ATI and Nvidia's Same-Day Mega-Launch Mayhem

[raven_87]

@Parlee

You realize DFI and Epox have fantastic PCI-E based 754 boards...

That being said...
I'm liking the look of the cards. I think ATI still has a solid standpoint,
as they finally realesed a decent midranged card (Being the GTO) which
might be able to capture some of the midranged market in time.
I'm sure they have a slight edge simply becuase they can start (and have started) to cut X1900 prices. Which in turn, should keep the 7900 series in check. Great hardware from both companies though...much love.

I'm still debating between the 7900GTX or the X1900XT though...

 

[parlee]

i didnt know that because i havnt been looking it up because it doesnt seem wotrht it, upgrading a dead processor, with no upgrade path... although i do have a 3700+ its the last cpu for this chipset and it will be outdated soon with the hole dual core craze gonig on, buying a 70 dollar 754 mobo, then buying a 300 dollar gpu isnt worth the money for me when i could just buy a 300 dollar gpu for agp, since ill be upgrading my entire system in a years time...

 

[YoshiDark]

I have to agree that a 128 bit interface really cripples the card. My vanilla 6800 cannot match up my brother's 6800 GT, even after unlocking the pipelines and a bit of OCing. What annoys me is that such information is usually absent from most e-tailer's websties, most just post onboard memory size and core speed.

What I'd like to see is power consumption charts. How do the flagship offerings from both companies match up in this area?

 

[Heyyou27]

I'd say ATI for single card and Nvidia for dual card.

 

[parlee]

that seems to be the case... i didnt really look over the benchies but nvidia single card with max filtering would be faster than ati?... once again, didnt look over benchies that well

 

[gomerpile]

I had said this before and when I reviewed the 1900 specks I was shocked at the techical view, which in my opinion has gone beyound what nvidia has to offer. Now it boils down to choice

 

[GTMan25]

How do the X1800GTO and 7600GT compare for heat, power and noise?

 

[Dybowski]

just bought a 7900gt off of newegg for my sons computer
he had 300 dollars saved up and was waiting for the x1800xts prices to drop but i convienced him to get this, im not an nvidia guy but well see how it goes, the fact that theres no heatsinks on the memory kinda scares me.

 

[lordroddington]

6800 and 6800gt both have 256bit memory interface, the only difference is 4 pixel pipelines, 1 vertex shader and some clock speed

 

[bront]

Is it me or does it look like they rearanged the memory configuration so things like the NV Silencer won't work on the newer cards?

I don't like how the 7900 GT and the 7600 GT heatsinks don't touch the memory, though I guess you could always put memory sinks on them individuarly now to help cooling.

Anyone seen a 7800 GT to 7900 GT comparison?

 

[hergieburbur]

Is it me or does it look like they rearanged the memory configuration so things like the NV Silencer won't work on the newer cards?

I don't like how the 7900 GT and the 7600 GT heatsinks don't touch the memory, though I guess you could always put memory sinks on them individuarly now to help cooling.

Anyone seen a 7800 GT to 7900 GT comparison?

Yeah, that kinda stinks. Seems like they skimped on the cooling.

All the comparisons I have seen put the 7900GT at the same level as the 7800GTX.

 

[mpjesse]

I thought the most interesting portion of the article was this:

We think that scrambling to launch a counter product is just as insane as giving reviewers less than one week to review three new products in six configurations with a driver that has a revision 1/3 of the way into testing. Then to find out that the driver has an overclocking bug, what good does that do anyone? So the question begs to be asked, what good is a rushed launch? Does it keep rumors from flying across the Web or leaked reviews? Does the consumer benefit any more from a secretive launch with a short time to market or from a preview of things to come with a met delivery date a few weeks later? It seems there is some logic behind the antics but this is a little childish.

Truer words were never spoken. This battle between ATI and nVidia is flat out ridiculous. I've always been one for competition, but these two knuckleheads are taking it to the extreme! I mean... we're down to less than 6 months now!

Ugh.... i can't keep up anymore. This coming from a dude w/ dual 7800GTX's!

-mpjesse

 

[RichPLS]

Still paying that note eh?

 

[Henrik]

The die size says it all... Nvidia is clearly the winner in both architecture and pricing...

I was always a big fan of Nvidia, a buddy of mine convinced me to try ATI... so I got the 9800Pro. I was disappointed. After purchasing the 7800GTX that I now have, I will most likely never go back to ATI. Especially with blockbuster releases like this...

 

[Wapas]

The SLI performance increase is much larger than Crossfire's.

That is not true, I am only looking at the highest resolutions with the most features turned on and X1900xt crossfire provides higher frame rates at the high resolutions on MOST games. I am not sure you can see the difference, But I got my crossfire setup : 2 1900xt, one is a crossfire edition of course) for about $900. If you are running 1920x1600 or 2540x1600, you need to have SLI or Crossfire. Look at the X1900XT and XTX benchmarks on Toms. Only 1 or 2 games work better with SLI over Crossfire.

 

[benjamin]

I thought the most interesting portion of the article was this:

But we've heard it all before. You can either moan and bitch about not getting long enough to test, or you can keep up with the plethora of other tech writers who won't.

Sorry... that paragraph really bugged me for its insincerity. After deciding you are in fact "going to play that game", suck it up.

 

[bigspender]

Its a good thing as the beaches are fast being depleated of sand...we don't want to run out of that stuff....LOL....All joking aside just think about the bucks they make that they would of had to put in the trash; had they thrown it away that is. My question is you think some of that money made on the subordinate video cards trickels its way to the consumer in price breaks? Some Harvard Grad must of done a study to see if the end result is better (Profit margins for the company) I mean better pricing for the consumer....LOL...Its all about the bucks!..Way too many choices in my opinion also. I'll pay the bucks just remove the confusion and give us great price/performace ratio for our hard earned bucks. I sure as hell don't want to spend it only to throw it out a few months later. Nvidia and Ati don't throw thiers out. But they expect us to???? Just think ..the proof is in the pudding....why use two cards for a 20% improvement. If these guys were fair the second card would only cost us 20% more. Instead it instantly gives them 100% more revenue///// Its just about the bucks!

 

[CompGeek]

Nv hasn't won anything. ATI lowered prices and now their cards are competitive with pretty much everything Nv has except 7900GT and maybe 7900 GTX SLI(huh, you have to be stinkin' rich to pay extra 500+$ for a 0-70% performance increase). In fact the winner between ATI 1900XTX and 7900GTX actually is the 1900XT. At 450-480$ it's the best bargain for a very high performance card(i place 7900GT one level under it).
But i really didn't expect good performance to come this cheap. Probably their prepering for The Oblivion now and for UT2007 later. I hope at least the last mentioned will work ok on a "budget" 7900GT-1900XT-1800XT (not sure what to pick). I don't want to blame bad performance for my poor play.

 

[YoshiDark]

Oops hehe...well, I unlocked the pipelines and vertex shader on my card and OCed the core to GT speeds. Must be just his memory that makes the difference.

And "bigspender" thinks SLi is too pricy?

From the looks of it, SLi and Crossfire don't outpreform each other overall. It just depends on the game you're playing, and wether you just like ATi or nVidia.

I will wait for DX10 video cards before I buy anything.

 

[hergieburbur]

I am wondering which model to buy to work well with oblivion as well. But I like the AIW cards, so I am looking at a 7900GT, and AIW1800XL, or just saying the hell with it and getting an AIW 1900.

 

[CompGeek]

Well from simply watching the screnies i came up to the conclusion that even with the cards mentioned above i defenitely won't be turning AA or aniso on. It looks just so real. I have X3 The Reunion which is a totally different game but rocks at graphics. And on normal cards it runs like sh... . Oblivion will be even more gfx hungry so no time to waste. Conroe better arrive soon as my CPU will soon be bottlenecking.

 

[DPolkowski]

We had one reader ask about the driver issue.

So to elaborate for everyone, there were a total of 3 drivers available during the testing cycle. There was an 83 series driver that we never used as it was replaced immediately by 84.11 on Monday the 27th. We received cards on Tuesday at Editor’s day. We flew back on Wednesday from San Jose and started testing. On Saturday night, around 8PM EST, a revised driver was released; 84.17. This new driver fixed some performance issues in F.E.A.R. We of course had to retest everything because you never know if there is an impact on the other titles they didn't tell you about.

Later on we as many other sites found out there were overclocking issues on the 7900GTX. The control panel would report high frequencies without being enabled. To fix this they launched another driver, 84.20 yesterday with the launch. You can find this driver listed on nZone under the BETA drivers. Needless to say this was a week short of when we needed solid drivers for testing.

I hope this clarifies this for everyone.

 

[Dybowski]

the 7900gt is an awsome card it performs the same as my x1900xt in most games. my son can play his games with all the eye candy turned up now. the only complsint i ave is the stock cooler its very whiney and my son cant find a watercooling block for it. hopefully some comout soon.

 

[Narg]

It seems to me that both companies produce cards worth owning. Neither has a real advantage hardware wize. But, I did make a choice on one very important difference. That difference was their business practices.

nVidia more and more is becoming very draconian in it's business and causing a lot of problems with developers. Because they have so much trouble trumping ATI, they have taken a path that partners them exclusively with developers to produce software that favors their cards and not ATI's. This type of behavior will result in bad returns for the gamers. If nVidia get hold of too many developer then ATI may no longer be able to hold ground and then we will never ever see any more price wars like this again.

The 7800 series marked a new price high for video cards. It was no surprized that ATI was able to beat them in price by over $200. nVidia thought they had the market hold strong, so they jacked up their prices in order to get more money to convince more game developers to code only for their card.

Kinda makes you sick if you think about it.

nVidia want money to bribe developers and to advertise until we are sick of see their ads. Advertising does pay. The iPod is a good example, while it's an nice player it doesn't produce the best sound in comparison to some others on the market, yet it's got a hugh lead. Why? Ads. Plain and simple.

Anyway, I'd rather pay for engineering instead of advertising, so my money went to ATI.

And that engineering shows off too. ATI still meets and beats nVidia will less processing paths. It's only been the recent boards that ATI finally put more pixel shaders in their card than nVidia. But they still have less pipes on other functions. So they obviously do the work better than nVidia. Using smarts rather than brute force. That says a lot.

 

[GRUMP]

I think it boils down to costomer service. A few fps, and a few $'s one way or another is no big deal.