nv Geforce FX 5950 Ultra vs ATi 9800XT

[Stuka87]

Yeah ATI dominated back then. I owned a 9800 Pro and a 5700 Ultra. Admittedly the 5700 Ultra was not bad, it was the fastest of the FX cards (yes it beat out the 5950 Ultra). But it really didn't hold a candle to my 9800 which I still consider to be one of the best cards I have ever owned.

 

[Zorander]

As much as I loved the 9800 Pro I owned back then, it did not cope with Oblivion @1280x960 (stuttering even when fighting just two skeletons in a dungeon). This led me to upgrade to a x1950 Pro. Much much better.

And I still fail to understand the point of this thread.

 

[lamedude]

R300 was "cheating" as we would call it nowadays in AF while the FX wasn't though. But I would take angle dependent AF at 60FPS over angle independent AF at 40 FPS.

 

[PingviN]

Don't you miss the vacuum cleaner sound of the FX5800 Ultra? Even the dogs love it.

Only had FX5500, so I wouldn't know (yes, horrible, horrible waste of money), but if it was worse than the X1900XT, someone at Nvidia should be lined up against the wall and shot.

Would someone who truly was into IQ back in the days be so kind as to explain if Anarchists OP has any truth in it whatsoever? I just recall ATi's superior AA and of course the 3D performance. Did Nvidia actually possess a noticeable image quality advantage?

 

[Skurge]

Only had FX5500, so I wouldn't know (yes, horrible, horrible waste of money), but if it was worse than the X1900XT, someone at Nvidia should be lined up against the wall and shot.

Would someone who truly was into IQ back in the days be so kind as to explain if Anarchists OP has any truth in it whatsoever? I just recall ATi's superior AA and of course the 3D performance. Did Nvidia actually possess a noticeable image quality advantage?

I had a FX5500 as well, dumped it the second I saw HL2 looking much better on my friends ATI card. Can't remember if it was a 9500 or 9700. Got my self a 9600XT and kept it till crysis came out.

It helped that I had a 1280x1024 CRT monitor.

 

[SirPauly]

Yeah ATI dominated back then. I owned a 9800 Pro and a 5700 Ultra. Admittedly the 5700 Ultra was not bad, it was the fastest of the FX cards (yes it beat out the 5950 Ultra). But it really didn't hold a candle to my 9800 which I still consider to be one of the best cards I have ever owned.

Yeah, I had both as well and the nVidia product wasn't bad but the ATI product was just "that good" and believe the R3XX generation was ATI's finest moment. On the other side of the coin, what happened to nVidia with the FX wasn't their finest hour or moment -- not only with hardware but questionable optimizations and a long and winding road that helped pave the way about their future with optimizations, which is very welcomed today, imho!

Without the FX, nVidia isn't the company they are today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCN3LbNZ0xY

 

[SirPauly]

R300 was "cheating" as we would call it nowadays in AF while the FX wasn't though. But I would take angle dependent AF at 60FPS over angle independent AF at 40 FPS.

I purchased my 5900 for a side grade system to have angle invariant filtering, hybrid-mixed modes and their image sharpening feature. However, the R3XX generation was impressive and owned a 9700 Pro, 9800 Pro and an 9800 XT -- great memories here --- and these are my favorite demos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EacjNPi8nZk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAc2CTQcLw&feature=related

 

[qliveur]

Shooting for the long troll on this one huh?

It's what he's famous for.

 

[videogames101]

I LOVED my 9800 Pro, that card was a friggen monster!

 

[RussianSensation]

As much as I loved the 9800 Pro I owned back then, it did not cope with Oblivion @1280x960 (stuttering even when fighting just two skeletons in a dungeon). This led me to upgrade to a x1950 Pro. Much much better.

And I still fail to understand the point of this thread.

You realize that's 2.5 generations faster?

9800Pro/XT --> X800XT / PE (2x faster) --> X1800XT (2x faster) --> X1950 Pro ^_^

X1950Pro destroyed 6800 Ultra (6800 Ultra competed with X800XT PE, which itself was 2x faster than 9800Pro).

Source

Comparing 9800Pro/XT to X1950Pro is like comparing the performance of an 8800 GTS 640mb to GTX570.

 

[exar333]

You realize that's 2.5 generations faster?

9800Pro/XT --> X800XT / PE (2x faster) --> X1800XT (2x faster) --> X1950 Pro ^_^

D@mn you for bringing-up the X800XT! I overpaid so much for that card because I bought it during the shortage, and needed a PCI-e version for my new build. Most expensive GPU I ever bought.....wow was it amazing at HL though!

 

[Zorander]

You realize that's 2.5 generations faster?

9800Pro/XT --> X800XT / PE (2x faster) --> X1800XT (2x faster) --> X1950 Pro ^_^

I knew it was at least two generations younger, though not exactly on how much faster. I upgraded only because the 9800 Pro no longer cut it for the then current games and the x1950 Pro fit my budget.

I heard quite a bit of talk on AA back in those days but as long as my games did not run like slideshows and look reasonably good, I was happy. Are these cards actually still relevant or holding certain IQ advantage (regardless of performance) against today's GPUs?

 

[RussianSensation]

I knew it was at least two generations younger, though not exactly on how much faster. I upgraded only because the 9800 Pro no longer cut it for the then current games and the x1950 Pro fit my budget.

I heard quite a bit of talk on AA back in those days but as long as my games did not run like slideshows and look reasonably good, I was happy. Are these cards actually still relevant or holding certain IQ advantage (regardless of performance) against today's GPUs?

No, modern GPUs have superior AA quality and angle independent AF. Plus, we pretty much get "free" 16xAF, something not possible at all 3-4 years ago.

 

[Zorander]

No, modern GPUs have superior AA quality and angle independent AF. Plus, we pretty much get "free" 16xAF, something not possible at all 3-4 years ago.

Could you clarify what you meant by 'free'? Are you impying we can turn on 16xAF with hardly a performance hit?

Thanks.

 

[Anarchist420]

Only had FX5500, so I wouldn't know (yes, horrible, horrible waste of money), but if it was worse than the X1900XT, someone at Nvidia should be lined up against the wall and shot.

Would someone who truly was into IQ back in the days be so kind as to explain if Anarchists OP has any truth in it whatsoever? I just recall ATi's superior AA and of course the 3D performance. Did Nvidia actually possess a noticeable image quality advantage?

I would know I was into IQ "back in the days" and I had both.

To answer your question, yes they did, it was just that enabling the better IQ had a serious performance hit.

The 6800 series AF was inferior to the FX despite the fact that the 6800s was the FX's successor. Of course, as SirPauly pointed out, nvidia forced trilinear optimization as well as some other non-filtering related optimizations in the 50 series drivers which really degraded IQ.

The FX series also was capable of higher Pixel shader precision than R300, it's just that it was too slow for most people.

One thing I'll admit the R300 could do on the IQ side that the FX couldn't was MSAA in Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness (IIRC) so it was broken on both platforms.

 

[Anarchist420]

Could you clarify what you meant by 'free'? Are you impying we can turn on 16xAF with hardly a performance hit?

Thanks.

AF is now mostly free because current GPUs have special hardware for it and enough texture cache. Games also aren't as texel fillrate dependent as they used to be.

 

[nemesismk2]

Wasn't the 9700 Pro double the performance of any of its competition for over a year with AA enabled?

I had a ocuk 9700 pro but a couple of years after they were first released. great video card

 

[Cookie Monster]

Those days were pretty exciting times and alot more interesting tbh. From the top of my head, only the FX5700 ultra and FX5900 were decent cards given the price. I also remember how NV40 blew everyones expectations and speculations.

I remember as a young PC gamer that it was either ATi for HL2 or nV for Doom3. So many "vendor specific" games in those days.. But then Id rather have that than the plague called "consolitis" taking over in recent times.

Pure nostalgia..

 

[BFG10K]

...and it ran a lot cooler (at least the Gainward 5900 Ultra that I had in a custom system by the now defunct Monarch did; I don't know how cool the 5950 Ultra ran).

I'm pretty sure the TDP of the nVidia card was far higher than the ATi part. The cooler on the 9700 Pro was a tiny fan while the 5800 Ultra needed a massive dual-slot dustbuster.

Am I the only one who thinks that R300 sucked?

Probably.

It also didn't have the wbuffer or the 2x RGSS AA mode that the Geforce FX had. AF was useless with it because the shimmering was horrible with AF on.

The GeForce FX didn't have RGSS.

 

[RussianSensation]

Could you clarify what you meant by 'free'? Are you impying we can turn on 16xAF with hardly a performance hit?

Thanks.

Ya, the performance hit with 16x AF over no AF is usually very small like 1-3%.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I had a 5900 that flashed to 5950 ultra. It was really really good at texture intensive games, I originally got it for COD and it beat that game to death. Then HL2 came out, and my video card was put to shame.

 

[notposting]

LOL at the belated trolling thread.

Anyways, while I did get the 9700 Pro a bit late, the real winner for me was the X800XT PE that I got "refurbed" direct from ATI. It appeared to be brand new, was nice and cheap, and was a workhorse for quite a few years for me, I put an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 4 Rev. 2 on it.

Got it based on this thread in Hot Deals: HOT DEAL - ATI RADEON X800 PLATINUM @229.00

Then a few years ago, I got in on the first class action lawsuit, and received all my money back, as explained in this thread.

A year after that, I received in the mail, another video card, a Radeon 4650 from yet another class action lawsuit related to that card, as detailed in this thread.

So I bought the one, got all the money back for it, then got another card as well! The original Hot Deal thread was a monster one heh heh.

 

[Anarchist420]

I'm pretty sure the TDP of the nVidia card was far higher than the ATi part. The cooler on the 9700 Pro was a tiny fan while the 5800 Ultra needed a massive dual-slot dustbuster.


Probably.


The GeForce FX didn't have RGSS.

You're right, it had RGMS+OGSS. The Gainward 5900 Ultra I had ran pretty cool and it was only single slot. It ran a lot cooler than the 9800XT I'm sure.

 

[Muskelmads]

Also, a lot of the R3XX graphics cards were moddable. You could buy a 9500 non-pro version and mod it to: 9500pro, 9700 and if you were lucky and had samsung (i believe) memory modules, you could clock them to a 9700pro and way beyond.

The 9800Se AIW versions were also moddable to 9800pro AIW... I had one of those

 

[formulav8]

Anytime a game was DX9 based nVidia was out right horrible. They're dx9 implementation was majorly broken. It definitely should not have been listed as a feature.