Pre-order X800 Pro - ?NDA? - 8 extreme / 12 normal PS pipes

[Moose]

Basically the NV40 suffers from the same weakness as the NV3x?

Good question, one I've been asking myself since the 6800 preview and the article on Tommti brought into question their benchmarks of Farcry with the 6800 running fewer Ps2.0 shaders than the 9800XT.

This definately needs answering before I buy the NV40 that's for sure.

Ps3.0 will be useless this generation if the NV40 can't run it reasonably well and we don't really even know what the NV40 can do with PS2.0 let alone Ps3.0.

 

[Richard]

This might be a stupid question but... if the IQ problems on GFFX/GF6 were introduced with the 1.1 patch why not test with the retail game version? If the 1.1 patch is absolutely required to use the GF6 then... hum... how could CryTek have released a patch that has obvious quality issues with the card they were specifically targeting to provide support for?

 

[Bry]

Basically the NV40 suffers from the same weakness as the NV3x?

I don't think that that is what he is saying, remember that the 9800xt runs the nv3x path faster than the dx9 path also.

Whether there is more to it than nv3x just being a less complex shader path I don't know, there may be other optimizations there also, but clearly there is a fair performance benefit for 9800xt running the nv path.

Yeah but when running the R3XX path the ATI is faster than the NV3X and it appears that the NV40 suffered as well. as it is much closer to the 9800XT than in other benchmarks. I think that is what K.I.L.E.R. was talking about..Yes the 9800XT got a performance boost going to PS1.1. But when running all the PS2.0 shaders it took less if a hit than NV3X and it appears the NV40 took a bigger hit than anyone would think it would.

 

[Blacklash]

As far as the clock speed of the X800pro is concerned I have heard 525 core floating around. As always it's speculation til Tuesday.

 

[Moose]

This might be a stupid question but... if the IQ problems on GFFX/GF6 were introduced with the 1.1 patch why not test with the retail game version? If the 1.1 patch is absolutely required to use the GF6 then... hum... how could CryTek have released a patch that has obvious quality issues with the card they were specifically targeting to provide support for?

Because they were addressing the bigger issue of game speed with Nvidia and the NV3x.

The reduction was on purpose to decrease the number of Ps2.0 shaders to get the NV3x performance more at the level of ATI in this game. The image quality problems were a result. (Sorry bugs IQ don't disappear by running at full IQ.)

I'm still not convinced that Nv40's Ps2.0 speed it fast enough let alone its Ps3.0 abliities.

You would have thought that if PS3.0 was such a big deal that they would have gone out of their way to showcase it.

I have to admit that seeing Ps1.x pics shown as Ps2.0 and Ps2.0 as Ps3.0 doesn't exactly instill confidence either.

 

[Ardrid]

I heard that was the speed for the XT. The Pro is rumored to be 475-500MHz.

 

[nelg]

JYFI, I got a couple of teaser benchmarks from somebody with an XT PE. It's pulling double the FPS of the 9800XT in Far Cry at 1280x1024 with 4xAA/8xAF. This is about 20% faster than a 6800U@400/550MHz on the same system, using the same settings (not sure about PS 2.0/3.0 though). They're about the same speed without AA/AF, but this is on a 3.2GHz P4 and the CPU limitation is extremely apparent. The AA/AF margins in Far Cry are reportedly even higher on more powerful, A64-based testbeds.

Interested to see the A64 results, since - as I just said to you - 20% is perhaps a tiny bit down on what I'd expect. Certainly nothing to be sniffed at though, although it does make you wonder what a better clocked 6800 could do. 20% is only around 10fps, perhaps less depending on what impact 8xAF is having. A 50mhz bump would certainly drag that back a bit.

Xbit's results

 

[PaulS]

Nelg - With AA/AF, we've been seeing scores in the 50s and 60s, hence 20% = ~10fps

 

[nelg]

I just was merely surprised that there was such a small gain from the ~9% over clock.

 

[mozmo]

I have noticed that without any AF/AA the nv40 appears to be cpu limited pretty much all the time, that's why i predict we'll only see the speed differences between X800Xt and 6800 ultra in extreme resolution and AA/AF situations. Even then it will probably be close too.

 

[DemoCoder]

Has anyone ran a 640x480 test on multiple CPUs to see where the limits are and how it scales?

 

[CapsLock]

Did anyone notice that Tom's review used "normal" quality settings when benchmarking Colin McRae, a supposedly shader intensive game? (The intro list of games said high quality but the actual chart said normal.) Hmmm.....

Dig, I hope the people at Ati are learning that you have a problem connecting what happens to the company and how they feel.

If you don't know what Alexa spyware is perhaps since you contribute and link so often to EB, and since they are uploading it to people's computers, you should find out.

Vysez, I never used the word "hate" so go pound salt.

Caps

edit: misspelled McRae and subbed "normal" for medium. Tom's chart says "normal quality"

 

[BRiT]

<OT>
You know, if you used a better browser you wouldn't have those pesky spyware issues. There's a wide selection available. Try one. You won't have browser spyware issues again.

As for Alexa, you can modify it to not be spyware by having it use google instead. Directions are listed here: http://www.imilly.com/alexa.htm
Edit the line in your own copy of 'Related.htm' [C:\Windows\Web\related.htm]
FROM: RelatedServiceURL="http://related.msn.com/related.asp?url=";
TO: RelatedServiceURL="http://www.google.com/search?q=related:+";
</OT>

 

[CapsLock]

Cool Brit, thanx for the advice. Which browser do you prefer?

Caps

 

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

<OT>

Lynx, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, and Konqueror (among others) are all valid browsers. I, personally, prefer Opera and Firefox.

</OT>

Has anyone ran a 640x480 test on multiple CPUs to see where the limits are and how it scales?

I, too, would be interested in this, but I feel that we're probably processor limited at this point.

 

[MrBond]

<OT>

Lynx, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, and Konqueror (among others) are all valid browsers. I, personally, prefer Opera and Firefox.

</OT>

Of those, Opera and Mozilla Firefox are the only two that are really viable on a Windows system, assuming Netscape 4.x. I have a preference for Mozilla Firefox myself.

Oh and neither of those have any of those have any built-in spyware problems, though the truly paranoid can probably nitpick at the built in advertising in opera.

offtopic moment over

 

[dizietsma]

Moose
I'm still not convinced that Nv40's Ps2.0 speed it fast enough let alone its Ps3.0 abliities.

You would have thought that if PS3.0 was such a big deal that they would have gone out of their way to showcase it.

I have to admit that seeing Ps1.x pics shown as Ps2.0 and Ps2.0 as Ps3.0 doesn't exactly instill confidence either

Have you seen this on digit-life moose :-

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-part1-c.html

 

[Evildeus]

JYFI, I got a couple of teaser benchmarks from somebody with an XT PE. It's pulling double the FPS of the 9800XT in Far Cry at 1280x1024 with 4xAA/8xAF. This is about 20% faster than a 6800U@400/550MHz on the same system, using the same settings (not sure about PS 2.0/3.0 though).

MuFu.

Then the 6800U shouldn't be that far away don't you think?

Over 20% improvement in Far Cry performance (fixed a z cull bug)

http://www.vr-zone.com/

 

[vb]

On topic

Stupid 12/8 theory

maybe, in certain cases (longer shaders), out of 3 quads 2 get double pumped and one turns off.

 

[dizietsma]

http://www.vr-zone.com/

Ah, it did look screwy compared to other theoretical tests.

I'm starting to think this might be down to which cards overclock the most from when you buy it, and not on gpu but on memory .....