I just read the comments and I think they are overly optimistic. However, with that said, often companies try to elevate their new products by shouting 'this' and 'that' about it, promoting how it is the next best thing. I could understand if it's 7x faster in Half-Life 2 because say if you play 5950 Ultra at 1600x1200 @4AA/8AF it might run at 8 frames per second if the Pure Direct x9.0 nvidia non-optimized code is implemented. Then the new card will run it at 50+ frames; thats realistic considering just how poorly the new FX cards perform when are subject to running the genuine HL2 code. These figures could be representative of the highest quality setting performance since at 1600x1200 with AA and AF enabled Nvidia might run doom 3 with Highest Detail at 20 frames per second so 4 times as fast is 80. It makes sense somewhat because Radeon 9700Pro can be up to 5 times faster than my radeon 8500 if you enable the highest settings considering my card goes to 5 frames per second in direct x 9.0 games. What I think we shouldnt' assume is that its 4 or 7 or X times faster in regular 1024x768 normal quality settings because then we are looking at 200-300 frames which is unrealistic in that sense. Also, having 8 times faster shaders sounds far too unbelievable, but I am not gonna deny that it's probably possible to recreate a benchmarking environment to prove that if nvidia wanted to. In other words, theoretical increases in shader performance do not always translate to real world performance advantage since sometimes they dont perform 8x faster in the real game.
Still I think the card should give a healthy boost of 30-40% in 1024x768 and far greater advantage at high quality settings that is what everyone cares for the most. I wouldnt' be suprised to see 25000-28000 3dmark2001 scores non-overclocked with a p4 3.4 or Athlon 64. But I want to see real benchmarks first, as hearing about prescott's optimized hyperthreading, 1mb cache, etc. 1 year ago seemed like a sure northwood killer; but when it came out this didnt happen (yes down the line it will). Also, I dont think ATI will want to give up more or any ground at all, and I highly doubt if nvidia's card is faster, that it will be an easy win for either company. Even now, both companies have cards that run better at certain games and settings and it's hard to tell who the winner is at least for direct x 8 games. Looking at the past history shows that even after 1 company beats the other, the loser always releases a refresh to beat the other and so on, so I expect a close battle nonetheless. Now who wants to buy me the NV40 or R420 for my b-day?:evil:
