Budget DX9 GF FX based video cards from Nvidia

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

Originally posted by: blahblah

Originally posted by: nemesismk2
The GeForce FX 5200 sounds like a great upgrade for my aging GF4 MX440 which has served me well for over a year now. It's going to be interesting what ATI will release to compete with the 5200 because let's be honest who's going to buy any of their dx8 video cards when the 5200 is released?

Don't make a decision beased solely on NVidia's PR "Info".

Tom's Hardware Guide seems happy with the performance of the Geforce FX 5200 and that's good enough for me.

tom's also was happy laying nvidia's anti-3dmark propaganda without even considering that there might be more to the issue than what they had been told. granted they rectified the situation with a follow-up article but it still goes far to belittle the "if tom's says it i believe it" argument; does it not?

 

[rogue1979]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and make a prediction.

I say Nvidia still needs a little more polishing on their DirectX9 drivers for the 5200, 5600 and 5800 series. The ATI 9500-9700 series is a fine card, and the 9700 Pro has awesome power with the 9800 and higher really getting up there in terms of performance. I love to watch all the Nvidia bashers jump all over the 5800 Ultra and others. ATI zealots must remember, it wasn't so long ago when the 8500 was bashed by Nvidia lovers because of it's poor performance compared to the Geforce3 series. But after steady driver updates it eventually passed up the GF3 and came close to GF4 performance. I say the new DirectX9 Geforces will get be very competitive to the ATI counterparts, in both the mid level and upper level categories after a few driver updates. Yes, the newest 9800 and higher might still be faster than the fastest 5800 Ultra, but not by much. In the mid range I think the 5600 Ultra stands the chance of being ahead of the 9500 Pro/9600 and even at a lower price. At any rate, the two companies will be very close straight across the board, and we will all benefit.

I just wanna add that the 5200 will be a good thing just like the Radeon 9000 was. The 9000 was the first DirectX8.1 compliant card released at such a low price, I don't see why the 5200 can't be the same thing for DirectX9. I still have a 9000 in the house and while I have much faster cards, it still plays modern games just fine.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and make a prediction.

I say Nvidia still needs a little more polishing on their DirectX9 drivers for the 5200, 5600 and 5800 series.

what facts do you have to back that up? how do you know that they are not running dx about as good as it will get on the hardware?

Originally posted by: rogue1979
I love to watch all the Nvidia bashers jump all over the 5800 Ultra and others.

wouldn't it be better to try an overlook the bashing as well as the hyping and try to stick to the truth?

Originally posted by: rogue1979
ATI zealots must remember, it wasn't so long ago when the 8500 was bashed by Nvidia lovers because of it's poor performance compared to the Geforce3 series.

well they obviously remember as they seem to be taking this opportunity to offer a little payback.

Originally posted by: rogue1979
But after steady driver updates it eventually passed up the GF3 and came close to GF4 performance.

yep, that is one of the possible things that can happen with the fx too, but again i wonder why keep implying that this will happen without any respect to the possibility that it might not. wishful thinking is asking for disappointment.

Originally posted by: rogue1979
I say the new DirectX9 Geforces will get be very competitive to the ATI counterparts, in both the mid level and upper level categories after a few driver updates. Yes, the newest 9800 and higher might still be faster than the fastest 5800 Ultra, but not by much. In the mid range I think the 5600 Ultra stands the chance of being ahead of the 9500 Pro/9600 and even at a lower price. At any rate, the two companies will be very close straight across the board, and we will all benefit.

again i would like to see a technical explanation to back these arguments.

Originally posted by: rogue1979
I just wanna add that the 5200 will be a good thing just like the Radeon 9000 was. The 9000 was the first DirectX8.1 compliant card released at such a low price, I don't see why the 5200 can't be the same thing for DirectX9. I still have a 9000 in the house and while I have much faster cards, it still plays modern games just fine.

it will be the first, and hopefully it will be worthwhile; the specs i have seen make me wonder though.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

again i would like to see a technical explanation to back these arguments.


There can obviously be no technical explanation until all these cards have been thoroughly tested with later driver releases.

This is just a guess, I could be wrong. But somehow I think Nvidia won't be so easily put down by ATI. I realize I am leaving myself open to criticism, but when the Northwood first came out and the first T-bred "A" cpu's were released to compete, they overclocked poorly and many people said AMD couldn't compete. With absolutely no proof at the time I predicted the t-bred would be able to compete with P4's after they improved the yields (It actually took a core revision). It was just a gut feeling and alot of Intel people took advantage and bashed me for a short time until AMD proved them wrong. Again, this is just a feeling I have, nothing to back it up and maybe even just wishful thinking.

 

[kylebisme]

well i wasn't looking for benchmarks or anything, i was just wondering of your speculation was actually based on the technology itself or just speculating from prior observation. from what i understand of the clockspeeds and simplified architecture i tend to doubt the 5200 will do very well. but then again that is just my own speculation and i know i may have to eat my words on this, we shall soon see.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Has anyone bothered to look at Nvidia's own graphs for the projected performance of the GeForce FX 5200?

2.5x the GF4's perf. in Unreal 2003 w/4x FSAA? A GF4-Ti4200 gets ~22 fps in this bench, and since the GF4-MX is dog slow compared to the GF4 Ti series I can extrapolate that the GF4 MX is getting *maybe* 10 fps. 2.5x that and you get a whopping 25fps.

Without checking the other benches I'm guessing that this card will be solid for DirectX 8 games but will get eaten alive by the DirectX 9, next gen games. It looks to be good competition for ATI's low end, but let's be honest to ourselves the inclusion of DirectX 9 in this card is likely a PR stunt as this card won't have the GPU power to push next gen games on the DirectX 9 code path at a decent frame rate.

 

[pelly]

If you take a few steps back, you'll see the "Big Picture" here...

By flooding the market with DX9 cards...combined with the fact that DX9 is much easier to code than DX8....we should see a great deal of DX9 games shortly ( comapred to DX8 games which still are not present in much volume ).

All in all, NVIDIA is just pushing Developers to make the transition and start using DX9 technology...

 

[kylebisme]

but what good is directx games if they are built for realy slow cards?

 

[ID]

Well as far as DX9 support goes as a selling point, what has been the best selling card on the market in the last year if not the geforce Mx line which is DX7. So for the average consumer I don't think it'll sell because of the DX9 support, it'll sell because it carries the latest geforce name "FX" and the $79 price tag. And for $79 I'd have to say the geforce fx 5200 may support a DX9 but I'd like to see it run a DX9 game. The better cards will of course be the 5600 series, these will offer DX9 support that you'll actually be able to use.

 

[kylebisme]

ya, it just strikes my as the same thing all over again as when people friends of mine brought home their shiny new 79$ gefroce4 mx400 only to ask me to help them make their games run good on it.

 

[CheapTOFU]

Nvidia has been tweaking their drivers to get more fps in 3dmark bench..

But when 3dmark2k3 came out, R9700pro or even R9500np with dx9 crushed Geforce4ti4600...

They got dx9 for all their fx's because they simply can't compete w/o dx9..

 

[FearoftheNight]

huk....I think Nvidia drivers will improve....from 300 - 350 its only a revision....Ati has had time to squeeze out revisions i.e. 20%~ for R9700Pro in Catalyst 3.x. However, Nvidia's last true core was GF4 Tis and FX is whole next family so drivers will obviously have room to improve given time. And I also hope Nvidia gets its act together and learns from its messup. If Nvidia falls and Ati only remains. What stops them from jacking up the price on us?

 

[kylebisme]

i am not so sure because i got the impression that nvidia was holding preformace back with the drivers to impress us down the line in the past. but sence they are not on top at the moment, i tend to think they are pushing everything they can out of the drivers and if we see much more it will be by luck.