HOLY SH*T SON! The nvidia card Smoked the ATI card. I didn't think Nvidia would have been able to come back other than maybe during the next release of cards.

I remember TR would say the ATI card would win by a "Huge" amount when there were only a handful of fps difference.

Nice to see you guys decided to lay off those comments for ATI's sake.

Ah but the real question remains, has the image quality been drastically decreased in order to give ATI the old one two knockout?

I love all the bleeding hearts here for Joe Consumer and how he is totally screwed by the naming of these cards. Joe Consumer goes to Future Shop/Best Buy and asks for a good card for himself or his kid that costs between 100 and 200 dollars. The dude behind the counter tells him what to buy.

Now enthusiasts who go to the extreme of reading tech sites and commenting on articles should be able to distinguish themselves from Joe Consumer by reading comparison reviews and looking up a price.

5800 9200 XT Pro Ulta etc are merely alpha-numeric designations to separate physically different products. Joe consumer doesn't care what its called and Joe Enthusiast shouldn't care. Find a product, find its specs/reviews check price, buy it.

Maybe it's just me, but I could honestly care less about how the card performs. I APPLAUD eVGA for renaming their card. Naming a budget chip after the top-performance chip of your competitor is really a desperate, last-ditch measure to garner a few more sells. It's cheap, uncalled for, and it has caused me to stop recommending any nVidia product for my clients.

What would you guys think if AMD chopped half the cache out of the XP 3200+ and renamed it the "XP 3200+ EE", then sold it for slightly cheaper? This is exactly the same.

I hope VIA likes my K8T880 purchases.

NVIDIA's Call of Duty deal represents roughly $50 of value for those who were planning on picking up the game, which is a pretty sweet deal.

It's a 8 hour game. I wouldn't go that far.

What you are all quick to forget it just how weak the card really is. They had to compare it to a 9600 XT in order to see it succeed. Put it against a 9800 Pro 128MB or *gasp* a 9800 XT, and there goes the ballgame. It's a 5900, which last I checked was supposed to be the competition to the 9800 series. The 9600 is intended as competition for the 5700 and 5600 series. Even ATI's comparison page readily gives basic tech facts and expected performance ratings to substantiate this. Oh, and I'm not going to even comment on the 53.03 drivers... there has to be something at work there to give you a 700+ point jump in 3DMark03! If the next Catalysts did that, the Nvidia people would riot in the street, screaming about optimizations and whatnot. Now that Nvidia does it again, is anyone surprised? No... they welcome it. I'm always skeptical on both sides of the graphics fence, but now this has me floored. A souped-up 5900, compared against a 9600 XT.

Oh, and check the price for the performance. There's no doubt it can achieve what it says it can achieve, with the right drivers, but how are they making any money using cores that powerful then? Are they willing to take a loss just to dominate the middle-ground section of the video card industry? I guess so.

As taken from the ATI.com Product Comparison screen:

ATI 9600 Pro 128MB: 1.6GPixels/second, 200MTriangles/second

ATI 9600XT 128MB: 2.0GPixels/second, 250MTriangles/second

ATI 9800 Pro 128MB: 3.06GPixels/second, 380MTriangles/second.

Jeez... sounds like the intended competition is either the 9800 Pro or even non-Pro, either of which will soundly spank this price-chopped 5900.

I would have liked to have seen more real games used that had private demos like they do at [H]. All the "canned" benchmarks are worthless with the cheating ways of NVIDIA so evident now days when it comes to showing me what kind of gaming experience it going to be delivered by the video card.

I think people should recognize that these 5900 cards are a sham unless they are out in MASS QUANTITIES. Here in canada, finding a 5700 is damn impossible whereas the 9600XT/pros are EVERYWHERE. For me until I see them in the stores the 9600XT kicks ass!

Too bad every review site that runs ATI cards say they are solid. I have no issues with my 9600pro.

I got a non-biased review site that doesn't agree with you!

Also, at the bottom of the hill when Lara is running toward the water, the ATI card has some issues with the rendered texture on the water being consistent. The texture will turn off and on until she gets to a certain distance from the water. After this distance is reached, everything looks fine./]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1896&p=38

Good grief. Just try and look for a 9700pro. It will ensure you can play dx9 titles trouble free without any of the smoke and mirrors Nvidia has been cooking up with it's drivers and the FX cards.......

ATI rocks !!

NVidia rocks too !! They will learn from the last year, or they will become obsolete. They know what victory tastes like, and they want to tastes it again.

Competition is the only reasonn either of them rock !!

Fanboys of either side are an unfortunate reality.

Warped propaganda is an unfotunate reality - thank TR and all the other site out there that blow away the smoke and break the mirrors.

Objectively, I think the 5900 @ $200 is the best deal in the price range. It is irrelevant what the originally intended market position of the card was - the free market has put the card where it belongs.

Once you get over $300, the cards are very close, and very fast. The 9800 seems the best choice, but I'm dissapointed that ATI has done nothing to improve the core in over a year !!

Just another opinion out of 5 billion.

A correction, page 1:
"The NV35 graphics chip renders four conventional (color + Z) pixels per clock, but is capable of performing 8 operations per clock for Z pixels, textures, and stencil and shader ops."

Nope. The sentence should read
"<...> but is capable of performing 8 operations per clock for Z and stencil pixels and 8 texture lookups per clock."

Less confusing IMO and factually correct to boot ;)

Note that 8 texture lookups per clock are an automatic capability of all 4x2 architectures, it isn't unique to the NV30/NV35 design. Also, doing multiple "shader ops" per clock, per pipe, is just as misleading. ATI does that, too.

Recommended reading on the topic of shader pipe layout:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8005

-zeckensack

LOL! You like how TR changed their graphs, instead of using bar graphs that would show just how much of a Gigantic lead Nvidia has they use the other ones.

Is it really so hard to give a unbiased review?

You can get a 9800 non-pro non-SE for around 200...and if you use ATi's trade in program you can get a 9800 Pro for 250...either of which imho are better options than the nvidia cards, at least until nvidia gets their act together. And im not entirely sure, but they both may still come with the HL2 offer if you buy them BBATI.

I won't buy Nvidia until they make real DX9 card

ATI fanbois, stop being idiots ;) just because nVidia has a superior product in this price range doesnt mean you have to spout off a total bunch of crap! "oooh, its hard to find them in canada" wow... that makes it such a bad product... SHUT UP! GO ONLINE! BUY FROM NEWEGG LIKE THE REST OF THE PLANET! "ooh ooh, its ACTUALLY a 5900!!!!! but its clocked lower!!!!!" and.... IT COSTS $100 LESS! WOW! THEY MIGHT EVEN BE TRYING TO SELL SOMETHING! "whhhiinee they needed to put a $500 ATI card in the review to 'balance' it out" no no no they didnt! have they ever added something that has NOTHING to do with the product they are reviewing? nope. thats about as smart as adding a voodoo5 in a processor review. seriously. I own a radeon 9700 and I bet it could beat this card with a little OCing but so what? I allways thought ATI's best deals were right in between where nVidia hasn't currently gotten to, like $230-300. the 9700/9800non-pro are both KILLER deals. even the 9700/9800PROs are awesome deals. so quit bitching!

These debates will never end. Nvidia fanboys will support Nvidia to their graves even though the truth is out on subpar performance for PS2.0 and Vertex snader support for Next Generation games.
If they cheat like they have done, Nvidia fanboys will make up excuses why Nvidia did it. Who needs a PR department when you have blind sheep supporting a flawed product? If IQ is less and lower floating point precision is used, Nvidia fanboys will argue less IQ is better. Slower Frame rates? Same response. And the classic.

"They still have bad drivers"

Too bad every review site that runs ATI cards say they are solid. I have no issues with my 9600pro.
All the lies about the 5800Ultra?

"Just delays. No issues."

Lies about how many piplines it has?

"It still runs like a 8x1 pipeline card. I swear. Nvidia even said so. I will believe"

What about the 5900 and the 5950?

"It still runs like a 8x1 pipeline card. Nvidia said so. I will believe"
What about all those shader tests and games showing Nvidia hardware having major problems with shader intensive titels and DX9 games?

"3dmarks2003, Aquamarks, ShaderMarks, Chemeleon Marks, TRAOD, HL2, and Halo, are the total fault of the game deveopers for those games running poorly on Nvidia based hardware even though those games have the (Way it's meant to be played) on the game boxes. Nvidia is not at fault. They are the golden standard of drivers and video cards. Nvidia said so."

John Carmack about GeForce FX and DirectX 9

No doubt you heard about GeForce FX fiasco in Half-Life 2. In your opinion, are these results representative for future DX9 games (including Doom III) or is it just a special case of HL2 code preferring ATI features, as NVIDIA suggests?

"Unfortunately, it will probably be representative of most DX9 games. Doom has a custom back end that uses the lower precisions on the GF-FX, but when you run it with standard fragment programs just like ATI, it is a lot slower. The precision doesn't really matter to Doom, but that won't be a reasonable option in future games designed around DX9 level hardware as a minimum spec."
-John Carmack-

Nvidia fanboys response?

"John Carmack has no idea WTF he is talking about. He knows squat about programming and video cards even though he is a major supporter of Nvidia. Nvidia won't lie to it's die hard fans. Carmack and the rest are total damn liars"

You get the picture. Talk about living in a fantasy world.
I have no favorites. If one company puts out a superior product or service, i buy it. I am not blinded by company loyality when that given company has screwed the consumer, over and over again. Then i switch. If they can improve, then i will buy their products or services again.
I am no puppet because big corporations don't give a rat's arse about us, so to have a blinded faith and alligence for a company is quite stupid when the product or service they are selling is sub-par to the competition.
That's what you call a FANBOY. And who needs a PR department like i said before.................

FX cards are quite fantastic if you want to run games that are DX7, and DX8 driven. Quite amazing. Holding their own against any R3xx series of cards. But who the hell buys a new video card to play last year games andeven further? If you do, you need mental help....

Great article, Diss. The 5900XT stacks up nicely at $200 retail, and totally invalidates the 5700U. I was surprised to see the 9600XT competing in some AA+AF benches, though--particularly in OGL games!

Just one correction: regular 5900's are 400/850, not 450/850 (p. 13). Only the 256MB 5900U is normally clocked 50MHz higher for the core.

Don't get me wrong, this was a well put together article, but it seems hardly fair to put GeForce FX 5900 cards up against a 9600 XT when it is clear that these cards are aimed at different price points and market segments. If you're going to include 5900 series cards, then it's only fair to also include the 9800 XT in your benchmarks.

You can find radeon9800 non-pro for almost as low as $200 on ebay or holiday store sales. Personally I bought a samsung mem non-pro for $220 on ebay just recently, and that card flashes to pro and overclocks like a champ on top of that (well beyond pre-overdrive 9800XT speeds). Ofcourse on ebay you get ripped for S&H, so keep that in mind.

I can see how one can make the fx5900 (XT or ebay non-ultra) look like a solid buy, and I agree that it is; fx5900, radeon9800non-pro and radeon9700pro are all awesome bang for the buck cards. However, with all the bad publicity nVidia has been getting for a year an a half now, you would do good for the industry by picking the underdog. Remember - you can be as loud on the forums as you want, but it is your wallet that you vote with.

#88 ionpro

Your colors are revealed. Unless you feel your cards are inferior somehow. ?!?

I don't buy video cards, I have no allegiance, I barely know what is in my machine right now, AND I made no comment about particular card names.

Please spare me the excuse that you confused my post with someone else’s. You obviously feel you have a side to defend and are doing so with emotion instead of logic.

That is one strapped for employees Best Buy you are imagining that has a person working their computer section that doesn't know computers better than Joe Consumer. Stack of resumes and they can't find a qualified person.

They'll think the exact same thing when they see a "5900 XT" as Joe Consumer would Uhm, did you read the message at all before you went into defend mode? I said that Joe Consumer doesn't think, he asks someone more knowledgeable and that the person he asks actually reads and doesn't care what it is called.

I am sure you have some valid points, I just haven't read any. But please feel free to continue your holy war against windmills, some of us get chuckles out of your comments.

I see Nvidia is throwing money out the window. The card is just an under clock 5900. Plus that seems like an unfair fight. The 9600XT is only missing half is memory and bandwidth.

I'm thinking about returning my recently purchased Leadtek 5700 in favor of this card. However, I'm wondering if it's true that Leadtek uses a higher quality RAMDAC and output filter(s) to achieve superior visual quality, sharpness, etc?? I don't want to sacrifice ergonomics for 3D processing speed. What do you all think?

sure, but does it have HeadCasting?

am i the only one amazed by the fanboy stuff (for mainly ati, but some for nvidia).

its a card that puts pictures on your screen, not a religion.

#84 and 80 So does name calling and depreciating comments make the people who bash others feel any better or any more righteous? I believe those individuals were making an honest comment about the lack of nvidia's products in canada and you made it a personal attack.

Oh well, i hope you feel better anyways

#79/80/81

So there'a a total of 5 stores in all of canada that sell the 5700, and that's online? In vancouver vitrually all the local computers stores have the 9600xt on their websites and even in the bigger chain computer stores have them on the shelf. I cant see the same for the 5700.

5700 and 5900se/xt mostly paper launches for PR purposes and nothing for normal people.

To the person who suggested the price network, Canada is a big country and 5 stores dont really cut it for people who dont want to pay for the added cost of shipping.

*sits here patiently* I'm waiting for Loki.

"Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness gets its own special little intro here because its publisher, EIDOS Interactive, has released a statement claiming that the V49 patch, which includes a performance benchmark, was never intended for public release. The V49 benchmark apparently fails to correctly load Tomb Raider's GeForce FX-optimized code path, so it's more a reflection of how the GeForce FX cards perform with default DirectX 9 code than anything else."

Did this come from NVIDIA, Edios or Core?