I'm going back to ATI

"@drian" wrote in message
...
"magnulus" wrote in message
...
I have a GeForce FX 5900. I'm going back to ATI though. I checked out
all
the benchmarks for Tomb Raider and Half Life 2 and the GeForce is
running
twice as slow was a Radeon 9700 Pro in most of them.

Twice as slow as a Radeon 9700 Pro? There's something wrong other than
the
video card; video card drivers, motherboard chipset driver, etc. A
GeForce
FX 5900 should at least be near the 9700 Pro, if not surpassing it.

No, you are using obsolete logic. Tomb Raider AoD and Halflife 2 use Pixel
Shader 2.0 for reflections and shadows and rely heavily on the pixel shader
units' floating point calculation power. ATI's R3xx GPU pixel shader units
have a lot more raw FP power and thus perform much better than the NV3x.
GPUs. Memory bandwidth doesn't mean very much here and even the Radeon 9600
outperforms the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra in those two games when running full
DX9 mode.
---
Anders

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:34:17 GMT
"@drian" wrote:

"Anders Albrechtsen" wrote in message
k...
No, you are using obsolete logic. Tomb Raider AoD and Halflife 2 use
Pixel Shader 2.0 for reflections and shadows and rely heavily on the
pixel
shader
units' floating point calculation power. ATI's R3xx GPU pixel shader
units have a lot more raw FP power and thus perform much better than
the NV3x. GPUs. Memory bandwidth doesn't mean very much here and
even the Radeon
9600
outperforms the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra in those two games when running
full DX9 mode.

So the days of comparing raw MHz or speed is out?

Any modern processor performs more than one operation per clock cycle,
so clock speed is no longer the only thing that counts.

It sounds like it
comes down to the intelligence of the components in the graphics
engine/chip.

In that case, I'm wrong. Fair enough.

@drian.


--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"Anders Albrechtsen" wrote in message
k...
No, you are using obsolete logic. Tomb Raider AoD and Halflife 2 use Pixel
Shader 2.0 for reflections and shadows and rely heavily on the pixel
shader
units' floating point calculation power. ATI's R3xx GPU pixel shader units
have a lot more raw FP power and thus perform much better than the NV3x.
GPUs. Memory bandwidth doesn't mean very much here and even the Radeon
9600
outperforms the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra in those two games when running full
DX9 mode.

So the days of comparing raw MHz or speed is out? It sounds like it comes
down to the intelligence of the components in the graphics engine/chip.

In that case, I'm wrong. Fair enough.

@drian.

"Anders Albrechtsen" wrote in message
k...
More or less. GPU's are vastly different today than two or three years
ago.
Instead of just increasing memory bandwidth new co-processors with huge
floating point computation power are added to increase performance.
Currently ATI is ahead of Nvidia in that department when the floating
point
units are used to generate pixel shader 2.0 effects. In DirectX 8 games
and
below the GFX 5900 Ultra is just as fast as the Radeon 9800 Pro and even
faster in some cases.
---
Anders

I'd say for DX 8 and below the FX 5900 is faster in almost all the cases.

GeForce FX 5900 is just a GeForce 4 on steroids, though, with some floating
point functionality. It only has 4 pixel shader units, and some of these
also have to shared for texture addressing duty. It has alot more bandwith
than any ATI card, but as the benchmarks show, this doesn't matter when
computational power for effects seems to be more important.

OTOH, the Radeon 9700 and Radeon 9800 aren't really very similar to the
Radeon 8500. They have similar features like ATI Truform, but that's about
it- the architecture is different.

Bottom line. NVidia built a card to beat ATI at benchmarks. ATI built a
card to run future games. ATI ultimately wins when Doom 3 gets delayed a
year and Half Life 2 pops out of nowhere with advanced features.

"magnulus" wrote in message
...

"Anders Albrechtsen" wrote in message
k...
More or less. GPU's are vastly different today than two or three years
ago.
Instead of just increasing memory bandwidth new co-processors with huge
floating point computation power are added to increase performance.
Currently ATI is ahead of Nvidia in that department when the floating
point
units are used to generate pixel shader 2.0 effects. In DirectX 8 games
and
below the GFX 5900 Ultra is just as fast as the Radeon 9800 Pro and
even
faster in some cases.
---
Anders

I'd say for DX 8 and below the FX 5900 is faster in almost all the
cases.

The only games that consistently perform better on the GeForceFX 5900 is
FS2004 and Serious Sam 2. Most other games run just as fast on the Radeon
9800 Pro and even faster in many cases especially in high resolutions with
maximum quality settings.

GeForce FX 5900 is just a GeForce 4 on steroids, though, with some
floating
point functionality. It only has 4 pixel shader units, and some of these
also have to shared for texture addressing duty. It has alot more
bandwith
than any ATI card, but as the benchmarks show, this doesn't matter when
computational power for effects seems to be more important.

That is a very precise description. The GeForceFX 5900 is a DirectX 8 card
with some DirectX 9 functionality. The only pure DirectX 9 cards on the
market are ATI's R3xxx and RV3xx cards.

OTOH, the Radeon 9700 and Radeon 9800 aren't really very similar to the
Radeon 8500. They have similar features like ATI Truform, but that's
about
it- the architecture is different.

Correct. The Radeon 8500 has more in common with a GeForce4. In regards to
Truform the Radeon 8500 supports this directly in hardware while the Radeon
9500+ cards (R3xxx/RV3xxx) only support it in software. But Truform isn't
really needed anymore since games use more polygons than two years ago and
you play in high resolution with FSAA and AF to soften jaggies.

Bottom line. NVidia built a card to beat ATI at benchmarks. ATI built
a
card to run future games. ATI ultimately wins when Doom 3 gets delayed a
year and Half Life 2 pops out of nowhere with advanced features.

Exactly.
---
Anders