“After long weeks of impatient waiting, it has finally arrived. NVIDIA has distributed the first GeForceFX cards to the press. Now, NVIDIA has to prove that it really has what it takes to topple ATI and its successful Radeon 9700 PRO from the throne.” Benchmarks on TomsHardware, ExtremeTech, AnandTech and Hard|OCP.
nVidia GeForceFX: Brute Force Attack Against the King
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Tom’s Hardware show that YES, in most case the GForceFX is faster but only slightly. This extra speed comes for a faster yet hotter processor and the DDR2 memory.
I really don’t think it worth the extra money to buy the FX over the 9700 when now the 9700 are becomes sub $300 prices and perform almost just a good.
I have a hard time seeing how NVidia is going to push the FX future b/c
1. It’s already overclocked and requires massive cooling
2. The bus is already maxed to the limit
Thus no room to future expand as to ATI, they can increase the clock and add more memory.
-Sad day for NVidia
Yup, I agree. For the money it costs, it is only a bit faster.
Except the fact that took nvidia a lot of time to release this card, it is extremely expensive and only slighter faster (plus it takes up two of your slots – I already have bad memories from my huge Voodoo5 which barely fit on that case).
The only nice thing it has is that it can support 2048×1536 resolution at 80-85 Hz I think. The highest end ATi Radeon today can only do it at 60 Hz. But if someone has a monitor that can do such resolutions at these refresh rates, he/she is more likely to buy a Quadro or a FireGL anyway…
I think nVidia has lost the battle. I hope I’m wrong because this market needs competition. If you think about the vid cards just 2 years ago vs the new vid cards its quite amazing. The 3dFX curse!
Funny you say this. Exactly one year ago, we were saying the exact same thing for ATi. And then, the unexpected happened!
ATi released a kick-ass card, and nvidia wasn’t ready. The tables have turned in less than 8 months! That was a surprise, for me at least… 😮
Up until ATI released the 9700, NVidia was king of the hill. For a little while ATI pulled ahead. Now NVidia sticks it’s nose out a little further. Now you claim the death of NVidia?
Bah! They’ve made good cards for a long time. I’ve received better support from NVidia than ATI. I’ll stick with NVidia. Why does the computer industry have this “there can be only one” attitude?
It doesn’t matter if ATI has the better card at the moment. Nearly every game that has been or is in developemnt recently are targeted at nVidia cards. As a result, most games have had spotty performance or glitch graphics when played on the ATI offerings. Everyone should just face the fact that nVidia is controling the show. They are pushing the standards thier way, and I see little reason to believe that this will change in the near future.
On a further note, ATI can’t even be bothered to release reference drivers for thier IGP chipsets. I bought a Compaq Presario 900 with such a chipset, and Compaq is showing little intrest in keeping thier driver up to date. I would also point out that they have been really problimatic in releasing the specs for this chipset so that the XFree86 ati driver will support it.
Conclusion? Well lets just say that hardware is nothing without software support.
Don’t you go crying about nVidia. What you are seeing today are PREviews (as oppose to REviews). Those are conducted using very early drivers which naturally stall the performance of this owesome card. nVidia is generally known for their outstanding drivers and I am certian that with every next release of detonator we’ll see GeForceFX pulling farther and farther ahead on Radeon9700 Pro. The final performace gap is expected to be no less than the one between Radeon9700 Pro and GeForce4 Ti4600.
You Nvidia fanbois make me laugh. Keep on deluding yourselves, by the time Nvidia actually relases the damn thing Ati will have the R350 on the shelves, there is no way in HELL nvidia will be able to compete with it. Oh plus the leafblower cooling makes the Nv30 the laughing stock of the vid card world.
The Anandtech article mentions that the fan, while running full bore, registered at 77db on their sound meter. They don’t mention if the card was in an enclosed case or how far away the meter was from the case, though.
Regardless, 77db is loud. For comparison, an average small economy car has about 80db of ambient noise inside while it is being driven. A conversation registers somewhere in the high 60s to low 70s.
Imagine having two people talking constantly whenever you try to use your computer. It will be that loud while you are playing games. The fan throttles down to a more reasonable level when the card is only doing 2D work.
And the card runs hot, according to Anandtech. While the fan cools the GPU, the memory on the back of the board is cooled passively. They say that the back of the board got up to 131deg Farhenheit. That’s nuts.
I like nVidia products. I’ve owned a TNT2, GeForce2, and a GeForce4 Ti4600. They’ve all been great performers without any problems. Now, though, I have to wonder if my next card won’t be a Radeon 9700 Pro or an upcoming ATI R350. The noise, lackluster performance compared to a 6 month old card, price, and form factor (takes up 2 slots on your backplane) don’t make me all that enthused about the GeForce FX
‘Tis interesting that Anand spent a lot of time comparing the AA and Anisotropic filtering options, coming to the conclusion that ATI’s implementation was noticably superior at 6X AA/16X Anistropic, compared visually, to the geForceFX at 8X AA, 16X Anisotropic, and at these settings the Radeon was roughly 10% faster too.
And the enxt gen Radeon is due shortly after the GeForceFX ships.
Sucks to be NVidia, not only is the FX 8 months late, but it’s merely comparable to a part that shipped in early September and will soon be replaced on the high end. If ATI makes the ship date for the R350, NVidia’s going to be in a world of hurt.
This card/gpu was released for mindshare and mindshare alone.
The life of a gfx card on the open market is a short one. But once a gfx card LOSES mindshare; its DAMN hard if not impossable to get back.
ATI kicking nVidias butt for months on end would not be good.
In a desparate move, nVida puts out a gfx card with NO HOPE of beating (market/sales wise) ATI’s best. SURE it beats it on the benchmarks, but with its powerconsumption, physical oversize, high PRODUCTION cost (ie lower margins) etc etc. nVidia KNOWS their only going to sell a miniscule amount of these cards (to *REAL* geeks/idiots only) BUT it buys them TIME; becuase for now nVidia has the “the best” card. They lose no mindshare (just a little money) and now have time to work on a real (ie cost effective) solution.
Good move. ATI – its your turn.
Hey Leafblower –
“arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics, it doesn’t matter whether you win or not, you are still retarded!”
Reason why not Nvidia?
-Taking too much space
-Too hot
-Price
-Loud
-Not that far from Radeon 9700 PRO
I find that’s total no reason why need to take too much space by two slots. It means, Nvidia does really need to work more on this part, which seems like it has arrived to the limit level. That count on heat and memory bandwidth too.
Here’s a hint. ATI is working on the R350 core for their next card. Honestly, NVidia’s drivers in the next 6 months will obviously increase performance, but not to the point where if the R350 is as good as it should be the R350 will STILL beat the FX… I’m loving it… I love watching companies pull this stuff… first AMD, now ATI… ah, i love computers. Read the Anandtech article, i thought it was the best.
Logik, how exactly do u know all that? How do you know how much performance increase will be achieved through driver optimization? How do you know what the performance of R350 will be like? I am not trying to pick a fight here, just looks to me like alot of speculation with not enough evidence to back it up.
One of the reasons why I swore off supporting 3Dfx was because of their patchy and lazy driver support, and the ease with which discontinued products were left to die. While ATI used to produce good hardware their driver support struggled to compete. Now that ATI has invested heavily in building its driver development team and have shifted to a unified driver model, I’m more optimistic about the quality of their current products and support for discontinued products. On pure hardware terms it’s clear that ATI are now a real contender. What I would like to see, now that the hardware willy waving comparisons are done, is in-depth compatibility and quailty comparisons between ATI and Nvidia drivers. After all, what’s the point in squeezing a few frame more than the next card if the drivers are junk?
Its funny, but I see this as the end of an era for nVidia. They will have to be price competetive to pick up the pace with the 9700Pro. I just dont see this happening, not with the massive investments in this NV30. Funny cuz this card will completely stink up the market for nvidia, i think if they undersell their Gf4 Ti range they might break even, otherwise bye bye Charlie.
I predict nVidia fading into obscurity within 2 product cycles. And ATi getting better and better.
Hello ATi!
I find it funny how ATI releases *one* good product and all of the sudden the fickle consumer thinks nVidia is gone. Need I remind you that ATI had extremely poor solutions for years, and was mocked in every discussion group? And even if nVidia leaves the desktop business they’d still have other venues such as their cineFX program, etc. I’m sorry, but ATI is a one trick pony. (plus they leaked DooM III).
I find it funny how ATI releases *one* good product and all of the sudden the fickle consumer thinks nVidia is gone.
It’s more than just the one card, it’s direction and momentum. ATI have finally started putting the resources into their driver team, introduced a unified driver, and have been incrementally increasing driver quality. On the other hand Nvidia have had to overclock their cards to stupid levels to equal the performance level of a cooler and better designed Radeon series. If ATI can nail the last remaining doubts with driver platform support and quality, this Nvidia customer is going to jump ship in a heartbeat as the cost of staying up to date is getting into stupid figures and ATI’s solutions are much more affordable.
if only ATI release drivers and info for linux/freebsd
WILL SOCK!
if only ATI release drivers and info for linux/freebsd
I agree. If ATI can maintain the direction of driver quality they’ve been taking lately and port their unified driver to Linux and FreeBSD, they’ll make me feel considerably more confident about the overall driver/card package, speaking as a developer and a user.
Really, Nvidia’s FX isnt even out yet, by the time, it will be a year since the ATI’s 300 has been out, followed by the 350. But then, Ati is already working on thier next GPU. Sounds like a normal cycle of each topping the other.
Until there’s some dx9 benchmarks there is no way to tell wich is better.
BTW, does anyone know were i can find some benchmarks for the 3dlabs wilcat vp and wilcat4 cards??
even if ati does bring out another card soon…
and even if it grinds the fx in the dust…
exactly how ~long~ has ati had the upper hand?
and how ~long~ did nvidia?
if you think one good victory means the war… or even a couple close together… well… the illogic of that speaks for itself ;o)
for myself i dont want either of the big cards… id rather get a 9500 pro and save a bunch of $$$
feature wise it would do everything i care about right now and would leave me some money left over to use for other things
3dfx thought the market would never fail them. How wrong they were. It didn’t matter that they dominated the market for years and that nVidia was the underdog for all that time. Just look at them now… oh wait, they’re gone.
Yeah.. yeah, you say, but 3dfx was different. Really? I see striking similarities. Both were overconfident in their technology. Both had a large userbase. Both looked almost indestructable in their heydays. So tell me again, how is nVidia immune to market forces?
People please. Nvidia is no 3DFX the Voodoo 5 was GARBAGE it couldnt even out perform current cards. Thats why 3DFX died. Next Nvidia still makes a lot of money after all they have the Nforce. Also the majority of their money comes from lower end porducts. Why do you guys think ATi survived all this time.
Oh btw im not a Nvidia Fan boy and in fact im running a radeon 8500 right now.
Well, I don’t see nvidia dying form this, and I agree that they get to keep some mindshare with this release. However, the sound output for the graphics card at 77db is outrageous. I wouldn’t buy one, and I’m faily toleratant of sound/heat issues.
This is definitely changing the momentum, but it took 3dfx 18 months to die didn’t it? This is just 8 months. The pressure may be starting on nvidia though, because if they dont’ release a really good card next, and ATI does, they will be hurting badly.
In the mean time, I’m sure FX performance will increase somewhat with drivers, but then again, ATI is supposed to release R350 soon, aren’t they?
Doom III will run on both, but one is cheaper, doesn’t sound like vacuum cleaner, and doesnt’ take up 2 slots.
On the other hand, I won’t buy ATI until I hear some good news about their drivers, Windows and especially Linux.
yes but first ati has to win ~consistently~
note that im not saying its not possible for nvidia to die…
i just dont think one win or two from ati will do it
actually i think either some new company will move into the market or some old one thats been out of the running might make a comeback (s3’s new product sounds promising)
i think the idea that “ati came out with a good card so nvidia will die” is really weak… look at the radeon 8500… it was a damn nice card at the time… how long did it take nvidia to take the lead back then?
if the situation is the same in a year then talk of death might have some “meat” to it… until then its just trash talk
All this talk of NVIDIA being dead is silly. Does this hurt them? YES! But it hurts in reputation more than profits. The high end ($300+) is a very small market. It is more of a test market for future products. NVIDIA is still pretty competetive in the $80-$200 range. They also still have XBox and nForce bringing in money. In fact, I’d wager that Radeon 9500 and 9500 Pro will hurt NVIDIA more than the 9700 in the near term. Also, NVIDIA still has a a better driver reputation than ATI. All in all, I think this poor release will hurt NVIDIA, but I think they can and probably will bounce back. ATI was in a worse position a year ago than NVIDIA is now.
From the hardware specs it looked like it could be a GF3 killer, but with the quality (or lack of such) of the original drivers Radeon8500 was lagging behind. On top of that around the same time nVidia released the Detonator3 drivers, giving GF3 based card a very healthy performance boost and leaving 8500 in the dust. By the time 8500 drivers started to mature and show the card’s real potential, GF4 was out.