Gamers Depot: nVidia PWNED...Twice!

[GTaudiophile]

ROFL!

GeForce FX5600 GO vs. Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO

GeForce FX5900 Ultra 256 vs. Radeon 9800 PRO 128

The R300 architecture was built from the ground up for performance in DirectX 9. DX9 instructions map naturally to our hardware, without any tweaking or driver optimizations. This is important, because the vast majority of games out there won't have the benefit of driver optimizations from anyone (unlike certain game benchmarks), because no-one has the engineering resources to spare. Whether you look at brute force (our 8 pipes versus the competitor's 4) or elegance (we can run many shader operations in parallel that our competitor can't) we have a fundamental advantage with our hardware. With more and more DirectX 9 games coming onto the market, the battle will be all about who can run shaders faster and more efficiently. And our shader performance is hugely better. ShaderMark and other tests show shader performance that is three to six times better on ATI's hardware than Nvidia's. This architectural advantage is evident in shipping games like Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. You will also see this in Half-Life 2 and every DX9 game coming out before the holiday season.

Patti Mikula
Public Relations Manager
Desktop Products

 

[Corporate Thug]

repost

 

[wicktron]

worked.

 

[Genx87]

don?t know how anyone could objectively look at the performance we?ve seen in these benchmarks and conclude that a 5900 Ultra is a smarter buying decision than a 9800 Pro ? even the 128MB 9800 Pro (as used in the tests here) trumps the lofty 256MB 5900 Ultra. If you?re still ?stuck in the past? and think that ATI is plagued with driver issues, than go ahead and keep your head stuck in the sand like an ostrich, buy a 5900 Ultra and then start crying when your pals are smoking your ass in games like Half Life 2 and Halo because they?re running ATI hardware.

What can NVIDIA do right now to turn things around? First off, lower the damn price of its high-end cards ? even if they were priced the same, a 9800 Pro would be a better choice for Pixel Shader 2.0 performance. Secondly, they?d better pull out every stop in their playbook of tricks to fine-tune their drivers.


Boy if that doesnt scream partial I dont know what does lol

Gen

 

[Rage187]

As I said earlier.


Thats alot of underlying bias.

 

[Johnbear007]

Meh... Nvidia dropped the ball this time. The only people that really hurts are the Fanboys, who buy a certain brand no matter what. Intelligent people who buy for price/performance always end up with the better product. These brand war arguments are only for fanboys.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Genx87
don?t know how anyone could objectively look at the performance we?ve seen in these benchmarks and conclude that a 5900 Ultra is a smarter buying decision than a 9800 Pro ? even the 128MB 9800 Pro (as used in the tests here) trumps the lofty 256MB 5900 Ultra. If you?re still ?stuck in the past? and think that ATI is plagued with driver issues, than go ahead and keep your head stuck in the sand like an ostrich, buy a 5900 Ultra and then start crying when your pals are smoking your ass in games like Half Life 2 and Halo because they?re running ATI hardware.

What can NVIDIA do right now to turn things around? First off, lower the damn price of its high-end cards ? even if they were priced the same, a 9800 Pro would be a better choice for Pixel Shader 2.0 performance. Secondly, they?d better pull out every stop in their playbook of tricks to fine-tune their drivers.


Boy if that doesnt scream partial I dont know what does lol

Gen

i actually agree with most of this, except for "buy a 5900 Ultra and then start crying when your pals are smoking your ass in games like Half Life 2 and Halo because they?re running ATI hardware."

 

[Rage187]

^ they let their bias slip out.

 

[Corporate Thug]

yes, they are bias BUT i also feel that they are right when they say the 9800 pro is a better buy. there is obviously very little difference between 9800 pro 128 and 256 and the 128 could be had for $300 on a few occasions.

the HL2 and Halo statements are uncalled for and not justified

also, there is a lot more testing to be done with ps2 as IMHO tomb raider is a poorly coded game in general. also, one game isnt enough to say that Nvidia sucks in ps2


just my 2 pennies

 

[nemesismk2]

Why the repost? I personally think that it's true that Gamers Depot is biased which makes their reviews worthless.

 

[Corporate Thug]

this was the review spam posted

 

[Mingon]

And in all honesty the dirver issues still exist, having gone from a nvdia to ati recently I have had no end of issue's. My next card will be a nv4X until then the my 9600pro will stay albeit slightly in the dog house.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Mingon
And in all honesty the dirver issues still exist, having gone from a nvdia to ati recently I have had no end of issue's. My next card will be a nv4X until then the my 9600pro will stay albeit slightly in the dog house.

I have as well but I am not having any driver issues. What games are you playing that are having problems? ETM, Freelancer, UT2003, and Dynomite ( ) all play really well on my R9600Pro with CAT3.7 installed.

And please note, I am what most fanATIcs would call an NVidiot. I am extremely pleased with my ATI experience so far.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I've been reading GD for 3 years, and when it came to Klipsch speakers, I thought they were quite bias, but I never got the same feeling with their videocard reviews.

Sorry for the repost, though. I searched for "Gamers Depot" and nothing came up.

 

[BFG10K]

It's becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day that ATi is definitely going to be the king of the next generation DirectX 9 games.

I'd almost go as far as to say that the NV3x core is DOA.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
It's becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day that ATi is definitely going to be the king of the next generation DirectX 9 games.

I'd almost go as far as to say that the NV3x core is DOA.

I always said that NV30 was DOA. I never thought the same would be said about NV35, etc.

 

[Corporate Thug]

btw, as far as drivers, I built ANOTHER nforce2/Ati system, installed cat 3.7 and not a SINGLE issue

 

[nemesismk2]

None of this really effects me too much because I usually skip a generation so I'm still using a geforce4 ti4200 and ti4600. If both of my video cards can't run Doom3 and HL2 at an acceptable level than I'll upgrade to a r9800 to tide me over until next year.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I'd almost go as far as to say that the NV3x core is DOA.

With it outselling the R3xx core by more then 2:1(including all the R3xx boards that were sold before the NV3X became available), what do you call ATi's part? This is akin to saying the old RagePro core was DOA while the Voodoo2 was crushing it, the RagePro outsold it by more then 10:1

There is a huge gap between a 'failure' in enthusiasts eyes and a marketplace failure. Recall the GeForce4MX, it made nV truckloads of cash. ATi needs to get on the ball with a low end R3xx part or nV is going to continue to slaughter them in DX9 level installed base.

 

[Peter D]

Gamers Depot: nVidia PWNED...Twice!

One of the reasons I'm going ATI. The results can't be overlooked, and some of these driver problems and "optimizations" are getting to be too much for me. I just want a powerful card thats powerful because the company is smart about how they build it, not because the company optimized their drivers for a useless benchmark over 2 years old..

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

I'd almost go as far as to say that the NV3x core is DOA.

With it outselling the R3xx core by more then 2:1(including all the R3xx boards that were sold before the NV3X became available), what do you call ATi's part? This is akin to saying the old RagePro core was DOA while the Voodoo2 was crushing it, the RagePro outsold it by more then 10:1

There is a huge gap between a 'failure' in enthusiasts eyes and a marketplace failure. Recall the GeForce4MX, it made nV truckloads of cash. ATi needs to get on the ball with a low end R3xx part or nV is going to continue to slaughter them in DX9 level installed base.

That fact is what alot of people here fail to grasp so I hope they are paying attention!

 

[Pete]

I call ATi's parts mid- and high-end true DX9 cards, while I call the 5200 (which accounts for most of nV's claimed DX9 sales dominance) a marketing sham. You keep duping customers, it'll bite you in the ass sooner or later. Remember, nVidia came to "power" in the 3D field because it was such a succeses in enthusiasts' eyes. They're not selling MX's and 5200's on their merits, but rather on the merits of the top-class cards that came before them, the GF2, 3, and 4Ti.

I agree ATi needs to work on a sub-$100 DX9 card. Rumors point to a cut-down RV350 appearing soon. 128MB 9600's are already hitting $100, albeit after rebate.

 

[Pete]

BTW, Ben, what do you make of this quote? Does it jibe with your info? I just read it (linked at B3D).

With regard to market share, NPD figures saywe have 97% of the $300 and up market. --ATi's Chris Evenden

 

[Mingon]

The way I see it the difference in cost betweeen ATI and nvdua cards is not bg enough in the consumers eyes. By that I mean the people who would spend 250 £ or 300+$ on a card would probably spend another 100 without questioning it.

 

[1ManArmY]

"Mr. Evenden: We're definitely taking market share. We have at the momentthe best technology in the marketplace in the computer graphicsindustry, and our business model is to develop leading technology forPCs, desktops, and cascade that down to other markets. Our top productat the moment, and the best product on the market, is the RADEON 9800PRO, and that we market to hardcore gamers. These are people who arewilling to spend US$400 on a graphics card for their computers so theycan play games at the highest possible resolutions with the bestpossible image quality and all the special effects switched on. A yearfrom now that technology would be in the mainstream or in the valuemarket, and we will have introduced something higher above that. Thattechnology will carry on cascading down, and will end up in theintegrated market on notebooks. So we get the best value out of ourresearch and development. With regard to market share, NPD figures saywe have 97% of the $300 and up market. But we have a very strong productstack and are gaining market share throughout the range as we cascadethat technology down. We're also the strongest company in mobile,especially mobile integrated, where I think we have 60% of the market.We are gaining market share and, as I said, the share of the siliconwithin the PC is going up as the emphasis increases on the graphicsexperience of your PC. Even in an office environment now people want tobe able to watch streaming video, for example."



hmmm