NV40, NVIDIA gets in the game

[CrazyCrusher]

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1703/

[Midknyte]

Did you see the 3DMark03 score on this thing? I'm wondering if nVidia didn't do some major tweaking just for the benchmark....

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15169
3DMark 2003 score of 12,535

[CrazyCrusher]

YEP thats a huge score, gezz im happy when I hit 6000 let alone 12,500, I dont think we will know for sure untill 3dmark strip down the NV, but if its legit, ATI are going to have there hands full, it should be fun to see what comes of all this, theres nothing better than a good old ATI Vs Nvidia Bash;) from the critics

[Vampiel]

Keep in mind thats an article in the inquirer. Although they do have real sources, they like to print articles that are "unofficial" rumors and speculation.

(though sometimes they turn out to be true)

Notice they added later on
In back rooms at the CeBIT Messe, we heard talk of 3DMark03 scores of "over 10,000 3DMarks" for both ATI's R420 and Nvidia's NV40 but, for various reasons, we weren't particularly confident in our source.

[Midknyte]

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Just saw this article this morning:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2018


What seems highly unusual is the scheduled introduction of Radeon X800 XT on May 31st; only a month after Radeon X800 Pro's unveiling. Recall that Radeon 9800 and 9800 XT were launched six months apart. We can speculate ATI has either changed their marketing strategy, or the difference in performance between R420 and NV40 hastens ATI's release schedule.

Maybe there's some truth in those unreal scores.....

[bob05]

Personally I am inclined to believe them, at least the part of a 10,000+ 3dmark03 score. This quote is even more interesting:

Sources close to ATI have said that a score of 10,000 3DMarks for ATi R420 "would be a dream", indicating that R420 Revision: CeBIT 2K4 wasn't pulling this level of numbers.

Nvidia had a sour taste in it's mouth after the 5800, they aren't gonna let that happen again. It sounds like they're gonna give ATi a run for their money. ;)

[MadPistol]

hehe. The new Nvidia cards supposedly don't have the Geforce FX name on them, it's just Geforce. Nvidia has done them a bad thing now. :t

[bob05]

Originally posted by MadPistol
hehe. The new Nvidia cards supposedly don't have the Geforce FX name on them, it's just Geforce. Nvidia has done them a bad thing now. :t

I think they should just stay with Geforce #, not the FX or XP or anything like that. But after about Geforce 8-9, it doesn't have a nice ring to it. It makes your company seem old. :p That's prolly a reason why they may call the new cards Geforce 6000's and such.

[Yoshi]

I skipped a vid card upgrade for these babys, I havn't had Nvidia for awhile now. Hmmmm 12,000 you say:D

[cusimar9]

I absolutely REFUSE to believe that a new graphics card can give DOUBLE the score on 3DMark of the current fastest (non overclocked) system.

Either
1. They're pulling our leg
2. The drivers are well dodgy
or
3. This is going to turn the Gaming world up-side down.

Here's hoping for the latter.

I do hope its not a ridiculous looking thing with about 3 120mm Delta fans on it though.

Rick :r

[cusimar9]

Look at what I've just stumbled across on the nVidia site:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/sdk_home.html

Some NV40 Video Clips!

OMG - PROPER Vertex Bump mapping. Now that would have a massive effect on scene detail!

Multiple lighting? Yes please

Rick

[bob05]

Originally posted by cusimar9
I absolutely REFUSE to believe that a new graphics card can give DOUBLE the score on 3DMark of the current fastest (non overclocked) system.

I do hope its not a ridiculous looking thing with about 3 120mm Delta fans on it though.

Why not? Before the 9xxx series, Ati really didn't truly shine (and gain a big market share). But look at them now. :t

And about that last one, like I said before, Nvidia has a sour taste in it's mouth because of that big fan on the 5800, they will probably try to do it right the first time. :p

[cusimar9]

Well I hope its as fast as they say it will be.

Looking at those NV40 demos it certainly looks very impressive. I'd give anything to see the Unreal 3 engine at work right now.

... and here (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.planet3dgames.de%2Fne ws.php%3Fid%3D1048&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools) it is!

[Vampiel]

Honestly ive never really cared much for the 3Dmark scores. Real world FPS are what I like to see.

[bob05]

Originally posted by Vampiel
Honestly ive never really cared much for the 3Dmark scores. Real world FPS are what I like to see.

True, but I think it would be a rough gage of real world performance. My 5200 gets 1000 +/- and it does alright in real world situations. But my Geforce 2 MX got a 53, and it didn't do so well. :t

[CrazyCrusher]

Originally posted by Vampiel
Honestly ive never really cared much for the 3Dmark scores. Real world FPS are what I like to see.
I would have to agree with you, real world scores in FPS is what tends to catch my eye when purchasing a Video Card. but looking at a 3dmark score like that, you know it has to work well on a game, thats nearly double of what use guys are getting now.

[causticVapor]

Originally posted by bob05
Why not? Before the 9xxx series, Ati really didn't truly shine (and gain a big market share). But look at them now. :t


The 9700 pro didn't get twice the 3dmark2001 score of the 8500 though.

[causticVapor]

Originally posted by cusimar9
I absolutely REFUSE to believe that a new graphics card can give DOUBLE the score on 3DMark of the current fastest (non overclocked) system.

Either
1. They're pulling our leg
2. The drivers are well dodgy
or
3. This is going to turn the Gaming world up-side down.

Here's hoping for the latter.

I do hope its not a ridiculous looking thing with about 3 120mm Delta fans on it though.

Rick :r

good logic.

I agree

[bob05]

Originally posted by causticVapor
The 9700 pro didn't get twice the 3dmark2001 score of the 8500 though.

Nope, but the 9700 did get a score of about 15000 points in 3dmark01 to the 8500's score of 9000. Ever hear of Moore's Law? Why shouldn't it apply to GPU's either? ;)

[Rugor]

First, it's an Nvidia card using non-Futuremark approved drivers. Given those two caveats I expect the score to be accurate insofar as being a number someone got from an NV40 on a 3DMark2K3 run. Having said that, I don't know if that really means anything for real-world performance.

Nvidia's "optimization" strategy has done a very good job of decoupling any sort of overall or theoretical performance metric from actual gameplay performance. Popular and high-profile games will benefit from significant optimizations and gameplay will reflect that. Please note, I'm not saying it will be a bad card, but only that given Nvidia's history we really won't be able to see how it performs in real games until people can test it. An ATI card (given recent history) would give a 3DMark score that was more representative of overall performance.

What I am sure of is that there are game this thing is going to be insanely fast in. Not even the most optimistic R420 is going to be able to do to it what R300 did to NV30.

The problem I see with it is going to be power. The ultra-high end models are going to want 500W or more in your box and even today that's not common.

[causticVapor]

Originally posted by bob05
Nope, but the 9700 did get a score of about 15000 points in 3dmark01 to the 8500's score of 9000. Ever hear of Moore's Law? Why shouldn't it apply to GPU's either? ;)

A system that would score 15k with a 9700 would score at least 10500 with an 8500. Not saying the 9700 wasn't revolutionary, it just wasn't twice as fast.

NV40 is going to be a lot faster than what's out now, even without driver cheats, if nvidia has learned their lesson. I predict somewhat of a GF4/8500 situation in which nvidia is slightly ahead of ATi this time, but time will tell.

The IQ thing better be fixed as well. FX cards still don't have as good IQ as radeon counterparts, something that may be due to drivers, architecture, or both. It's something that has long been overdue.

Either way it swings, competition will be intense, as long as the 6800 is not another 5800. If it is and R420 ends up not consuming nearly as much power, then the same may happen again. I doubt it though

[iceblue]

Actually, the most recent IQ analysis show that some games end up looking better on GeForce FX cards while others look better on Radeons.

[CrazyCrusher]

Performance is one consideration when evaluating high-end video cards, but image quality is also very important, especially of late with the new games that are coming out now. The performance war has moved to a whole new level with Nvidia and ATI, and in some cases, the first casualty is image quality. Lowering detail levels or simply not reaching the highest potential quality in anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering can lead to higher benchmark scores, but will create a less appealing game environment. Balancing these two factors is a difficult job, and is made even tougher by the "personal taste" appeal of certain techniques and effects, im not sure about this but I think The Radeon 9800 XT features the enhanced R360 core, but it's still a Radeon 9800-based product and as such, displays excellent image quality. Its anisotropic filtering is the best in the business, and anti-aliasing is also top-notch. In my book, the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra can't match ATI's anisotropic filtering and trust me as every one knows thats hard for me to say :), and also falls back a bit when comparing pure edge anti-aliasing. NVIDIA has by no means "poor" image quality, it's just that ATI has presented such a high standard for comparison over the last few months/year, So im hoping that this turns out to be a good old Nvidia Vs ATI Speed war again, given that ATI has lead the way for a while,

[Vampiel]

We can speculate all we want, but all I have to say is we will just have to wait and see what really happens.

I remember when the 9800 came out everyone was like wow it beat the FX?

I think ATI keeps it under wraps better than NVIDIA. NVIDIA likes to hype things up more it seems.

We will just have to wait and see what happens, speculation and rumors are not going to beat the facts.

[Rugor]

It's really hard to compare IQ between the two IHVs because things are so different.

ATI has angle-dependent AF, which doesn't work as well at some angles as Nvidia's angle-independent implementation. However there's a lot more to it than that. ATI's hardware supports up to 16xAF, while Nvidia's tops out at 8x. Also, ATI's implementation has less of a performance hit, so you can often enable higher settings.

Then you get the latest trick where with many applications it's impossible to enable true trilinear filtering on Nvidia hardware with current drivers.

Then we get AA. Both companies use Multi-Sampling, but the implementations are much different. For example ATI's 4x implementation allows for twice the granularity with the same number of sample points as Nvidia's. Also, ATI has incorporated gamma correction into its AA hardware while Nvidia hasn't.

Apart from things like AA and AF which can be objectively measured, the only other objective way to measure IQ (and then only in D3D and not OpenGL) is to use Microsoft's refrast (or reference rasterizer) to determine exactly what image the software is asking for, and then compare the card's output to it.

Anything else boils down to personal preference.

Before I finish, there's one other issue that can cause quite a problem here, and that's that a lot of games use different render paths for ATI and Nvidia hardware. So they're not comparing apples to apples, which makes it even harder to do objective comparisons.

[Vampiel]

You can only directly compare the performance with clairity. It's like comparing an Apple to a PC, or Intel to AMD. Who cares how many pipes it has or the IQ, just give me the FPS and image quality.

[Rugor]

Originally posted by Vampiel
You can only directly compare the performance with clairity. It's like comparing an Apple to a PC, or Intel to AMD. Who cares how many pipes it has or the IQ, just give me the FPS and image quality.

Pardon? Performance with clairity[sic]?

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. You can compare screenshots and FPS, but in a lot of cases that's subjective. One person may like Nvidia's brighter look where another may prefer ATI's. Otherwise you're stuck with how close is it to what was asked, or the quality of the AA and AF as based on a tester or screenshot.

[MadPistol]

Any way you throw this issue, the next set of cards will be amazing, as all new card series from both ATI and Nvidia are. (although Nvidia was a little disappointing this time around)

ATI was there before Nvidia was, so they've got experience under their hats. However, Nvidia invests in so many areas of visual and computer arts that Nvidia dominates completely different markets that ATI hasn't even touched yet.

Think about this though.

Nvidia won in DX8 and 8.1 with the Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 Ti cards.

ATI won in DX9 first generation with Radeon 9700 - 9800 XT cards.

In other words, the next round is up for grabs. However, I have a feeling that Nvidia will not be as weak this time. The main reason is that they will not be using the FX name in their next card series (knowing what kind of reputation those 2 letters have gathered over the last year.) These cards will be much better, and I don't think Nvidia is altering any kind of scores with their new cards. The only reason their even doing it right now is because their cards right now are not up to par. If they alter their scores on their new line of cards, the only people their fooling is theirselves. We won't be disappointed with this card series. :t

[Vampiel]

Originally posted by Rugor
Pardon? Performance with clairity[sic]?


I meant that the preformance is the only thing you can directly compare with an absolute, this gets more FPS than that one. You can talk about the architecture all you want, just gimme the FPS in real games, and some screen shots, thats all I need to now.

[Rugor]

I have to disagree,

you can compare more than just FPS. You can compare things like the performance hit from AA and AF, and the quality of the two. You can also compare how close the image is to what it's supposed to be.

All those factors help define a card-- without going into the architecture.

But you are right that it's the results that count, not how the internal hardware gives you those results.

[Someone Stupid]

I'm not taking it that either company has an advantage right now. Both have a grasp of the technology, and both have been ahead at one point or another. Until rumour becomes certified 3D mark 03' comparisons and other gaming benches that are intensive for the time they are released, I couldn't tell you which one I'd bet on.

[cusimar9]

When's the next version of Direct X coming out? Or the next 'big feature'?

A couple of years ago I invested £300 in a GF4Ti4600 (which I still love, by the way) only to find DX9 come out a couple of months later.

Itd be nice to know you could buy a card safe in the knowledge it'll last you a good few years.

Did anyone take a look at the NV40 demos I posted earlier?

[bob05]

Originally posted by cusimar9
When's the next version of Direct X coming out? Or the next 'big feature'?

A couple of years ago I invested £300 in a GF4Ti4600 (which I still love, by the way) only to find DX9 come out a couple of months later.

Itd be nice to know you could buy a card safe in the knowledge it'll last you a good few years.

Did anyone take a look at the NV40 demos I posted earlier?

The next Direct X version to come out will be Direct X 9.1. The big feature in it should be PS 3.0. I saw some of the demo's, they looked slick. I was most interested in the multiple lighting one. :t

[cusimar9]

Direct X 9.1? So will the NV40 support DX9.1 or just DX9?

Yeah the multiple lighting one is very impressive. So smooth with so many lights.

I thought they could have made a better demo for the water simulation. It looks good, but I think i've seen better on my GF4.

[bob05]

Originally posted by cusimar9
Direct X 9.1? So will the NV40 support DX9.1 or just DX9?

Yeah the multiple lighting one is very impressive. So smooth with so many lights.

I thought they could have made a better demo for the water simulation. It looks good, but I think i've seen better on my GF4.

My bad, Microsoft decided to call it DX 9.0c (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13907) instead of 9.1. The NV40 will support 9.0c, but I don't know about R420 since 9.0c supports PS 3.0. You might see a partial implementation of 9.0c in the R420, but I dunno about full.

[cusimar9]

I have a question:

Why does the hardware have to support a version of DX?

Why can't they generalise the hardware to run whatever version of direct X is currently available?

Its just software isn't it?

I appreciate the hardware is OPTIMISED for certain effects and features, but it should still support everything.

You don't get versions of DirectX that will only run on certain CPU's (excluding ancient ones, of course)

[Vampiel]

No, their is hardware involved in supporting new features (depending on what it is). It's not "just software".

Rugor I agree with you notice in my first post I wrote "just give me the FPS and image quality"

compare how close the image is to what it's supposed to be

That's basically what I meant. AA and AF are supposed to give you better image quility, otherwise why would you enable them.

[Rugor]

There is no DX9.1, Microsoft has never had plans for DX9.1 and there will be no DX9.1. Most of the rumors about DX9.1 have come from people who believed it was going to be a major revision of the API that would somehow magically improve NV3x based cards' shader performance.

The next real version of DX is going to ship with Longhorn, and while the official name is unknown at this point (it's been called DirectX Next in some articles) it's what would be DX 10 if the current numbering scheme is followed.

For the near future there is only DX9.0c. The reason it is a letter release rather than a point release (9.0c rather than 9.1) is because it brings no new features to the API, it only reveals ones that were already there but had not been activated. DX8.1 introduced PS1.4, where VS and PS3.0 are already part of the DX9 specification, but just haven't been revealed in the runtime yet.

As to R420 not supporting PS 3.0 that's pure speculation. ATI has made no official statements at all, so the only thing we really have to go on is one leaked slide from an ATI presentation where the presenter's notes indicate that R420 will have a significant performance hit using flow control in PS3.0. Note that that implies R420 does support PS3.0 but does not support all features well.