**Official NV35 preview/review thread**

[Mem]

The fact that Kyle still would prefer a Radeon 9800 PRO to a GeForceFX 5900 Ultra in his personal says a lot about just how much better ATi's IQ is. If it were simply marginal, he would have gone with the slightly-faster card.

Actually that`s just his opinion so doesn`t mean a lot,I don`t know about you but I buy a video card on my opinion not anybody elses,if I was choosing between the two right now I would go with the NV35,and I would not buy a video card just based on IQ alone.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Well, since I am unable to put a 9800 PRO and FX5900 Ultra in a side-by-side comparision, I DO depend on what these reviewer's say. IQ is more important to me, so R350 wins over NV35 in my opinion.

Since you're an nVidiot, and I am a fanATIc, I think we can agree to disagree on this.

 

[Mem]

Since you're an nVidiot, and I am a fanATIc, I think we can agree to disagree on this.

How did you work that one out? I`ve never put ATi down and call it as I see it,as I said people buy video cards for different reasons,IQ,performance,price,drivers etc not just by one person`s review or opinion, remember there`s room for both ATi and Nvidia.I just give credit where`s credit`s due,just like I did with the ATI 9700 Pro(which IMHO is the best video card ATI has ever made).

Going back to IQ,anybody can see that Nvidia are trying to improve IQ just like ATi is trying to improve their drivers or are you going to say that`s all wrong .

 

[davidos]

To me the cards look "fairly" equal i.e., the benchies go back and forth in various games (although HardOcp did a great job of analyzing image quality and picked ATI)... The biggest differentiators are the size of the card (ATI wins) and the driver support (nvidia wins).

I want to see the comparison of the $299 Nvidia FX 5900 card to the Radeon 9700 Pro... There is no way (for me) that I could think about laying out $499 for a video card.

 

[Mem]

I want to see the comparison of the $299 Nvidia FX 5900 card to the Radeon 9700 Pro... There is no way (for me) that I could think about laying out $499 for a video card.

Agreed! I too want to see that since that`s more in the price range for most gamers,including myself.

 

[Megatomic]

davidos, I have seen in a couple of places where they say that the size of the official FX 5900 Ultra will be along the lines of the GF4 Ti 4600. I think that most of us will find that reasonable. I know I do.

 

[TROGDORdBURNINATOR]

I remeber the speach that kyle gave about ATI's IQ at higher resolutions when he was giving away door prizes. I'm glad that he hasn't backed down from that position and I'm kind of disapointed that anand hasn't focused on it as intently. All in all, I'm glad to see Nvidia be competivie in at least some areas again and the midrange single-slot card might be worth while for some people.

 

[Nemesis77]

Apart from Doom3, Ati and NV seems to be more or less even. And Doom3 is still too early to tell (since the Ati-drivers didn't work properly with it).

But could someone please tell me what the hell is this?!?!?!?! The patent-pending NV-Blur FSAA?

 

[butch84]

both new cards look pretty damn nice next to my poor old gf3 which i have had for a couple of years . . . still, i wish they didnt cost so much. eventually, a high end card is gonna cost a grand. This must stop, how can ati and nvidia even sell enuff of these cards to offset the higher production costs?

If they can make a profit, more power to them, but i only buy video cards at the magic $200 mark!

Cheers,
butch

 

[TROGDORdBURNINATOR]

Until now, ATi always came out as the winner in direct image quality comparisons that used single-frame screenshots. NVIDIA's apologetic explanation was that the GF FX's filtering was originally optimized for moving scenes, not for single frames. The new driver solves this "problem" and is supposed to offer good quality even in still frames. In Quality mode, the entire scene is filtered trilinear anisotropic, whereas Performance reverts to bilinear anisotropic. ATi's driver works in a similar manner.

Yet the Detonator FX driver's improvements go beyond image quality refinement. It also enhances performance of all GeForce FX cards even with image quality enhancements disabled.

That's nice.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: butch84
both new cards look pretty damn nice next to my poor old gf3

Imagine what they look like next to my kick ass GF2 GTS !

 

[BentValve]

If those Doom III benchesfrom HardOCP turn out to
be how it is for ATI and Doom III then it looks like I will have to upgrade my 9800 when that game comes out.

 

[Whitedog]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: butch84
both new cards look pretty damn nice next to my poor old gf3

Imagine what they look like next to my kick ass GF2 GTS !

Don't feel bad. That's what I'm still running too.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: BentValve
If those Doom III benchesfrom HardOCP turn out to
be how it is for ATI and Doom III then it looks like I will have to upgrade my 9800 when that game comes out.

Didn't they have severe problems getting D3 to work with Radeon? And in the end they had to use old drivers that didn't activate the other 128megs of the RAM. And to my knowledge, they didn't tell what rendering-path they used. I would take those benchmarks with huge grain of salt.

 

[BentValve]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77 I would take those benchmarks with huge grain of salt.

Oh yes I agree, dont get me wrong I was just making a comment , I wont take anything seriously until the game is on the shelves anyways.

 

[ginfest]

Bottom line,from all the reviews I've seen- both cards are too close to call.
For me the deal-breaker will be the drivers and it looks like ATI is still behind in that area. I mean even the Cat 3.4 which aren't even out yet have problems.
And b/4 the flames start, I buy what I feel comfortable with and haven't had driver probs from the TNT-GF4. Yet reading Rage3D there are mucho complaints with the Cats- and the answer always seems to be ".. format, Win is borked, DX is borked, the game code is borked, your PS is borked, even your monitor.." etc, etc.
It always seems that it's either the hardware or software at fault but never the Cat drivers?
Anyway,
"to each his own"

Mike G

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: BentValve
If those Doom III benchesfrom HardOCP turn out to
be how it is for ATI and Doom III then it looks like I will have to upgrade my 9800 when that game comes out.

Didn't they have severe problems getting D3 to work with Radeon? And in the end they had to use old drivers that didn't activate the other 128megs of the RAM. And to my knowledge, they didn't tell what rendering-path they used. I would take those benchmarks with huge grain of salt.

Not really, DoomIII was demod on 9700 pro beta cards at E3 last year.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: BentValve
If those Doom III benchesfrom HardOCP turn out to
be how it is for ATI and Doom III then it looks like I will have to upgrade my 9800 when that game comes out.

Didn't they have severe problems getting D3 to work with Radeon? And in the end they had to use old drivers that didn't activate the other 128megs of the RAM. And to my knowledge, they didn't tell what rendering-path they used. I would take those benchmarks with huge grain of salt.

Not really, DoomIII was demod on 9700 pro beta cards at E3 last year.

True but the drivers were different and the version of the game was different.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Ginfest
Bottom line,from all the reviews I've seen- both cards are too close to call.
For me the deal-breaker will be the drivers and it looks like ATI is still behind in that area. I mean even the Cat 3.4 which aren't even out yet have problems.

Well, in all honesty, the problems they encountered were on a beta-version of an unreleased game.

 

[TROGDORdBURNINATOR]

There's also severe lighting problems with Splinter Cell.

 

[OldSpooky]

Is anand's site down? I can't reach it at all

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: OldSpooky
Is anand's site down? I can't reach it at all

Everyones site is being hit HARD. HardOCP... Anandtech... THG... I cant reach any of them.

 

[Byte]

the real test? When Detenator FX (5) come out.

 

[Yozza]

If you look at XBitLabs review, they have an interesting comparison of Anisotropic Filtering IQ with 42.68 drivers and the 43.80 they use. See HERE.

They do mention the 44.03 drivers that most other review sites used, and say that

our express testing showed that 44.03 driver version doesn?t differ from the 43.80 version in either image quality or performance: the results were absolutely identical. This allowed us to complete the tests with any rush with the 43.80 driver.

It certainly looks like NVidia skimping a bit on the AF IQ in the recent driver sets compared to the earlier 42.xx on the GeForce FX series at least.

 

[krackato]

*sigh* I never tire of reviews of hardware that hasn't been released for games that I can't buy.