2900XT vs 8800GTS 320

[superbooga]

Originally posted by: munky

The problem with that review style is that the author gets to decide what's playable, and which settings to adjust to make the game "playable". And different cards will have different performance delta's from adjusting those settings, so the author is free to chose which settings to adjust that will favor one card over the other. Why did he only use 2xAA in Oblivion, but chose to max out shadow settings? I played Oblivion, and the IQ difference between shadow settings is much more subtle than the difference between 2x and 4x AA.

Yes, that's a valid point. However, I think most people will try to max out other settings before adjusting AA. If performance isn't adequate, AA is the first thing that goes, not shadow quality.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: ND40oz
And once again, they used XP...time to get with the present and bench in Vista.

Uhm why? For DX9 gaming there's no reason to use Vista. XP uses less resources and has better support.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: superbooga

Originally posted by: munky

The problem with that review style is that the author gets to decide what's playable, and which settings to adjust to make the game "playable". And different cards will have different performance delta's from adjusting those settings, so the author is free to chose which settings to adjust that will favor one card over the other. Why did he only use 2xAA in Oblivion, but chose to max out shadow settings? I played Oblivion, and the IQ difference between shadow settings is much more subtle than the difference between 2x and 4x AA.

Yes, that's a valid point. However, I think most people will try to max out other settings before adjusting AA. If performance isn't adequate, AA is the first thing that goes, not shadow quality.

I always ditch shadows first since game makers have a habit lately of making Max shadow quality a generation ahead of current hardware. I can use Medium shadow settings in games to retain shadows and use AA to make sure nothing is ugly and jaggy.

AA > SuperhighqualityShadows

 

[Nathelion]

This review tells you nothing. The questions they ask are so limited in scope as to be useless. Are you going to play stalker at precisely those settings with a gts 320 but with an equally precise but different set of settings with an ati 2900xt? And are you really going to figure that out before you buy? Because unless you know those things this review won't tell you anything, the apples-to-oranges comparison robs it of any general applicability.
That being said, it's entirely possible the GTS 320 wipes the floor with the competition. The only review I've actually read of these card is the Anandtech one, and that was made with the release drivers. I'm just saying that this review is bogus.

 

[dreddfunk]

Wreckage - a thought just occurred to me in re-reading your posts on this thread.

Do you feel that you are consciously providing pro-nVidia, anti-AMD information as a counterbalance to others' bias, in the hope that consumers will at least be able to judge between two sets of biased accounts?

[edited for clarity]

 

[Gikaseixas]

I will not say that H is biased but this is my "opinion" on the review, and a very honest one:
From what i saw there, even at their own forum some users suggested that more games could be tested and i share the same point of view, i think they should use a wider variety of games not just these few ones.
To make this short i didn't like the tone of the reviewer, it was very negative towards ATI and before you guys start running ur mouth's i use NVIDIA because at the time of my purchase it was simply the best we had so i'm defenitly not a fanboy of either company.

I do believe that the 2900 will mature to be a faster card and challenge the GTX, right now it is trading blows with the GTS which it's not a bad achievemnet given it's average price.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: dreddfunk
Wreckage - a thought just occurred to me in re-reading your posts on this thread.

Do you feel that you are consciously providing pro-nVidia, anti-AMD as a counterbalance to others bias, in the hope that consumers will at least be able to judge between two sets of biased accounts?

I'm just trying to counter the FUD that certain others post here. There are a lot of hypocrites here who think it's wrong for me to post pro-NVIDIA stuff while it's OK to post pro-AMD stuff.

I currently have an ATI GPU and several AMD CPUs in my various machines. I have on occasion recommend ATI GPUs here.

Outside of this forum I would probably not be considered "biased". However I have no problem with that label here considering how many people that give me that label are just the same.

I think it is important for people who come into this forum to here both sides of the story.

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: Gikaseixas
I do believe that the 2900 will mature to be a faster card and challenge the GTX, right now it is trading blows with the GTS which it's not a bad achievemnet given it's average price.

R600 should had been at least 50% faster coming out so late and not trading blows with a 7 month old part. That's kinda unfair to NVIDIA if you ask me and not the other way around.

One other thing I wanna say. Before you guys accuse 'H' of being bias or on NV's payroll you should know when it comes to CPUs Kyle and staff prefer DAAMIT over Intel even tho Intel has a faster chip. They maybe NV supporters or whatever but the other side of them leans the opposite way.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: yacoub

Originally posted by: ND40oz
And once again, they used XP...time to get with the present and bench in Vista.

Uhm why? For DX9 gaming there's no reason to use Vista. XP uses less resources and has better support.

Because these cards say on the side of the box designed for Vista. XP is done, over, I'm not buying DX10 cards to put them in an XP box. If you're dropping 400-600 on the latest card for the latest feature, you should expect that most people will be using the latest OS. Vista is a better OS then XP, it's time to let it go and move on.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: solofly

....when it comes to CPUs Kyle and staff prefer DAAMIT over Intel even tho Intel has a faster chip. They maybe NV supporters or whatever but the other side of them leans the opposite way.

Ok, so when reviewers think AMD platform is better despite lower power consumption of C2D, ability to drop in Quad Core in current mobos, 25% advantage per clock cycle, unmatched performance after overclocking, how much credibility would you weigh on their opinion?

 

[gunblade]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: solofly

....when it comes to CPUs Kyle and staff prefer DAAMIT over Intel even tho Intel has a faster chip. They maybe NV supporters or whatever but the other side of them leans the opposite way.

Ok, so when reviewers think AMD platform is better despite lower power consumption of C2D, ability to drop in Quad Core in current mobos, 25% advantage per clock cycle, unmatched performance after overclocking, how much credibility would you weigh on their opinion?

Well said.

 

[Gikaseixas]

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by: solofly

....when it comes to CPUs Kyle and staff prefer DAAMIT over Intel even tho Intel has a faster chip. They maybe NV supporters or whatever but the other side of them leans the opposite way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Ok, so when reviewers think AMD platform is better despite lower power consumption of C2D, ability to drop in Quad Core in current mobos, 25% advantage per clock cycle, unmatched performance after overclocking, how much credibility would you weigh on their opinion?



ouch

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Ok, so when reviewers think AMD platform is better despite lower power consumption of C2D, ability to drop in Quad Core in current mobos, 25% advantage per clock cycle, unmatched performance after overclocking, how much credibility would you weigh on their opinion?

That's why I quit reading reviews long long time ago. I will look at the benchmarks, maybe read a little bit here or there but that's it. I mainly decide my purchases based on my past experience and from ordinary folks like you and me that come to these forums. Everything else is a waste of time to me.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: solofly

....when it comes to CPUs Kyle and staff prefer DAAMIT over Intel even tho Intel has a faster chip. They maybe NV supporters or whatever but the other side of them leans the opposite way.

Ok, so when reviewers think AMD platform is better despite lower power consumption of C2D, ability to drop in Quad Core in current mobos, 25% advantage per clock cycle, unmatched performance after overclocking, how much credibility would you weigh on their opinion?

When have any of the H reviews ever said the current AMD platform is better then the current Intel platform? If anything, they're on the Core 2 bandwagon as well. Check the recent motherboard reviews, check out the number of Intel boards versus AMD boards? Of the last 12 board reviews, only one has been an AMD board...

 

[dreddfunk]

Wreckage - I'm not honestly sure that defeating bias with more bias is actually effective unless it comes within the confines of a rigorously structured system such as our judicial system (and even then it is problematic).

The reason our judicial system works on the basis of adversarial bias is that there are discrete boundaries between plaintiffs, defendants, attorneys, judges and juries. Only a small number of people are actually given the right to be legally 'biased', and the rest are given the right to interpret the results of the various arguments. Competing marketing departments often act in this fashion in front of a consumer base that is truly outside the 'case', but hardly 'objective' or without bias.

The reason I bring this to light is that these kinds of systems don't work well on message boards, where the boundaries between advocate, defendant, plaintiff, and judge aren't at all clear. Any perceived 'third-party' looking in on these threads is likely to already have some sort of bias, not to mention the actual posters on these boards (many of whom cannot escape accusations of being 'fanboys' of one manufacturer or another).

There is no 'objective', 'third-party' 'judge' or 'jury' to which these arguments play out. There is no 'outside' audience judging the merits of your (or anyone else's) adversarial bias. We are all 'in here', in the mix, irrevocably embroiled in the case, each acting in turn as advocate, defendant, judge and jury. The fact is, all of our judgments are compromised, because not one of us sits 'outside' the case.

In such a situation, adversarial bias is simply a prescription for flame-wars, not reasoned judgments. In these situations, balance produces more balance, bias produces more bias. When there is no one competent to judge the merits of competing bias, the function of competing bias is rendered useless.

Think of the way politics has become in the United States. There are two parties who less and less argue out the merits of their respective cases in front of an 'undecided' public. The public is largely decided--and full of bias--one way or another. As a result, we *all* simply argue with each other from established points of bias, there is no 'outside' jury. We, as a voting public, are no longer 'competent' to judge the merits of competing bias.

Like them, we are a community, all mixed in together here on AT Video. You aren't reaching some third-party audience who sits in judgment between your point of view and some ATI fanboy's. The people you need to communicate with are right here--and they are the very ones who you perceive to be horribly biased.

We aren't acting this drama out in front of other people for their benefit and edification. We are the only ones here--so all of this is really only for us.

If you will take some well-intentioned advice: spend more time trying to convince the people right in front of you, here in AT Video, and less time taking an ideological stance for the benefit of a non-existent audience. Meet bias with patient--and balanced--reasoning.

Just a thought.

Cheers.

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: ND40oz
When have any of the H reviews ever said the current AMD platform is better then the current Intel platform? If anything, they're on the Core 2 bandwagon as well. Check the recent motherboard reviews, check out the number of Intel boards versus AMD boards?

They haven't and if they did I wouldn't know since I don't read reviews, in whole. All I had to see is Kyle's attitude in the forums and that's all. Take it or leave it.

I have a question for you... Can you list all the new chipsets and mobos on AMD's side of things, like how many of the them are there? Maybe that could explain how many more reviews Intel gets these days compared to Amd. Intel's realesing new stuff and DAAMIT is lowing their prices. That's my take...

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

I wonder how many Nvidia cards HOCP helps sell

Someone made a thread asking to decide between 8800GTS and HD2900XT there... my first thought was "WRROOOONG place to ask", so I went in and someone inevitably says this:

"HD 2900 XT is inferior in every way. Does that make the choice a bit easier for you?"

...

I wish I could smack people over the internet... and I dont even have anything to do with the company.. people over at AMD must be totally frustrated at how underrated their product is, I should know, since that happens to me all the time in what I do

 

[Matt2]

You can argue the final conclusion is bias, but the numbers aren't fake. I don't care if a review site is bias in how they word things or what they conclude, I just care about the numbers. We should all be savvy enough to look at the facts and draw up our own conclusions.

That being said, I like HOCP's style of benchmarking. It shows you how the card will perform with the highest playable settings. There are even apples-to-apples benchmarks thrown in there.

People can tweak their games however they want, but HOCP gives a good starting point. If 8800GTS can pull 40fps at max settings, but to achieve that same 40fps, the HD2900XT has to have shadows or AA turned down, then it's pretty simple to understand that the GTS would be faster at the same settings. Showing us what settings need to be turned down to achieve a playable framerate is far more useful knowledge than to look at Anand's benches and see that at max settings both cards pull under 30fps and are not playable.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: dreddfunk

If you will take some well-intentioned advice: spend more time trying to convince the people right in front of you, here in AT Video, and less time taking an ideological stance for the benefit of a non-existent audience. Meet bias with patient--and balanced--reasoning.

Just a thought.

Cheers.

Your statements reflect a "perfect world" scenario. Once you show a preference for Company A or say something bad about Company B you get labeled a fanboy here and are targeted for strife. I am a member of many forums and none of them are nearly this bad. This part of the AT forum is near legendary across the web. So I chose my side and I stand my ground. I do my best to limit personal attacks and I back what I post with links and facts.

As a guilty pleasure, I must admit I do enjoy the debates.

 

[dreddfunk]

Wreckage - I think you may have missed the point of my post: there isn't really an outside audience to justify the use of adversarial bias as a tactic for eliciting the truth.

If the only people to whom you are speaking are right here, then you are merely taking part in an elaborate game of two competing groups speaking past one another, usually in the hope that winning a 'point' or two will give them a temporary boost to their ego. At that point, the discussion has nothing to do with presenting the 'truth' and everything to do with what you call 'enjoying the debate' (whether or not one finds it actually enjoyable depends on the person--personally, I do not, as all I see are people actively speaking past one another making grand claims of trying to present the 'truth').

Second, I'm not sure that my statements do reflect a 'perfect world' scenario at all. I'm merely suggesting that communities can monitor their own behavior. Modeling 'good' discussion behavior inspires others to do the same. If enough people do it, then the culture of the board is changed. In fact, this form of self-monitoring is the only kind that really works. If AT Video is notorious, it is up to regular posters--like yourself--to take the lead in making the necessary changes.

P.S. If I had to choose, I'd choose the 320 GTS over anything else right now as the best price/performer. I'm really hoping to see a single-slot, low-noise solution that can handle Oblivion like the current GTS that sells for under $200. I may have a while to wait.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: solofly

Originally posted by: ND40oz
When have any of the H reviews ever said the current AMD platform is better then the current Intel platform? If anything, they're on the Core 2 bandwagon as well. Check the recent motherboard reviews, check out the number of Intel boards versus AMD boards?

They haven't and if they did I wouldn't know since I don't read reviews, in whole. All I had to see is Kyle's attitude in the forums and that's all. Take it or leave it.

I have a question for you... Can you list all the new chipsets and mobos on AMD's side of things, like how many of the them are there? Maybe that could explain how many more reviews Intel gets these days compared to Amd. Intel's realesing new stuff and DAAMIT is lowing their prices. That's my take...

ATI/AMD has 690g and R580 out, nVidia has 500, 520, 550, 570, 590 and 680a and Via has K8T, K8M and K8N lines. I would think there are enough out there to do a few reviews on...

 

[Nathelion]

...and on it goes and on it goes. Have any of you people ever considered growing up and getting a life? Oh wait none of us have a life, that's why we've already read all the 5 pages of this thread. But the growing up part would be nice.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: dreddfunk
Wreckage - I think you may have missed the point of my post: there isn't really an outside audience to justify the use of adversarial bias as a tactic for eliciting the truth.

Actually there is a very large audience. Very few people who view these threads actually post here, in fact many of them are not even registered users.

If the only people to whom you are speaking are right here, then you are merely taking part in an elaborate game of two competing groups speaking past one another, usually in the hope that winning a 'point' or two will give them a temporary boost to their ego. At that point, the discussion has nothing to do with presenting the 'truth' and everything to do with what you call 'enjoying the debate' (whether or not one finds it actually enjoyable depends on the person--personally, I do not, as all I see are people actively speaking past one another making grand claims of trying to present the 'truth').

Forums are all about debate. Without sides there would be no "point\counter point". In fact there would be no need for discussion of anything other than maybe troubleshooting.

Second, I'm not sure that my statements do reflect a 'perfect world' scenario at all. I'm merely suggesting that communities can monitor their own behavior. Modeling 'good' discussion behavior inspires others to do the same. If enough people do it, then the culture of the board is changed. In fact, this form of self-monitoring is the only kind that really works. If AT Video is notorious, it is up to regular posters--like yourself--to take the lead in making the necessary changes.

This is not a self help group, it's just a tech forum and this section focuses on video cards. I don't mind that the discussions get heated, that's how debate works. As for "communities can monitor their own behavior", I'm guessing you don't visit forums much and that my "prefect world" statement is accurate.

P.S. If I had to choose, I'd choose the 320 GTS over anything else right now as the best price/performer. I'm really hoping to see a single-slot, low-noise solution that can handle Oblivion like the current GTS that sells for under $200. I may have a while to wait.

I to am waiting for a fast single slot DX10 card. Hopefully an 8950GT.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
I wonder how many Nvidia cards HOCP helps sell

Someone made a thread asking to decide between 8800GTS and HD2900XT there... my first thought was "WRROOOONG place to ask", so I went in and someone inevitably says this:

"HD 2900 XT is inferior in every way. Does that make the choice a bit easier for you?"

...

I wish I could smack people over the internet... and I dont even have anything to do with the company.. people over at AMD must be totally frustrated at how underrated their product is, I should know, since that happens to me all the time in what I do

If you look at pure "FPS" in many games the HD2900 may be a better card over the 320.

But when you factor in cost, heat, noise, power draw, IQ etc.

It's not the better card.

Why is that wrong?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: BS
Oh boy another H review bashing the 2900XT with non mature drivers.

At what point would you say drivers become mature? 2 months? 6? A year?
I agree about the drivers and AMD should be able to get more performance out of it. With all that bandwidth available to the 2900, you would think a simple driver revision would literally "wake" the card up. But it looks like that core might be designed in a way that current games cannot take advantage of. Maybe down the road a ways, devs will utilize the superscalar shaders efficiently. After reading the architectural differences between G80 and R600, and how they handle data, I can see how this presents a real challenge for the driver team at AMD.

Stop being so nVidia biased, it takes quite a while for a driver to be mature, don't you remember that certain driver fixes improves the performance greatly in many scenarios? Why you just go to the Anandtech''s review "Catalyst, under the knife" or "Forceware, under the knife", and will see how long it took for nVidia to exploit the maximum performance on the GeForce 6 series, in the Radeon X800 series didn't take that long cause it was based on the older R300. Don't you remember the Doom 3 fix replacing the Texture Lookup table with Math? Or the Far Cry fix fixing a bottleneck in the Vertex Shader? The R600 (even the R5xx) series have a Programmable Memory Controller which the driver can manipulate to improve efficiency in different games, after all, not all the games access the RAM in the same way. The Radeon HD 2900XT is faster than a GTS 640MB and is slower than a GTX, period.

Are you blind? The post of mine you just quoted states, "I agree about the drivers." Did you miss that? Or did you only read the first line of the post? Feel free to apologize.