GeForce 7900 Vs. Radeon X1900 65
Gamespot has an article comparing the shiny you get when using a Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX SLI and an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX Crossfire. From the article: "All told, the barrier to entry is enormous; but once you're there and running your games at 1920x1080 with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering, any regrets you might have had about spending a small fortune will be thrown out the window. We're sure that one of these setups offers a better experience, however. The two could differ in terms of raw performance or the subtleties of image quality depending on the game. Either way, if you're going to lay down the smack for the best performance, we're going to make sure you get it."
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
I know, I just got a new car. =^(
I know you want to think these are expensive, but after a couple thousand-dollar processors, a kilowatt powersupply, and the RAID array, they're pretty affordable.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1)
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1)
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:5, Insightful)
Articles like this are not for you. Your stuff plays fine for you. It does not play fine for the target audience of setups like are discussed above. A Ford gets you down the road well enough for most people, but not for a car enthusiast. This is no different.
We're all proud of your frugalness, and are glad you're having a good experience with the games you play. But others like to compare and discuss the bleeding edge of graphics technology, and comments of the formula above don't really add to that.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
The car analogy is a good one. I bought a cheap car because I need to get from point A to point B, talk about how cool BMW's are is great for those who can afford 'em, but it sur
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1)
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1)
We all know that means you sport about 3 and a half hard inches. Sorry, flappysack. Go post in a thread that interests you instead of trolling the ones that don't, please.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
Yes, but some women like it that wide.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
Their numbers aren't all that great compared to gamers, but there are graphics professionals who can easily and gladly purchase cards for $500 or more each when they are spending $50K on a motion base or tens of thousands on multiple projectors and screens for scientific visualizatio
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:3, Insightful)
And that would be more like 1/10th (or less) the price for a previous generation card (here's a froogle for a 6800 at $170, compared to roughly $1000 for a 7900 SLI).
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=geforc e+6800&pid=2223881873561302977&oid=299528262137621 7068&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=mrd [google.com]
But it wouldn't be nearly as good, unless you consider 8x slower nearly as good. In fact, given the prices
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
You gotta set your priorities, man.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:1)
I'd probably put it in my IRA and take the income tax saver's credit for an instant guaranteed 20% "return" on that investment, but that's just me.
Re:I'm sorry but I'd rather... (Score:2)
Want to see Everquest 2 performance. (Score:1)
Guess there's no set test they could do though to make it all fair. No "demo" script they can run on different configs.
Re:Want to see Everquest 2 performance. (Score:2)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
Personally, I miss 3dfx. They were doing great work until they decided it would be a good idea to cram huge amounts of unnecessary memory on to cards with aging chipsets. It would be nice to have three major companies competing rather than just two.
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
Nope, not with FC5 [slashdot.org]. But I have a Radeon and use Windows...
Just making a clarification, though.
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1)
I'll never buy an nVidia board again, regardless of the reviews.
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2, Redundant)
gauge:
1 a : a measurement (as of linear dimension) according to some standard or system: as (1) : the distance between the rails of a railroad (2) : the size of a shotgun barrel's inner diameter nominally expressed as the number of lead balls each just fitting that diameter required to make a pound (3) : the thickness of a thin material (as sheet metal or plastic film) (4) : the diameter of a slender object (as wire or a hypodermic needle) (5) : the fineness of
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1, Troll)
How about this then.... To the mods - Fuck You!
Having Karma to burn is fun indeed.
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
Typos don't just happen. People LET them happen. They're lazy, careless and a simple *typo* as you say, could lead to dire consequences if the mistake is made in the wrong place.
Slow down, take the time to cross your Ts and dot your Is.
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
nVidia's Linux Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? While Quake 4 has always run better on Nvidia hardware, Half-Life 2 has always performed better on ATI hardware [anandtech.com], to the extent that ATI hardware came bundled with Half-Life 2 [slashdot.org]. You have to give it to Nvidia for designing a card that would beat ATI's flagship at their own game (pun intended), and this alone deserves to declare them the winner of this comparison.
Their fab process and Q&A suck
Again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. Their "fab process"?? Both Nvidia and ATI used TSMC to fab both of those chips. No difference between the two. As for Q&A, then you have to talk to the specific board manufacturer. Nvidia doesn't design the graphics boards, only the chips. Other vendors like Asustek and eVGA design the boards, and sell them to you. So they are responsible for any Q&A.
they cannot be bothered to properly follow the farking API specs for dx9 or openGL
Again you're spreading FUD. The NV3x (GeForce FX) had issues, which NVidia were the first to acknowlege. The tables have completely turned with the Geforce 6x and 7x series. Can you point the parts of the spec that those cards don't implement properly?
I've see far too many of their cards TOAST from being OC'ed by their own drivers.
The drivers don't just OC the cards. You have to do it. You know that this voids the warranty, don't you?
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
So what exactly was the problem with the fab processes? The mask ? The feature size? The dielectric? Current leakage? What?
Oh I'm sorry, have I caught you trolling about something you don't even understand? How embarassing.
Bottom line is i don't trust them and they have done nothing to regain my trust.
I bet they're devastated about that. Who were you tal
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1, Flamebait)
Oh I'm sorry, have I caught you trolling about something you don't even understand? How embarassing.
Oh I'm sorry, have i caught you accusing other people of not knowing what they're talking about when you're just being an ass because they do? How embarassing.
I bet they're devastated about that. Who were you talking about anyway? ATI or Nvidia? I can't be bothered to try and
Re:Not a fair test (Score:1)
Re:Not a fair test (Score:2)
I have to say from general use (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally believe these are the more important factors to look at. The good news is that new cards are fast to the point that no matter what you get, you'll be happy. Any 7800 or 7900 card is enough to rip apart any game out there. You won't find yourself saying "damn, if only I'd bought an ATi this would run better" or vice versa. Because of that I really think the thing to look at is overall system and app stability.
Also, though it might be fun to have a mitching high end setup, I recommend against it unless you've simply tons of money to spend often, and nothing to spend it on. Some people might be tempted to get something like that with the idea that you don't need to upgrade for quite some time. Fair enough, after all that performance is such that it's way ahead of current titles' requirements. The problem is that video cards come out with new features at an amazing pace. The upgrade the abilities of their shaders and rendering engines to do new, more realistic graphics. So it becomes not a question of raw pixel pushing power, but what they can do with it.
Once could get a professional visualization system built in 1999 that far exceeds the raw pixel stats of new boards, using a large array of Voodoo chips (Quantum3D makes such products), driving amazingly large displays with super high fidelity anti-aliasing. Yet, you'd find they were incapable of running a game like Quake 4. Why? Well for all their power, they lack the new features that are used now to create visual effects like visual distortions due to flame. Those capabilities weren't introduced to cards until receantly.
Thus your best bet is to find a price point that you think you can afford around once a year and look at buying there. Rather than trying to spend $600 once every three years, look at spending $200 every year, and so on. In general, you get a better experience for it. This holds true at basically any price point I've ever looked at.
If you can afford to buy around the upper end of the mid range cards, which is generally $150-200, you tend to find that nearly all games out there will run well, which a reasonable amount of eye candy. Developers aren't stupid, they know that most people don't have the latest $600+ card, and they need to sell to everyone they can. However even if you get a more low range $100 card, you still should find game run fine, just with details turned down.
Re:I have to say from general use (Score:2)
I'm holding off on purchasing right now - but I may well end up buying ATI next time (I've Nvidia ATM) for this reason.
I'm not attempting to run Linux though.
Re:I have to say from general use (Score:1)
That being said, I much prefer ATI at the lower end of the spectrum. nVidia tends to lag really bad in my experience. I say this because I originally bought an nVidia MX 5400 for my main system and had hella local lag playing my games. I bought a cheap ATI 9600SE, which was a bit cheaper than the nVidia was, and it rocked the house. I threw the nVidia in my second system, which is almost exactly like my main system, but less disk space, an
Re:I have to say from general use (Score:2)
Re:I have to say from general use (Score:3, Informative)
Ive been playing Wow for quite a while using a 9600xt and have not once come across a GPU reset. Although right now I can't even start the game Silk Road, but I dont think thats a genera
Re:I have to say from general use (Score:2)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-tech-support&t=684059&p=1&tmp=1#post684059 [worldofwarcraft.com]
ATi claims to have fixed it in a driver release (it's in the patch notes) but clearly it happens for many people still. Some, like me, found that the unoffical Omega drivers seem to fix it, but not all. Seems it may be related to the Catalyst Control Centre, since that's the major change with the Omega drivers.
Do the math!!! (Score:5, Funny)
geez.
Re:Do the math!!! (Score:1)
Re:Do the math!!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Which one is better in terms of... (Score:1, Informative)
The Nvidia chipset.
A). It's pretty widely known the Nvidia's drivers work a whole lot better with Linux than ATI's, although ATI is finally starting to make an effort to close this gap.
B). I play UT2004 on Debian all the time, using Nvidia hardware, and I've never had a single crash. Hell, for me, it performs better on Linux than it does with Windows XP, and I don't run a single unneccesary service on Windows (I use it strictly for gaming, so it's set up for gaming).
Red Bars? (Score:1, Funny)
Advertising Video Cards on Video Cards? (Score:4, Insightful)
Detail for the uninitiated (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia:
Nvidia [wikipedia.org]
Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units [wikipedia.org]
GeForce_7_Series [wikipedia.org]
ATI_Technologies [wikipedia.org]
Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units [wikipedia.org]
Radeon_Series [wikipedia.org]
Anandtech:
ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series [anandtech.com]
X1900 XT/XTX Roundup: A Closer Look at the Performance Leader in Graphics [anandtech.com]
NVIDIA's Tiny 90nm G71 and G73: GeForce 7900 and 7600 Debut [anandtech.com]
Performance is based upon the system as a whole (Score:1)