Author Topic: Nvidia in trouble? ATI king of the heap? (Read 882 times)

FOGOLD · « **Reply #15 on:** March 10, 2003, 09:50:11 AM »

Skuzzy, what's your opinion on purchasing a GF FX? I have a XP1800 and youve gotta watch you don't max out your processor by aiming for too good a video card. It's got a lot to do with Synergy!

Skuzzy · « **Reply #16 on:** March 10, 2003, 11:57:28 AM »

The FX will be much faster than your CPU, but I would wait until NVidia gets the NV35 out the door. It should be a much better part than the NV30 based FX.
The current FX suffers from some problems NVidia is working around in its drivers, which leads to more CPU overhead than is neccessary for a video GPU in this class.

Ack-Ack · « **Reply #17 on:** March 14, 2003, 05:03:34 PM »

I agree with Skuzzy and holding out for Nvidia cards based on the NV35 chip.

Here's a review of the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra from Guru3D.

GeForce FX 5800

Ack-Ack

Reschke · « **Reply #18 on:** March 14, 2003, 06:12:27 PM »

I tend to agree with the fact of holding out. I shelled out big dollars last spring for a GeForce4 Ti4400 that is still humming along nicely. I doubt that I pop down anymore cash for another video card till late this year (Christmas time) or next spring when the NV35 is supposed to be in full production. Some of us just don't have the cojones to go tell the wife that her second child will have to wait on its bottle because daddy needs a new video card.

Siaf__csf · « **Reply #19 on:** March 15, 2003, 04:09:33 AM »

The FX can't even compete with the year old 9700 pro, it's not a very smart purchase for anyone especially regarding the horrible problems with noise levels. The standard version of FX was/is as loud as a household vacuum cleaner!

MANDOBLE · « **Reply #20 on:** March 15, 2003, 05:50:07 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Matrox is about done for. I would be surprised to see them last to the end of this year.

Any good alternative for up to 4 monitor support with a single card?

Ack-Ack · « **Reply #21 on:** March 15, 2003, 06:04:41 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Siaf__csf
The FX can't even compete with the year old 9700 pro, it's not a very smart purchase for anyone especially regarding the horrible problems with noise levels. The standard version of FX was/is as loud as a household vacuum cleaner!

The recent drivers released for the GeForce FX dramatically improved the benchmarks for the card and in some, even passed that of the 9700. But the problem is that the drivers can't over come the inherent problems with the FX chipset. I think Nvidia has realized this and that's why it's now concrentrating its full force on the NV35 chipset. And as for the noise from the fan, the FX comes with or without the fan.

Ack-Ack

Skuzzy · « **Reply #22 on:** March 16, 2003, 08:42:55 AM »

Ack-Ack, those improvements came by using FP16 (16 bit) color resolution, which is not DX9 compliant. The 9700Pro uses FP24 (24 bit) color for all operations.

The NV30,31,34 can use FP32, which is DX9 compliant, but the performance goes into the proverbial trash.

NV3x currently has too many bugs in it. They will not be able to get WHQL drivers for it due to the drivers forcing FP16. FP24 or better is required for DX9 certification. None of NVidia's offerings until NV35 will pass DX9 certification without substantial performance hits (talking about FX Ultra's running at less than 25fps).
They also had to put fogging into the drivers as it is broken in the hardware.

NVidia is goin full force at the NV35. And this one should correct many of the problems with the current NV30,31,34 chips and allow NVidia to get WHQL drivers released.
I would expect the NV35 to be ready in the July/August timeframe.