 5200, they're just slow. My ATI Radeon 9100 has much better preformance in 3d Mark (2001 and 2003) and in all of the games today. Nvidia messed up bad with Geforce FX series and that's final.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 14th Oct 2003 15:24
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Quote: "Geforce FX is not a true DX9 card. Actually, thats the reason why GF FX 5900 Ultra is so slow in Half Life 2. Radeon uses the generic DX9 while Nvidia uses some stupid combination of DX8 and DX9 so the result is bad image quality and some stuff like that."


another case of mixxed up cards ... the GeForceFX is the only TRUE DirectX9 Card currrently on the Market, although the RadeonXT has extra speed its design is still on the Dx8.1 based Radeon.

The N-Patches are hardly anything new or particularly special, or even exclusive to Radeon.
as for your 9100 being better performing in Mark '03 and '01 my FX5200 64mb gets 980marks in '03 and 6,780 in '01

as soon as i get a chance i want to actually test it outside of my Duron system, because when i OCed the CPU from 800mhz to 900mhz i noticed my '03 mark quite literally jump from 980 -> 1,400 considering it is suppose to be testing the GFX card speed and not the system speed it seems odd. Standardly the CPU gets 240marks, which is pretty pathetic.

.. .. think you'll find what actually gives the Radeons some of thier biggest speed advantage is the fact that they're not using true DirectX9, infact they've got ALOT of driver rewrites for Dx9 calls which use altered versions and do not produce the results a developer or gamer expects.
Alot of ATI's little 'performance tweaks' are the whole reason people will not develop specifically for them.

what makes me laugh is the fact that alot of people seem to claim that the Radeons are the ones with better quality, yet as an artist even at Half-Precision the GeForceFX are quite noticeably better Quality... and considering nvidia have a little gold trophy in thier cabinate also echoing this from the graphics industry, i'd love to know why alot of online idiots believe that the Radeons have the better quality.

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Guyon
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Posted: 14th Oct 2003 17:07 Edited at: 14th Oct 2003 17:13
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The ATI is about the same at 800x600 but pulls a head at higher resolution. I accidentally found a another card comparison from Tech TV. http://www.techtv.com
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/products/story/0,24330,3539700,00.html

And the winner is...

Without a doubt, ATI's Radeon 9600 Pro wins as the best "budget" DirectX 9 video card. If you must have DX9 hardware support and are unwilling to spend the money on a flagship-class card, pick the 9600 Pro.
Besides superior DX9 performance, the 9600 Pro handled our OpenGL and DX8 games with ease. It sports smooth frame rates, it has enough power to enable a little AA/AF, and it's nicely overclockable. The Radeon 9600 Pro proves itself worth every penny.

The ATI9800 is just that much better! DMXtra, enjoy the card, you a a real gem!
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Velorien
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Posted: 14th Oct 2003 23:19
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@ Raven

I think you are mistaken, not I. I have read the official explanation of why HL2 is slow on Geforce FX cards and it states that Nvidia is using it's own rendering approach rather than regular DX9 that Radeons use.

As for FX 5200 i think you're ridiciolus with that results. Asus FX 5200 (regular, not magic) on P4C 2.4 GHz(800 MHz) with HT enabled, 512 MB PC3200 MB RAM and Intel 865 chipset gets 7385 3d marks in 2001SE, and in '03 around 1500 (but that's not the updated version
of 3dMark so there is cheating involved). If your computer gets the results you say it does then congratulation, you must have some super computer Duron that's been kept in secret by AMD all this years (not to mention the card.)
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Velorien
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I don't have anything against FX cards, but here in Croatia Radeon 9800 Pro is cheaper that Geforce FX 5900 Ultra and it also has Truform 2.0 which i consider as an advantage over geforce. So i would choose Radeon over Nvidia anytime because it's cheaper and it has more features, not because it's faster or stuff like that (usually the difference is 4 fps between the cards except on higher resolutions where Radeons have considerable advantage.)
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DMXtra
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Posted: 15th Oct 2003 01:15
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What I find amazing is the latest cards speed.

Regardless of which video card you picked, the thing is that DX 9 video cards such as the Geforce FX or Radeon 9800 Pro+ proform way better than I expected them to.

In DBPro alone, you are talking about a 600 frames per second increase from a Geforce 3 to a Radeon 9800 Pro for example. So if you have some slowdown with DBPro, you should really consider getting an upgrade.

I find that nothing is too slow in DBPro, like CSG using subtraction in realtime at over 1300 frames per second and this is only on a 2 Ghz pentium 4. My geforce 3 did over 300 frames per second on the same CSG demo. Amazing..

I can't wait until the Pentium 5's come out with the R500 or NV50. wooo wooo

What I find interesting though is that these high end cards won't be high-end for long. I bought the ATI 9800 Pro because I wanted to play with Pixel/vertex shaders 2.0 in DBPro, but I wanted to wait for the NV40 or the R420, but I couldn't wait as they won't be out until next spring. So what I am going to do is upgrade one more time as the NV40 and R420 will be the LAST highend AGP cards around. Might as well get the best I can for my system before I buy a brand new state of the art system in 2005 with the PCI Express bus which replaces AGP.

People might think I am crazy, but I havent upgraded my video card since 2001 and have been almost waiting 3 years to upgrade and also I kind of had a forced upgrade with the Pentium 4 as I had an athlon 900 mhz from 2000 but it broke down after I came back from watching a movie.

What all this means is that people should be getting some very powerful hardware with a very small price and I think its worth it.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Neophyte
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Posted: 15th Oct 2003 01:16
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@Velorien

"but here in Croatia Radeon 9800 Pro is cheaper that Geforce FX 5900 Ultra and it also has Truform 2.0 which i consider as an advantage over geforce."

Ummm...Why? Geforce cards have had the ability to use N-patches since at least 2000, 2001.
http://www.nvidia.com/dev_content/nvopenglspecs/GL_NV_evaluators.txt
Its not like this technology is new or anything. Though I don't know of very many games that use it.
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Velorien
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Nvidia had software support for N-patches before but now they removed it from their drivers and don't support it anymore. Radeons 8000+ series all have hardware support for N-patches and it's important for me because my game will use truform. If you want some examples i will upload some pictures to my site so you can see how cool truform really is.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 15th Oct 2003 18:48
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Oki you want to get into all of this properly?

Quote: "I think you are mistaken, not I. I have read the official explanation of why HL2 is slow on Geforce FX cards and it states that Nvidia is using it's own rendering approach rather than regular DX9 that Radeons use."

No, ATI have stated officially that they helped to create "updates" for the DirectX9 SDK that Half-Life2 uses.

Secondly GeForceFX is the ONLY true DirectX9 card currently on the market. It is the only card which is capable of 100% of the DirectX9 features, and unlike ATI Radeons, Matrox Perhelia, Videologic Kryss & SiS T-Series it is the only card which is actually using the DirectX9 Libraries rather than using the drivers to convert the Dx9 calls to thier Dx8.1 equivilants.

This is actually shown within the benchmarks of Half-Life2 where both the Radeon 9800pro and GeForceFX 5900 ultra were being benchmarked and the Radeons suffer ZERO performance hit. If it was truely using the DirectX9 libraries it would've seen some performance hit of somekind... even if it was just 5fps, but it performed IDENTICALLY.

Quote: "As for FX 5200 i think you're ridiciolus with that results. Asus FX 5200 (regular, not magic) on P4C 2.4 GHz(800 MHz) with HT enabled, 512 MB PC3200 MB RAM and Intel 865 chipset gets 7385 3d marks in 2001SE, and in '03 around 1500 (but that's not the updated version"


my results actually show my FX5200 is actually underperformning, so care to explain how my results are ridiculous?

Quote: "I don't have anything against FX cards, but here in Croatia Radeon 9800 Pro is cheaper that Geforce FX 5900 Ultra and it also has Truform 2.0 which i consider as an advantage over geforce"


GeForce2+ have Hardware N-Patch and B-Patch support, and really the only difference between N-Patch and B-Patch is the calculations. IMO B-Patch is better because it runs faster and is CPU Driven rather than GPU driven meaning everyone can enjoy it.

Just because a company doesn't decide to call a feature of its card something ridiculous with a verison at the end doesn't mean it doesn't support it.

Quote: "Nvidia had software support for N-patches before but now they removed it from their drivers and don't support it anymore. Radeons 8000+ series all have hardware support for N-patches and it's important for me because my game will use truform. If you want some examples i will upload some pictures to my site so you can see how cool truform really is"


I'd suggest you look again, it is hardware support, it also hardware supports RT-Patchs which quite frankly are better and more powerful. Truform isn't anything special, niether are N-Patchs.
Infact to be honest i'd rather use B-Patchs, as they're calculated faster, they don't clog up the pipelines and best of all they can be run on even the lowliest of processor.

Perhaps a slight drop in quality, but at the end of the day when your running through a corridor with huge arching roofs with pixel shaded light comming in from every angle ... i'd rather my program was running at 60fps so that the minor difference in quality isn't noticed.
And really with a decent lighting and normalisation even the lower set B-Patches can produce awesome results, just look at Unreal Tournament 2003 ... that uses B-Patches

Quote: "So what I am going to do is upgrade one more time as the NV40 and R420 will be the LAST highend AGP cards around. Might as well get the best I can for my system before I buy a brand new state of the art system in 2005 with the PCI Express bus which replaces AGP."


ATi and NVIDIA are adding PCI Express version cards to thier lines, they're NOT dropping AGP. Nor is anyone else ... perhaps if your understood how the technology worked you'd understand why.

-- -- --

somedays i truely wonder if any one here really understands the technology behind these cards

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Velorien
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Posted: 15th Oct 2003 21:14
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Quote: "TRUFORM is ATI's implementation of N-Patch technology that is included in Microsoft's DirectX 8 & OpenGL. ATI TRUFORM technology only requires one line of code to be added to a new or existing game as the work is done in the T&L (transform, light & clip) section of ATI's chip. It can be applied to every 3D game."
This is taken from this website http://www.a1-electronics.net/Graphics_Cards/ATI/ATI_Truform_pg2.shtml. The difference between ATI and Nvidia that truform, in theory, can be applied to any 3d game today and it's easy to implement (one or two lines of code) while with your B-patches the programmers must program them into the engine.

Quote: "GeForce2+ have Hardware N-Patch and B-Patch support, and really the only difference between N-Patch and B-Patch is the calculations. IMO B-Patch is better because it runs faster and is CPU Driven rather than GPU driven meaning everyone can enjoy it."
Yeah, everyone can enjoy it (but only if the programmers decide to put the support for them). They're slower because CPU must calculate them and that slows down your game while the truform calculations are preformed in the cards T&L engine so there is no preformance hit. Oh, cloggs up the pipelines, that's why ATI Radeon 9700+ have eight(8) of them
Quote: "my results actually show my FX5200 is actually underperformning, so care to explain how my results are ridiculous?
"
Read the specs of the test machine, you'll figure it out someday
Quote: "ATi and NVIDIA are adding PCI Express version cards to thier lines, they're NOT dropping AGP. Nor is anyone else ... perhaps if your understood how the technology worked you'd understand why.
"
So, explain this. If PCI X is faster, newer and it supports multiple graphic cards and hot swapping while AGP is limited to one g-card, it will become a bottleneck to the new cards, why would any of them want to keep AGP standard longer than it's necessary? Sure, there are people who won't be able to buy new computers but they'll probably drop AGP soon
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MushroomHead
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Posted: 16th Oct 2003 02:55 Edited at: 16th Oct 2003 02:59
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Quote: "I think you are mistaken, not I. I have read the official explanation of why HL2 is slow on Geforce FX cards and it states that Nvidia is using it's own rendering approach rather than regular DX9 that Radeons use."


The latest detonator drivers (v45.23) are WHQL certified and tested by Microsoft themselves, go their website and check it out. Also, if you have the the November issue of PC Format, turn to page 96 and there's a review of CoolFX Ultra from Gainward with benchmarks showing it's a 9800 pro killer ... there is a drawback, the price will set you back a cool £600. Additionally, people have reported problems with Radeons 9500 and 9600, at I haven't heard of and problems with 9800 pro though, so this looks like a stable card.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 16th Oct 2003 04:01
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Quote: "Yeah, everyone can enjoy it (but only if the programmers decide to put the support for them). They're slower because CPU must calculate them and that slows down your game while the truform calculations are preformed in the cards T&L engine so there is no preformance hit. Oh, cloggs up the pipelines, that's why ATI Radeon 9700+ have eight(8) of them"


the GeForce2 also has 8 geometry pipelines, and it was the first card to impliment such hardware. As i said, just becayse nvidia didn't choose to give it a fancy name doesn't mean that it isn't there.
Infact there is a demonstration on the nvidia site of a church, which actually demo's the technology - designed for the GeForce2 and even runs very admirably on a GF2mx, which is what 1/10th the speed of a 9700

Quote: "The difference between ATI and Nvidia that truform, in theory, can be applied to any 3d game today and it's easy to implement (one or two lines of code) while with your B-patches the programmers must program them into the engine."

only a newbie programmer would come back with something like this.
honestly you make me wonder very very hard, sure you can just add a single command line for the ATI card ... wonderful - but by using it you've just cut your title off from 75% of the gaming public.
Way to go einstein

and we'll forgo the fact that when you use a pure single command implimentation you have almost zero control over the functionality. The nvidia cards and other may have several commands to impliment, however thiers is a)quicker, b)customisable to YOUR engine & c)able to be converted to be implimented on multiple platforms without much effort.

Quote: "Read the specs of the test machine, you'll figure it out someday"

The processor speed is taken away from the overall speed to come up with the 3D speed, so it is more or less independant - which goes to prove that i'm running a slower FX5200 than most (probably due to only having 64mb ram rather than 128mb) ... and yet it still is capable of keeping up with a top end Radeon in dbp

Quote: "If PCI X is faster, newer and it supports multiple graphic cards and hot swapping while AGP is limited to one g-card, it will become a bottleneck to the new cards, why would any of them want to keep AGP standard longer than it's necessary? Sure, there are people who won't be able to buy new computers but they'll probably drop AGP soon"


your aren't aware of how PCI and AGP differ are you?
lol and quite frankly i'm not going to explain it niether, you can find it out for yourself, you know where intel.com is - look for yourself. (and READ carefully about how it works, not just its theoretical features.)

and thank you MushroomHead, nice to see some nvidia support

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DMXtra
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Posted: 16th Oct 2003 12:51
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Raven,

I have a question for you.

Why is it, that everyone from tech journalists to actual people writing the drivers and the games disagree with you on just about everything.

If you look what they say verses what you say, its two differnt things.

I understand that you are an Nvidia fanboy, which is fine, but what I don't understand is how you can live in complete ignorance against everyone else out there.

I loved Nvidia, but I am not going to lie, just like I love DBPro, but I acknowledge the problems that it has, I don't ignore them like they don't exist.

Nvidia doesn't use eight pipes all the time, in fact it uses four a lot and they admited this as well as research has been done on this subject and Radeon 9700 came out in August 2002 and it was the first to market thus they were the first true consumer 8 pipe video card on the market.

I understand you love Nvidia and I was the same way, without the hotair. I loved Nvidia because they had the most resources and patents and technology and scientists to make 3D the most advanced possible, but they got their ass kicked this year. This year has been a disaster for them and to sit around defending them and telling stuff that I personally know is not true is just stupid.

This is my first ATI card and I am really not an ATI fanboy, but I was driven to ATI because all the lies and cheating Nvidia got caught with and because Radeon works best with DX 9 with pixel shader 2.0 and such and thats more important to me than better OpenGL support.

I hope that the NV40 will be the bomb diggity, but it scares me that Microsoft is going with ATI with Xbox 2 and with future versions of DX and Nvidia really didn't and thats why the NV3X sucks at DX 9. NVidia didn't follow the DX 9 specs very well and thats pretty easy to see.

I am very disapointed in Nvidia and I wonder why they are running the company in the ground. They even went so far as to say that their focus isn't even on 3D chips anymore, that they are a broader company now and I fear they are spreading themselves too thin and they let the 3DFX people design the NV3X and thats why it was so poor.

I was hoping that when Nvidia got caught cheating that they could come clean and move on, but I am scared that they haven't learned their lesson.

Dark Basic Pro - The Bedroom Coder's Language of choice for the 21st Century.
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Tywald
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Posted: 16th Oct 2003 13:28
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Quote: "Yeah, everyone can enjoy it (but only if the programmers decide to put the support for them). They're slower because CPU must calculate them and that slows down your game while the truform calculations are preformed in the cards T&L engine so there is no preformance hit. Oh, cloggs up the pipelines, that's why ATI Radeon 9700+ have eight(8) of them "


I own an 9700 Pro (Hercules) and i can tell you that alltought TRUFORM sounds very nice and the pictures that shows models using TRUFORM looks very good, in practical use (read games) this feature isn´t really worth the performance drop.

For example take the Doplhin demo by ATI that uses TRUFORM.

Whitout it the dolphin looks more like a badly textured submarine, by increasing the "Tesselation" level to 2 and the dolphin looks a little better but still more like a submarine. At level 4 the dolphin now looks like a dolphin but now i have also cut down my frame rate by 30%. At the highest level wich is the one you often see in screenshots the performance is really horrible.

It´s the same problem in games, eg. in Half-Life the models really looks nice but the framerate gets really slow.
The latest game i played that could use this feature was the UT2003 demo, in my opinion it is a waste of resources as the differance betwen the orginal and the one that uses the feature is very small , unless you like to stand one meter away from your opponents and chit-chat. Only at <4 you could see a difference but then the framerate makes everything unplayable.

It would really make more sense whit screenshots but i dont have Internet access on my own computer.
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