GeForce FX 5900, benchmarks now out there

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Julio Franco

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Update: Forget about small details, NDAs have been lifted and complete information on NVIDIA's GeForceFX 5900 Ultra and its main competitor 256mb equipped Radeon 9800 Pro is now available.

Even some of the bigger sites seem to be hit with the massive attention these articles are generating, here are some of the articles I could actually access by time of posting: Anandtech, Hexus, HotHardware, Neoseeker.

Both CNet and VRZone have posted information about the GeForce FX 5900 card that will be officially announced later this week and is based on the NV35 chip.
According to the first article, FX 5900 boards will go on sale this June, priced around $399 for the regular version and $499 for the "Ultra" version with more memory (probably up to 256mb, but will it really make a difference?), I'd assume faster clock speeds are expected for Ultra as usual. VRZone also has details on memory clock initially slated to run at 425Mhz, was later improved to 450Mhz with the latest card samples.

Also, from those leaked pictures it'd seem that NV35 boards would use two slots like in FX5800 boards but that's not the case, NVIDIA says they expect to have all shipping boards using an improved cooling system that will take a single slot.
NVIDIA is also expected to release a new set of Detonator drivers that will improve performance considerably along their entire FX line, hopefully that will remain true in terms of real optimizations and not visual quality tricks, 5200 & 5600 boards would become a lot more attractive with a 10% performance boost for instance.
 
http://www.avault.com/hardware/getreview.asp?review=geforcefx5900ul&page=1

has a full preview/review of the new 5900.

Despite all the hype surrounding this card, I still think ATi 9500/9600/9700/9800 cards are a more viable solution for most people, even high-end gamers would have to think twice before spending such a large amount of cash on a card which is still not much faster than the 9700Pro (Notice they did not include the 9800Pro in the comparison). I think the main features of this card are simply to get up to the visual quality of competitive ATi cards (as NVIDIA cards have always been typically poorer in terms of visual quality). At least they seem to have got 1 thing right with the new card though, they have made the fan a bit quieter. :D
 
Anandtech’s benchmarks show the NV35 as outperforming ATI, so now ATI will have to respond. It can only get more interesting from here :).
 
I don't see why you guys must always criticize NVIDIA, poor picture quality bla bla bla... At least NVIDIA cards actually RUN 99% of games you throw at them unlike some other company. I don't want to start a war, I am just curious as to why you (people in general) must always criticize something which has more good points than what you praise. :confused:
 
After reading many reviews this morning, I think the general concensus is the 5900 Ultra is faster in most all the benchmarks.
 
As I said, I don't want to start a war. But the fact of the matter is that NVIDIA now holds the performance crown, or will at the public release of the NV35.

I never said EVERY ATi card will have problems; it's just you are always hearing about their cards having trouble, whether it's driver or compatibility issues, it doesn't matter to me as I will never go ATi.

I am constantly misunderstood in this area of discussion, so let me make myself clear. I have absolutely nothing against ATi, in fact, I praise them as if they weren't around; NVIDIA would be able to do whatever they want - and the same goes for NVIDIA. Let's just say that both companies need each other.

Also, if I remember correctly, weren't you experiencing troubles with your 9700 PRO recently? Or was that another member? Forgive me if I am mistaken, it's been a long day.

EDIT: My mistake, just did a search. You have only had minor problems with Direct3D and AGP speed. Nevertheless, I stand by my point.
 
It'll be interesting to see how the R9800pro fares when the Cat 3.4 is released...
There seems to be a problem accessing the "extra" 128mb on the 256mb version with the Cat 3.2....
(Or at least so they said over @ Beyond3d)


Originally posted by timmoore
I don't see why you guys must always criticize NVIDIA, poor picture quality bla bla bla... At least NVIDIA cards actually RUN 99% of games you throw at them unlike some other company. I don't want to start a war, I am just curious as to why you (people in general) must always criticize something which has more good points than what you praise. :confused:

Maybe because we're having trouble seeing those good points through all the pr speak? ;)

Seriously, this discussion is way too likely to spark of a flamewar, especially since unregistered users are able to post here, to be run here....

If you really want this discussion, post a new thread here, and take care when writing it... Point out what you don't understand about peoples opinions, why you think is wrong (i.e. image quality), and keep it civilized...

It could turn out quite interesting... :)
 
hehe Tim, I'm just bragging :p. Your right though I had problems with my card at first but that wasn't due to games. It was just due to a setting in SmartGart where I had to lower the AGP speed. That problem should be fixed by going with a better motherboard and then I would be able to run at higher AGP speeds, but I am very content with the image quality I have now so I'm not going to buy the A7V8X like I was planning. I'm going to go with a different motherboard in my new machine that I'm going to start building in Decemeber though.

As far as games, I havent found one game so far that I can't run with high quality graphic settings @ 1024x768. Those games include:

Battlefield 1942
Army Operations
Quake 3 Arena
Unreal II
Alien vs Predator
Alice
Rainbow Six: Black Thorn

those are just a few of the games I've tried lately. I play Battlefield 1942 everyday and it runs like a dream :D

I remember someone saying once that ATI has it's problems but once you get rid of that small hurdle which is usually some small detail that has nothing to do with gaming like my situation, ATI's run faster and more reliable than Nvidia cards.

To be 100% honest though, I wouldn't mind one bit going with the high end GeforceFX card. I'm sure it would run just as well as my Radeon 9700 Pro, but I dont ever intend on running anything less than that such as Geforce4, etc.

The next card I buy MAY be a Radeon 9800 Pro, but I'm not sure. For now my intentions are to put another Radeon 9700 Pro in my next system this December.



As far as "flaming" other members posts. I think most of us get the wrong idea about replys to others posts. I've never intended to flame anyone and I know most of us never have intended to do so.. We live in a harsh world, so we immediately think a different opinion is "flaming", but it's not.. so dont worry so much guys ;)
 
Originally posted by timmoore
As I said, I don't want to start a war. But the fact of the matter is that NVIDIA now holds the performance crown, or will at the public release of the NV35.

I never said EVERY ATi card will have problems; it's just you are always hearing about their cards having trouble, whether it's driver or compatibility issues, it doesn't matter to me as I will never go ATi.

I am constantly misunderstood in this area of discussion, so let me make myself clear. I have absolutely nothing against ATi, in fact, I praise them as if they weren't around; NVIDIA would be able to do whatever they want - and the same goes for NVIDIA. Let's just say that both companies need each other.

Also, if I remember correctly, weren't you experiencing troubles with your 9700 PRO recently? Or was that another member? Forgive me if I am mistaken, it's been a long day.

EDIT:

... it's just you are always hearing about their cards having trouble...

... My mistake, just did a search. You have only had minor problems with Direct3D and AGP speed. Nevertheless, I stand by my point.

I understand where you are coming from, but these are very generalized views and I think you are spreading a little misinformation....

Both companies make cards that work well out of the box (usually), but both also screw up majorly.. All I ask is that you acknolwege this. :)

Examples:

If I hear about nVidia's "infinite loop error" one more time, I'm going to scream! :) You can search on this forum and find tons of people who've had blue screens... It's almost unreal. These are NOT minor problems.

How about the new Geforce FX which overheats because of a screen saver? LoL. You can really tell nVidia is interested in getting it out fast, than making a quailty product anymore.

There's much more out there too...

I just want to bring attention a few of nVidia's problems too.. There's no reason to be one sided on this topic because there's more than enough + and - for both.
 
Very true Rick. I acknowledge that both companies have their problems, but I don't see how you can take the screen saver error into this. It's is only a software issue and will/should be easily fixed with a patch or in the next Dets.

I am not trying to be one sided, it just comes out wrong! As I said, I have nothing against ATi, it's their fans that I do - the ones who talk a load of bull that is.
 
Originally posted by timmoore
Very true Rick. I acknowledge that both companies have their problems, but I don't see how you can take the screen saver error into this. It's is only a software issue and will/should be easily fixed with a patch or in the next Dets.

Well, isn't software problems what most people encounter...

Yes, ATI had some big trouble with motherboard compability, but it's a bit hard to say that's ATI's fault since the troublesome motherboards weren't built to spec....
You could allways argue that ATI should have anticipated this since nvidia has, but that would, imo, be beside the point...

Originally posted by timmoore
I am not trying to be one sided, it just comes out wrong! As I said, I have nothing against ATi, it's their fans that I do - the ones who talk a load of bull that is.

That's good to hear...
I understand what you mean about fanATIcs... :D
Luckily I don't think we have many of those here...

It's one thing to like a company very much, and try to "defend" it, but it's something else when you start "spreading the gospel" about it...

That is incidentally one of the reason I dislike Nvidia (the company) so much...
They hype their cards so much you'd think it was the second coming or something...
And they "hide" what the card really is/does behind PR speak... How much confusion wasn't there about whether the NV30 was an 8x1 or 4x2 part?


When it comes to the cards, they're quite good...
There's no denying that (with certain exceptions like GF4MX (and possible NV30))...
And the NV35 looks very good...

But to me they've allways lacked in IQ... The FSAA still isn't up to par of my old V5 5500, and there's a bit of a washed out look of the picture... At least on the GF4 and older, I haven't seen any NV3x based cards in RL yet, so I can't really say about those...


As far as speed goes, I'll end this post with part of [H]ard|OCP's conclusion:
It almost seems like in every benchmark the cards go back and forth, dancing around each other. One map will run one card faster, another map will run the other one. One resolution shows a card faster, another resolution shows the other fast. It makes deciding which is the fastest card a very hard decision. Here we have an 8 pipeline card clocked at 380MHz beating in some cases a 4 pipeline card clocked at 450MHz with a lot of bandwidth. It appears in those situations that the 9800 Pro 256MB card just has a better architecture with faster shader speed. Then on the other side we do have the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra winning in some DX8 tests as well. One thing at least is certain, both cards offer awesome performance with AA/AF at high resolutions, and the 256MB of RAM does make a difference once you overcome CPU bottlenecks. If you only play games at 1024x768 and have an aging CPU, a card of these calibers will probably not help you much. But if you run at high resolutions with AA and have a fast CPU, a 256MB card can help stabilize FPS at those resolutions.
 
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