Now that FX is out, ATI or Nvidia?

[IBdaMac]

I'm definitely biased towards ATI because I have had no problems with the 8500 I owned and now the 9700 pro. I know that the FX is now just a tiny bit better than the r9700 so what I want to know is are people still gonna pay the extra 100 bucks or so for the FX? Or will the Nvidia fans just save money for basically the same performance?

ATI or Nvidia: ATI for me

 

[ConclamoLudus]

I plan on riding my 9700 Pro for a while. Its beautiful.

 

[adlep]

If you dont have anything to do with the money, send me a check for few hudred bucks.....lol
Keep the Radeon 9700 that means!

 

[HostVisions]

nVidia should include a set of earplugs with their new card....

9700 is way nice, and much quieter...

 

[scottrico]

Smooth sailing with my 9700 pro for a while now.

ATI

Whats with that funny looking geforce fx?

 

[rudder]

I am keeping my 8500 until doom3 is released. BY then the 9700pro should be around $150.

 

[Tennoh]

The FX isn't available yet. Its only in preview form. Probably at least 1 more month. In any event, ATI is the winner IMO and has been since its R300 release.

 

[mflacy]

Originally posted by: rudder
I am keeping my 8500 until doom3 is released. BY then the 9700pro should be around $150.

Same here.

My 8500 pulls a tad over 9000 3Dmarks. Every game I play works perfectly in 1024 x 768 with full details. There is no reason to upgrade until Doom 3 comes out. Heck, I'm interested to see what the 8500 can do with Doom 3.

 

[Killrose]

People in the Nvidia camp have no where else to go for an up-grade, so for them, the FX is it. As far as someone looking for a faster product and don't have a bias, the Ati is the best solution. Either 9700 Pro now or 9900 in a month.

 

[BoomAM]

Ive gotta say, the geforce fx is a very big dissappointment IMO.

Its over priced
Its loud
Its ugly
It takes up lots of room
Its only about 5% faster than the 9700PRO(WO/ FSAA & AA)
The 9700PROS faster with FSAA & AA

ITS RUSHED.
One of the reviews, of the card that ive seen, has a quick note from an Akasa technition, and even he says that the cooling system on the card, with a few months extra work, could have been far more effiatiant, and take up less room.

 

[Excelsior]

ATI. Its obvious theyve been the leader ever since the 9700 release, and still are after the release of the FX. I will say that Nvidia has a good chance to improve the drivers substantially but by the time there is a noticeable improvement from them, the Catalyst drivers will be improved, and the next ATI card will surely be at least equal to if not (and most likely) better than the FX even with the updated drivers (of course its purely speculation on my part). And the fact that the FX is so late, obviously doesnt help.

I do still have respect for Nvidia since their AMD chipsets are spectacular and drivers are considered top notch ( I had a Geforce2 before this 9700 and I enjoyed it very much). And this isnt doomsday for Nvidia or anyone. This is a setback, and they will do the best the can with what they have. If they don't, theyd be in big trouble. But Nvidia isnt where it is today cause they make bad products. Maybe I am being too leniate with Nvidia, who knows. Again, I still love my 9700. This year will certainly be interesting eitherway, and everyone loves competition. Only the ignorant want a company to die off in a very competitive market.

Mflacy. After playing the Alpha of Doom3 (which of course doesn't provide a true representation of what the final performance will be) on my Geforce2, you will be fine. Ill tell you why. Now you wont be able to play it 1024x768 at full settings (at least I doubt it) but I am confident you could play it very low settings @ 1024 or medium to full @ 800x600 with your current cpu/ram/mobo combo (you could buy just buy a faster Athlon by then for a good price and some pc2700 RAM). Definitely keep your 8500 till Doom3 comes out since your other games run fine. I see one of the biggest limitations of your 8500 being the 64MB. I hear Doom3 will use around 80MB (quite a lot).

K, im done.

 

[SectorZero]

Let's weigh the pro's and con's of each shall we?

GF FX:
Pro's:
-1 It's damn fast
- 2 hmmm ...... ?

Con's:
- 1 Expensive
- 2 Loud
- 3 Not any faster than the 9700 pro
- 4 Hot like hell
- 5 With all the heat it puts out, not sure if it can guarentee to continue Nvidia's record of rock solid stability
-6 It comes overclocked out of the box by the manufacturer
- 7 Life expectancy? How long can the card survive running that fast and hot?

Rad 9700 Pro

Pro's:
- 1 It's damn fast
- 2 Less expensive than it's closest competitor
- 3 Mature, stable drivers ( care to debate that?)
- 4 Better image quality than it's competitors
- 5 Finally gives Nvidia something to compete with besides it's previous generation of cards ( possibly the biggest factor in favor of the 9700 pro)

Con's:
-1 Do you REALLY need that much 3D power?
-2 ?

In my opinion the Rad 9700 pro wins this round. It's almost a no brainer if you want to play at the high end. ATI has a real winner in the R300

Competition is a wonderfull thing. Can't wait to see what Nvidia has up it's sleves for the next round

 

[Kazuo]

I'm stuck with a Radeon 9000, which I've been pleased with, since I don't need hundreds of frames per sec I believe that ATi's cards have gotten so much better that they're definitely worth a shot, even if you're an ardent nVidia fan (as I was this time last year). ATi just deals more bang for one's buck.

 

[Budmantom]

I hope the prices start going down a little faster.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

nVidia is far from out of the picture. Now? ATI has the huge upper hand. Back when the 8500 came out to give some "serious" competition to the GeForce3, the 8500 stunk up the place, especially with the early drivers. The one thing I believe that allowed ATI to gain a foot hold was their ability to drop prices on the 8500 so swiftly without taking much losses in order to compete. If the 8500 had been performing then as it is today, I'm sure it would have kept its initial $399 MSRP. But because ATI didn't come out of the gates at such a full sprint, they lowered the MSRP to $299 and you could even get deals that would allow you to grab an 8500 for just over $200.

Now I don't see how nVidia could pull off such a stunt with the FX. Not only is the card expensive for us to buy, it is expensive for nVidia and their partners to produce. Low chip yeilds and costly cooling solutions, I don't see how nVidia could drop prices to really put the pressure on ATI, espeicially now that ATI 9xxx products have been out for such a good chunk of time, ATI could drop prices far more easily than nVidia could dare to. Right now it seems as though nVidia will have to rely on their die hard fan base to get promising sales out of the FX.

Clearly the best deals seem to lie exclusively within the Radeon line with a very small and ever shrinking Ti 4200 niche still out there.

 

[Excelsior]

Bunnyfubbles-
I agree that ATI is the choice still, but what some people dont understand is that Nvidia has only one option, and that is to make the FX work. They will do whatever it takes (or whatever they can) to do this, whether its drivers, etc. If they can't pull it off, they would be in a whole lot of trouble, thats why i think they will do a bit of magic with their drivers.

Now I don't see how nVidia could pull off such a stunt with the FX. Not only is the card expensive for us to buy, it is expensive for nVidia and their partners to produce. Low chip yeilds and costly cooling solutions, I don't see how nVidia could drop prices to really put the pressure on ATI, espeicially now that ATI 9xxx products have been out for such a good chunk of time, ATI could drop prices far more easily than nVidia could dare to. Right now it seems as though nVidia will have to rely on their die hard fan base to get promising sales out of the FX.

You are exactly right about that. Not only did they invest a lot of money, but ATI now, i think, can afford to drop the price on the cards if they need to. Im thinking maybe 349.99 MSRP, or something like that. Now, I just want to see how Nvidia handles the FX, and what ATIs next card will do. *waiting with his 9700 Pro*

 

[lifeguard1999]

I vote for the Sapphire 9700 Pro Ultimate. 100% quiet with that heat pipe.

 

[IBdaMac]

I just think that Nvidia really screwed up with this card. I think with such high clock speeds, power consumption and heat generated, and with such low benchmarks it would
almost idiotic to go with the FX. I've had the 9700 pro for about 2 or 3 months now and I couldn't be happier.

If I were any of you people thinking of getting a new card, I wouldn't put my trust in the 15% increase in performance due to it's drivers. The FX is just a poorly designed
card, plain and simple.

 

[Cesar]

Ati for me 9500 PRO

 

[LP29]

Kudos to ATI

 

[jiffylube1024]

Right now I'm happily running nVidia - GF4 Ti4200 (only person running nVidia here so far ), and yes it's faster than my previous Radeon 8500 (not too much but definately noticeable). The Radeon 9700 puts it to shame, of course.

Right now, ATI has a big upper hand since the FX isn't all it's cracked up to be, but I'm sure (and I hope) nVidia will be back. Over the past 5 years I've owned 2 nVidia cards, and about 3 ATI cards (loved my 8500) so I have plenty of experience with both.

I'm happy that ATI is king of the hill (I am Canadian after all!), but let's not kid ourselves, we need both companies to be strong over the next few years to see the beautiful pace nVidia and ATI have set continue. Without nVidia and the GeForce 1, ATI was happy to chug along with the Rage 3d/Pro/128/128 Pro. Finally, they got their act in gear hardware-wise with the Radeon DDR (the GeForce 2 GTS clone), and somewhere along the line in the Radeon 8500's lifetime they really got their act in gear driver wise. Why was this? nVidia's unified drivers and 6-month product cycle were killing them.

Now, the GeForce FX is a lot of things, but rushed I don't think is one of them. It's a completely new technology and needs lots of time to mature (see: Pentium 4 release). nVidia had a whole 6 months to clean up the design and drivers while it was constantly delayed. When do you want them to release the FX, in another 6 months when the R350 is out? They need to put this card out now, even if it isn't perfect yet (see: Radeon 8500 release). There are just a bunch of tradeoffs required to run a 500 MHz core GPU and 500MHz DDR-II apparently, and putting a hair dryer on the card is one of them.

The GF FX Ultra is going to be a tough sell (I posted in another thread thinking aloud, just who exactly is going to buy this card anyways?). But, the top end is never the volume money-maker anyways, and since ATI and nVidia both have fast cards, they can't do as much price-skimming as they have in the past (The GF FX's MSRP of $399 is far more justified with all that copper and junk on the card than the GF3's MSRP of $399 when it was first released). The real cheddar is in the low end and niche $100-200 market, where nVidia still has plenty of time to make the GF FX fit (non-ultra). Heck, if they just cut the GPU to 400 MHz or something and put in common 300 MHz 3.3ns or 2.8ns DDR on a 256-bit bus the GF FX could be awesome, who knows (I don't think we'll see 2.2 ns/256-bit on a non-ultra/pro card for awhile).

My $0.02

 

[titanmiller]

I'd still go with nVidia, mainly because I feel sorry for them and they need some cash to make the NV35 great.

 

[WickedChild]

ATI!!! but thats just cause 3DFX is out...
and i hate nVidia...
but besides that... the GFFX is a big failure... if you ask me... the R9700 is the lightweight fighter aginst the GFFX which is a heavywheight... and still the R9700 puts up a fight and beats the GFFX badly if you give it some OC Steroids... though it doesnt need them really to give the FX a bashing...
so imagine a heavywheight R9700 Pro (*COUGH* R350 *COUGH*)... now that would be a sight for what would be sore eyes if we didnt have the R9700 Pro... luckily we do... ITS THE PICK!!!

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: WickedChild
ATI!!! but thats just cause 3DFX is out...
and i hate nVidia...
but besides that... the GFFX is a big failure... if you ask me... the R9700 is the lightweight fighter aginst the GFFX which is a heavywheight... and still the R9700 puts up a fight and beats the GFFX badly if you give it some OC Steroids... though it doesnt need them really to give the FX a bashing...
so imagine a heavywheight R9700 Pro (*COUGH* R350 *COUGH*)... now that would be a sight for what would be sore eyes if we didnt have the R9700 Pro... luckily we do... ITS THE PICK!!!

*cough* fanboy *cough*.

 

[Orbius]

For me to have gotten excited about the GF FX it would have to be priced at $200. As it stands know its somewhat like the release of the Voodoo 5500, poorly designed, too expensive, too hot. I'm going to wait for 9700 pro's to hit $200 and then get one with a Zalman silent cooler.