Is "the beast" going under?

[Husar]

Wow, being a bit of an NVidiot myself, I actually thought that the R600 would beat the NVidia 8000 series by a large margin because then I could get an even better next generation GeForce(of course that requires some belief that NVidia could beat that new "beast").:sweatdrop:
But, apparently, according to Daily Tech (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7052) the new "beast" from AMD is so tame, it can't even compete with an overclocked 8800GTX and the topmodel is so expensive due to the DDR4 memory that some manufacturers don't even plan a card based on it.

[Spino]

The shocking thing is just how small the performance gains are when comparing a 2900 XT to a 2900 XTX, the R600's performance simply isn't scaling well.

I've been an ATI fan since I first picked up a Radeon 64 VIVO years ago. I've stuck with ATI cards mainly because of their better 2D/3D image quality and multimedia features (the former finally being a non-issue with Nvidia's 88xx series). Unless the 2900 XT comes in a great price and/or ATI manages to squeeze out more performance via drivers it looks like I'm jumping on Nvidia's bandwagon this round. Nvidia really produced a gem in the 8800 GTS and GTX cards, now if only it could produce drivers on par with ATI's...

Anyway this is very bad news for gamers; less choices and artificially elevated prices due to lack of competition are never a good thing. We can only hope that ATI can revamp the R600 chip for a '2950' series that is strong enough to take back the crown from Nvidia. If not then I expect ATI will do whatever it takes to move the high end R6xx chips to a 45nm process ASAP. Performance wise ATI's low to mid range R600 based cards might be just fine but the high end stuff is what gets all the press and glory (and fat profit margins).

[Husar]

Nvidia really produced a gem in the 8800 GTS and GTX cards, now if only it could produce drivers on par with ATI's...
I agree with most of what you said, but while the NVidia drivers are definitely not perfect, I remember hearing a lot more complaints about the ATI drivers, I actually didn't get an ATI card for a while because I read so many comments about how bad their drivers were. Their driver support for Linux, as we discussed earlier, seems to be very lacking as well.
Image quality is nice, but I often ended up with midrange class were AA and AF were hardly a factor for me because they'd slow down (newer) games so much that I almost never used them anyway.:sweatdrop:
Which also makes me wonder why they include a 24x AA mode in the 2900 series if any modern game will probably lag like crazy with that activated, unless you turn all the details down.:dizzy2:

[Spino]

I agree with most of what you said, but while the NVidia drivers are definitely not perfect, I remember hearing a lot more complaints about the ATI drivers, I actually didn't get an ATI card for a while because I read so many comments about how bad their drivers were. Their driver support for Linux, as we discussed earlier, seems to be very lacking as well.
Image quality is nice, but I often ended up with midrange class were AA and AF were hardly a factor for me because they'd slow down (newer) games so much that I almost never used them anyway.:sweatdrop:
Which also makes me wonder why they include a 24x AA mode in the 2900 series if any modern game will probably lag like crazy with that activated, unless you turn all the details down.:dizzy2:

Well ATI's drivers used to be absolutely terrible until they introduced the Catalyst series! Anyway ATI's drivers aren't the embodiment of perfection but they seem to create less headaches for users than Nvidia's. Maybe it's more of a question of which are the lesser evil of the two? I own a 9800 Pro and am still using the antiquated Cat 4.12 drivers and have not had a single problem with them. The Cat 4.12s are among the most stable and compatible drivers I've ever used and they're arguably the best drivers one can get for the 9xxx series. I'd bother installing more recent drivers if there was a performance or compatibility based reason to do so.

24x AA mode is just for bragging rights. Both ATI and Nvidia tout silly features like this just to dress up their products. Overkill features like that are only good for drawing in prospective buyers who can barely figure out how to copy and paste text and impressing tech geeks who like to bicker over such nonsense in their favorite forums... :wink:

[Mikeus Caesar]

Ooh, interesting. If people suddenly find an ATI card to not be all it should, then people will start looking at Nvidia. ATI won't be too happy about that, and might actually make an effort to make a topnotch graphics card.

More competition between the two companies means better results for us, the consumer. This can only be good.

[Spino]

The R600 benchmarks posted on Dailytech have stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy on relevant tech forums (the hardcore ones to boot). Supposedly DT's 2900XT and 2900XTX benchmark's are way off the mark and most of the doom and gloom predictions regarding the R600 series are without merit.

This link seems to cover all the rumors in one shot and provide a plethora of links...

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=39173&page=146

You want some truth?

People who have the cards, affiliated, and replying on those Daily Tech reports:


Kombatant: www.kombatant.com AMD/ATI employee, (ex) Beyond3D/Rage3D mod:

On a serious note, I still see some stuff out there that have no merit. Patience.

They christened the OEM version we've known and loved for quite a few months as an "XTX". That should tell you a lot about their credibility actually.

Ok, so before this goes totally out of hand, let me say this, and this will be my final say on the matter, until the NDA is lifted: AMD made certain decisions concerning this card. I took a hard look out there, to see what's being leaked, and it seems there are still some stuff that are totally made up - tbh, it smells like a FUD campaign to me, if I take into consideration certain emails that are flying around lately. Certainly there are some stuff out there that are true, and you will know which is which when the NDA lifts soonish. The journalists that were in Tunis certainly know, and are probably laughing at some of those at this minute.

So, to recap: What I've said in the past stands about the card (Sound_Card been on a mission to put all of my quotes in his sig so that we don't miss anything ). Unfortunately I can't reveal more at this point due to the NDA. And for those who are wondering, no, I am not a moderator/staff on Rage3D anymore, I stepped down two months ago, because it wouldn't be ethical imo with the new job I now have to continue do work here.

As I said, some info out there are accurate, some are not. Whatever rumours are out there certainly won't force AMD to reveal stuff sooner, that simply doesn't work, whether you're called Intel, AMD, nVIDIA or whatever.


Bum_JCRules @ THG (under NDA with cards):

Total Crap.. well almost:
While I am required to follow the NDA, the stuff up on Daily Tech today is almost worthless. Yes Anandtech was present in Tunisia (signing Non-disclosure agreements like the Inquirer), why they are posting this stuff is beyond me because their numbers are off. They must be only using the XP drivers and OS because the numbers in CF vs the GTX are very much different. So until I can officially comment on the architecture and the performance.. hold all of this as useless until the rest of the world writes about it.

I really would love to comment on this stuff...

I understand that DT and Anand are seperate but that is so childish. Derek was there and his cards got to his place of business before he returned home from Tunisia. That long board they have ... Not what Derek should have gotten in his delivery. That is all I will say before I go too far.


Kink (under NDA with cards):

Dailytechs benchmarks are inaccurate. Atleast in terms of 3dmark 06 (commenting on HD 2900 XT)


Metro.cl (under NDA with cards): www.chilehardware.com

laughable (whistling emoticon (wasn't me))


BenchZowner (under NDA and has card):

1) These benchies from DailyTech are quite off the reality, that's all I can say.

2)The 2900XTX & the 8800GTX are performing on par in Crysis at the moment ( direct info from a developer of the game )

3) Is it a deja-vu ? Remember the Mr Sanders case ? The...non invited to the press event at Ibiza editor of Hardware Analysis who wanted to "punish" ATi by publishing his...numbers of desire for the R580 ? He he, Deja-Vu

http://i12.tinypic.com/2py29hz.png

"Do I really have to express myself here ?
If these guys are so called my colleagues ( as of being reviewers like me ) then I should feel ashamed, really Evil or Very Mad

What are we looking at here ?

a) They used a better test system today, better drivers ( supposed to be ) and they managed to get the 2900XT to perform worse than their previews bench session with a worse test system & worse drivers ?
How come ?
On April 24 they got 84FPS on F.E.A.R. with the 2900XT with a QX6700 and pre-release drivers, and they got 79FPS today with a QX6800 and retail drivers ? Oh really ? Very Happy

b) Where's the result for the 2900XT in Company Of Heroes today ? Why N/A ?

c) On Half-Life 2:E1 today they got the 2900XT to score 1FPS more than the 2900XTX.
What could've caused this ? A typo ? Quite angelic.
Something else ? Using a CPU limited resolution which would cause both cards to behave like they're the same.And then there's the GTX surpassing the R600s by ~40 FPS. Quite the real leap over the Radeon X1950XTX at that game. Evil ? heh

d) Now, the best part...they scored ~48FPS in Oblivion on the 24th, and now they present us a 54FPS gain by a move from the QX6700 to the QX6800 and the small gain from running the RAM at 1T Command Rate ?

e) A reviewer in order to conduct comparable and a valuable & trustworthy review must use the same testbed, quite they opposite is what they did ( if they really went through a performance testing process )

f) And for what reason would somebody present unclear results in combination with unclear drivers & filters ( AF & AA ) settings ?
***** right boy Very Happy

My two cents ( oh wait, I have another one ) [ I'll save it for later ]

P.S. The stock core clock for the 2900XTX as of current is 800MHz and not 745MHz as they state.

P.S.2. That's pretty much all I can say at the moment.

P.S.3. Now I have to finish a memory roundup and then pack my stuff for a trip.


What did Crysis lead Developer (has the cards) say about the two (G80GTX and R600XT)?

And remember, Crysis is a DX9 game with an additional DirectX 10 codepath which will only help in getting better performance (gains) for the ones with DX10 cards.

28th April:
I'm gonna spit out a very last detail ( before they get me behind the bars for disclosing information )

The 2900XTX is 4fps in front of the 8800GTX ( in average ) in Crysis ( information directly from a developer of the game )

The 2900XTX won't be the G80 killer that everybody was expecting, but it'll be in front in most cases, with little to good margins depending on the game and settings.

nVIDIA did a great job with the G80 this time, and the performance leap over the previous generation is huge and only compared to the R300 launch in the past


That's STOCK clocks guys, it can OC high


BTW, from Fudzilla by "mouth": GeForce 8800 Ultra get 14000 scores in 3DMARK06 with no detail of test platform and no driver detail:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index....=view&id=678&Itemid=1

From DailyTech: Radeon HD 2900XT get 14005 scores in 3DMARK06 with full detail of test platform and driver detail:
http://www.dailytech.com/Overc...+R600/article7044.htm

AND NONE of them are with with release drivers, look at the GPU clocks very carefully aswell, look for the silicon version, look at the benchmarks used aswell and the detail in each setting (compare), look at the motherboard used too and that 8800GTX is no where to be found BUT by BFG at $950 as a watercooled card. PLUS those are EARLY pre-release sample cards, ES samples if you understand what that means and do you remember the abysmal performance of the faulty 8800GTX early ES samples with the wrong resistor values on release? What about the driver optimization that took place over months on end to get decent performance? Joe is on the JEDEC board BTW, and an AMD/ATi employee who helped produce GDDR4 for X1950XTX and made it a killer product so now you are telling me after 2 years spent on it like nVidia had spent 4 years on the G80, and millions of dollars, it simply doesn't beat the X1950 in benchmarks and no higher clock on the GDDR4? BTW, those benchmarks are not remotely correct either. We have 100's of GTX split around in our corporation and my own work system has 2 in SLi at 650/2100 with watercooling. Seriously, some of them benchmarks for let's say Oblivion, are 100% increased by h*ll knows what!

Hint #200: Memory clocks can go much higher and bandwidth (i.e. performance too) is much greater in upcoming titles and higher res/detail.

BTW the owner of Fudzilla, Fuad, is the ex-Graphics Editor of The Inquirer if you didn't already know. Take everything with a brick of salt.

I'll leave you with a little pre-release bang

Here is another site which supposedly offers real 2900XT benchmarks. Nothing spectacular and nothing alarming. The one area where the 2900XT seems to shine is in Crossfire mode, for the most part it positively trounces the 8800 GTS (640meg version) in SLI mode.

http://r800.blogspot.com/2007/04/radeon-hd-2900xt_28.html

Rumors or not the one area where ATI has truly stumbled is its failure to hard launch all the R600 based cards in the beginning of this quarter.

Anyway the best thing to do is to take all the rumormongering with a grain of salt and wait until the NDA expires on the 14th.

P.S. - I suppose it's even more important that we wait and see how ATI and Nvidia's DX10 cards perform using actual DX10 applications.

[Husar]

That's what I read now, the new ATI cards may perform better in DX10, seems like DX10 is a very different thing in comparison to DX9.

[Spino]

Looks like Nvidia is either playing it safe or is a tad worried about ATI's new 2900XT & XTX cards because they just released the 8800 Ultra even though the 8800 GTX has no competition to speak of.

Strangely enough the 8800 Ultra barely outpaces the 8800 GTX and yet its MSRP is just under $900!!! Many reviews are calling it a curious waste of money.

[Husar]

I read 699EUR, which sounds a bit weird, considering that EUR and $ prices usually have roughly the same numbers.
But I'm waiting for NVidias next generation anyway and store prices are usually lower than MSRP anyway.

[edyzmedieval]

The 8800GTX I got on offer here is 699USD, not EUR. :inquisitive: