Eve of Geforce FX benchmarks

BKtje · 27-01-2003 2:15am #1

Well the day has arrived that all nvidia fans have been waiting for and from early reports from a german site you'll be very disappointed.

Its in german but the benchmarks are pretty easy to make out.
Apparently the nv35 is noisier, power hogging and self throttling if it overheats(!?). It also takes a pci slot for a fan, is pricier and on top of this it onlyjust beats the r300.

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1109/1.html

Tomorrow we'll see sites like anandech, toms, hardocp etc with their reviews. Will make for interesting reading.

STaN · 27-01-2003 5:23am

well they have spend 400m in developing it.

and i have heard of 2-4 times the preformance of the top end ti4600 128mb

Kali · 27-01-2003 9:57am

Hmm 2-4 times performance would be extremely optimistic.. in the benchmarks for the above, its around the 5-15% improvement mark, while I'd be dubious about the quality of the above test sample and drivers, its still not exactly groundbreaking figures.

BabyEater · 27-01-2003 11:31am

It will only be 2-4 times quicker than the 4600 if antialiasing and antiscopic filtering and the like is turned on . As the 9700 is 3 times quicker than the 4600 in some benchmarks if you have all that stuff on.

BKtje · 27-01-2003 2:24pm

Just read anandtech's review of the G FX.
To say im disappointed is an understatement.

The G FX can barely beat (if that) the 9700pro which is been around for 6 months. I know the drivers still need to be worked on but tbh they will only give it the lead by the amount it should have had at launch. The r350 will wipe the floor with it if this is all the FX can do. Im now happier than ever that i bought my 9700 pro

Also i had to laugh at the noise tests that anandtech did.
The 9700pro was a nice level whirring noise. The FX starts nice enough but then *bang bang VROOOOM* is the best way to put it.

If you want a silent pc, stay clear of the FX.
Will be intesting tos ee wether the Geforce FX will still be priced as highly as was expected.

I've linked to the noise tests below. Theya re fairly hefty
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/nvidia/geforcefx/review/ati.zip is 1.6mb
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/nvidia/geforcefx/review/nvidia.zip is 2.28mb.

leeroybrown · 27-01-2003 3:02pm

Having read the anandtech review I'd have to say "pretty dissapointing".

I would say tho that Nvidia were probably under massive internal pressure to launch the product now rather than wait another month for driver modification. Based on the hardware available on the Nvidia card a substantial performance increase could be found in improved drivers (something that Nvidia normally produce).

That said I had expected Nvidia's new flagship product to make a perfomance gain (even if slight) over the Radeon 9700 Pro on launch.

Now it will he nice to see ATI increase the core speed of the Radeon. What I'm really looking forward to is the first manufacturer to combine the two cards technologies and produce a DDR2 Based card (Geforce FX) with a full <edit>256</edit> bit memory path (9700 Pro).

Also I dislike the idea of my Graphics Card changing mode when it gets hot. It's not exactly overclocking friendl for a Card to almost half it's clocks when it thinks that it's being overheating.

BKtje · 27-01-2003 3:47pm

a bit of inconsistancy ive found,
i read Hardocp's review and they say fairly much what anandtech says. However Toms Hardware has the FX coming out on top in most things.
The difference you may be wondering? anandtech and hardocp use intel 3.06ghz while toms uses an xp2700.

Is the difference between the cpu's that big a difference or is some misinformation flying about.

longword · 27-01-2003 5:05pm

Originally posted by leeroybrown
What I'm really looking forward to is the first manufacturer to combine the two cards technologies and produce a DDR2 Based card (Geforce FX) with a full 128 bit memory path (9700 Pro).

256-bit you mean. Video cards have been using a 128-bit RAM interface for a long time. Trouble is ATI's PCB is massively complex. And what surprised me is the GeForce FX PCB is apparently more complex even though it only has 128-bit wide traces. Could be a while before we see GHz RAM on a 256-bit card.

Gerry · 27-01-2003 6:27pm

Heh ye, the tnt1 was the first card with a 128bit memory interface afaik. The dreadful tnt2 - m64 was a step back.

leeroybrown · 27-01-2003 6:44pm

Indeed, they have. Mental typo on my part

Of course it's a 256 bit memory path. The 9700 is the only card with a set of fully 256 bit pipeline.

The PCB's naturally end up being hugely complex when you consider the amount of signalling paths they need.

Anyone know how many layers they used on the FX PCB. The Ti4600 is 12 layers afaik.

Gerry · 27-01-2003 7:43pm

The fx uses 12 layers also. tbh I wouldn't touch the geforce fx, its an underperforming, bulky, heavy, noisy piece of hype. After taking a gamble on the 0.13micron process it doesn't appear to have done much good with the heat production of the card. Ati's r9700 is 0.15 micron and runs much cooler.
If you look at nvidias homepage, theres a lot of hype about its cinematic features, but I'm not sure what games this applies to. As some of the reviewers said, the performance will probably increase a few months down the line when the nvidia driver team get their act together, and perhaps we will see some games taking advantage of the image quality.

leeroybrown · 27-01-2003 8:02pm

THe main problem I see with all this is that because the FX has grossly underperformed compared to it's press, the prices of other cards (Especially the 9700 Pro) will probably stay high for longer.

The noise from it did seem a bit excessive. The measurements given on anandtech were pretty high (77dB) and the presence of the 2D lower run speed seems to point to major Nvidia worries about it. 77dB is screamingly loud and would probably show up Delta's loudest offerings.

Also I normally leave a free PCI slot beside my graphics card but the FX really forces the issue.

longword · 27-01-2003 11:07pm

Originally posted by leeroybrown
Anyone know how many layers they used on the FX PCB. The Ti4600 is 12 layers afaik.

GeForce 4 is only 6 to 8 layers. GeForce FX is 12. I think Radeon 9700 Pro is 8, maybe 10 layers but I couldn't be sure about that

Kevok · 28-01-2003 1:14am

Theres no way i'm sticking an FX into my PC if it sounds like those review boards. My vacuum cleaner is quieter :eek:

My money will be going for a 9700pro, a bit sad really as I have liked nvidia cards before, but i simply cannot justify spending so much on a card for such marginal gains.

Maybe it will change, but i can't imagine by much.

STaN · 28-01-2003 1:20am

ill never go back to ATI, due to early memories of the ATI Rage II 2mb pci, but thats another story.

I'd say wait and see what the varying retail models are like.

timeout · 28-01-2003 3:36pm

What a monster of a card.

Looking at it on tomsHardware, and its huge. Read on a couple of pages and there was a spec page listing the details of the radeon, G4, and Fx. There's hardly anything different between the radeon and the Fx.

Have a look, It's a great article.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/index.html

Gerry · 28-01-2003 9:16pm

Originally posted by STaN
ill never go back to ATI, due to early memories of the ATI Rage II 2mb pci, but thats another story.

I'd say wait and see what the varying retail models are like.

Is it not a bit stupid to forever prejudice yourself against a particular manufacturer because of one product you didn't like?
Ati cards were always good 2d cards, usually with better 2d image quality and video acceleration than nvidia or anyone else. 3d quality was brutal until recently, but they have now gotten their act together with performance, 3d image quality, and drivers. I'd certainly have no problem buying a r9700 pro.

Ryo Hazuki · 28-01-2003 9:17pm

ATI Rage II 2mb pci

Yeah but the 4mb AGP version is much better, i have 1 if you want, only 20 euro.

Yep, i was expecting more from the FX, looks like a rushed job to me.

koneko · 28-01-2003 9:34pm

I wouldn't put much faith in the Toms Hardware (p)review.

Their articles are generally **** and/or biased. This one in particular looks fairly dodgy.

"Varying retail models" won't change the hardware :rolleyes: A driver update (ole Nvidia style) will fix the card up a bit, but it's basically a letdown.

A Radeon 9700Pro will overclock really well. The FX won't. Even if the FX outperforms the Radeon (which it barely will) you can overclock the crap out of the Radeon and *still* beat the FX.

Take a look at the Anandtech and HardOCP reviews and compare the quality of the AA-enabled pics.

Celt · 28-01-2003 11:47pm

Originally posted by STaN
ill never go back to ATI, due to early memories of the ATI Rage II 2mb pci, but thats another story.

I'd say wait and see what the varying retail models are like.

I had the 8mb version, I agree with you and thats why I bought a ti4400 over a 9000.

PPC · 29-01-2003 12:27am

I had bad experiences with the rage fury 128.
The change to the GFddr was amazing, but with the loudness of that ti5800 i think i might be giving ATi a try next time round unless it becomes quieter

spooky donkey · 29-01-2003 1:01am

ANyone know when Nvdia plan to release this card? I dont plan to but one, but when they do realease it I hope there will be a drop in prise of the Gforce 4 TI cards in general! Then i`ll get my new GF4 card!

BKtje · 29-01-2003 1:17am

Spooky: They say that they will start being shipped next month.
That however is the US and they will be rare for a while. Towards end of feburary there should be a fari few about in the states.
Should be in Europe in bulk late march early april at the soonest imo.

Strage thing is that i found tomshardware one to look more favourably on the FX than anandtech or hardocp (or that german one), it did much better vs the radeon than on the other sites.

The FX is nothing special now that we used to the high standards set by the r300. I doubt once the varying models come from the different manufacturers they will tweak that fan one hell of a lot. Dont expect it to be as quiet as the r300 but i doubt it will be as noisy. The FX will get a performanve increase with new drivers but with the r350 scheduled to be out within a couple of months (which is supposed to be 30% more powerful than the r300 but we'll see about that) nvidia seem to have lost this round....

SickBoy · 29-01-2003 9:20am

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
Strage thing is that i found tomshardware one to look more favourably on the FX than anandtech or hardocp (or that german one), it did much better vs the radeon than on the other sites.

I think the reason for this is because THG used a high end XP rather than a high end P4 for his tests...

BKtje · 29-01-2003 5:05pm

Yer i agree with u there sickboy as its the only explanation i can see.

Makes it interesting tho, means in the future people might have to consider gfx cards depending on what brand of cpu they have .

SickBoy · 29-01-2003 5:14pm

Also it was run on an nVidia motherboard. I wonder does the latest NForce 2 bios make the R300 choke a little

Food for thought...

vac · 29-01-2003 5:38pm

Couldn't stop laughing when i saw that. I also heard the mp3 they made at tomshardware and it isn't a quite one

SickBoy · 29-01-2003 5:45pm

OMG! That is funny!!

whosurpaddy · 29-01-2003 9:19pm

anyone have an idea of how much these new cards will be?
are we talkin bout €700 yea?

leeroybrown · 29-01-2003 9:33pm

Makes it interesting tho, means in the future people might have to consider gfx cards depending on what brand of cpu they have .

Perhaps iit might be more true to say that the Drivers currently run better on XP systems. I reckon this will even out pretty quickly if it is the case.

Eve of Geforce FX benchmarks

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