GeForce FX in trouble?

[jtroutma]

ExtremeTech Review

It is looking more promising for those of us that have invested in the Radeon 9700 Pro.

However, the drivers are still not up to par for the FX and I feel that Nvidia has more up their sleeves.

Still....kinda disapointing for Nvidia's latest and greatest not being able to beat ATI right out of the gate.

[Brians256]

As much as I like the hardware in ATI, I have to say that they never seem able to produce stable software drivers to take advantage of that lovely silicon. My money is on nVidia even though the short term advantage lies in ATI's court.

Now, having said that I am NOT an nVidia fanboy. I have an ATI Rage 128 in my system right now because it was cheap and it seems to have good enough performance to play the games I have been playing.

[gmat]

Duh. Never consider any bench *before* the actual card is out on the market, drivers are being developed until the last minute, and in the case of NVidia, even after the product release... And they *do* make a heck of a difference.
(and AA is not "rendering details" - the real test is 'high polygon count' scenes from games, with lots of *rendered* effects)

[HMB]

Originally posted by gmat
Duh. Never consider any bench *before* the actual card is out on the market, drivers are being developed until the last minute, and in the case of NVidia, even after the product release... And they *do* make a heck of a difference.
(and AA is not "rendering details" - the real test is 'high polygon count' scenes from games, with lots of *rendered* effects)

Nvidia has had A LOT of time fine tuning their drivers while waiting for 0.13micron and DDR2. Look at anandtechs review btw where they are quite thorough and compare IQ and THEN benchmark using same IQ settings, the GFFX is overrun. Also HardOCP managed to overclock their GFFX to 530/535 which is far from stellar. While on a radeon 9700 pro u can easily get it to lets say 380 on core and 340 on memory (450/380 with good cooling and Vmod). Radeon 9700 pro is out now and will cost less than GFFX. Nvidia will have a tough time up ahead.

[gmat]

Duh. [H] overclocking a test sample doesnt meant sh*t. WTF are they modding a test sample anyway ?
Test samples are that, beta-quality, pre-release, *unfinished* products. Unfinished drivers as well, and no you cannot fine-tune anything until you've got the real thing in your engineering hands. It has been seen before, final drivers usually boost up the performance for quite an amount.

"530/535 which is far from stellar" -> !!! Dude look at these figures, 535 DDR that means 1070 -> PC8560 memory !!! Try to touch that with anything else than a mainframe.
And a *better designed* chip at 500 MHz is likely to be more efficient than a *older* chip at 300 MHz.
Currently those test sample benchmarks are what they are, test samples.

BTW i've seen prices for the 9700pro, they're level with announced FX prices.

[pHaestus]

NVIDIA gfx are in the xbox, and MS is apparently about to buy Vivendi games. This means Halflife2, Counterstrike2, ALL of Blizzard's games, etc etc. So NVIDIA isn't exactly hurting. They will be the gfx card maker in the next gaming system that everyone buys. That gaming system just won't be a PC.

ATi cards have always benchmarked well, but had issues with not actually rendering all the textures. I know the original Radeon sucked in this regard, and have heard of some issues with the 8500 as well. Has this all been cleared up with the 9700?

I am soon to be in the market for a new video card. I was thinking I would wait til the FX and r350 came out and then hope for a ti4600 or 9700pro in the $100-150US range. With the FX showing little performance advantage over the 9700, though, I wonder how much the 9700 pro will drop in price?

[Banshee164]

From what I've read the 9700 should drop to $350 retail once the FX comes out. And I wouldn't be expecting a large jump in performance with the retail card, Nvidia has been working on the drivers for this for a while now. The test sample everyone's working with will be close to everyone's retail products since Nvidia making them for everyone right now. If they thought they could get tremendously better results later on they wouldn't have let these out for review yet, especially when they're trying to drum up interest/sales for it right now. Instead, all Nvidia did was make people that bought 9700's feel a lot better about not waiting for the FX Oh & I haven't had any problems with rendering on the 9700, glad I upgraded from my Ti4400

[HMB]

Originally posted by gmat
Duh. [H] overclocking a test sample doesnt meant sh*t. WTF are they modding a test sample anyway ?
Test samples are that, beta-quality, pre-release, *unfinished* products. Unfinished drivers as well, and no you cannot fine-tune anything until you've got the real thing in your engineering hands. It has been seen before, final drivers usually boost up the performance for quite an amount.

"530/535 which is far from stellar" -> !!! Dude look at these figures, 535 DDR that means 1070 -> PC8560 memory !!! Try to touch that with anything else than a mainframe.
And a *better designed* chip at 500 MHz is likely to be more efficient than a *older* chip at 300 MHz.
Currently those test sample benchmarks are what they are, test samples.

BTW i've seen prices for the 9700pro, they're level with announced FX prices.

U think the r300 was such a pain in the ass to overclock when it was in the preview state? And no overclockability hasnt improved very much with newer revisions in the vidcard segment, u might be confused with the cpu segment. The NV30 only has 128bit wide bus, if u overclock the radeon 9700pro with 50MHz then u increase the bandwitdh 2X than with a similar OC on the nv30. The radeon 9700pro has more bandwidth then the nv30 stock and is easier to overclock. Why does the nv30 have a better designed chip if it cant beat the radeon 9700 which is 175MHz slower clocked? Are u an nvidiot? I think so. Ohh and the drivers.. there wont be that much to gain there since nvidia has had a looooooooong time to finetune their drivers while waiting for 0.13micron and DDR2. If they only are test samples why did they give the cards to the reviewsites and make their supposed r300-killer look like ****? Think about it.....

[bigben2k]

I agree with gmat: it's WAY too early to take these results seriously.

Obviously, with the claimed bandwidth of the NV30, it should be doing better than showed.

As for time to develop drivers, Keep in mind that it takes a long time to develop the GPU, and it's a back-and-forth battle between GPU design, and driver requirements, especially in light of MS's latest specs. The GPU was probably announced when the hardware part was finalized, which means that the software (driver) now has to be completed.

If you need references, think back about how Intel actually works on the design of not one, but two generations of CPUs beyond what you're buying as "the latest".

Once NVidia has done its work, it's up to the different VC manufacturers to do the same: spec the GPU, design the circuit, write a driver. This is usually an effort that is concurrent with the design phase, unless you're a small outfit. If you are, then you're one of the last people to offer your product, based on the latest GPU.

[edited for irrelevant speculation]

[Quickmcj]

Anyway...

Have you heard th Mp3 files at Toms comparing the dB level between R300 and GF FX ? What a wonderful hairdryer he has bought him self. No actually...it sounds worse.

Linky

[bigben2k]

I'm not surprised. I don't even need the sound file to check: a blower so small will be very ineffective, and should make more noise than move air...

[Quickmcj]

Maybe the reason why more companies are going to produce the GF with a premounted waterblock

Really hope that ATI wont use same solution with the hairdryer.

[bigben2k]

Yeah... it actually sounded like a vacuum cleaner to me, which actually uses the same type of fan...

[jtroutma]

Well...when I originally started this thread, I was not out to "damage" the GFFX possibilities. As the review site stated, it was just kinda disapointing that Nvidia wasnt leaps and bounds ahead of what ATI was offering now.

Also, DRIVERS will make a huge difference when they are officially released. Nvidia is after all a SOFTWARE company making hardware to back up their products. I must say that with all my expereince with drivers and the likes, Nvidia does and excellent job at making their drivers fast and stable. It is really too soon to make speculations, I just thought that it would be interesting to see how far along the FX was comming.

I really hope that they do find some way to get rid of that hairdryer though. Even with modern day machines sounding like vacuum cleaners more and more, the FX will not help matters much (but does look cool )

BTW The FX uses 128bit DDR2 modules which can be clocked much higher than DDR1 units however the Radeon uses 256bit DDR1 units at a slower pace. The actual bandwith numbers comes out with the Radeon 9700Pro @ 19.2Gbps where the FX base is only 16.8Gbps. Nvidia is counting on Compression to boost the bandwith to about 48Gbps. So straight hardware to hardware, the Radeon 9700Pro does have an advantage over the FX already. It will be up to the drivers to determine if the FX will be able to reach its theoretical 48Gbps or not. Sometimes faster is not allways better (wow, did I acutally just say that )

[pHaestus]

I was really hoping for some hardware that would wow me though. As is, I have a GF3 Ti200 o/ced, and it is not gonna cut it for Doom3. But the fastest card out there (R9700pro) isn't either, and from the looks of things neither will the FX. So with money in hand, I am gonna just keep waiting. I was hoping that the whole "skip a generation" would work out a bit better. The boost from GF1 to GF3 seemed a little larger to me than this one

[Puzzdre]

Just to add a few words on account of ATI drivers...I had several issues with 8500, but then bumped onto this :
http://www.driverheaven.net/drivers/downloads.php

Those plutonium drivers didn't got me much higher 3DMarks but they work perfectly and the quality of the picture is great.

Just my .02

[gmat]

Originally posted by HMB
[...] Are u an nvidiot? I think so.

You couldnt be further from the truth. I have no church, i just choose the HW that i find the most suitable for the moment. I am no AMD zealot, i had Intel CPUs before because they were the best (C300a kicked some ass), i had a 3DFX then a TNT, i'm ready to move to ATI if they produce a driver that *does not* kill picture quality to get better benchmarks.. I don't care about NVidia and their strong-armed market tactics, nor about ATI and their crappy drivers.

Are you a [H] transfuge ? I think so.
Throw me the gauntlet i'll react. Beware, i love flamewars.

Originally posted by HMB
Ohh and the drivers.. there wont be that much to gain there since nvidia has had a looooooooong time to finetune their drivers while waiting for 0.13micron and DDR2. [...]

You don't seem to know what a driver is about, or a test sample, or even building a product such as a GFX card. Actually it's much more than just [H]ype and 3Dmarks on an OC'ed test sample. But it seems you know better...

BB2K & jroutma: i totally agree. I just hope the pricing policy is in tune with the competition. I won't shell out $500 for the 'ultra' version when the 9700 pro is at $400 (those are EU prices btw).
The smart thing would be to drop prices on Ti4600's -> say, $200 and it would be a killer.

[bigben2k]

I agree. For my purposes, $200 is reasonable. Maybe I'll end up with a Ti4200-like version of the GeForce FX. Realistically, the price for bleeding edge hardware is extraordinarily high.

[jtroutma]

Hmmmmmmmm........very interesting.

Did anyone else read about Toms benchmarks of the GeForceFX?
I just finished glancing over them and it was very curious that in the majority of tests that the FX was on top of the 9700Pro.

This is particularly interesting when I just finished reading Anandtechs review with the same benchmarks (different test bed though) and the Radeon9700 seemed to be mostly on top. Also ExtremeTech noticed the Radeon on top or close call most of the time as well.

So far, by my count, Anandtech and ExtremeTech say that the GFFX needs some work where Toms states that it is already ahead.


Curious........................................... ...............

[TerraMex]

Like a friend of mine calls it, Tom's Hardware has become "Journal of the Fantastic". After a few key elements left the team , the quality of the reviews/articles has gone way down. One of the funniest things i saw was that amdXP vs p4 hassle a while back. Im two weeks time the p4 went from a "disapointment" to "greatest thing since sliced bread". Geesh. The same is happening to Hardocp if you havent noticed. Its a darn shame.

Besides, dont put much faith in those types of benchmarks, i like to see thing up and running in front of me, and do my tests .

[msv]

Originally posted by pHaestus
NVIDIA gfx are in the xbox, and MS is apparently about to buy Vivendi games. This means Halflife2, Counterstrike2, ALL of Blizzard's games, etc etc. So NVIDIA isn't exactly hurting. They will be the gfx card maker in the next gaming system that everyone buys. That gaming system just won't be a PC.

Sounds a bit scary with MS buying themselves into the game market. Of course, it´s their money, they buy whatever they like.
Hopefully they will keep the programmers.

As far as I know early nVidia drives don´t show much performance, but that´s remedied after a couple of driver generations. Performance tests should be more interesting i a month or two.

regards
Mikael S.

[HMB]

Originally posted by gmat
You couldnt be further from the truth. I have no church, i just choose the HW that i find the most suitable for the moment. I am no AMD zealot, i had Intel CPUs before because they were the best (C300a kicked some ass), i had a 3DFX then a TNT, i'm ready to move to ATI if they produce a driver that *does not* kill picture quality to get better benchmarks.. I don't care about NVidia and their strong-armed market tactics, nor about ATI and their crappy drivers.

Are you a [H] transfuge ? I think so.
Throw me the gauntlet i'll react. Beware, i love flamewars.


You don't seem to know what a driver is about, or a test sample, or even building a product such as a GFX card. Actually it's much more than just [H]ype and 3Dmarks on an OC'ed test sample. But it seems you know better...

BB2K & jroutma: i totally agree. I just hope the pricing policy is in tune with the competition. I won't shell out $500 for the 'ultra' version when the 9700 pro is at $400 (those are EU prices btw).
The smart thing would be to drop prices on Ti4600's -> say, $200 and it would be a killer.

Just watch anandtechs and hardocp:s review and you'll see which card has the best image quality, and the drivers are actually very good, i havent had any problem with my card. And most reviewsites think the drivers are very good.

I dont want to turn this into a flamewar cuz it would spoil the thread.

I know enough to realize that nvidia has had many months to optimize their drivers while waiting for 0.13micron and DDR2, ofcourse they will be able to squeese more out of the card, no doubt about it but i also think ATI har more to get from r300. The GFFX will probably not overclock very well later on either since it isnt built using FC-BGA and already pushing out 75W. Have u seen the videos and heard the noiselevel the card has? It takes a lot of cooling just to keep the chip at standard clock. 3dmark doesnt mean anything IMHO, run reallife games to find out the performance, i strongly object towards using syntetic benchmarks.

Sure its a test sample but do u think they will make it much different? GF4:s test samples looks exactly like retail products. The only thing i think they can do to increase overclockabililty is if they would get better yields in the manufacturing, maybe finetune something in the core somewhere, guess we will have to see. I dont remember the earlier cards but i have a strong feeling that they didnt change the design very much.

Im sorry if i offended u in any way, i have a tendancy to go rather hard on with my comments sometimes, peace out!

[pHaestus]

HMB I think you are (mostly) right, but also recall that neither HardOCP or Anandtech made much todo about driver problems that plagued the R8500 pretty much until the 9700 came out. I can't help noticing that both of those sites have double sized ATI ads running as well.

Overall, the comments I have gotten from friends with 9700s has been positive, and included things like "the drivers are not an issue". One person I know said they had tons of missing textures and ass quality when they switched from ti4200 to 9700pro; maybe a format is needed or maybe there are some incompatibilities.

I won't buy either of these cards, but I did find a Canadian webstore that is guaranteeing that the 9500s they sell are on the 9700 pcb. I assume this means they are ready for the resistor mod. $180US is actually within my price range, so I may upgrade in February...

[bigben2k]

Originally posted by HMB
...since it isnt built using FC-BGA and already pushing out 75W.

Is this true? This would be comparable to a CPU's power dissipation!

Any links?

[Brians256]

Comparable to a CPU's power? It's higher than most CPU's! Most consumers are running CPU's with 40-60W of power consumption.

Now, considering that they are trying to dump 75W of heat, isn't it amazing that they were able to do it in that constrained form factor? There isn't much space in even two PCI slots compared to the space above and around a CPU. PC's use a huge heatsink, a larger fan, more space around the CPU, and they use a large exhaust channel in the shape of a PSU. Frankly, I'm amazed that nVidia made something work with only air cooling.

The GeForceFX GPU is begging for water and/or peltier cooling to make it run like it wants to. However, the memory speeds probably wouldn't overclock enough to keep a highly overclocked GPU well fed.

P.S. Much of this was discussed last night in the chat room. Join us, y'all!

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