M
McGrandpa
There is no doubt about it. They're both good 3D cards. Image quality
is beautiful with both. Performance in Half Life, Halo, UT2004,
Morrowind, TR: AoD is really good with both. So I wonder why it is that
two different video cards taking turns in the same machine, same opsys,
same applications, can turn out a 3DMark2001se score with the Radeon
getting near 15,000 3DMarks and the FX getting 13,500? And the Radeon
CPU and RAM are clocked slower. Both cards are excellent products. I
honestly cannot see why there could be such a big difference. Unless
someone really does have it in for Nvidia?
In 3DMark 2001se I note that though the FX gets slightly lower
framerates in certain areas, the motion is smoother. The Radeon colors
seem to be more vivid, clear. Not a lot, but noticeable. In Nature,
the Radeon absolutely spanked the FX. This really surprised me.
I saw the FX dip down into the 20's and slowly come back up. It never
hit 100fps for long at all. The Radeon only dipped below 100 one time
for aabout 4 secs, then went over 120 to finish. It ranged from 120 to
192 fps for the most part. Impressive.
In 3DMark2003 the scores were very close. Neither hit 6000. So my rig
makes a poor showing in the ORB for '2003 en toto.
I ran my games with the FX, then commenced the setup for the Radeon,
swapped out, booted, installed the Cat 4.5's, rebooted, then did all the
same games with the 9800 Pro. Both were great. FWIW, the colors in
Morrowind are more vivid, yeah, I know it's a DX8 game. But they're
also more vivid and clear in UT2004. FR's seem pretty much the same in
the games. For both cards, I set all to Quality, with VSync OFF.
I'm not trying to start any flamewars here. Machinery is machinery, and
both of these cards are very good. I tend to be a bit more partial to
ATi because my first three video cards are ATi. I've had a few more
since those old days as well. I've also had most of the NVidia cards.
The only family of NVidia cards I've missed are the GF3's. I've run
everything from Riva 128 thru the FX5900. With ATi, I got my first
discrete video card. A VGA Wonder 1.0 512K, then a VGA Wonder XL24 1
meg, then a OEM ATi Mach64 4 meg, then R7000, then R8500-128 and now
both a Radeon 7000 (in a P3 800) and 9800 Pro 128.
Both companies make excellent hardware. And today, I'm seeing ATi
driver stability every bit as good as NVidias. I've no gripes about
either really. I do wonder how a slower card can truly outperform a
faster one in some pretty broad areas? Pixel Shaders 2.0 for instance.
I used to think I knew a lot, now I see I got a lot to learn
I'm still looking for an X800 XT, I believe it is the hottest desktop
board for general retail?
One other thing I like a lot about the Radeon 8500 Pro-128:
you don't hear it !! I had to scrunch my head down to look up under
it to make sure the fan was running! It's also a few inches shorter.
McG.
is beautiful with both. Performance in Half Life, Halo, UT2004,
Morrowind, TR: AoD is really good with both. So I wonder why it is that
two different video cards taking turns in the same machine, same opsys,
same applications, can turn out a 3DMark2001se score with the Radeon
getting near 15,000 3DMarks and the FX getting 13,500? And the Radeon
CPU and RAM are clocked slower. Both cards are excellent products. I
honestly cannot see why there could be such a big difference. Unless
someone really does have it in for Nvidia?
In 3DMark 2001se I note that though the FX gets slightly lower
framerates in certain areas, the motion is smoother. The Radeon colors
seem to be more vivid, clear. Not a lot, but noticeable. In Nature,
the Radeon absolutely spanked the FX. This really surprised me.
I saw the FX dip down into the 20's and slowly come back up. It never
hit 100fps for long at all. The Radeon only dipped below 100 one time
for aabout 4 secs, then went over 120 to finish. It ranged from 120 to
192 fps for the most part. Impressive.
In 3DMark2003 the scores were very close. Neither hit 6000. So my rig
makes a poor showing in the ORB for '2003 en toto.
I ran my games with the FX, then commenced the setup for the Radeon,
swapped out, booted, installed the Cat 4.5's, rebooted, then did all the
same games with the 9800 Pro. Both were great. FWIW, the colors in
Morrowind are more vivid, yeah, I know it's a DX8 game. But they're
also more vivid and clear in UT2004. FR's seem pretty much the same in
the games. For both cards, I set all to Quality, with VSync OFF.
I'm not trying to start any flamewars here. Machinery is machinery, and
both of these cards are very good. I tend to be a bit more partial to
ATi because my first three video cards are ATi. I've had a few more
since those old days as well. I've also had most of the NVidia cards.
The only family of NVidia cards I've missed are the GF3's. I've run
everything from Riva 128 thru the FX5900. With ATi, I got my first
discrete video card. A VGA Wonder 1.0 512K, then a VGA Wonder XL24 1
meg, then a OEM ATi Mach64 4 meg, then R7000, then R8500-128 and now
both a Radeon 7000 (in a P3 800) and 9800 Pro 128.
Both companies make excellent hardware. And today, I'm seeing ATi
driver stability every bit as good as NVidias. I've no gripes about
either really. I do wonder how a slower card can truly outperform a
faster one in some pretty broad areas? Pixel Shaders 2.0 for instance.
I used to think I knew a lot, now I see I got a lot to learn
I'm still looking for an X800 XT, I believe it is the hottest desktop
board for general retail?
One other thing I like a lot about the Radeon 8500 Pro-128:
you don't hear it
!! I had to scrunch my head down to look up underit to make sure the fan was running! It's also a few inches shorter.
McG.
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