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Guest PaulL01

GFFX-FS2k2-Me own take....

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Guest PaulL01

Fresh this morning are a smathering of GFFX reviews including benchmarks and comparisons to its competitor the ATI 9700 pro.NVnews.com is a good jumping off point to all of the available reviews as they become uh...available. :-rollThough these are reviews based on the reference card not the final retail boxed version and as noted the drivers have yet to mature, there is plenty to see as to what this card will offer.I present my FS2k2 tainted view...of the reviews of the GFFX card and conclude a few things:1. Along with the ATI9700 pro we can now enjoy FS2k2 at very tolerant FPS levels while using 4x AA combined with 4x Aniso at fairly high res while running the more CPU demanding add-on packages, considering this with the use of the latest CPU's P4-3.06/XP2800/Barton&64 and MB chipsets blah blah, ba blah.2.Quality-At this point ATI's advantage is better AA quality(smoother edges on 3d objects/Aircraft and Buildings) and GFFX has better AF Quality (sharper Textures when viewed at high agles such as when looking at terrain)-sound familiar? 3.performance-this is a tuffy as 1200x1600x32 2xAA 2xAF (a very good combo for FS visuals I might add) ;)the GF seems to have it over the ATI if only slightly, step up to 4xAA/AF and beyond and the crown goes to ATI in most cases.Bearing in mind that driver performance will improve, I think we can see that these two cards will remain close no matter what develops as ATI will introduce a yet faster version of it's pro card soon etc.All that being said here are some other things to think of as for these two cards running FS2k2:Both of these cards will seem to perform so close to each other in FS2k2 (FPS will still be quite low) that I think Price, driver support and Noise are what personal choices should be made on between these two cards and this will make it very hard to choose...Price: You can expect the GFFX to be $400 for a while and the ATI can be had for as little as $330 (retail store) but consider finding normally for $350-Advantage ATI-9700proDriver support:There is no question that Nvidia gets the nod here but it ATI is improving, slowly.-Advantage Nvidia GFFX (if this wasn't an issue I would simply reccomend the ATI card but unfortunitly I can't.Noise:I personally only want to hear the 6 channel audio coming from my BOX, not a leaf blower, but I reserve the right to my own opinion when I hear it in my Box myself as I line the inside of my case with good quality sound absorption material.-Advantage ATIBack to you Don...

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Have you ever owned an ATi card?We always hear how the ATi drivers suck. This is simply not true anymore, as I am sure anyone with a current Ati card and Catalyst 3.0 driver set will tell you. It seems no matter what ATi do, history will always be against them.As for the FX, looks great if you want a hoover on your desk!

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I was quite shocked to read those reviews this morning - the GeForce FX appears to be Nvidia's Voodoo5 - delayed multiple times due to manufacturing problems, power hungry and noisy, outclassed by its current competitor and about to be totally outdone by the next competitor just after it's released (The ATI R350). This may kill Nvidia if they can't get something out fast enough to compete with the R350...Re: drivers - the Anandtech article specifically mentioned that the ATI drivers have gotten really good and that the Catalyst is every bit as good as the Detonator now if not better.Somehow, I think the new system I'm building in April or May is going to have an ATI video card in it...Ryan


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>Price: >> You can expect the GFFX to be $400 for a while and the ATI >can be had for as little as $330 (retail store) but consider >finding normally for $350 >-Advantage ATI-9700pro For the first time in years I've bought a video card with no buyer's remorse: a Radeon 9500 which successfully patched to near 9700 Pro (cannot quite match the memory speed), for $160. I think I'm going to be happy with it for a while.>>Driver support: >There is no question that Nvidia gets the nod here but it >ATI is improving, slowly. >-Advantage Nvidia GFFX (if this wasn't an issue I would >simply reccomend the ATI card but unfortunitly I can't. > I think I see a bias here. The hardware reviews I read this morning are less reluctant to acknowledge ATI's improvement in driver support, and the current drivers seem very good. What would they have to do in improving the current drivers to win your recommendation?>Noise: >I personally only want to hear the 6 channel audio coming >from my BOX, not a leaf blower, but I reserve the right to >my own opinion when I hear it in my Box myself as I line the >inside of my case with good quality sound absorption >material. >-Advantage ATI I'm put off by the sheer look of the thing, and the real estate it eats up -- and probably heats up! -- inside. BTW, while I may not be buying your POV this time, I've benefited immensely from your posts, so don't take me the wrong way. I've got Nforce2 board on the way that will temporarily house my Athlon Tbird (1.4 Ghz running at 1.53 Ghz) until the Barton's are released and drop to a price that I like. I think I got turned to this combo reading your posts.-Basil

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Nvidia is a strong company and they'll fix their mistakes come the NV35. Their problem is bandwidth. Demanding games like FS2k2 like bandwidth. You can see that when looking at the performance in Nascar 2002 and IL2 with 4xAA & 8xAF. BTW, where is the FX's 16xAF?? The 9700 IMHO definitely outclasses their new card when eye candy is turned on at least on demanding games in existence today. Nvidia still has the R350 to deal with. That'll be interesting?? I'm waiting for specific benchmarks with FS2k2 to come out. It'll be interesting to see if the FX will run decent at 4xAA & 8xAF with FS2k2. The 9700 handles it nicely running 6xAA & 16xAF. You only need 4xAA to get rid of the jaggies, but there's still some noise in the treetops that could use improvement. Problem now is we all need bigger processors. They ain't been built yet.I'm running the ATI CD driver version 6166 and they work perfect with my hardware. So IMHO, there's nothing wrong with the ATI drivers.

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"1. Along with the ATI9700 pro we can now enjoy FS2k2 at very tolerant FPS levels while using 4x AA combined with 4x Aniso at fairly high res while running the more CPU demanding add-on packages, considering this with the use of the latest CPU's P4-3.06/XP2800/Barton&64 and MB chipsets blah blah, ba blah."Do you have a Radeon 9700 Pro? Why use 4x AF when you can use 16x AF with almost no performance hit? Fairly high res? The card has no problem running 4x AA at 1600x1200 in FS2002."2.Quality-At this point ATI's advantage is better AA quality(smoother edges on 3d objects/Aircraft and Buildings) and GFFX has better AF Quality (sharper Textures when viewed at high agles such as when looking at terrain)-sound familiar? "You are right about the AA. The Radeon 9700 Pro has a superior sampling pattern, which makes it much better than the GFFX at removing jaggies.What you seem to miss is that the AF is ALSO superior on the 9700 Pro. First off, R9700 Pro supports up to 16x Trilinear or Bilinear AF, where as GFFX only supports 8x Trilinear or 16x Bilinear AF.The problem with blurry textures at certain angles was present in the Radeon 8500. ATI fixed this in the 9700 Pro. Both the performance and quality modes properly filter textures at all angles. With the higher number of samples for the Radeon 9700 Pro, this means that the R9700 Pro produces the sharpest image of the two."3.performance-this is a tuffy as 1200x1600x32 2xAA 2xAF (a very good combo for FS visuals I might add) the GF seems to have it over the ATI if only slightly, step up to 4xAA/AF and beyond and the crown goes to ATI in most cases."Did you see the screenshots of 2x AA? It does virtually NOTHING to the image quality at this point. Whether that is caused by a driver bug, or if it's supposed to be like that is currently unknown, but at those quality levels, the most fair comparison would be Nvidia's 2x AA vs no AA on the ATI.I don't ever turn off AF on my 9700 Pro. It's constantly at 16x Quality. I will never go back to the blurry rendering of a lower aniso level or plain trilinear. I use 4x AA in almost every single game at fairly high resolutions (up to 1280x960).Overall I'm very dissapointed by the GFFX. The core is running at 500 MHz vs only 325 MHz on the Radeon 9700 Pro, and it uses exotic 1 GHz DDR-II memory (allthough linked by a narrow 128-bit bus), but it still looses to the Radeon 9700 Pro in several tests. It appears to be a very inefficent arhitecture.


Asus Prime X370 Pro / Ryzen 7 3800X / 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz / Gainward Ghost RTX 3060 Ti
MSFS / XP

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Guest PaulL01

>>Driver support: > I think I see a bias here. Yes,Bad consumer experience tends to bias opinions, mine included.>The hardware reviews I read >this morning are less reluctant to acknowledge ATI's >improvement in driver support, and the current drivers seem >very good. True, but there are still a number of unresolved software and hardware incompatibility issues that are still waiting to be resolved. While it is great that ATI has improved, I will continue to be reluctant about there driver quality until they establish a better track record, I don

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Hi Paul,A job well done...I agree with your take on the FX/9700 PRO comparison, although I must step up and state that ATI's drivers/support are excellent these days. I would say they are dead even in that department. Is the FX a disappointment? Well, I am not loyal to anyone, but must admit I looked for more upbeat reviews than what has come forth. My 9700 Pro continues to bring great performance and IQ to my system. I suppose now I look fwd to the R350!Cheers,Greg GXP 2100ASUS A7V8XRadeon 9700 PRO512MB MUSHKINWD 40GB w/8mb BufferWIN XPGoFLight, CH, & PFC stuffs

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Guest PaulL01

>Do you have a Radeon 9700 Pro? Why use 4x AF when you can >use 16x AF with almost no performance hit? Fairly high res? >The card has no problem running 4x AA at 1600x1200 in >FS2002. Really? Try running CS-727 add-on highres mesh and a decent amount of ATC and even with no AA and AF and even your better then average systems will come to a crawl, and that

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Guest PaulL01

>Have you ever owned an ATi card? Several adorn my wall of hardware.>>We always hear how the ATi drivers suck. Gee wonder why that would be? :-lolThis is simply not >true anymore, as I am sure anyone with a current Ati card >and Catalyst 3.0 driver set will tell you. Glad for your personal experiance, type in the words ATI 9700 incompatability" into the Google search engine and see how many pages turn up about problems with 8xAGP boards that have been know for now what 6 monthes? and there is still more, the point isn't how many as there are as many with the various Nvidia drivers and cards, the point is -Response, and that is where ATI Still needs to improve.When its working, it is a very nice card, that or the GFFX will be adorning my box when ever My favorite PC store gets boared with thiers. ;)>It seems no matter what ATi do, history will always be >against them. Not always, just untill they get it right.>As for the FX, looks great if you want a hoover on your >desk! Yeah! :)

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Guest PaulL01

Go to nvnews.com and jump from there.

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"Really? Try running CS-727 add-on highres mesh and a decent amount of ATC and even with no AA and AF and even your better then average systems will come to a crawl, and that


Asus Prime X370 Pro / Ryzen 7 3800X / 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz / Gainward Ghost RTX 3060 Ti
MSFS / XP

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Hi Jimmi,>"Really? Try running CS-727 add-on highres mesh and a decent >amount of ATC and even with no AA and AF and even your >better then average systems will come to a crawl, and that

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Guest SoarPics

Interesting discussion...What I like most is to see the ATI owners stepping up with their positive reports of support. ATI has an uphill road to climb in this area, and it's nice to see that they are indeed making major strides.As an nVidia owner for the past three years (four of their cards staring with a GF2), I won't be unhappy to move over to a Radeon for my next upgrade. nVidia simply hasn't delivered the goods since they bought out 3DFX.And after reading these recent reviews of the GFX, the decision to change brands is even easier.It's nice that we finally have some choices after nVidia's virtual monopoly the past couple of years.Regards,

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