9800 pro 256mb or FX 5900 256mb?

Review sites have really been waffling on this. Suffice to say that the difference is really not that much at all: they both seem to win in different conditions, on different tests and different games. So what should really make the difference at this point is image quality and price: which gives the advantage to the 9800.

But I'd think seriously about buying eihter of these cards right now. There simply do not exist games to make them worthwhile yet, and by the time those games do come out (3months from now) , these cards will be MUCH cheaper.
 
9800 Pro, better image quality and better shader performance=better half life2 performance
 
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-24.html

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-14.html

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-25.html

look at some of the other benchmarks too. i would go with a 9800 pro, though thats jsut me. if you go with a 5900 ultra you wont see any differance. its pretty much just comes down to which looks cooler. :D

in splinter cell, the 9800 pro beats the 5900. in UT2k3, the 9800 and the 5900 are both over 100 fps, so it dosnt matter. you cant tell the difference between 60 fps and 100 fps, let alone 120 fps and 125 fps.

id go with the 9800 pro because ill im gonna play is hl2 for a long time, and the 9800 pro will work best on that dispite what anyone else says right now. but even if you play it on a 5900 ultra i bet it would just be like 5 fps lower, no big deal.

its not that hard of a choice, they are both amazing cards and you will not see any difference between the two. EXCEPT the 5900 ultra is really loud and takes up 2 slots...and i expect that ati will come out with a lot better drivers soon. o btw even though it dosnt make much of a difference, nvidia lied on those benchmarks.
 
To me it comes down to which company is advancing..

ATI has done nothing since the 9700pro..Yes it was a great card but the 9800pro is a 9700pro which higher memory and clock timings..thats it, there is no new technology with there cards, and the 9900pro will be a overclocked 9800pro from reading the prototype specs.

Nvidia is in shambles kinda right now but you gotta realize the 5900 is the card that was supposed to be released LAST YEAR before the 9700pro but do to that fact that noone could produce the .013 boards with quality it was delayed. Nvidia is at least a year ahead of ATI technology wise and with moving forward in technology comes drawbacks but soon they will get it back together, not with this release but with the FX6000 series they will dominate again the card industry. (ATI aint coming out with the .013 boards until 2004)
 
Ridics right though you wont notice a difference between the two cards FPS wise. The only thing you will notice a difference though is is between the AA and AF

ATI has better AA(smoothing out jagged lines)

Nvidia has way better AF(texture quality)
 
Nvidia is at least a year ahead of ATI technology wise
Click to expand...

Cite? Most review sites say that ATI imaging tech is more advanced right now. NVIDA has a smaller die size, but that doesn't magically make things better. In fact, moving to that die size was exactly what made the 5800 so crappy and still makes the 5900 so big and loud.

In reality, neither company will be seriously fielding their next gen cards until 2004. And frankly, your entire argument doesn't make much sense: which company is advancing? You aren't buying a company, you're buying a card. It's not like you can swap out chips to upgrade a card only to the same company's products: you have to buy a whole new card every time, and you can buy whichever is better at the moment.
 
my argument makes no sense?

nvidia uses .013

ATI use .015

If you know anything about these you know the huge differences in performance that can be achieved.

ATI has the 9700pro..they have done nothing since that at all.
 
Id like to find who is going to do the .013 process for ATI also since there are very few companys out there can mass produce it with quality at this time. Nvidia sighned with IBM earlier to make there cards for them since they are the best with quality and fastest producing these types of products, there supposed to start shipping Nvidia cards at the end of the summer.
 
In my opinion, the difference now between these two boards is comapny preferance.
I'd go with nVidia jsut becuase they have a repuation of great support and driver support. ATi has just recently started to get their act together with drivers, and i'm not sure if it was a fluke, or a permanent improvement.
 
Originally posted by Apos


In reality, neither company will be seriously fielding their next gen cards until 2004. And frankly, your entire argument doesn't make much sense: which company is advancing? You aren't buying a company, you're buying a card. It's not like you can swap out chips to upgrade a card only to the same company's products: you have to buy a whole new card every time, and you can buy whichever is better at the moment.
Click to expand...

Um...a company advances you get the direct result of them advancing there tech?. Whats wrong with buying new cards also?
 
Apos and me don't understand how a company's advancement in technology will impact someone who buys their video cards. If you buy an fx5900 NOW, how would i benefit from nvidia advancing for FUTURE PERFORMANCE? will i get better drivers that i can download to make my card that i buy now faster? better tech support? your argument is kind of baseless. be more specific
 
Originally posted by deepers
will i get better drivers that i can download to make my card that i buy now faster?
Click to expand...

Well, if Nvidia decided to not unleash the 5900's full potential - then a driver could possibly unleash its full potential. This is just like ATI's catalyst 3.4 drivers which brought the Radeon's 9800 driver path to the 9700.
 
Originally posted by Shockwave
my argument makes no sense?

nvidia uses .013

ATI use .015

If you know anything about these you know the huge differences in performance that can be achieved.

ATI has the 9700pro..they have done nothing since that at all.
Click to expand...
1. 0.13µ production process plainly isn't needed to create the Radeon 9700, so why use it?

2. The Radeon 9600 DOES use 0.13µ production process, unlike the 9700 and 9800. Therefore nulifying your agrument that nVidia is ahead of ATi because of the manufacturing process they use.

3. As another argument of advancing (albeit a sketchy argument), it took nVidia months to create a card that could compare to the Radeon 9700, and it turned out to be a loud, vacuum'ish, flop. Only now are comparable cards by nVidia (5900 Ultra) starting to leak into the retail sector.
 
Im getting a Geforce FX 5900 ultra 256Mb
Because Nvidia card have been very good to me and setting them up in linux is very easy!
 
Well obviously 9800 pro is better for hl2. But what about Doom 3 and Far Cry and of course Stalker?
 
Originally posted by Shockwave
my argument makes no sense?

nvidia uses .013

ATI use .015

If you know anything about these you know the huge differences in performance that can be achieved.

ATI has the 9700pro..they have done nothing since that at all.
Click to expand...

Not really, look at ati and Nvidia cards right, who gives a crap who is further technology-wise? Performance is what counts, Nvidia is wasting the benefits of the 0.13 process by pairing it with such a crappy architecture, one that can still be beaten by something made months before and on a larger process which MANY people said was IMPOSSIBLE to do, everybody doubted Ati could get where they are on the 0.15 process, but they proved them all wrong.

And your comment on the 9700 pro makes no sense. Nvidia has done nothing since the NV30 either. The NV35 is just an NV30 on a more mature process along with the 256-bit memory bus(which has 0 to do with the actual graphic core btw, so ill just dismiss that), with minor feature additions such as the ultrashadow and HCT. From the looks of it, they just did exactly what Ati did on the 9800 pro, the only thing that differs it from the 9700 is a more mature process and minor feature additions such as the F buffer.

And the fact that Ati is still on 0.15 and Nvidia 0.13 is NOT good for Nvidia. They have nowhere to go as in easy fixes to tide their adoring public over with. They already used up their 256-bit memory bus ticket and their mature process ticket, the only other ticket left is an architectural overhaul since 0.09 is not ready, and working on an architecture take a heck of a lot more work than just slapping on a new bus and adding a few algorithms and equations to the cores repertoire to save some bandwidth.

Ati hasn't done anything with the 9700 pro because they dont NEED to do anything, they managed to create a product that caught their competitor off guard, and they really dont need to work on the core at all, they could just use an easy fix such as moving it onto 0.13 and it wold completely annhilitate anything Nvidia has right now, and possibly what they have in store for Ati.

And dont give me any of that bull about Ati and its foundries having trouble with 0.13, they already have cards out using this process, and they just happen to be overclocking monsters, most of which can reach a core speed of 500mhz, and to think Nvidia could have blamed TSMC for messing up their NV30, when TSMC seemingly has no trouble producing high quality 0.13 Ati cards
 
my argument makes no sense?

nvidia uses .013

ATI use .015
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what your point is. A smaller die size can be an advantage, but as the FX5800 series clearly shows, it isn't always worth the downsides, especially when you can acheive the same things with .15 tech: which is cheaper, faster to produce, runs less hot, etc. In the end it doesn't matter what process is used: just how good the card is.

ATI is moving slowly into .13 to make sure that they can supply good volume and followthru. NVIDA moved too fast and tripped themselves up. Neither is really ahead of the others in terms of designing next gen cards: the real issues now are marketing strategies, not so much tech problems.
 
So what u guys are saying is that both cards are actually quite the same?
 
Originally posted by Rambo
So what u guys are saying is that both cards are actually quite the same?
Click to expand...

They are actually very similar.

nVidia's GeForce FX 5900 will give you a bit better performance than ATi's Radeon 9800, where the 9800 will give you better picture quality with AA and AF turned up. The downside of the 5900 though, is that it has a fan so big the card will take up not only your AGP slot, but most likely one of your PCI slots as well. And because that fan is so big, it's loud. They've made improvments on it sinse the 5800's vacumm cleaner effect, but it's sill consideribly louder than the 9800.

You'll also find the 5900 is probably more expensive right now too, which is obviously something to consider.
 
thanks paz :)

That bit better Performance is very small and hardly noticable right?
 
hmm i have decided to put these friendly arguments to rest. I shall make the ultima card. It is in develpoment. pictures soon to come.
 
Card-2.jpg


The brand new boogy 99,000 Ultra olympic.

Its so powerfull it glows!!

7836945 billion Ghz mHz blips, 10024 ddr, 90578 Mhz core speed.

blast away the other cards!! this one PWNz0rx
 
ok my point is that both cards have thier strong points, and weak points. insted of listing them im going to tell you this--get the cheaper of the 2. thats the 9800 pro right now but who knows in a couple months. YOU WILL NOT TELL A DIFFERANCE BETWEEN THE TWO UNLESS YOUR RESOLUTION IS OUTRAGESLY HIGH.

ahem, my brother has a 9800 pro. my friend who i visit frequently has a 5900 ultra. the funny thing is i cant tell the damned difference. they both had 100 fps for half life, bf1942 and ut2k3 on high detail at 1024x768.

there is no reason to go higher then 1024x768, but if u do the 5900 actually dose a bit better. thats why on all the nvidia benchmarks the res is at like 1600x1200. thats the only way they could beat the 9800 pro by 5-10 fps.but nobody in their right minds plays on 1600x1200. if they did the tests on 800x600 or 1024x768 then they would both be even. actually the 9800 pro would beat it by like 1-5 fps, but thats no difference.

also, 1 other thing. even if the 9800 pro dose beat the 5900 ultra in fps with hl2 it wont matter. for example say you get 85 fps on hl2 with a 9800 pro. and say ur friend gets 75 or 80 fps with his 5900 ultra. it wont matter, it wouldnt matter if it was 100 fps to 75 fps. the human eye cant tell the difference between 60 and 100+ fps. thats just something to think about.
 
Originally posted by Shockwave
my argument makes no sense?

nvidia uses .013

ATI use .015

If you know anything about these you know the huge differences in performance that can be achieved.

ATI has the 9700pro..they have done nothing since that at all.
Click to expand...

Sort of right. 9600 uses 13 nm however, and this makes very little difference other than tempature and manufacturing costs.
 
Originally posted by [Hunter]Ridic
ok my point is that both cards have thier strong points, and weak points. insted of listing them im going to tell you this--get the cheaper of the 2. thats the 9800 pro right now but who knows in a couple months. YOU WILL NOT TELL A DIFFERANCE BETWEEN THE TWO UNLESS YOUR RESOLUTION IS OUTRAGESLY HIGH.

ahem, my brother has a 9800 pro. my friend who i visit frequently has a 5900 ultra. the funny thing is i cant tell the damned difference. they both had 100 fps for half life, bf1942 and ut2k3 on high detail at 1024x768.

there is no reason to go higher then 1024x768, but if u do the 5900 actually dose a bit better. thats why on all the nvidia benchmarks the res is at like 1600x1200. thats the only way they could beat the 9800 pro by 5-10 fps.but nobody in their right minds plays on 1600x1200. if they did the tests on 800x600 or 1024x768 then they would both be even. actually the 9800 pro would beat it by like 1-5 fps, but thats no difference.

also, 1 other thing. even if the 9800 pro dose beat the 5900 ultra in fps with hl2 it wont matter. for example say you get 85 fps on hl2 with a 9800 pro. and say ur friend gets 75 or 80 fps with his 5900 ultra. it wont matter, it wouldnt matter if it was 100 fps to 75 fps. the human eye cant tell the difference between 60 and 100+ fps. thats just something to think about.
Click to expand...

I can do the difference between 60 and 100 fps.
In CS, ut2k3, etc
 
no its just in your head, you really cant.
 
I can see the difference in a 60Hz refresh rate and a 100Hz refresh rate. Pretty much the same with fps. It looks much smoother at 100 than 60. I know theres a limit in the eye, but you can tell the differences.

Why else would any monitor go over 60Hz?
 
There's a myth that you cannot see more than 30 fps, which is blatantly false. Fighter-jet pilots were tested for sight, and they were shown a 1 second long video made up of 200 frames. A single frame had the picture of a jet. After viewing it once, the pilots were generally able to tell there was a plane, while about half could tell what make/model it was. I'll get a link to the article I got this from.


EDIT - Here it is (http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html) - EDIT
 
thats totaly different its testing your ability to decript an object at a blazing speed. ok maybe not 60, but i dont know about anyone else but i cant tell the differance between 80 and 100, even if someone can....it wouldnt matter all that much because id be glad to have 70 fps let alone 80 or 100 in a game.
 
oh boy, im about to go off on short ramble i think, we will see. First off, vsync is a lovly, lovly, lovly thing. What it does is it lines up the fps with the refresh rate. When this happens there is no texture tearing and it also seems to be very, very, smooth. Honestly, if you are looking at 2 monitors, one running with vsync and one with out. no, say the one with out was getting 100 fps and the one with was getting 72 im betting about %80 of the people would say that the one with it on would running at a high fps. Really High fps is overated. At this point it should be more about image quality and running steady with the refresh rate of the monitor than high fps.
 
Well, I had to buy an ATi 9200 because my old Geforce 256 craped out. Now I get errors which say that my atimag (or something) crashed because it got stuck an in infinite loop...any help?
 
Do you think there will be any new cards from ATI or NVIDIA before half life 2's release because i plan on building a new system pretty soon and I was wondering if i should wait until closer to the HL2 release to do so.. Also does anyone here is 3ds max 5 with an ATI card? I have heard some people say that max doesn't work right on ATI cards, is this true?
 
no, i doubt the new cards will come out before hl2, if you bought them right when they came out you would be a fool. i GARRUNTEE(or how ever its spelled) you that if u had a 9900 pro you would not get a better performance on hl2 compared to the 9800 pro. the 9800 pro is PLENTY for hl2....no game would need the new card right away...
 
Ok, thanks, I still think i should wait until closer to the release cuz the hardware im looking at will probably drop in price by then, maybe not a whole lot, but every little bit helps :cool:
 
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