Curator
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There seems to be alot of confusion here. Half Life 2 has been designed to run on a 9800 Pro. There currently isn't anything faster than that other than workstation graphics cards which aren't optimized to run games. That said, Valve would not make a game that only runs at 30 fps with max settings on the fastest available hardware as that would just be absurd; it will more than likely be around 100 fps.
The fact of the matter is that the 9800 Pro is a better card than the 5900 Ultra. In the majority of the benchamarks conducted by various sites all over the net, the 9800 comes out on top in almost evey test. The only time you would see otherwise is if the review used optimized versions of the detonators along with unpatched versions of 3DMark03 which allowed nvidia to cheat by decreasing the level of image quality (among other things). Nvidia knew their cards had problems so in order to mask these problems and still make some money they withdrew from the partnership with Futuremark and made false accusations against them. The massive failure of the 5800 Ultra should have tipped most people off right away. Even Gabe has admitted to owning 9800's over the competition citing the pure facts.
The reason why the 5900 Ultra does better in Doom 3 is because nvidia has grinded id software for a partnership (and payed a hefty sum I might add) in order to optimize for them. The 5900 also has a special engine designed to run dynamic shadows (which D3 uses heavily) more efficiently. And on top of that ATI has not yet done anything to it's drivers for Doom 3 optimization.
The next ATI card is labeled the R420, not R400 and is supposed to be twice as fast as the 9800 Pro. It won't be out until beginning next year. Same goes for the NV40.
The fact of the matter is that the 9800 Pro is a better card than the 5900 Ultra. In the majority of the benchamarks conducted by various sites all over the net, the 9800 comes out on top in almost evey test. The only time you would see otherwise is if the review used optimized versions of the detonators along with unpatched versions of 3DMark03 which allowed nvidia to cheat by decreasing the level of image quality (among other things). Nvidia knew their cards had problems so in order to mask these problems and still make some money they withdrew from the partnership with Futuremark and made false accusations against them. The massive failure of the 5800 Ultra should have tipped most people off right away. Even Gabe has admitted to owning 9800's over the competition citing the pure facts.
The reason why the 5900 Ultra does better in Doom 3 is because nvidia has grinded id software for a partnership (and payed a hefty sum I might add) in order to optimize for them. The 5900 also has a special engine designed to run dynamic shadows (which D3 uses heavily) more efficiently. And on top of that ATI has not yet done anything to it's drivers for Doom 3 optimization.
The next ATI card is labeled the R420, not R400 and is supposed to be twice as fast as the 9800 Pro. It won't be out until beginning next year. Same goes for the NV40.