Sunday, November 11th 2007
AMD Internal Benchmarks Show HD 3850 Supremacy
Well, the charts speak for themselves really. The 3850, which should be less than $200USD when it is released later this month, completely slaughters the intended competition, which includes the HD 2600XT, and the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS. The 3850 also holds it's own against the HD 2900XT.
The last images show RV670 supremacy in DirectX10 rendering.
Source:
VR-Zone
92 Comments on AMD Internal Benchmarks Show HD 3850 Supremacy
Also, comparisons between the 2900XT and the GTX are irrelevant. The GTX SHOULD beat the 2900, it costs more. But when the 2900XT meets or beats at some game benchmarks then that is a different story.
There is always the OpenGL benchmark for the Fur shading.
www.dailytech.com/ati+radeon+hd+2900+xt+performance+benchmarks/article7043.htm - This is from April 2007
forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=30179&highlight=HD2900XT+benchmarks - From May
firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_8800_gt_performance/page5.asp - About the 8800GT but it shows the 2900XT generally meets or beat the 8800GTS 640mb most of the time, losing a little.
It's hard to find recent benchmarks with newer drivers.
Big edit: Not about the subject, just that I hope this doesn't get to out of hand, it's not that bad now but I do realize my post could be taken the wrong way. I just want to let everyone know I am not trying to insult anyone by disproving what they say but just stating my opinion. And yeah I realize there are fan boys out there...me being one of them (my intel/amd set up is really nice to me) but just try to keep your minds open people, please and thank you.
Ultimately it comes down to price. Look at the Wii vs the 360 and PS3. If AMD can build these for less than their Nvidia counterparts, then the OEM's will keep ATI's income flowing.
IDK when they are supposed to be released.
Ah, what the hell, GT v 2900XT/AMD: Catalyst 7.10
www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=10
on a side note... whether ati wins or not i still think that it will self no matter what ...us enthusiaSS lol are a vast minority....:D
8800GTX>2900XT most of the time
8800GTX>8800GT @ mid to high resolutions
8800GTS=2900XT almost all the time
Anyway, I'm hoping for the best in saying that either those benchmarks aren't done right or the drivers were not optimized at all.
I really hope the HD3870 is an ownage card. Just as long as it could compete with/slightly beat an 8800GTX, I will be more than satisfied. When ever I've looked for an upgrade I want an nvidia card for a while, then ATI comes through for me right in the end I go their way.
-Indybird
well i guess i was not the only one with this problem with the 8800 gt in crysis
Don't ever take benchmarks or silly little reviews for granted...
Everything is FAR to unstable..
I have heard of people with 2900xt's that cannot run Crysis in anything over 1024x768 with low settings to try to keep above 40fps... Then again I can play dx10 on my 2600xt with all medium and a few high settings and average 40fps.
Then again I built a machine that ran max settings with a 2900xt that gave a smooth 40fps at 1280x1024.
It's a big mess... Anyway you look at it, buy what you want, can afford for what you use and personally like... Being a fanboy is stupid... People need to stop being so ignorant. People here have had such issues with 1950pro's that they went back to 6800xt's *can you imagine?*
Nvidia/Ati
It's like
Intel/AMD
When you get the top you get the top and it "can" go either way and it does.
Beyond that, people slam on ATI WAY too much, remember even if they are slower on average *which they are*, the games are built to run on Nvidia cards NOT Ati. So who is really building a superior card? Nobody knows, and there is no way to truly tell as of now.
HD3850 will rock stomp a 8600gt or 8600gts, its good competition between a 2600xt and a 8600gt in dx9 and in dx10 I am yet to see a 8600gts beat a 2600xt. Add the better gpu and take into consideration the 256bit mem bus and the 8600's are gone with the wind.
HD3870, well we will just have to see what happens when they are full release.
First, the 3850 is meant to compete with the 8600gts. It should be priced around the same, yet hopefully deliver the performance of the HD 2900GT with 1/2 the power consumption, only have a 6 pin pcie power connector (instead of 1 8 pin), and be single slot cooled. As those graphs illustrate, the 3850 dominates the 8600gts. I would then expect the HD 2600 series to become the low end ATI cards, and the HD 2400 series to become integrated into motherboards.
It is the HD 3870 whose job is to compete with the 8800GT, not the 3850. Don't confuse the two! I don't know much about the 3870 (therefore I cannot say if it will have half the power consumption as the 2900xt, or what power connectors it will use), but it does seem that it will retain a dual slot cooler. Note: dual slot cooler != running extremely hot. Also, how will the performance of this card be? I don't believe any of us are in a position to answer that beyond speculation. I will be interested to see cooling and noise benchmarks of the slot coolers for the HD 38xx vs 8800GT when they are all out on the market.
As for current cards, it seems that with up to date drivers, HD 2900XT gDDR3 roughly compares pretty well with the 8800GTS 640mb (it beats it in some tests, looses in others, but they roughly match out to the same are in the same pricing arena). The 8800GTX/Ultra typically dominate all their competitors. Whoppity-doo, do you expect any less from the prices being asked for them?! The 8800GT seems to perform above the 8800gts 640mb, but below the 8800GTX, yet costs much less.
Also to add, to know just how closely related the HD 38xx series is to the HD 2900XT, pay attention to the performance of the cards after AA is enabled. The 2900XT seems to become less competitive after doing that. If the newer ones don't, then they are probably more than just the "R600" die shrink Nvidia fanboys are claiming it to be.
Finally, if you remember, when the 8800 series first came out, purchasers of it liked to gloat against ATI owners because they had DirectX 10 support when they didn't. However, how long afterwards was the first DirectX 10 game released that wasn't just a patched DirectX 9 game? After the HD 2900XT, launch, that is for sure. Therefore, I believe history will repeat itself with select ATI owners gloating about having DirectX 10.1 support while Nvidia owners don't, when the first decent DirectX 10.1 games probably won't be released before Nvidia releases their own DirectX 10.1 card (something even further evidenced by the increasing "The Way It's Meant to be Played" campaign).
End of rant...
Edit: Sorry to add more... I don't believe the 3870 will have two cores/be crossfire on a card. I think that will be a separate card called the 3870x2. Also, ATI will continue to dominate in the AGP market, which refuses to go away.
Thats where the pwnage of no space for a sound card will come! lol
But here ATI destroys the competition.
Simply put, most of the reviews comparing the 2900 to competitive hardware are old and outdated, another majority of reviews only use the drivers right out of the box, and yet, how many more review(er)s are typically green-sided? Case-in-point, if I open a review and see anywhere on that page an advertisement for either nVidia or ATI, the review is worthless, IMO.
It's funny how the reviews say one thing, but owners report entirelly different results.
. . . and somehow I forsee this thread getting locked down . . . :shadedshu
If we assume that these benchies are correct it means that the 3850 evenly competes with the HD2900XT we can therefore assume that the 3870 will be faster than the HD2900XT which means that it will compete with the GT/GTX.
These cards are refreshers as the R680 will launch beginning next year and the R700 at the end of 2008.
IMO ATI f***K up the R600 just like how nVidia did with the FX. and nVidia came back strong becuase necessity is the mother of invention
ATIs weak point right now is really that its architecture requires highly optimized drivers, and your games need to be designed with this type of architecture in mind. If your application and driver are not constantly generating as many independent instructions as possible all the time, the execution units in this architecture are being left idle, and you have terrible efficiency and this impacts performance. Nvidias scalar architecture does not have this limitation, because its more flexible because in a lot of applications your next command often relies on the previous one, and you dont always need or can generate 5 independent operations. You can look to this to understand why ATI is often improving performance with every driver release instead of just improving compatibility with games. And it can also explain why at its best, the hd2900xt was able to beat the 8800GTX, yet at its worst the hd2900xt wasnt even able to beat the x1950xtx.
Another thing to remember is that with these architectures ATI is basically focusing all their power on raw shader power for which it is significantly faster than even the 8800 ultra for shader operations per second, yet it neglects things like pixel fillrate and texture fillrate. R600 only has 16 ROPs and 16 TMUs, compared to G80s 32 TMUs and 24 ROPs.
Its always going to boil down to case by case comparison, some games will run better now on G80/G92 others right now may run better on R600/RV670...who knows about tomorrow, maybe in a year ATI's architecture will show its full power, maybe not. Maybe ATI's will prove stronger with the professional segment where AMD wants it, and us gamers will have to make due with acceptable performance, or go to the competition.
What you have to remember is the difference between the fastest, and whats fast enough. Does an hd2900xt play most if not all games at high resolutions while keeping playable FPS? Yea. Will the new HD38x0 series? Yea. Is the 8800 series faster? More often than not yea... Will people pay more for a faster card? You bet your ass, but should ATI expect strong sales from something slower? No reason why they shouldnt. If they can get close to HD2900xt performance from a $150-$200 card range than thats a huge plus. The HD2900 pro sold VERY well at $250 for just this reason.
If ATI can make some further optimizations to the RV670 and related architectures, such as improving their shader recompiler, driver/application optimization, improving their texture dispatch processing, etc then they stand to gain solid ground. How many people believed the 8800GT would get close to the GTX performance? It wasnt hard when you know how to make a good thing better.
ATI and Nvidia have always, and will always trade the performance crown back and forth. One company will have the superior performance for one or two generations, then the other company will take that lead. If you look here and now your wasting as much time as you are money. Buy the cheapest card you can that remains "fast enough" and upgrade it two or more times a year. Buying 1 big expensive card and hoping it lasts you 2 years might work, but its usually gunna hit its peak long before then. Premium cards never stay on their pedestal for more than a year, and high end cards are lucky to get half that. Upgrade to the best value and upgrade often.
*edit*
And to fuel the fire a bit, take a look at some other numbers, namely the 3870:
twrococ.com