Thursday, April 26th 2007
NVIDIA 8800 GTX beats AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX
After impressive benchmark results for the Radeon HD 2900 XT, the Radeon HD X2900 XTX (AMD's flagship DirectX 10 card) has failed to impress in the same way. When compared to NVIDIA's 8800 GTX, the 2900 XTX is lagging behind in frames per second when it comes to games such as Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R., Half Life 2: Episode 1 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You can see the results for yourself (as well as pictures of the card) by clicking the images below - all tests were run on an ASUS P5N32-E SLI motherboard with a Core 2 Extreme QX6800 processor and 800MHz Corsair XMS2 RAM. The HD 2900 XTX is based on the same GPU as the HD 2900 XT, but uses GDDR4 memory running at 1010MHz instead of GDDR3 memory running at 800MHz. There aren't any comparisons between the cards when they are overclocked, nor is there any data on DirectX 10 performance, but at present it looks like NVIDIA could be a step ahead of AMD. The card used by DailyTech was a sample released to board members in the second week of April, and the benchmarks were made with the drivers AMD plans to provide when the new cards hit retail.
Source:
DailyTech
79 Comments on NVIDIA 8800 GTX beats AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX
Someone see that mobo is for SLI (Nvidia) and not for cross fire (ATI)?
P5N32-SLI use SLI Tech and not Cross fire!
HUMMMM theses benchs are not equal someone could test a mobo with cross fire Tech?
If im not equivocated, a mobo that have a cross fire tech or suport ATI tech can increase some numbers in PCI-X Cards from ATI, and some videocards give better responses in diferents mobos and models.
bye
Flagship cards are merely a display of "I've got the performance crown" but shouldn't be a display of whether that company will disappear or not.
And as people are saying, assuming these benchmarks are right it's not the end of the world because ATI may completely blow NVIDIA away in DX10 for all we know, there are just early indications of DX9 performance.
vr-zone.com/
"AMD has decided to push forward the launch of the Radeon HD 2900 series to May 2nd instead of the original date on May 14th. Products demonstrations and reviews are allowed to appear on that date so it is considered a soft launch. However, AMD is still keeping Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 under wraps until the big day on May 14th. Radeon HD 2900 XT cards will be available from that day onwards for the price of US$399 to be positioned against the GeForce 8800 GTS. The final clocks for Radeon HD 2900 XT stood at 740MHz core and 825MHz for memories."
btw, its comment #100 :D
The faggot you guys know as "Contact" was none other than our most ban-smacked user, Track. He's ignorant, he's an asshole, and most of all, he's tenacious. It's people like him that make me glad I have the "physically remove post" button, the "delete spam" button, and the "ban user" button.
JK good thing we have a mod who doesnt go crazy with things.
Now, back to the card. Hey, if its true, thats fine, its a dx10 card. Im not changing my story one bit on performance ( :P Tatty_one) I still like to believe the final release will be able to spar with Nvidia. Honestly, the biggest gripe here is the huge delay of R600 only to be released on a test bed and get smacked by Nvidia. Someone a couple posts ago mentioned this to a degree and he is right. However, noting the different boards, it has long been reported (CPU magazines and such) that for some mystical reason, ATI boards performed slightly better in nvidia chipset motherboards, than in ATI mobos, via mobos, etc. Funny aint it?
X2900XTX = pwned by GTX
X2900XT = pwned the GTS640
Which ones more likely to sell? If ATI can keep up in mid-range, and Nv have the king, everyone still gets a happy place. (Honestly, the 8500/8600 series are rather slow)
all hail the uber banstick!
On the drivers front, AMD/ATI are definately NOT perfect - quite a few things arent working right yet.
My server is on an X1950GT 512MB, and its a crossfire mobo. I've recently been testing various video cards in the system (all ATI, of course) just making sure they work, 3Dmark runs etc, and ATI certainly have screwups - If you change an ATI card over without completely uninstalling the drivers (even in a different PCI-E slot with the original card in place, or directly swapping them) the system BSOD's. Good one ATI, safe mode is fun to use.
Oh and you're right on the framerate part... you wont notice 100FPS to 90FPS, but to people with massive HDTV screens, performance really matters... and so does features. ATI still dont have scaling for non-widescreen apps on widescreen monitors, quite horrible that.
(as for other features, TV out quality, HDTV decoding etc, no one knows yet)
i have 3 pc's. an old pentium 2 i use for internet connection sharing, a athlon 3400 and a athlon 3800 dual core. the 3400 has a nvidia 6600gt, the 3800 has a ati 1650 pro. both the athlons run on vista ultimate.
my problems with nvidia :
1. nvidia menu does not function properly, alot of features are missing, greyd out etc .. )
2. TV-out full screen mirror function does not work, and nvidia has announced that this feature is dicontinued permanently. ( i use this ALOT. )
3. even the tv out itself sometimes resets for no reason when i reboot and i have to set the tv format back to pal again, it keeps jumping to ntsc.
4. fps is alot lower in vista than in xp.
5. nvidia are sloppy in delivering updates, they do 1 driver release in about 3 months.
6. i also HATE the new menu, it just sucks piles.
the list goes on ....
AMD/ATI
1. Menu works perfectly, with new 7.4 release all tv-out features that i need are working, even before 7.4 there were definitely far more features working than nvidia.
2. full screen theater mode works perfectly with certain players, i can't stress enough how important this is for me.
3. ATI has released 3 drivers in the last 2 months, and they have made noticable difference in performance and features in windows vista.
4. i have noticed that with each driver release fps has gone up alot in vista.
5. the ATI menu is just so much better than the nvidia one, atleast you have many more options to work with and it just feels so comfotable doing it.
in the end it really comes down to 2 things, i can handle nvidia's pethetic excuse for a menu if i must, but i cannot handle waiting around for 6 years for them to release new drivers, and most of all I NEEED FULLSCREEN VIDEO MIRROR FEATURE, i live on it, and nvidia has dicontinued this feature, and altho it only works with certain players on ati in vista, atleast it is working and they have not written it off. I am sure that ati does not see it as a priority at the moment, but they will get to it in due time, this is a comforting thought for me.
also have you tried their latest drivers ? it is a vast improvement over the last ones.
so in the end it comes down to preference, i prefer ati, it feels more stable to me, more features are working, drivers are less bugged. in the end ati gives me less headaches. but others might feel the same way about nvidia.
my point of the post above was that only little 12 year old children will go around and compare the top 2 cards and make 12 page threads about a 10fps difference when you really won't notice it with the avarage user, to me features and stability are more important than fps, unless the fps gap is huge.
Your ATI comments are spot on with my observations, except that ATI dont support disabling aspect scaling on widescreen monitors. If the game doesnt support widescreen (Battlefield 2, BF 2142, both modern games that dont) the game just distorts and goes blurry.
Nvidias latest drivers have a new driver panel, fair bit easier to use - but i get taht bug where you cant see the options til you mouse over them. They also get me better FPS in Vista than i got in XP (Excluding 3dmarks - those are slower, games are faster)
Oh and i dont use TV out, sorry i cant comment there.