G70 Vs. R520 All things being equal

[Wreckage]

http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/efficiency/

Here is a more "apples to apples" test of the latest cards.

 

[Acanthus]

That article has no bearing on anything. Im not even going to get into it.

 

[Ronin]

Then you didn't really read. A lot of people have asked for a apples to apples comparison. This is as close as it gets. nVidia relies on pipes, ATi relies on memory bandwidth (mostly) and core speed. You can see where both cards excell when they're specs are as close to exact as possible.

I would have preferred a more extensive test, but I may do that myself.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
That article has no bearing on anything. Im not even going to get into it.

Exactly. While the 'efficiency' debate is interesting, it's nonetheless irrelevant. R520 doesn't run at 450 MHz and you'd be a fool to run your 7800GTX @ 16 pipelines.

People buy Athlon64's because they are faster, not because they are more efficient than Prescott P4's.

 

[Cooler]

Ok They under clocked that card . Why not just OC GTX to ATI speed maybee because they cant without extream cooling. Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Cooler
Ok They under clocked that card . Why not just OC GTX to ATI speed maybee because they cant without extream cooling. Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

Yes but the same argument is why not run the ATI card with 24 pipelines going? Because they can't - ATI's card has 33% fewer pipelines.

 

[Gamingphreek]

While an interesting test, it really does have no bearing. Different architectures favor different things, setting all things equal is not the way to do it. Who on earth would get a card and underclock it for that purpose. The comparisons should exist at stock settings, when you mess with those you dont get an accurate representation.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Cooler
Ok They under clocked that card . Why not just OC GTX to ATI speed maybee because they cant without extream cooling. Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

You cant overclock it that high. On the first batch of 7800GTX's Nvidia is only equipping them with IIRC 1.6ns memory as opposed to the X1800XT which uses 1.26ns. Raises the theoretical maximum.

That is hardly a strong point. It is merely just equipping faster memory to make up for the lack of 8 pipelines.

-Kevin

 

[Rage187]

Originally posted by: Cooler

Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

thats a weakness, genius.

It's about working smarter not harder, MHZ and GHZ mean crap. If you have to run at a higher clock rate to keep up that means your architecture sucks.

 

[biostud]

Clock:clock comparisions are useless.
performance/watt and performance/price is far better if you want something else than absolute performance.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: Rage187

Originally posted by: Cooler

Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

thats a weakness, genius.

It's about working smarter not harder, MHZ and GHZ mean crap. If you have to run at a higher clock rate to keep up that means your architecture sucks.

Only if it means higher thermal dissipation IMHO.

 

[Insomniak]

Kind of a pointless test. Well, no kind of, it IS a pointless test.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Rage187

Originally posted by: Cooler

Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

thats a weakness, genius.

It's about working smarter not harder, MHZ and GHZ mean crap. If you have to run at a higher clock rate to keep up that means your architecture sucks.

Certainly not a weakness. Just a different way of reaching the same thing. ATI chose to ramp clocks instead of adding pipes (or they were forced to because of yields).

Nvidia chose to add pipes instead of ramp clocks.

The only disadvantages to ramping clocks are yields, and power. The disadvantage, as you can see, to more pipes, is the fact that higher clockspeeds prove to be more beneficial in a lot of cases.

-Kevin

 

[Lonyo]

It does have some bearing.
7800 clock speeds aren't going up that much, which means vertex wise they are at their limit, but the R520 was underclocked, which means at stock speeds vertex performance should improve.
But other than that they're fairly much the same, and the two companies just took different approaches, clock speed or work per clock.

 

[Rage187]

Consider the graphics war a foot race.



Ati has to take quicker steps.

Nv has to take longer strides.




Ati is having to run faster to keep up w/ Nv's longer legs. and Nv is having to take bigger steps to keep up w/ Ati's quicker steps.


Now all things being equal, if Ati had longer legs and took the same amount of steps they would be faster.

and

if Nv took more steps with the same long strides they would be faster.


It all evens out in the end.

 

[Duvie]

It is an interesting review and worthy of reading, IMO....

However the cards are what they are.....As mentioned above 2 different paths to get to about same place in the main road....

I say we take a 2.8ghz P4 w/ HT and disable the HT and then run the test....
HOw about take the already anemic P-D 820 and downclock it to 2.4ghz and compare it against the 4800+ X2....

Basically what does this really tell us we dont already know??? one company went higher mhz, longer pipe, while sacrificing IPC and increasing latency...the other went lower clock shorter pipeline for higher IPC and less latency...IN the end they are not too far off...at least in the single core realm.....

This is the same....

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Rage187

Originally posted by: Cooler

Thus showing the strong point of r520 extream clock speeds.

thats a weakness, genius.

It's about working smarter not harder, MHZ and GHZ mean crap. If you have to run at a higher clock rate to keep up that means your architecture sucks.

No it doesn't, it means you have 8 fewer pipelines . It's called wasting less die space on pointless pipelines if you can make due with fewer at a higher clockspeed, so # of cores per wafer increase. Just a different way to do things. Neither approach is 'right' or 'wrong,' and Nvidia's approach certainly isn't 'smarter' if ATI can afford to use less die space for a competing card (provided they can yield more working cores per wafer, which is an entirely separate discussion altogether). This is just to show you that there's a flipside to that coin.

However, bearing this in mind, if reports of X1800XL temps are true, the card is smouldering hot. The GF6 and 7 series are inferno's themsleves, mind you, but reports have the X1800XL and XT's being hotter still...

 

[Pete]

It's an interesting test, though I would've liked to have seen more games benchmarked. Very interesting to see by how much R520 loses in Doom 3, clock for clock.

I have to wonder if the X1800 doesn't lose a little more in the comparison because it's being downclocked so much, whereas the 7800GTX is actually being overclocked slightly. For instance, the XT's memory originally runs at 1500MHz. Does it run with higher latency (like, say, CAS 2.5 vs. CAS2, or 2T vs. 1T) than the 7800GTX's 1200MHz memory? Does this latency remain at lower clocks? Also, I think they forgot that the G70 has its vertex shaders clocked higher than its pixel shaders when they ran the 3DM tests:

Vertex shader figures are also interesting, as both cards have 8 vertex shader units and are clocked at 450/1000 we can really see which architecture processes vertex shaders more efficiently. In this test the result goes to the R520 when simple vertex shaders are used. However when more complex shaders are used the G70 just outperforms R520.

I also wonder if they took the G70's clock plateaus into account (the G70 apparently only OCs in specific increments, not by single Hz as with older cards. So, for instance, even though they set the G70 to 450MHz, did it actually run at that speed?

Nice to see such a test is possible, though. Yeah, it's not really practical, but it's an interesting theoretical exercise.

 

[Gamingphreek]

However, bearing this in mind, if reports of X1800XL temps are true, the card is smouldering hot. The GF6 and 7 series are inferno's themsleves, mind you, but reports have the X1800XL and XT's being hotter still...

THe 6 series temps were pretty hot, but the 7 series are no hotter...in fact they are probably cooler. The X8 series while it had high power draw, had a suprisingly lower heat output (perhaps a more efficient cooling device). The X1800's are rumored to have just a little higher power draw, but are supposed to be hotter. Not sure how some of this is happening.

-Kevin

 

[LTC8K6]

So, what will ATI have if they get 20 or 24 "pixel processors" going considering they are doing pretty well with just 16?

 

[Inappropriate4AT]

This is the stupidest fvcking article I have ever read, Stuart Davidson is a god damned moron. That is all.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
So, what will ATI have if they get 20 or 24 "pixel processors" going considering they are doing pretty well with just 16?

They're not goign pretty well with 16. NV can just clock higher and then they would be going pretty well. This bench shows NV has the upper hand because fo higher efficiency. Many of us including me were fooled that the R520 would be more efficient with only 16 pipes, but in reality, speed change is more responsive to clock speed change, so R520 doesnt make up by having more efficient pipes, but rather just faster clocked stuff....

 

[CPlusPlusGeek]

Apparently the x1800 idles at upper 80's :Q

 

[LTC8K6]

They're not goign pretty well with 16

I think they are, and the question was theoretical anyway.

 

[golem]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
So, what will ATI have if they get 20 or 24 "pixel processors" going considering they are doing pretty well with just 16?

Probably the same thing as what Nvidia will have when they up their clocks.