Announcement: Radeon 9800 Pro Review!

[Guest]

Ok, I'll give you that the comment is funny (in an odd sort of way :-)).But reality? Hardly. It just feels like reality when benchmarks like today came out (to NVidia more than anyone else for a couple hours, I have no doubt). Indeed, its felt that way for the past couple months while ATI have been near competition-less as far as the headlines go (not, you'll note, in the much more important sales]).Most certainly ATI has the best cards on the market right now (I own a few myself). But NVidia suddenly can't compete and out of business? Again, hardly. All it takes is a bit of cursory company study to realize that (and not just their bottom line - look at the past quarters sales figures as well as market share... NVidia basically owns the graphics market - still).You'd think ATI would be the one out of business with that kind of off-the-cuff reasoning. ATI wasn't at the top of the heap for, what, five years? A reality check is in serious order when it comes to NVidia as a company. One product cycle does NOT a company break (if they are nimble - which is the definition of NVidia to date).The old axiom stands: don't believe everything you read. Just me. :-lolTake care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N[/b)

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Hello, >I just wanted to add some info. from Anandtech.com.I noticed >that they used the benchmark of a heavy cpu dependant >flightsim,Comanche 4, and in this case it was clear to them >that in this type of benchmark,the 9800 gain isn't so >significant(at least at 1024*768). >http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1794&p=9 >So it may be that the 9700pro could become the very best >value overall. >Paul eh...... What graph were you looking at? First of all, you've got to understand that *ANY* performance gain solely attributable to the graphics card alone in a game like Commanche 4 (which is as CPU-bound as MSFS) is a *MAJOR* gain and speaks very highly of said graphics card. Take a look at the results again: Commanche 4 @ 1024x768x32 using AA&AFRadeon 9800 Pro (4X AA/8X Perf Aniso) 54.8 fps Radeon 9800 Pro (4X AA/8X Qual Aniso) 52.9 fps Radeon 9700 Pro (4X AA/8X Perf Aniso) 50.1 fpsGeForce FX 5800 Ultra (4X AA/8X Bal Aniso) 49.7 fpsRadeon 9700 Pro (4X AA/8X Qual Aniso) 40.8 fpsOnly a 2.1 fps loss by switching from performance to quality setting is AMAZING. Especially in comparison to the 9.3 fps the 9700 Pro loses when making the same switch. That's less than a 5% loss for the 9800 Pro vs. an almost 20% loss for the 9700 Pro! Hardly insignificant... And the 54.8 fps the 9800 Pro gets using performance setting vs. the 50.1 fps the 9700 Pro gets using the same setting isn't too shabby either. That's an almost 10% jump in fps in the *PERFORMANCE* setting, which is definitely more CPU-dependant than the Quality setting. It would've been interesting to compare the GFFX Ultra and the two 9xxx Radeons using high quality settings... From all the reviews I've seen the Ultra just TANKS whenever you do so. Another interesting thing I took from Anand's article were the overclocking performance results. A 10% increase in core clock and an 11% increase in memory clock (with no extra cooling) result in 10-12% performance gain across the board when using AA&AF! In the past, overclocking a graphics card did not result in linear performance increases, but it looks as though the 9800 Pro may change all that :) Who knows how fast this puppy could be with some extreme cooling? The best part is yet to come though! The 256MB DDR2 Radeon 9800 Pro will be out in another month or so and, if they use the same speed memory as Nvidia did (500MHz DDR2 = 1GHz effective) on a 256-bit memory bus that would result in 32GBps bandwidth!!! That's just insane! (The Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB version offers 21.76GBps bandwidth, btw) Of course, that's assuming they use the same speed memory as Nvidia did for the GFFX Ultra. I would hope ATI would do so though, as the 256MB DDR2 Radeon 9800 Pro is supposedly targeted at NV35 (until R400 comes out anyway), so I would expect them to use RAM at least as fast as NV30, if not NV35. Hehe, imagine 1.2GHz DDR2 ram on the DDR2 Radeon 9800 Pro. That would provide 38.4GBps memory bandwidth ::drool:: Can we say "hello 1600x1200x32 w/6xAA & 16x AF in virtually every game" lol! Even if they only use 400MHz (800MHz effective) DDR2 memory it will still provide 25.6GBps bandwidth. Definitely nothing to laugh at. These are raw memory bandwidth maximums btw, this doesn't even take into account ATI's Hyper-Z III+ compression technology which would raise the effective bandwidth by Lord knows how much... Probably somewhere in the 100+ GBps range :)Ok, I'm done having an orgasm over the R350 now ;)-Max Cowgill

[Guest Max Cowgill]

Good points, Elrond. I concur that Nvidia is nowhere near dead, but you've got to admit that the combination of the R300, the delay of NV30, and the impending launch of R350 (at almost the same time as the launch of NV30 no less) pack quite a punch and will definitely have not only psychological but physical repercussions for Nvidia. Nice link, btw. I saw a quote in there that I'd seen somewhere last night but for the life of me couldn't remember what the quote was or where I'd seen it. "Tiger Woods doesn't win every day. We don't deny that ATI has a wonderful product and it took the performance lead from us. But if they think they're going to hold onto it, they're smoking something hallucinogenic." -Jen-Hsun Huang, Ceo Nvidia Corporation. Man that cracks me up! The funny part is that he said that about a month before Radeon 9800 Pro was announced. I wonder if he'd make the same statement now... I'm sure he still has faith in the company he founded, but one's faith has to be shaken by a succession of events such as these, even if only temporarily. OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if he comes out of this whole ordeal even more determined to show the world who's #1. (late 2002/)2003 will be a marquee year for pc technology, if you ask me. Quite a few innovative products coming out between last fall and Q4 this year...-Max Cowgill

[Guest]

Hey Max,Indeed, I am just as happy as you that ATI has reasserted itself on the high end after all these years (and fixed their driver team - finally!). Not only is it good for prices, but its good for the state of the art as well.I've found it very ironic that drivers haven't been talked about much in most of todays 9800 reviews... That just proves how far ATI has come over the past six months! An ATI review without the obligatory, intense focus on drivers? Unheard of until today.NVidia is certainly getting a bloody nose the past couple months - and today - and will continue to for the next couple months. Thats a good thing in my book: any company that gets complacent in their leadership is bound to get it taken away at some point in time. I have no doubt that this whole experience has put some of that much needed fear back into the company that it seems to have lost over the past few years. Fear, unfortunately, is what makes a company so successful. Microsoft's dominance is, of course, *the* prime example.My only argument is with the silly notion that NVidia is about to go out of business for some bizarre reason. That couldn't be farther from the truth.And I fully agree. The next couple months will prove to be one of the most interesting periods in this industry.Take care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

[B777ER 2,484]

The ATi 9800 Pro card at 256MB in April? Well, I forsee a couple overtime shifts for the money and a trip to Best Buy in April.

[Guest PaulL01]

Yeah?My friggin Diamond Viper550 will blow the doors and toilet seat off of the 9800 pro! Nvidia friggin rocks!!!!Heh heh heh . . .16 huge megggs man!!!and its Vram!!!got it's own cooler too!!! ..Blue I think, errr yah, Blue! It can do colors! Lots of em!!!Hey, err Elrond, those ATI guys, R those guys Hosers?My friigin 486 is a DX!A DX2!Its got ram and memory too!!!Plus its got a CD-Rom!It can do DOS AND Windows!!!Its get the new version of DOS, and has the Vesa local bus, and its got....Hey! My friggin CPU unit is a tower! Its Expandable so I'll never need another one!Its not biege either, its a new color...light Grey!http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/arge.gif !!!

[Guest]

Now Paullie, did you miss taking your medication *again* today? Sheesh, man. I thought we had that covered already!?!Ya freak ... (la sheik ... FREAKOUT! <-- Now THATS oldschool, baby)@-@ (<-- my new name. Just call me the programmer formally named Elrond)---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

[Guest PaulL01]

Note to self:Self, are folks here gonna really freak out when they discover split personalities talking to ourselves?Whatcha think Paulie, I mean Elrond?I mean Poster formerly known as Elrond?violet lazer 27gig DVD burners are nice, real ...nice. Hu hu huhhh Hu hu huhhh, (shut up beavis!)Matrox Rocks!I mean, Nvidia!Yeah!