Can ATI pull off another 9700 Pro?

[elkinm]

As I remember back when the R 8500 competed with the Geforce 3 quite nicely the Geforce 4 was released and was completely unanswered by ATI. The Geforce 4 was king until the release of the 9700 Pro series which not only clobbered the Geforce 4, it gave the FX a good beating.

Here you have the 7800 series out and uncontested by ATI. And personally I think ATI will need the R520 to mirror the 9700 Pro to save face.

Anybody think they can do it? I am very skeptical, but at the same time I really hope they pull it off.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I hope they can do it too, for the sake of competition, but after all the problems it sounds like they've been having over the last several months, I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

[kylebisme]

I doubt it, the 9700 went over as well as it did simply because nVidia was struggling with the FX series at the time. That clearly isn't the case now and while anything is possible, I'd say it is much more likely that the 7000gtx will be seen as nVidia's 9700pro. At least that is kinda how it is going at this point, though I doubt the r520 will be the dog the nv30 was.

 

[xTYBALTx]

I doubt the R520 will clobber the G70 in a similar fashion to the 9700's pwnage of GF4 & FX, but neither will the G70 own the R520. It'll be a rough stalemate( G70 > R520 overall), with ATI having some Phantom Edition cards to best nVidia.

 

[ElFenix]

not even the highest resolutions and rendering modes allow the 7800gtx to duplicate the whipping the 9700pro put on the previous generation. the 9700 pro damn near quadrupled the ti4600 in many high-res, 4xaa, 8x af kinds of tests. giving a short scroll-through of anadtech's review here, the 7800 doesn't ever even double the score of both the 6800U and the x850xtpe. the usual is somewhere between 33% and 50% better.

just look here. and then take a peek at the top and realize that the radeon is running 16x af while the gf is only running 4x!

that's the definition of getting owned.

 

[dug777]

i'll settle for just beating the G70 by a small margin actually

 

[nemesismk2]

I hope ATI can do it because the whole video card market has been very dull without them.

 

[linkgoron]

Originally posted by: elkinm
As I remember back when the R 8500 competed with the Geforce 3 quite nicely the Geforce 4 was released and was completely unanswered by ATI. The Geforce 4 was king until the release of the 9700 Pro series which not only clobbered the Geforce 4, it gave the FX a good beating.

Here you have the 7800 series out and uncontested by ATI. And personally I think ATI will need the R520 to mirror the 9700 Pro to save face.

Anybody think they can do it? I am very skeptical, but at the same time I really hope they pull it off.

Maybe you should ask, can ATI pull off another 5800?

 

[Sonikku]

I hope ATI does.

...So maybe the costs of a 7800 go down.
Granted, I don't think this is going to happen. ATI keeps delaying and delaying their next gen card. Could it be their "next gen card" has a worse speed to cost ratio then that of a 7800? Quite possibly.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
I doubt it, the 9700 went over as well as it did simply because nVidia was struggling with the FX series at the time. That clearly isn't the case now and while anything is possible, I'd say it is much more likely that the 7000gtx will be seen as nVidia's 9700pro. At least that is kinda how it is going at this point, though I doubt the r520 will be the dog the nv30 was.

yeah, the 9700 while a good card, with a good design wasnt all that good in the scheme of things. it just looked a whole lot better because the FX series was so bad

i remember seeing a benchmark somewhere....and the 9700 wasnt all that much faster than the Ti4600 at the start, untill you upped res/aa/af

but after NV30 i dont think either company will be producing another salivating dog of a GPU.
FX was partly poor because NV decided to carry on with the Xx2 architechture which didnt work. Ati are coming from and sticking with a x1 architecture, and they have great shader efficiency, and great AA/AF implementation so i cant see how they can go backwards.

(not sayin NV went backwards with NV30, they just went in the wrong direction, even though they improved on what they had.)

Ati wont produce another 9700 simply because Nvidia havent produced another FX

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I doubt it's gonna be a repeat of the 9x00's vs FXs. Maybe a role reversal, but ATi simply isn't behaving like a company with killer tech.

 

[biostud]

If they had the 32-pipe in full availability during the summer, most likely. Now I doubt it.

 

[sandorski]

I doubt it too. The 9700Pro card was a rarity and really the only card I can think of that stood out that much since the Voodoo was released.

 

[Keysplayr]

According to "legend" (lol) the 16pipe R520 will be somewhat "competitive" to the 7800. Which means it will fall short. Now if ATI can get a functioning 24 piper out the door, and clocked higher, then we may see something interesting. Lets not even talk about 32 pipe R520's because I just have the feeling that it's not going to happen. Maybe R580 will be that monster.

 

[mdchesne]

what I want to see is the r580( is this the top line card of the r5** series?) get like 100fps better than the 7800gtx... and stay above nvidea for the next year! THAT is my christmas wish. something that is so unbelievably powerful that it reigns supreme for a full year. no matter what nvidea can push out. THAT card, i would spend $600+ on

 

[KeepItRed]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
what I want to see is the r580( is this the top line card of the r5** series?) get like 100fps better than the 7800gtx... and stay above nvidia for the next year! THAT is my christmas wish. something that is so unbelievably powerful that it reigns supreme for a full year. no matter what nvidia can push out. THAT card, i would spend $600+ on

If the top of the line R520 has 16 pipes, I'll just wait for the R580...Unless the R520 can at least pull off 24 pipes. (Or is it possible 16 pipes can be designed to outperform 24?)

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
what I want to see is the r580( is this the top line card of the r5** series?) get like 100fps better than the 7800gtx... and stay above nvidea for the next year! THAT is my christmas wish. something that is so unbelievably powerful that it reigns supreme for a full year. no matter what nvidea can push out. THAT card, i would spend $600+ on

Unfortunately we'd have to test that card on the Japanese Earth Simulator to make it not bottlenecked.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
what I want to see is the r580( is this the top line card of the r5** series?) get like 100fps better than the 7800gtx... and stay above nvidea for the next year! THAT is my christmas wish. something that is so unbelievably powerful that it reigns supreme for a full year. no matter what nvidea can push out. THAT card, i would spend $600+ on

How come? Wouldn't you rather see neck and neck competition so that maybe you wouldn't have to pay $600+ on a high end vid card? You're not making sense.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
not even the highest resolutions and rendering modes allow the 7800gtx to duplicate the whipping the 9700pro put on the previous generation. the 9700 pro damn near quadrupled the ti4600 in many high-res, 4xaa, 8x af kinds of tests. giving a short scroll-through of anadtech's review here, the 7800 doesn't ever even double the score of both the 6800U and the x850xtpe. the usual is somewhere between 33% and 50% better.

just look here. and then take a peek at the top and realize that the radeon is running 16x af while the gf is only running 4x!

that's the definition of getting owned.

How about at 16X AA and 16X AF?

 

[ddogg]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
what I want to see is the r580( is this the top line card of the r5** series?) get like 100fps better than the 7800gtx... and stay above nvidea for the next year! THAT is my christmas wish. something that is so unbelievably powerful that it reigns supreme for a full year. no matter what nvidea can push out. THAT card, i would spend $600+ on

why dont you help ATI engineer such a card that would be so powerful Nvidia wouldnt be able to match it. lol keep fanboyism out of this thread.

 

[mdchesne]

ddogg: it's not fanboyism, i'm just saying what I want. jeeze... like a turret's syndrome racist in here aren't you? "yea well you can do FVCKING C0CK DAMN FANBOY! that if you plan to upgrade later"

KeepItRed: I think the high end 5** series has 32. I remember somewhere that the core is 32 reachable, but not stable for some reason. so only the high end model will have 32. otherwise it's 16 - 24 - 32 for low-mid-high

xbox360 has 48 though... i want that card! lol too bad only for xbox systems (r500)

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
ddogg: it's not fanboyism, i'm just saying what I want. jeeze... like a turret's syndrome racist in here aren't you? "yea well you can do FVCKING C0CK DAMN FANBOY! that if you plan to upgrade later"

KeepItRed: I think the high end 5** series has 32. I remember somewhere that the core is 32 reachable, but not stable for some reason. so only the high end model will have 32. otherwise it's 16 - 24 - 32 for low-mid-high

xbox360 has 48 though... i want that card! lol too bad only for xbox systems (r500)

jeez, calm down.

the high end r520 is 32 pipes, but guess what? there are only 10 of them. then they taped out to a 24pipe fabrication process and failed at that too, though there is no number of the number of good 24 pipe cores. the R520 is going to be 16pipe.

 

[Wreckage]

The chip for the 9700pro was made almost entirely by a company called ArtX. ATI bought that company and got it's first really competitive card out of it. However, they have been revising that core ever since. The R520 is to be their first attempt at making a high end chip in house, and so far they have run into problems. If you really must buy an ATI card your best bet is to wait for the R580 which is due out in the 1Q06 (not that far away). It sounds like ATI may go with a "limited release" of its high end R520 while the more widely available version will not compete well against a 7800. Of course until the actual product is out this is all conjecture.

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
According to "legend" (lol) the 16pipe R520 will be somewhat "competitive" to the 7800. Which means it will fall short. Now if ATI can get a functioning 24 piper out the door, and clocked higher, then we may see something interesting. Lets not even talk about 32 pipe R520's because I just have the feeling that it's not going to happen. Maybe R580 will be that monster.

Isn't R580 currently slated as the 24-pipe part?

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Originally posted by: xTYBALTx
I doubt the R520 will clobber the G70 in a similar fashion to the 9700's pwnage of GF4 & FX, but neither will the G70 own the R520. It'll be a rough stalemate( G70 > R520 overall), with ATI having some Phantom Edition cards to best nVidia.

What he said.

I must admit I was hoping for a 32-pipe, 600MHz 9.0c card which runs silently with a single-slot cooler, shiner my shoes and uses less wattage than the 7800gtx. And retails for 499 msrp.

Maybe in 6-12 months.