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

[Smurfie]

I voted equal, seeing how currently the R420 is slightly faster but beaten by the slightly superior feature set of the NV40.

However, the cards are still not available today, and these cards are meant to tide us over the next 6-8 months, till the next ATI chip and NV45 arrive.

Looking down the coming 6-8 months, we should look at which architecture has more room to grow. The NV40 has more headroom in terms of clockspeed and going into the 0.13 low-k process, options which ATI have already exhausted. ATI has the features headroom to deal the knockout punch.

The fight hasn't begun, in my opinion. We will only know who the real winner is, when Doom 3 AND Half-Life 2 is out. These games are what these new cards are for.

 

[Stryyder]

There really should be a fourth choice = "To early to tell"

Personally until retail boards and certified drivers are available, anything can happen. After past experiences with phantom drivers, boards that never get produced or review boards much different than retail it would be prudent to reserve full judgement.

 

[Stryyder]

I voted equal, seeing how currently the R420 is slightly faster but beaten by the slightly superior feature set of the NV40.

However, the cards are still not available today, and these cards are meant to tide us over the next 6-8 months, till the next ATI chip and NV45 arrive.

Looking down the coming 6-8 months, we should look at which architecture has more room to grow. The NV40 has more headroom in terms of clockspeed and going into the 0.13 low-k process, options which ATI have already exhausted. ATI has the features headroom to deal the knockout punch.

The fight hasn't begun, in my opinion. We will only know who the real winner is, when Doom 3 AND Half-Life 2 is out. These games are what these new cards are for.

I doubt if the NV40 will use low-k on the .13 process, but they may shrink the die to 0.11 just my opinion. You will not see an NVIDIA card on Low-K until they shrink to 90nm again just a feel.

 

[Natoma]

The X800 Pro is already on sale and ATI says the XT will be on sale on the 21st of this month. The 6800 series isn't expected to hit the market until June. Or if you subscribe to Digitalwanderer's protestations, July.

Here's hoping the 6800 series doesn't turn out like the NV30 launch, i.e. paper launched, availability 2 months later, and then yanked from store shelves with nary a sale to actual end users. That would be pretty damn bad. :?

 

[KimB]

But I think that there is something wrong with the max playable settings. If you look at their own apples to apples tests.

[benchmark]

The 6800 Ultra stills look good at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 16AF.

The min FPS was quite a bit lower. Since the R420's pixel pipelines are much closer to the previous generation from ATI than nVidia's, I think it's pretty believable that the drivers are going to be less mature at this point in time. Give it a few releases and these driver issues should be cleared up.

 

[KimB]

The X800 Pro is already on sale and ATI says the XT will be on sale on the 21st of this month. The 6800 series isn't expected to hit the market until June. Or if you subscribe to Digitalwanderer's protestations, July.

End of May, according to what I've seen.

 

[Zengar]

I don't understand the world anymore...

I cannot believe that noone sees that 6800 is a much more anvanced card then X800.

What is R420?
It's R300 with doubled pipeline count and minor advantages. It support nothing, nothing new. It's still register combiner hardware, much more advanced and complicated of course, but it's still the trend of GeForce256

What is NV40?
It supports floating-point blending, much richer instruction set, PS3.0 etc.
Of course it is heavier, larger and consumes more watts. You must pay for the feature set.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also quite shure that ATI will win this round, because R420 targets existing DX9.0 segment, heavily optimising linear pixel-processing and NV40 targets future, what may be not so wise. ATI show here clear buissness mind, which does everything to get more profit. But it's Nvidia who provides the new technologies, not ATI(althougt ATI did it one, with 9700).
To say it short: the existing market is not ready for the 6800... it's an amusing card, and I can see nothing that could impress me on X800.

 

[Sabastian]

I cannot believe that noone sees that 6800 is a much more anvanced card then X800.

I see this situation as being similar to the Geforce 3-4 transition. Sure the R200 had an advance in Pixel shader support (PS1.4) but that didn't douse the popularity of the GF4 series which in reality was not much more then a beefed up GF3. That might be a tad simplistic but its not overly difficult to see the similarities of the situation. Of course the GF 4 4600 had considerably more in terms of performance the feature set of the R200 was advanced in comparison.

The X800 pro and XT are already on their way to the market. (XT by the 21 of may) NV is going to have a time getting the NV40 to market on mass and if they do get it to market on mass its going to cost them a bundle. Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers. Further I doubt we will see much in the way of games that actually implement the feature this year.

 

[Sandwich]

What is R420?
It's R300 with doubled pipeline count and minor advantages. It support nothing, nothing new. It's still register combiner hardware, much more advanced and complicated of course, but it's still the trend of GeForce256

*sigh* I hope you realise how perverse you are being right now. You might aswell say the X800 is still the trend of the voodoo1, i.e.: colouring lot's of triangles really fast. This is what all 3d chips still do basicly, but you'd be ignoring all the technological improvements needed to make them draw much prettier and faster than before.

 

[KimB]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

 

[Sabastian]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

lol, PS2.0 is quite well good enough for now. I don't deny that PS3.0 is an advancement but it isn't that much of an advance IMO. 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?

 

[Sandwich]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

Is that so? I'm not convinced. Shouldn't you rather say it's CONSUMERS holding the game devs back?

If we all went out and buy the $500+ cards as soon as they hit the shelves, game devs would follow suit much faster.
As it is now, game devs are holding back with PS2.0 because lot's of people still use dx8 capable cards.

I say the game devs have the 6800, therefore they can play with SM3 already, so they're not held back by Ati or nvidia.

 

[Rican]

evry one still says ati has better IQ? in most of all the reviews i saw NV has equaly matched ATI's IQ .The iq issue dosent hold any ground any more

 

[Malfunction]

I dunno, I like both cards and voted likewise. I think that I may get a X800 XT PE now, as the current game I am playing is Battlefield: Vietnam. Out of the games I still play, a majority are Direct X game titles.

The OpenGL titles I still play are few.

Mainly, I wanna play BFV @ 16x12 with some AA/AF. Looks like I will be hurting a tad with the 6800 according to [H]'s review. Ofcourse I will be ready to buy in June/July anyhow, so things could change.

For: MCM2/LeadFoot/BF42/BFV/NFS:U/MotoGP2/Dungeon Siege/R.C. Cars/Re-Volt... ATi's X800 will be a good choice.

I am very concern about the driver quality though, ever after the fact that the majority of the reviews say good things compared to Forceware 6x. :?

Ultimately, I think we've all made out. Kudos to ATi and nVidia.

 

[mavis]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

How is ATi holding anyone back? If devs want to use PS 3.0, they certainly can use the 6800 ...

Anyway, it s comforting to see that you've been able to find SOMETHING unsatisfactory with the R420 - if not this, then certainly something else, right?

 

[Stryyder]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

LOL This is a great quote hehehe ATI is holding us back lol POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!! THE MAN IS HOLDING US DOWN!!!!! LOL

 

[Snarfy]

Anyway I don't think that the NV40 is far more advanced because of PS3.0 I am not sure it is that big of a deal except to developers.

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

LOL This is a great quote hehehe ATI is holding us back lol POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!! THE MAN IS HOLDING US DOWN!!!!! LOL

Help help, i'm being reppressed!

We found a witch, can we burn her?

mmmm...monty python...

 

[Doomtrooper]

Chalnoth is losing it, big time

 

[Rican]

well for p.s 3.0 the dx 9.0c isnt out yet so we wont know for sure how this card will run on p.s 3.0 but there is going to be a few games out this year with some p.s 3.0 so will have to wait and see if p.s3.0 will make a difference in performamce

 

[Deathlike2]

Therein lies the problem. Everybody knows that PS 3.0 is the future. And yet ATI is holding us back with the R420.

Um... couldn't you also say this (assuming we said that 15+ months ago:

Everyone knows that PS 2.0 is the future . And yet NVidia is holding us back with the NV30.