5970 Reviews

[SlowSpyder]

That is very arguable. All PhysX testing is done on Nvidia card, having Nvidia do PhysX while ATI card handling others is not intentional.

Think of it this way. Say Nvidia allows the cross vendor setup. One day while you play a game with physX and system crashed and can't be turn on. You realized that your ATI card has melted. You immediately send the card back to ATI as RMA, but they claimed that it was physX that cause the problem which they are not responsible for it. You can't send your ATI card to Nvidia as people will laugh at you, but you do make complains to them. Guess what? They will say they don't support ATI product. So what are you going to do with your brand new burned ATI/Nvidia card?

You think the hardware might fail, or 'melt' from having both vendors cards and drivers installed, and running Physx? And then you feel that the board maker (not AMD, and certainly not Nvidia with an AMD GPU) wouldn't honor their warranty because you used Physx? Your whole post really confuses me.

 

[Seero]

It's not arguable at all. It worked just fine before, and now without any hardware changes or changes to the games, it suddenly doesn't work with a new driver. It can still be "hacked" to run on the new drivers too, and it works perfectly fine, it's just not allowed normally. If Nvidia made printers they would make it so that they don't work if you have an ATI card in the system. This is no different. It's an artificial lockout with not a shred of technical purpose behind it.

If it worked just fine meaning that it works on previous drivers, then you don't need to update it as that driver is fine. If the new driver causes problems, don't use it.

The cross-over setup works on old drivers, but it was never a supported configuration. They stopped this configuration because it is not supported. You may still complain if the new Nvidia driver cause graphic corruption with that configuration, but Nvidia's driver never need to work with ATI's hardware to begin with.

Just because it works doesn't mean it is supported. I can submerge my PC into oil and it will work, but it will still void all the warranties doing so. I can lap the surface of my CPU for better cooling, but it will still void the warranty. You found that you can have ATI card for display while having a Nvidia card for physics, it works, but not supported.

 

[Seero]

You think the hardware might fail, or 'melt' from having both vendors cards and drivers installed, and running Physx? And then you feel that the board maker (not AMD, and certainly not Nvidia with an AMD GPU) wouldn't honor their warranty because you used Physx? Your whole post really confuses me.

All I am saying is Nvidia don't want to be responsible for something that they don't support. As of now, ATI user can't use PhysX, and the blame goes directly to Nvidia. For something that works on Nvidia but not on ATI, the blame goes directly to Nvidia.

Why are there so many games supporting PhysX but not Havok, why? Why didn't ATI support PhysX but create its own Havok that no one uses?

 

[SlowSpyder]

All I am saying is Nvidia don't want to be responsible for something that they don't support.

Fair enough. Leaving something functional and unsupported is not the same as artificially limiting something from working that used to work fine.

What if AMD turns off 3D rendering capabilities when an Intel motherboard is detected? You'd be ok with that then? Even if people who bought the Radeon card for it's 3D rendering were never told in the requirements that the video card will ONLY work with an AMD system (processor, chipset)? That's fine as long as AMD's excuse is that they don't want to be responsible for something they don't support even though the Radeon card gamed just fine on your Intel system for months?

 

[Seero]

Fair enough. Leaving something functional and unsupported is not the same as artificially limiting something from working that used to work fine.

What if AMD turns off 3D rendering capabilities when an Intel motherboard is detected? You'd be ok with that then? Even if people who bought the Radeon card for it's 3D rendering were never told in the requirements that the video card will ONLY work with an AMD system (processor, chipset)? That's fine as long as AMD's excuse is that they don't want to be responsible for something they don't support even though the Radeon card gamed just fine on your Intel system for months?

Again, I said it is arguable. I can see the problem and it won't be better if a message pops up and say "PhysX is unsupported when ATI card is present, do it at your own risk!" Nvidia will have to release fixes to unsupported functionalities because that allows users to do so. "If it used to work, but not anymore, then Nvidia have to fix it." Even if it was not a supported function to begin with.

Just because it appears to work fine doesn't make it bug free. I learn it the hard way. "Don't let me do it if it was not meant to be done." You may disagree, but users are smart and found hacks even when the developer tries to stop them. The key here is, words "Hack" or "Mod" more or less mean "No warranties".

Lets talk about CPU. Mobo use to support up to C2D and there are new mobo that support up to C2Q. Some user found out that those board that are suppose to support up to C2D actually support C2Q. Well, I went out and brought myself a 680i SE with a Q6600 hoping that I can OC it like crazy. It ran fine, but soon I found out that I can't OC. Who should I blame? Some people brought a new 775 socket board before they found out that there C2D CPU don't run. Who should they blame? If you can fit a cpu into the socket, then it should work! To avoid this mindset, AMD socket is different that Intel socket and user can't mix them. Problem solved. Some happens to memory slots. Can it be modded? Yes, it will void your warranty though.

If I have derailed the course, I am sorry.

Edit: I understand your point of view, but I don't think PhysX can be done independently. For cross-over to work, the drivers of the vendors must work together. I don't know the specifics, but I do see the complicities. Having it work base on luck is easy, making sure that it works for all possible scenarios is hard.

 

[UNCjigga]

I'm holding out for 32nm parts.

 

[Forumpanda]

Think of it this way. Say Nvidia allows the cross vendor setup. One day while you play a game with physX and system crashed and can't be turn on. You realized that your ATI card has melted.

If any piece of code can 'melt' hardware then the manufactures have a much, much bigger problem than physx, case in point, your scenario is ludicrous and at all not nVidias reasoning, you are just making stuff up to defend them.

 

[WelshBloke]

So far DX11 has one patched DX9 game. :hmm:

PhysX launched with a download pack that contained more than that.

You are skewing the facts a lot. There are plenty of PhysX games coming as well. Not to mention 10's of millions of people more have a PhysX capable GPU vs a DX11.

The PhysX power pack 1 contained 2 tech demo's, F@H client and an UT3 map.

There are 2(?) full DX11 games out now, yes?

 

[akugami]

So far DX11 has one patched DX9 game. :hmm:

PhysX launched with a download pack that contained more than that.

You are skewing the facts a lot. There are plenty of PhysX games coming as well. Not to mention 10's of millions of people more have a PhysX capable GPU vs a DX11.

You liked to go on about GPU PhysX and then list iPod and console games to skew the numbers in favor of PhysX when the discussion was about hardware accelerated physics. That's skewing. What I'm showing is that GPU PhysX support has not been as prevalent as you attempt to show it to be. DX11 has also been exponentially faster/widespread than PhysX ever was. That's not skewing the truth. Something you are the master of. And why are you now going to exclude or discount a game that was not originally developed from the ground up using DX11 when you include games that have GPU PhysX patched in such as Batman or UT3? Using your standard of counting DX11 games and applying them to GPU PhysX games, then the number of GPU PhysX games can be said to be zero. Double standards.

And are we really going to go with the skewing the facts thing? You do this in every thread. I really don't want to get into another argument about your past history of creatively using facts and quotes in every thread. If you insist on saying I'm providing false information or skewing facts then prove I have done so. Prove me wrong just as I have provided proof on how you are skewing the DX11 uptake vs PhysX uptate in favor of PhysX in this thread alone. It's also very easy to show you have lied in the past, have altered quotes, or ignored facts to suit your argument so do not attempt to say you only use facts and the truth in an attempt to imply the one you are directing your comments to as being the unscrupulous one. Either provide a proper argument to back up your claims or accept that you loss the argument and your point(s) invalidated.

If you payed attention to the article, you would notice that it has indeed been released in Russia and Germany. Or are those not real places anymore?

I've already pointed that out to him multiple times dating back to last month about the new STALKER game. He just ignored the information because it does not suit his purpose. Not only that, he's changed the argument to say that these games had DX11 patched in so don't count. Forgetting that pretty much every GPU PhysX game has had it patched in.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Seero, I think you are missing the point on why Nvidia made this decision. It's really a business decision on their part. Lets say the worst case scenario occurs, with an Nvidia card for Physx and AMD card for rendering your system becomes unstable. Games crash. That's it. That's your worst case scenario. Your hardware will not fail, it will not 'melt'.

Motherboard manufacturers release a list of supported CPU's. Overclocking is not a gaurantee. There is no gaurantee your chip will overclock even 1MHz. Attempting to install an unsupported chip in a motherboard and overclocking would not be supported unless otherwise stated that the motherboard guarantees a certain FSB frequency. You can't call up MSI and complain that your K9A2 does not overclock... if it runs at the rated speeds and the supported CPU's work, than that's all that MSI guarantees.

Physx is a different ballgame all together. Physx worked before. Physx capable cards were sold before with the capability to run Physx in your system that used an AMD based graphics card for rendering. The Aegia PPU was sold for use in any system that met it's power requirements, had the correct PCIE connection, and ran a supported OS. Then out of nowhere Nvidia pulls the rug out from those people. The reason they did this is to keep Physx exclusive to Nvidia cards... unfortunately for many of it's customers who did infact buy an Nvidia part for Physx, and did meet all the requirements for the card to be supported, they got screwed as Nvidia later on changed the requirements after they already had your money. Hence my AMD removing 3D capabilities on an Intel system analogy.

Unfortunately it seems Nvidia's best innovations as of late have been done so regarding their business practices and marketing. Their latest products are not exciting (sweet, GeForce 9600 performance with less power use for >$100 in the GT240!) and at least on the gaming side they have clearly lost the technology lead, at least for the time being.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Fermi derivative GPU parts haven't even been announced, no benchmarks have been released, and nvidia hasn't even mentioned what kinds of cards are coming to the GPU gaming segment. I'm annoyed and pissed with this situation too because I'd like to have all next gen parts out to compete for my money, but since nvidia isn't talking about their parts it's not vaporware. It's nothing-ware.

The 5970, though, has been talked about, alluded to, and given a set release date. We're getting benchmarks, the date is upon us, and there will be how many for sale? 10? 15? There are massive production issues right now with 40nm at TSMC. AMD can't deliver their 5850's or 5870 with any significant supply. This card will be even more scarce. I guess it's fun to talk about, but there will be more reviews of this card on the net than there will be actual paid-for owners of this card by the year's end. What is the point of releasing this card right now if they can't even make enough of their other just-released parts?

This is a problem indeed. AMD cannot produce cards for people to buy and the next fastest cards are from Nvidia. Someone building right now, today might just have to buy Nvidia even though AMD has the faster cards.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Irony that you cut the quote there. Lame

(The following is in the same paragraph directly following the above, taken out of context, quote)



So basically inferring, since nVidia can't compete fairly, sabotage is in order?

Edit: I have to add that misquoting something is not something new, you seem to have a knack for specifically misquoting something, (by edit* or omission) to show something different than the intent of the original author!

*Batman thread anyone??? You still have yet to reverse the edit.

Do note that the developers have choice. They don't have to enter the TWIMTBP program but they do. That's too bad. I don't cry over it, wouldn't cry over it if I owned a 5870.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Looking at the benches, it would appear that the driver certainly needs to improve. But as of now, AMD has the fastest dual GPU card, and the fastest single GPU card. Infact, 3 of the fastest 4 cards that money can buy from any manufacturer are from AMD. Pretty much any new card that launches from either camp will typically have it's driver bugs, I imagine the problem is compounded with dual GPU cards. We all know that these will get worked out as AMD releases their monthy drivers and hotfixes.

I would think the single biggest knock right now is availability of the 58x0 parts and we'll see how availability with the 5970 turns out. The 58x0 parts are trickling in here and there. But even at the less than stellar availability of the 58x0 parts, AMD's availablity of DX11 hardware is still much, MUCH better than Nvidia's availability of DX11 parts.

Lets see some DX11 games that are meaningful and quality before we worry about it too much.

 

[Schmide]

Do note that the developers have choice. They don't have to enter the TWIMTBP program but they do. That's too bad. I don't cry over it, wouldn't cry over it if I owned a 5870.

Dude. I was showing how Wreakage selectively quoted a paragraph go look at it at [ H ].

 

[thilanliyan]

These radeon cards are kind of disappointing to me. I've been waiting for something to upgrade my gtx280 and i don't think either one of these really fit the bill. The 5870 barely beats the 280 on the benchmarks i saw on techspot, sometimes only a 5fps difference, up to 12 or so, with maybe one case higher.

Are you serious? Even the 4890 competes with the GTX280/GTX275 and even the GTX285. Try reading more reviews.

 

[Swampthing]

Why didn't ATI support PhysX but create its own Havok that no one uses?

Pretty sure havok is it's own company, correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think ATI had anything to do with the creation of havok. And i also beleive havok has been around longer than PhysX. Havok FX was going to be owned by Intel but i beleive it was cancelled.

 

[Seero]

Pretty sure havok is it's own company, correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think ATI had anything to do with the creation of havok. And i also beleive havok has been around longer than PhysX. Havok FX was going to be owned by Intel but i beleive it was cancelled.

You are right, I am wrong. I got the facts mixed up, sorry.

 

[Seero]

Seero, I think you are missing the point on why Nvidia made this decision. It's really a business decision on their part. Lets say the worst case scenario occurs, with an Nvidia card for Physx and AMD card for rendering your system becomes unstable. Games crash. That's it. That's your worst case scenario. Your hardware will not fail, it will not 'melt'.

Fine, it doesn't melt, only crashes. Who is responsible to fix it? ATI? Nvidia? or the game developers?

Motherboard manufacturers release a list of supported CPU's. Overclocking is not a gaurantee. There is no gaurantee your chip will overclock even 1MHz. Attempting to install an unsupported chip in a motherboard and overclocking would not be supported unless otherwise stated that the motherboard guarantees a certain FSB frequency. You can't call up MSI and complain that your K9A2 does not overclock... if it runs at the rated speeds and the supported CPU's work, than that's all that MSI guarantees.

Well said. PhysX on Cross-over configurations is not supported which the exception of Aegia PPU. Use any Nvidia's card as a PPU is also not a supported configuration. You know it, thus you use unofficial drivers to re-enable PhysX.

Physx is a different ballgame all together. Physx worked before. Physx capable cards were sold before with the capability to run Physx in your system that used an AMD based graphics card for rendering. The Aegia PPU was sold for use in any system that met it's power requirements, had the correct PCIE connection, and ran a supported OS. Then out of nowhere Nvidia pulls the rug out from those people. The reason they did this is to keep Physx exclusive to Nvidia cards... unfortunately for many of it's customers who did infact buy an Nvidia part for Physx, and did meet all the requirements for the card to be supported, they got screwed as Nvidia later on changed the requirements after they already had your money. Hence my AMD removing 3D capabilities on an Intel system analogy.

Again Aegia PPU works, and still works. It isn't out of nowhere to some of us. We know Nvidia is going to do something about it.

Let put the formal reasoning aside. Say the action Nvidia has taken is simply to prevent ATI user to use PhysX. Is it wrong? Does the action even reduce the number of ATI user from using PhysX?

So yeah, buy 5970 and a cheap Nvidia card for physX plus some driver mod and you are good to go. Ethical? Does ethic save me money? lol

 

[PingviN]

Let put the formal reasoning aside. Say the action Nvidia has taken is simply to prevent ATI user to use PhysX. Is it wrong? Does the action even reduce the number of ATI user from using PhysX?

So yeah, buy 5970 and a cheap Nvidia card for physX plus some driver mod and you are good to go. Ethical? Does ethic save me money? lol

The problem at hand is that you've still payed for you GeForce GPU. Should it really matter if an AMD card did the rendering? No, because you are still a paying customer. This is only a way for Nvidia to stop people with older GeForce GPUs from buying (obviously) superior AMD hardware.

But unfortunately, Nvidia has no buissness ethics at all and are losing their credability. I honestly held Nvidia in the highest esteem during the G80 era, but now.. well, if Nvidia says something, I don't really give a rats ass. It's probably only half true at best.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Fine, it doesn't melt, only crashes. Who is responsible to fix it? ATI? Nvidia? or the game developers?

If you would use something that is not supported and it causes stability problems no one would fix it but yourself. You would either have to live with an unsupported configuration causing crashes or change the configuration so that it meets the supported requirements.

Well said. PhysX on Cross-over configurations is not supported which the exception of Aegia PPU. Use any Nvidia's card as a PPU is also not a supported configuration. You know it, thus you use unofficial drivers to re-enable PhysX.

I think you are confused about the Aegia PPU... Aegia is not supported any longer either. The Nvidia video cards were sold as Physx capable. Nvidia did NOT specify that with the Aegia PPU or an Nvidia GPU being used as a PPU that those pieces of hardware would only work with Nvidia GPU's being used as the rendering hardware. People bought and used the Aegia part as well as Nvidia GPU's to run Physx with their AMD video cards doingn the rendering for months. Then Nvidia took away that functionality for users with AMD video cards even though your PC met all the requirements.

Again Aegia PPU works, and still works. It isn't out of nowhere to some of us. We know Nvidia is going to do something about it.

See above... Nvidia took away that functionality on the Aegia part.

Let put the formal reasoning aside. Say the action Nvidia has taken is simply to prevent ATI user to use PhysX. Is it wrong? Does the action even reduce the number of ATI user from using PhysX?

So yeah, buy 5970 and a cheap Nvidia card for physX plus some driver mod and you are good to go. Ethical? Does ethic save me money? lol

Physx is Nvidia's, they can decide that they want it just to run on Nvidia hardware configurations. That's not the unethical part. What I don't agree with is that they sold parts that could be used as a PPU in any set up then changed the requirements of the system for the PPU. They gladly took money selling hardware (both Aegia PPU's and their GPU's) to be used for Physx without ever stating that using it with an AMD graphics card isn't supported or wouldn't be supported. Than after it working without a problem for months they took away the ability for that part to work any longer as a PPU, they changed the requirements to Nvidia only graphics AFTER they took customers money and sold the hardware. People who spent money on their parts are screwed now if they had an AMD graphics card... Nvidia took their money than made the PPU into a paper weight. Right now you can use the old drivers with current Physx games, but surely future games will require newer Physx drivers and people with AMD cards will be left high and dry. Of course Nvidia wants you to get rid of your current AMD card and get another Nvidia card in your rig. But it seems like an odd way to get people to buy your part... sell them a part, let them use it for a while, than take away the functionality and tell them the only way to get it back will be to buy another one of their cards.

Luckily for Nvidia the number of people using AMD cards with an Nvidia part for Physx is probably not very large. And for right now through old drivers it can still be used. But it's only a matter of time before more Physx games come out, and I'm sure Nvidia will do what they can to have those newer games requirer newer Physx drivers.

Back to what I asked you before. Would it be ok if you bought a nice new i7 rig and an AMD Radeon for graphics, everything works fine, than AMD takes away the ability of the Radeon to render 3D graphics until you get an AMD motherboard and AMD processor? AMD never specified that you needed an AMD motherboard and processor, and it worked fine in your i7 rig, but now AMD has taken away the 3D ability of the card until you get an i7. Obviously that would affect many more people, but that is very similar to what Nvidia did. They sold parts and the requirements were met with your AMD video card for it to work. Than after they have your money they change the requirements to stop Physx from working. To get it to work you need to game on an all Nvidia graphics system.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Lets see some DX11 games that are meaningful and quality before we worry about it too much.

The point I was trying to make is not that you can only get DX11 through AMD parts currently, as you mentioned DX11 is hardly a reason to buy a new card in it's current state. What I was getting at that they are the only one between themselves and Nvidia that have next gen hardware out. Don't get hung up on the DX11 part, it's just that AMD's next gen stuff is out and you can buy it now, even though the availability is pretty poor for AMD's part, it's much better than the availability of Nvidia's next gen part as it exists only in Nvidia labs and Power Point slides. In my quote you can just as easily trade "DX11" with "next gen". It was just a way of clarifying which generation of hardware I was talking about.

 

[Seero]

If you would use something that is not supported and it causes stability problems no one would fix it but yourself. You would either have to live with an unsupported configuration causing crashes or change the configuration so that it meets the supported requirements.

Well said. Unsupported configuration will have no support. You can choose a) to use old drivers, b) use modded drivers, or c) use preferred configurations.

I think you are confused about the Aegia PPU... Aegia is not supported any longer either. The Nvidia video cards were sold as Physx capable. Nvidia did NOT specify that with the Aegia PPU or an Nvidia GPU being used as a PPU that those pieces of hardware would only work with Nvidia GPU's being used as the rendering hardware. People bought and used the Aegia part as well as Nvidia GPU's to run Physx with their AMD video cards doingn the rendering for months. Then Nvidia took away that functionality for users with AMD video cards even though your PC met all the requirements.

I am not confused. Ageia PPU was a PCI card released 4 years ago. It was meant to offload physics calculations away from CPU. Now it can't handle the load of newer games so whether new driver should still support it is debatable as it can't handle the load of newer games anyways. However, Ageia PhysX PPU still works.

Physx is Nvidia's...

Nvidia video card is being sold as a video card that support physX, not being sold as a PCI-E card that offloads PhysX from the video card. Yes you are use Nvidia card as a PPU, so the mindset is Nvidia does support it. Now you know it doesn't. On the surface, those who use cross-over configuration are screwed. In practice, it still works after modding.

I wish to stop here as we can't get to the bottom of this. We have different point of views, and I clearly see your point and I don't disagree with your POV. This topic itself is very arguable.

Back to what I asked you before. Would it be ok if you bought a nice new i7 rig and an AMD Radeon for graphics, everything works fine, than AMD takes away the ability of the Radeon to render 3D graphics until you get an AMD motherboard and AMD processor? AMD never specified that you needed an AMD motherboard and processor, and it worked fine in your i7 rig, but now AMD has taken away the 3D ability of the card until you get an i7. Obviously that would affect many more people, but that is very similar to what Nvidia did. They sold parts and the requirements were met with your AMD video card for it to work. Than after they have your money they change the requirements to stop Physx from working. To get it to work you need to game on an all Nvidia graphics system.

Let me answer your question by asking you a question.

4000 series is capable of supporting DirectCompute, but is disabled. Why doesn't this seems to be a problem as users are being forced to buy 5000 series for Dx11, but are very upset about AA and PhysX?

 

[Wag]

According to this http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...the-fastest-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/ review the card is still suffering the micro-stuttering problems. Too much money for me to spend until they get those bugs sorted out.

 

[Sylvanas]

According to this http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...the-fastest-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/ review the card is still suffering the micro-stuttering problems. Too much money for me to spend until they get those bugs sorted out.

It's not a 'bug' it's an inherant drawback to all Multi-GPU AFR setups, 2 cards, 1 card (2GPUs), both vendors.

 

[darXoul]

Now that I'm running a GTX 295 (my first multi-GPU setup ever), I can responsibly claim that microstuttering in its current state, at least for nVidia cards, was blown completely out of proportion, mostly by German PC journalists.

Besides, even PCGH reviewers confirm that in order to exhibit noticeable MS, the 5970 card has to be forced to run under 40 fps. Unless you're running Eyefinity or Crysis in eye candy mode on a 30-incher, this is not likely to happen, given the monstrous performance.

For multiple reasons, I'm not interested in the 5970, and I actually bought the GTX 295 on 5970 release day after my GTX 280 died, but microstuttering was not one of these reasons, even if Radeons are worse than GeForces in this department.