Wich card is the king of the hill (nv40 or R420)

[Proforma]

Nvidia and ATI DX 9 Next generation products

I have been an Nvidia fan for a long time, last year I bought a Radeon 9800 Pro and really liked it.

I bought the 9800 Pro because of distrust for what Nvidia did and because it blew away Nvidia products at the time and Nvidia made a major mistake.

I now feel that ATI has fallen for big mistakes when they had Nvidia down.
PS/VS 3.0 is a big deal, its not like its a feature of Nvidia only, this is for everyone that makes 3D cards.

I would give ATI props but they don't deserve them this round.
Basically the R420 is a speed boosted Radeon 9800 Pro, why should I buy
something that is a refresh?

The reason ATI doesn't require higher voltage is because it doesn't do as much, if they would have put those features in it would be like the Geforce 6800.

All ATI has is some better Antialasing method, more speed, and a new compression method that may not be used on all hardware out there.

Its basically a refresh and its not much faster than the Geforce 6800 Ultra. I have seen some tests which have the Geforce 6800 Ultra which is faster than the R420. If Nvidia optmises their drivers it will even have a bigger speed boost, so really whats the big deal?

I am a developer and I am working with shaders so shader 3.0 is a big deal for me. That is full direct X 9 compliance and Nvidia didn't have this in the past, hell they didn't even have muliple render targets, but now they do and they also have 128 bit color and If I have to pay 500 dollars for a video card, it better have all the features that DX 9 can support.

What is not a big deal to me is ATI's texture compression, who uses it even in the future and why should I bother?

I love ATI and my Radeon 9800 Pro, but ATI got owned this generation and it was a very stupid move because SM3 is a DX 9 feature that should be used by ALL up and coming video cards.

Its reminds me of the stupid move that Nvidia made with the Geforce 4MX, what the hell was that all about? duh! Same thing with the R420, duh!

 

[Rugor]

ATI didn't have the developers' best interest in mind, they had their customers' best interest in mind.

ATI only had ATI's best interest in mind 8)

I don't know why people adorn these companies with illusions of morality or generosity. ATI is a corporation out to take your money just like any other corporation, not your buddy from down the street.

Your choice of that one quotation makes me wonder if you really understood the thrust of my post. Perhaps I was mistaken in using the term best interest, but I used it to refer back to the quote from Bjorn at the start of my post so it seemed appropriate.

Anyway-- to restate my post since your post and quotation seem to imply you didn't completely understand it: ATI designed their card according to the needs of the larger rather than the smaller part of the market because they felt that would allow them to sell more cards which would end up making them more money.

I'd like to close this post with another quotation from the same post of mine you chose to selectively quote out of context.

I'm seeing a definite pattern here. ATI chose to support the people who buy their products over developers. They followed the money, and it makes good business sense.

 

[webmedic]

um thats when they run it still doesn't tell you about how a fair number of things simply crash back to the desktop and complain about missing extensions for the nvidia drivers. For me it doesn't matter so much I run linux as my daily work horse and as servers. I dont play 3d games on it so it's no issue to me. The issues are still there. If it''s not one thing it's another. Untill both companies start provideing proper open source drivers that can be compiled properly without missing shared libs that no linux vender has it's rather worthles to say one is better than hte other.

The truth is if you want good 3d for now dont use linux.

Cairo is the next generation display system for X. Eventually the goal is to move all 2D rendering to opengl and do away with the 2D driver situation completely, so this kind of stuff is going to become really important. I'm not saying that nVidia's drivers are perfect or even really particularly "good", but they seem to be in significantly better shape than ATIs at the moment. Just look at the rants on rage3d's linux forums after Alex left.

I really hope that ATI improves things. They claimed things would get better once they moved operations back to HQ, but so far the support seems to have gotten significantly worse.

Nite_Hawk

I cant say from the forums it's kind of one sided if you dont go and hang out on nvidia forums also. I can tell you as a system builder that both are just as bad period. I keep hearing all this nvidia better linux support and since I build systems for a living I can tell you it just aint so.

I even took nvidia to task for this at a systems builder conference (ati was not their or else I would have with them also) and they really had no answer for me at all. It was more like we'll get back to you on this. Well they never got back to me either. I'm very involved with linux as I build server systems also and I try to promote it (sanely) when it is apropriate. Untill companies stop treating it like it is a toy and doesn't really matter there is not going to be better support really.

I am hoping that there will be some day though.

 

[christoph]

dave orton answered on the topic straight forward in dave b's interview.
they dropped r420 from the pc roadmap because of execution issues.

But that wasn’t the cause of the roadmap change, we had to make this change anyhow due to execution issues.

thats why we have the 'gap filler' r420....and as a gap filler it does quite well imo...the feature set leaves me disapointed though

 

[Atomahawk]

You may not buy that but what other explanation would you believe if that's what ATI is saying?

It's simple imo. The R420 doesn't support SM3.0 and Ati need to have some explanation for that. Saying that most games released this year will be PS2.0 is not wrong and is what i would say if i were them also. But i don't buy that they had the developers best interest in mind when deciding to drop SM3.0 support.

Look Bjorn I know your a smart guy I have read enough of your post here and a couple of other sights to know that. Yes the R420 dosn't support PS 3.0, that dosn't mean ATI will not support it in there next card , just not right now. They don't think it's required for this generation and that is their business decision. You do know they do this for money right? It's not like they have been sitting on their hands for the past year right?

Besides who pushed PS 2.0 to the forefront Nvidia? No ATI did, if Nvidia had their way everything would be PS 1.4 right (oh like it is now) With all of their TWIMTBP games out there you would have thought they would have encouraged developers to move on to PS 2.0 by now? No they haven't why not? I know you know the answer to that. They sit at those same meetings with the M$ directX team as ATI do's, what have they been doing with that knowledge? Did they work on a better solution for their own product? So now you want ATI to push PS 3.0 out there, why?
I for one will be glad when they do have PS 3.0 support, because with their track record and close working relationship with M$ I know it will work great. Now let ATI bask in the sun and rake in some cash while Nvidia continues to scramble to make up a billion dollars to cover cost of their new card, Is that really true a billion dollars?

 

[AlphaWolf]

If I am not mistaken TR:AoD was released within a year of the r300.

I'm guessing that we'll see games supporting SM3.0 much faster then that though.

Less than a year from when the ultra was announced or less than a year from when it hits the shelves?

And will consumers who don't have SM3 really be missing anything? I don't think SM3 support hacked on at the end of a products development is anything revolutionary.

Games built with SM3.0 in mind from the ground up are 2 to 3 years away.

 

[trinibwoy]

Your choice of that one quotation makes me wonder if you really understood the thrust of my post. Perhaps I was mistaken in using the term best interest, but I used it to refer back to the quote from Bjorn at the start of my post so it seemed appropriate.

Nope nope nope nope...... My remark was directed at that particular quote and as you highlighted I was commenting on your choice of words. Completely understood what you were trying to say. No need to be so defensive....one love!!!

 

[KimB]

lol, PS2.0 is quite well good enough for now.

Software T&L was good enough when the GeForce 256 was released.
Fixed function was good enough when the GeForce3 was released.
PS 1.x was enough when the Radeon 9700 was released.

Come on. New architctures have always been about future games, and that's what my comment was about too. If hardware companies always waited until game developers released games that supported the new hardware features, then we'd never have new hardware features.

Besides I expect that the R500 will support it. I think the fact that there is little API support for the PS3.0 feature is more of a holdup then anything, wouldn't you agree?

Um, what? There has been API support for PS 3.0 since DX9 was released. That's vastly more API support than we've ever seen from a new generation of hardware.

 

[KimB]

And by the way, as for how ATI is holding people back, it seems apparent that the next value part from ATI will be some iteration of the R4xx line, a product that, as far as programmability is concerned, has one PS feature over the R3xx: more instructions (According to OpenGL Guy, the R3xx also supports 32 registers).

nVidia, however, should be releasing the rest of the NV4x line by the end of the year, including a value part that will make SM 3.0, including floating point buffer support, available to the masses.

Now, I have stated in the past that SM 3.0 part will primarily be capable of not more effects, but better performance. Keep in mind that realistically, there will be a number of effects (particluarly ones that depend on FP buffer blending or texture filtering) that will be greater than 2x faster when run in SM 3.0.

One way to think of it is with DOOM3: John Carmack has stated that even the GeForce-class graphics cards will be able to run all effects of the engine (this was as of a few years ago, so it may have changed by now), but you'd almost certainly want to disable specular highlights because it will bring the performance to a crawl.

Similarly, a game in the future that is designed with SM 3.0 in mind will bring SM 2.0 hardware to its knees. ATI is holding game developers back by not sooner releasing a SM 3.0 value part (which seems very apparent given that they don't even have a high-end SM 3.0 part yet).

 

[Atomahawk]

dave orton answered on the topic straight forward in dave b's interview.
they dropped r420 from the pc roadmap because of execution issues.

But that wasn’t the cause of the roadmap change, we had to make this change anyhow due to execution issues.

thats why we have the 'gap filler' r420....and as a gap filler it does quite well imo...the feature set leaves me disapointed though

Gap filler is a good term I can live with, lets face it the cards are awsomes beasts that will give you some very serious PS 2.0 power. for a good 8 months maybe more depending if developers decide to go with full PS 3.0 or partial and full PS 2.0. One way or another current cards owners of both brands may not have that much usable power to draw from (besides the 9800XT and 5950 owners).

 

[aaronspink]

Of the top of my head: OGL games like CoD, NWN and JK run faster on a 6800.

Apparently KOTR doesn't run on NV with new drivers... FYI

Aaron

 

[Doomtrooper]

When buying a new video card people upgrade for SPEED, not features. In the Original Geforce vs. Radeon days the Radeon has a superior feature set but lost on benchmarks and also lost on sales.

When you buy a video card you want to be able to use the cards features in its lifespan, speed is a factor, AA and AF are factors and developers will NOT overlook the millions of SM 2.0 cards out there.
When SM 3.0 is fully supported in DX and we can then see how a Nv40 performs in full FP 32 mode and with branching, and if it performs well I will agree with some of you, initially benchmarks show the opposite so if the NV40 performs poorly doing these tasks I hope your ready to eat your shoe by putting your foot in your mouth.

Personally I buy a card that will have useable features used within a year.

 

[Doomtrooper]

And by the way, as for how ATI is holding people back, it seems apparent that the next value part from ATI will be some iteration of the R4xx line, a product that, as far as programmability is concerned, has one PS feature over the R3xx: more instructions (According to OpenGL Guy, the R3xx also supports 32 registers).

NO matter what ATI did you bitched and no matter what they will ever do you will bitch, spend more time on Nvnews where people can read your mindless drivel.

 

[ninelven]

When SM 3.0 is fully supported in DX and we can then see how a Nv40 performs in full FP 32 mode and with branching, and if it performs well I will agree with some of you, initially benchmarks show the opposite so if the NV40 performs poorly doing these tasks I hope your ready to eat your shoe by putting your foot in your mouth.

Where can I find these benchmarks?

 

[Doomtrooper]

Where can I find these benchmarks?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12107&start=0

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11753&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20


Full Precision Performance Drop Per Pixel Lighting test -32.9%

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv40/index.php?p=21

 

[ninelven]

Ah, ok... I thought you were talking about SM3.0 instead of FP32. There are certainly benchmarks documenting that.

 

[jvd]

Similarly, a game in the future that is designed with SM 3.0 in mind will bring SM 2.0 hardware to its knees. ATI is holding game developers back by not sooner releasing a SM 3.0 value part (which seems very apparent given that they don't even have a high-end SM 3.0 part yet).

Yet it may even bring sm 3.0 hardware to its knees .

Do you know how well the nv40 class hardware runs sm3.0 software ?

It seems to me its not even running the only dx 9 game out right now in p.s 2.0 mode. Even still at p.s 1.1 it still looses to the r420.

As for ati holding things back I dunno .

If the geforce 4 supported p.s 1.4 we'd have games using it along time ago.

If the geforce fx could run p.s 2.0 games at the speed of the r3x0 we'd have had more p.s 2.0 games along time ago .

Now that nvidia finally has 1 part that costs +300$

 

[Doomtrooper]

Whats holding developers back, the truth !!

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

956900 Submitted Surveys. (Almost 1 Million People)

NVidia GeForce4 MX Series 147,398 15.40 %
NVidia GeForce4 Series 117,106 12.24 %
NVidia GeForce2 MX Series 104,682 10.94 %

38% of the dominating cards to play online games with are powered by DX6-DX7 class video cards...with NO pixel shader support at all. So when I see comments about ATI holding back technology, I just simply laugh.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

I cant say from the forums it's kind of one sided if you dont go and hang out on nvidia forums also. I can tell you as a system builder that both are just as bad period. I keep hearing all this nvidia better linux support and since I build systems for a living I can tell you it just aint so.

I even took nvidia to task for this at a systems builder conference (ati was not their or else I would have with them also) and they really had no answer for me at all. It was more like we'll get back to you on this. Well they never got back to me either. I'm very involved with linux as I build server systems also and I try to promote it (sanely) when it is apropriate. Untill companies stop treating it like it is a toy and doesn't really matter there is not going to be better support really.

I am hoping that there will be some day though.

I'm not saying that nVidia's drivers are great, but the comment I posted earlier is from one of the actual developers of Cairo, and he's working together with the developers of Mesa-GL. He explicitly stated in that post that nVidias drivers under linux are working well, while ATIs drivers are having a lot of problems with memory leaks and crashing. If anyone is qualified to make a valid comparison between the two drivers, it is the guys on the Cairo, MesaGL, and freedesktop development formums.

I agree with you in that I would be extremely pleased if either of these companies produced opensource drivers. I'd probably buy a product that was significantly slower than the other if it actually had full opensource drivers. Unfortunately though, I don't think there are any cards at this point where this is true (even with well supported cards like the 8500 under DRI).

Nite_Hawk

 

[thop]

R420