Anand's 9800XT and FX5950 review, part 2

[jiffylube1024]

Well, I just finished reading Anand's article (all 60 pages of it) and I'm extremely impressed with Anand (yet again). What a solid review.

I'm also impressed with Nvidia. It seems the 52.xx series is finally panning out as the touted "holy grail" it was supposed to be. Aside from a few image quality problems (on both cards), they run neck and neck in the majority of benchmarks.

Yet again Nvidia has stepped to the plate and delivered a huge % increse in most games it was struggling to keep up in. ATI's card must be commended, as it is either in first place, or right behind Nvidia in all the benchmarks. And they still have their trump card, Catalyst 3.8 to play.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Well, I just finished reading Anand's article (all 60 pages of it) and I'm extremely impressed with Anand (yet again). What a solid review.

I'm also impressed with Nvidia. It seems the 5x.xx series is finally panning out as the touted "holy grail" it was supposed to be. Aside from a few image quality problems (on both cards), they run neck and neck in the majority of benchmarks.

True, but ATI's lead is still there with the 9800XT, and it's noticeable, though not as overwhelmingly so as it was before the 52 series.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Yeah, I do agree that for the most part, the 9800XT seems to have a small lead. In most games (according to the numbers) it wouldn't be tangible, but the lead is still there. Plus they do still dominate in a couple games, like SimCity 4 and Warcraft 3.

 

[reever]

You really should include regular charts for tomb raider, seems odd just to include charts that show perent differences. And im wondering how big is the Det50 drivers set and how big the 45 set is

 

[ginfest]

Originally posted by: reever
You really should include regular charts for tomb raider, seems odd just to include charts that show perent differences. And im wondering how big is the Det50 drivers set and how big the 45 set is

Why, what diff does the size make?
The issues seem to be quality and speed.
I was wondering how long it would take you guys to sign up here. The past few days have seen certain forums filled with posts that basically question the integrity of this site/editors and it's previews/reviews and the methods used.
It'll be interesting to see the FUD now that Part 2 is out and shows some gains for NV.
Hopefully the powers that be won't allow the nonsense to get out of hand like it does elsewhere.


Mike G

 

[Genx87]

Good review. I found it very interesting in Tomb Raider ATI was the card with major issues. I remember when the 51.75 drivers were being tested everybody and thier grandma jumped down Nvidias throat over rendering issues on Tomb Raider.

Overall a vast improvement. Definately Nvidia has a long ways to go with their compiler technology in some games. But maybe by the time the NV40 rolls around they will have more of it ironed out.

Best of all is the drivers dont have many IQ issues outside of known bugs. I cant wait to DL them and try it out

 

[Pete]

CRIMINY, THAT WAS A HUGE REVIEW (LOL).

There, that felt good.

Nice review, as I noted in the article comments thread. I wonder if you'll redo things for Cat 3.8 (and their dynamic OC'ing), or are you waiting for an official 5950 release? What's the deal with that card, anyway? Will nV have a lunch party for both it and the 5700, as ATI did for their XT cards? When are nV's updated cards due out?

 

[duane26]

I agree the article was a great example of detication on the part of anandtech trying to provide us with the best possible information, I commend you. I am very curious to find out how the new 3.8 catalyst perform as well as the new ASUS 9800XT. Is it possible that they can build a better board then ATI? I know feature and bundle wise they blow ATI out of the water! Any thoughts on this.

 

[Pete]

Hmmm, the dynamic OC'ing may be interesting with the different HSFs on ATi and Asus cards. I wonder if one design will OC better than the other?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Pete
Hmmm, the dynamic OC'ing may be interesting with the different HSFs on ATi and Asus cards. I wonder if one design will OC better than the other?

ASUS' 9800XT card is very nice, with the use of dual fans and very heavy copper. The difference will be minute in terms of overclocking, however.

 

[Pete]

I don't believe you. Mail me both an Asus and ATi 9800XT immediately so I can verify your wild claims.

 

[oldfart]

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb

Originally posted by: Pete
Hmmm, the dynamic OC'ing may be interesting with the different HSFs on ATi and Asus cards. I wonder if one design will OC better than the other?

ASUS' 9800XT card is very nice, with the use of dual fans and very heavy copper. The difference will be minute in terms of overclocking, however.

How is the noise level of the dual Asus fan Vs the single reference design?

 

[duane26]

Evan what about the fact that ASUS has it's own utility, smartdoctor for overclocking," ASUS? Smart Doctor software, the latest version shipping with the ASUS RADEON 9800 XT acts as a hardware monitoring utility with dynamic overclocking. It will be interesting to see how this compares to ATI?s own OVERDRIVE software, which will eventually offer some of the same features." This quote can be found here, http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/asus_radeon_9800_xt/
Now you only use smartdoctor with asus but what about the other way around, you will be able to use overdrive with ASUS right? And if either dosn't do the trick you can always do it manually with 3DRage Tweak?

 

[nRollo]

That was an excellent review. Well done.
I was happy, and surprised to see the huge gains in nVidia performance and IQ in DX9.
Competition is good, people who pay for cards should want there to be a parity in performance. Otherwise the company with a significant lead will charge what they want.

 

[Eagle17]

I do not believe that nvidia could code 50% to 60% more performance in drivers alone. I will however hold off full judgement unti someone with more ability has a chance to take a look at the bench's. Also I would like to see someone take a look at image quality of the game while running, side by side. I do not know if what gabe said is true but it is probably worth looking into with regaurds to the snapshot image quality. I hope that it is not true and that the FX is really this good it is just hard to believe given the last 9 months worth of issues from them.

 

[reever]

I was happy, and surprised to see the huge gains in nVidia performance and IQ in DX9.

Even when the dx9 effects were disabled right?

 

[Medicated858]

I'm happy for all the Nvidia card owners out there, it's good to see that Nvidia finally stepped up their game.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Good review. I found it very interesting in Tomb Raider ATI was the card with major issues. I remember when the 51.75 drivers were being tested everybody and thier grandma jumped down Nvidias throat over rendering issues on Tomb Raider.

Everybody jumped on Nvidia because they performed like crap in that game.

Originally posted by: Eagle17
I do not believe that nvidia could code 50% to 60% more performance in drivers alone.

They've done it before. They seem to have done it again. Kudos to Nvidia's driver team!

Do I think Nvidia have done it with no cheats whatsoever? No, probably not. Do I think that for the most part they have improved speed by optimizing stuff that we will not see or affect our gameplay experience? Yes.

And let me get this out of the way: ATI is still king in my books. Nvidia is the one playing catch-up this time. This is not fanboyism, this is based on the fact that ATI was(and still is) market leader for the last two years. Just like Nvidia wore the crown from the TNT2 all the way to the GeForce 4. Bring on NV40/R400.

 

[lifeguard1999]

This was a very good article. I enjoyed reading it.

The series is far from over and the next thing on the plate is a value/mid-range roundup to show you some cards that are actually feasible to purchase.

CPU scaling would be nice for those who do not have a NDA Intel Processor or an AMD Athlon64 FX51.

Looking back though, I can offer this advice: don't spend $500 on a video card until the game you want to play on it comes out.

That is always good advice.

What amazes me is that NVidia has left so much performance on the table in terms of their drivers. But then again, NVidia has done this in the past as well. I expect future versions of their drivers will also pull more performance rabbits out of the proverbial hat.

Well ATI's Catalyst 3.8 drivers are coming out at 3pm EST tomorrow. Fortunately for NVidia there is not suppossed to be much in the way of performance increases. Instead it is supposed to be new features (Dynamic Overclocking which only affects XT cards) and new versions of the software componenets.

 

[Peter D]

Awesome review (No I didnt read the WHOLE thing)

Also, I liked the choice of system setup

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Vegetto
Awesome review (No I didnt read the WHOLE thing)

Also, I liked the choice of system setup

You should read most of it at least. It sure doesn't read like 60 pages! It's mostly just image comparison pics and graphs.

 

[Luagsch]

somehow i don't trust nvidia.... don't know why...
i read the whole thing and everything looks fine but the voice in my head says "it's nvidia, watch out"

 

[nRollo]

This is not fanboyism, this is based on the fact that ATI was(and still is) market leader for the last two years. Just like Nvidia wore the crown from the TNT2 all the way to the GeForce 4. Bring on NV40/R400.

Err, Jiffy, not to nitpick, but you're contradicting yourself here. The 9700Pro started to ship to retail stores 8/19/2002, which isn't even 14 months ago, let alone two years?
Beyond that, when you consider there's no real overriding advantage of the 9800 over the 5900 for the last 4-5 months, you're down to talking about a window where ATI was a clear market leader for 9-10 months, a long way from two years.

 

[Jeff7181]

Hmmm... lets see...

The very large performance gains we saw in Halo, Aquamark3, X2 and Tomb Raider can be attributed to the enhancements of NVIDIAs compiler technology in the 52.xx series of drivers.

Can you say "highly programmable GPU?" I can... and I have been for months.

 

[Sideswipe001]

Originally posted by: Rollo

This is not fanboyism, this is based on the fact that ATI was(and still is) market leader for the last two years. Just like Nvidia wore the crown from the TNT2 all the way to the GeForce 4. Bring on NV40/R400.

Err, Jiffy, not to nitpick, but you're contradicting yourself here. The 9700Pro started to ship to retail stores 8/19/2002, which isn't even 14 months ago, let alone two years?
Beyond that, when you consider there's no real overriding advantage of the 9800 over the 5900 for the last 4-5 months, you're down to talking about a window where ATI was a clear market leader for 9-10 months, a long way from two years.

I read his statement as meaning "leader in sales" when he said "market leader". Maybe he meant the performace crown, but hey, I figured it was a combined thing, comparing all products down the line.