Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
AquaMark 3
Despite what some people would like everyone to think, Aquamark3 is really a test of how people developing software now envision DirectX 9 pixel and vertex shaders will be used in the future. The situation is very reminiscent of the first Sony PlayStation: the first games that used the technology were limited by the hardware until developers really learned to work with the hardware rather than on the hardware. As time progressed, we went from what were essentially ports of 16bit console games to amazingly complex and beautiful games like Gran Turismo 2. The same thing will happen with shader technology, and no amount of guessing and throwing functions at a gpu will tell you how its performance will really be in the future. Essentially, my advice is that any piece of software that claims it is a valid predictor of future performance should be taken lightly. We based our decision to include Aquamark3 on its popularity in the community. Aquamark3 is a cool piece of software, with some pretty neat tests, and a high score in any benchmark can still earn bragging rights in the forums. The only Aquamark3 test we ran was the publicly available 1024x768 4xAF noAA in order to maximize the usefulness of these numbers to the community. Our drivers were set to allow application control of AF and AA.
We can see almost a pairing off of the cards in direct competition with one another from each camp. ATI pulls ahead by an insignificant margin in the case of the top cards, but the 5600 Ultra falls way behind in this test. Image quality appears to have improved for NVIDIA in this benchmark over what has been reported of previous drivers, and the NV38 handled the massive overdraw portion of the test the smoothest of all the cards. We will be taking a much closer look at image quality very soon, but until then, it looks like ATI and NVIDIA have equal footing in the Aquamark3 arena and we are left to find more useful information about their differences elsewhere. We would also like to point out that the 9700 Pro held its own in this test inching out the standard 9800.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link
The MS flightsim tests might have v-sync enabled. That would explain the strange test resultsdswatski - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link
AND: Age of Mythology AND: Rendering with Adobe Premiere Pro with support for second monitor.Anonymous User - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link
gfRogodin2 - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link
That was a pathetic review because there were way too many varibles and the fact that anand stated that there were no valid premises to reach a conclusion should have been taken to heart before he decided to publish such a POS as this.rogo
Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
This info is simply unofficial, as DX doesn't want to stir up the industry more than has alredy been done. As some might recall, 3dfx was given the same ultimatum back in 99', yet the news wasn't even released until 2 years later afterAnonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
So by all means, Do Not Download Detonator 50 Drivers!!! Along with this, NV has been caught cheating on benchmarks as they usually do over at Anandtech . Notice that all of the realworld benchmarks perform better on ATi, yet all synthetic benchmarks perform better by a large margin on NV hardware. "These violations are inexcusable" said a DX employee, and I'd have to agree. So without the inside drive on DX10, NV will not be able to even optimize their cards as ATi can and will probably fall into bankruptsy just as 3dfx did before them...Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
NVIDIA out of DX10? DiscussThere's an interesting link on Gearbox Software's forums that claim NVIDIA has been shunned by Microsoft's DirectX team for future versions of the API - Thanks SidiasX!
Nvidia's NV38 (along with the rest of the FX series) has been dubbed as a substandard card by team dx. This means that DX will not include NV in it's developement range for directx10. Team DX made the decision "as a favor to the graphics industry". Team DX claims that NV violated their partnership agreement by changing the DX9 code with their latest set of drivers as caught by Xbit labs recently. This violates the licensing agreement and conpromises DX's quality in order to make it seem as if ATi and NV cards alike display the same image quality (which would be really bad in this case). This can only be fixed by reinstalling dx9b.
ATI's "Development Agreement"
it's looking bad for Nvidia..
Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
NVIDIA out of DX10? DiscussThere's an interesting link on Gearbox Software's forums that claim NVIDIA has been shunned by Microsoft's DirectX team for future versions of the API - Thanks SidiasX!
Nvidia's NV38 (along with the rest of the FX series) has been dubbed as a substandard card by team dx. This means that DX will not include NV in it's developement range for directx10. Team DX made the decision "as a favor to the graphics industry". Team DX claims that NV violated their partnership agreement by changing the DX9 code with their latest set of drivers as caught by Xbit labs recently. This violates the licensing agreement and conpromises DX's quality in order to make it seem as if ATi and NV cards alike display the same image quality (which would be really bad in this case). This can only be fixed by reinstalling dx9b.
ATI's "Development Agreement"
it's looking bad for Nvidia..
Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
NVIDIA out of DX10? DiscussThere's an interesting link on Gearbox Software's forums that claim NVIDIA has been shunned by Microsoft's DirectX team for future versions of the API - Thanks SidiasX!
Nvidia's NV38 (along with the rest of the FX series) has been dubbed as a substandard card by team dx. This means that DX will not include NV in it's developement range for directx10. Team DX made the decision "as a favor to the graphics industry". Team DX claims that NV violated their partnership agreement by changing the DX9 code with their latest set of drivers as caught by Xbit labs recently. This violates the licensing agreement and conpromises DX's quality in order to make it seem as if ATi and NV cards alike display the same image quality (which would be really bad in this case). This can only be fixed by reinstalling dx9b.
ATI's "Development Agreement"
it's looking bad for Nvidia..
Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
The CPu is not out.the NV38 is not out
the new drivers 52.14 are not out.
and these drivers have issues and probably IQ degradation.
the test should go up to 1600 x 1200 at least,
we should stress video cards not CPU's.
DX9 needs to be included in the benches.
I know what my next card will be ,
ATI will be replacing my Nvidia soon.
I want to play HL2 and TR aod.(I love the game).
I remember , years ago ,when ATI came out with a faster card and the next day Nvidia had a new driver that increased performance by 25%.
I'm still disgusted since the cheat drivers with bad IQ, and poor DX9 .