5900Ultra review at [H]ard OCP

[swanlee]

When will it end? how many people have to be ripped off by nvidia before they are exposed in the mainstream press for lying and cheating there way into people's wallets. What they have done really borders on consumer fraud and I still don't no why sites like hardocp still continue to pander to Nvidia's needs when in the end they will go down with Nvdidia when this does finally hit manstream and you have users filing classa ction lawsuits against oem's and Nvidia, then watch the oem's turn around and claim nvidia fooled them to and sue the crap out of them.

This coold put the industry back years, when all is said and done but it will be for the better. The other alternative is Nvidia gets away with this scott free like it looks like they are going to and continue to buy it's way to the top.

What a shame really

 

[martrox]

I got repremanded here for being a bit abusive to Mr. Bennett a few weeks ago. While maybe my language comparing him to a stubborn, longeared member of the horse family may have been a bit over the top, this just points out the [H]ard fact that nVidia has bought themselves a website - a few, actually. While it's a nobrainer to figure out where Mr. Bennett is coming from, just what the heck is up with Brent? Does he get paid enough to sell his integrity? And does he realize just how much this may cost him down the road?

Well, I was hoping Brent would finally come to his senses and tell Mr. Bennett the facts.....guess I should put the crackpipe down now!

Brent, it's a very easy thing to lose your reputation by selling you soul.... and it's very [H]ard to gain that reputation back...... just ask Mr. Bennett.....

 

[Pete]

To paraphrase - "The fact is that its faster, when people play the game thats the IQ they will get and they don't run it with mipmap levels on; apparantly real IQ doesn't matter to users just so long as it looks OK and plays fast."

Well, that's disappointing. Isn't this one of the steps on the path 3dfx took to oblivion--the 22-bit color which nVidia was glad to decry as incomparable to their 32-bit?

I'd like Brent to weigh in here, if he could, to more fully explain his ([H]'s?) position. If they're just going to bench with whatever settings are on "out of the box," then they're just setting themselves up to be duped, and thus dupe their readers, IMO.

 

[Reverend]

Pixel Shaked 1.1 is seen as DX8 technology by many but we will save that argument for another day.

That's a new unheard-of DX8 technology.

No comments re Brent's exchange with Dave. [edit] Ok, so I had to say something. I think Brent (or perhaps Kyle or any other reviewers) is a little concerned about using words that appear to "damn" a IHV through discoveries that reveal, uh, abnormalities. That's not quite the mindset to have... that's missing the bigger picture. Especially when you're reviewing a video card from one IHV where the review compares it to another offering from another IHV. The fact is that the two video cards are not doing "the same thing". I would feel (sorta) fine accepting the review as is if Brent didn't include the 9800PRO scores. In any case, the bigger picture is that we don't want the industry to go down the drain by doing things that is not supposed to happen. Like Dave said, it is ultimately bad for the entire industry if all IHVs advertise something that the consumers will never get. That's cheating. The fact that NVIDIA is not doing trilin in UT2003 is not cheating per se -- it is the fact that NVIDIA said that its "Quality" image setting results in filtering as requested by the app (and that this is not actually happening) that is cheating.

BTW, were both the NVIDIA and ATI cards using the same shadow mode in the Splinter Cell benchmarks?

 

[Reverend]

I didnt think Dave cussed

Ah, but you need to read some of his emails to me!

 

[nelg]

[H] has just run out of excuses. They have tried and tried to fool there viewers into believing that they have their best interest at hart. We have from [H]... “Bench marking Done Rightâ€, “Apples to Applesâ€, “If you can’t see it, it’s not cheatingâ€, “We will use custom time demos, so IHVs cannot cheatâ€. The reality is that they have compared apples to oranges. You can see it. IHVs can cheat in any benchmark and have a perfect example of bench marking done wrong by the site that promised to do it right. What a bunch of prostitutes.

 

[Mark]

I thought, through all misguided rhetoric that Kyle has been posting lately, that at least Brent would maintain his integrity and continue to publish good, objective reviews for [H]. Looks like I was wrong. Truly depressing.

I'm pretty sure you're reading this Brent. Care to comment?

 

[micron]

Maybe [H] feels that their readers arent interested in a segment of the review devoted to mip transitions, and point to point AF samples under different scenerios in different games. One things for sure....[H] doesnt do things the way B3D does, I doubt that any review that [H] turns out in the future will please the scrutiny of this forum.

 

[Ostsol]

Still, after all that they spouted about apples-to-apples benchmarking. . . *sighs* They're contradicting themselves and no doubt know that they are doing so. They have effectively become part of NVidia's marketting -- something such a site should be avoiding at all costs. Fansites slant themselves in favour of specific companies and no one can blame them for doing so. However, hardware review sites must remain neutral so as to provide unbiased, equal, and otherwise objective observations and opinions. If the situation doesn't reverse, we'll end up dumping [H] in the same boat as Tom's.

 

[micron]

Since Brent didnt come here, Dave went over there.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=640474&perpage=15&pagenumber=3
Sorry if this post pisses you off Doomtrooper....

 

[bmg]

Disagree BIGTIME...this has been discovered yet no mention of it (and Daniel Vogel replied in that thread and is aware)

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6719&start=0

Yet he has no problem putting up the graphs with the FX card disabling Trilinear even though it is set in the control panel.
I would not call that a fair review at all, in fact there was no renaming of .exe's and they used that same old [H] benchmark that has been targetted for optimizations (50% improvement in recent driver releases).

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDk2LDM=

Typical inaccurate REVIEW from [H] !

I played Star Trek Elite Force 2 with a Radeon 9800 Pro at 4xAA, 8xAF-Quality and 1280x960x32, all game quality settings maxed. The game looked and played great. I purchased a 5900 Ultra so I replayed parts of EF2 with it for comparison (4xAA and 8xAF set in control panel and trilinear in game). Frankly the 5900 Ultra looked terrible compared to the 9800 pro. An easy place to see it is in the Enterprise shuttle bay along the edges of the grate (or whatever it's called) under the shuttles. The mipmap banding is really obvious and distracting when you move. Sad considering that nVidia AF is supposed to be better than ATI's.

Up until the Radeon 9700 pro became available I always bought at least one and frequently two of nVidia's high end cards. I bought a 5800 ultra, which was disappointing to say the least, and recently a 5900 Ultra, which I ended up returning. I'm so disgusted with nVidia after trying the 5900 Ultra that NV40 is going to have to be really amazing for me to take a chance with nVidia again. I no longer even have any interest in keeping up on nVidia news, for example I still check out the "other graphic card" forum at nvnews, but I now make a point to avoid the "nvidia graphic card" forum. I was an nvidia fan for years, but I just can't stand what they've been doing the last 6 months or so. The 5900 Ultra and current drivers was the last straw.

 

[micron]

The mipmap banding is really obvious and distracting when you move.

I thought that mipmap banding was normal before I bought an ATi card.

 

[Himself]

The mipmap banding is really obvious and distracting when you move.

I thought that mipmap banding was normal before I bought an ATi card.

You were blind, but now you can see, praise the lord brother! Everybody witness the salvation of our brother in arms against the tyrany of oppression and let us proceed to the suppression of tyrany on our goal of global salvation! Amen

 

[micron]

The mipmap banding is really obvious and distracting when you move.

I thought that mipmap banding was normal before I bought an ATi card.

You were blind, but now you can see, praise the lord brother! Everybody witness the salvation of our brother in arms against the tyrany of oppression and let us proceed to the suppression of tyrany on our goal of global salvation! Amen

Well, what sux is that I temporarily am back to using an Nvidia card. I wish I still believed that mip banding was normal, I would be happy with this card!.....j/k

 

[nelg]

There is something about the Troika of Nvidia, BFG and [H] that disturbs me. After the formation of BFG was announced following the sale of Visontech how did the company survive with out products for so long? How did BFG get to become the first company o release a retail 5900ultra in the U.S. ? Do they really have more clout than MSI or Asus? I know this is speculation on my part but it seems that BFG is nothing more than an extension of Nvidia itself. [H] fits in here with an observation on my part of having given them an disproportionate amount of exposure since there inception.

 

[nelg]

The precident that [H] is setting here is just utterly fucking sad and stupid - all ATI has to do is release a set of drivers that does exactly the same - dial down IQ to increase performance, and that ultimately puts us on a path that screws all consumers.

ATI could even forewarn [H] about what the drivers are doing and then Brent could be the good little lap dog that he is and respond in the same manner that he did this time.

quote:
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Originally posted by hardBBQ
Brent, was trilinear filtering determined to be enabled for the 5900U in the UT2003 tests?
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I left Trilinear settings for the game default to whatever the game uses.

I set the nvidia drivers to quality mode.

I didn't sit down and examine each map with the mip-maps highlighted though. You can look at the screenshots yourself and see how it looks to you with 8XAF.

Recent findings on B3D seem to indicate that the 5900 is not doing Trilinear fully in UT2K3 though.

I haven't examined a comparison between it and the 9800 myself yet though.

 

[micron]

Brent could be the good little lap dog that he is and respond in the same manner that he did this time.

The name calling is pretty fucking lame.....seriously. Look where we're heading by acting like this. So ya'll didnt like Brent's review, thats cool. I understand being pissed off about it, but c'mon.....this is turning into a vicious circle. [H] fucks up, and the mannerism of this forum gets severly affected. Disagree with me all you want, or jump my shit even, but thats they way I honestly feel....

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I can't believe Dave B swore.

I am scared for life.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Maybe [H] feels that their readers arent interested in a segment of the review devoted to mip transitions, and point to point AF samples under different scenerios in different games. One things for sure....[H] doesnt do things the way B3D does, I doubt that any review that [H] turns out in the future will please the scrutiny of this forum.

That would be fine - if you were showing the whole picture. If you are going to tell people that one board "dominates" another under certain scenarios and in doing so you only paste image quality shots from one board and not the board is apparantly "dominating" then you've not done your job. You've misrepresentated the comparative conditions and hidden things from the people reading the review - thats really shoddy journalism (which I wouldn't have tarred Brent with before) or an agenda - take your pick.

 

[StealthHawk]

I've been stating this since the FX launch, Hardocp is paid off ..time for people to accept the truth...denial against so many facts just shows how 'strung' along some people are.

I'm not sure how you can say that. [H] is the first review site that exposed what exactly was happening with the Application/Balanced/Performance Intellisample driver settings, and showed the world how bad Balanced and Performance looked in comparison to Application. [H] is also the first major review site that used Application mode to benchmark gfFX cards in.