ATi vs Nvidia 2008

[Phil]

Please.The GTX300 coming out soon. I'll take this argument further on release



Theres a case for you Interverse. Keep your hand out of your pants now, kind sir.

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[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI_4EVER

Originally the X1800 was the 7800GTX's competition then nVidia decided to further raise the bar with 7900GTX after ATI had come close with their X1800. ATI responded with X1900XTX...an inferno...quite possibly the hottest card ever made...but the 7900GTX narrowly managed to keep the crown...then much much later when nVidia already were well into working on the 8 series ATI came out with their X1950 and various other refreshes.

Sure the X1950 might be better, but given it's like a year older than the 7900GTX (possibly even more) that's hardly an achievement. Also you're comparing incorrectly, it's flagship card in it's prime VS a refresh of a refresh towards the end of a generation.

The X1950 PRO I'm talking about was what the budget version of the high end cards, surely it was a new card but its performance never reached that of the X1900XT(X) cards, it never was ATi's intention to do so. So you completely miss my point, since I stated that ATi made cards that simply have a much better architecture. That generation still performs well now, hell the X1900XT is still competetive and can outperform the 3870. Even the X1950Pro still plays games relatively well, while its direct competitor, the 7900GS, has become completely useless.

It's always been that way nVidia lead and ATI follow. I can't remember the last time ATI asked nVidia a queation first. It's always been observe and conquer, and if that fails refresh until you get it right.
nVidia bring out a flag ship, then follow it up with two or three higher end cards, then some middle ends ones and lastly a couple of budget options and then vanish to work on the next line. ATI observes, then brings out their flagship a month later, and then release dozens of cards and refreshes of their failures till they have nVidia thoroughly beaten in that series. nVidia answers a few months later with a new series. ATI rush to try and keep up rinse and repeat. The HD4800 series has been a little different, ATi are following much closer this time but the rest of the formula is still there, refresh and beat nVidia once they have already moved on.

Aside from DX10.1 nVidia is also the leader when it comes to technologies, PhysX, DX10, PS3 (and PS4 through DX10), dual cards etc. all are nVidia firsts.



I won't argue that ATI offer great value for money, but that's because of their observe and conquer strategy...anyone can score 100% in an open book test providing they have enough time, and I just hate the ethics of such an approach.

AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news

Please read up on ATi's "road to success" story. The decisions that lead to their success now were made in 2005, just to show how far these things go back. Observe and conquer? No, the keyword here is anticipation. You cannot change the design of your cards so radically in a period of months in order to create the perfect counter.

In fact, seeing how ATi's cards have been performing much better in the long run for years, I think ATi's engineering is simply superior and their anticipation of the development of games is much better as well. It clearly shows that if it weren't for nVidia's grip on the market, their entire brute-force methods combined with technology bought from third parties (SLI/PhysX) would have left them trailing behind a long time ago. I hate the ethics of nVidia's approach of throwing horsepower at it and making deals with developers, as this is what halts the innovation and the fruits of it. (Assassin's Creed DX10.1 anyone?)

Yes ATi might be the first to 2GB, nVidia however was the first for memory sizes bigger than 512MB.

Memory size? Meh, this is usually a decision made by companies like XFX and Sapphire anyway, they decide how they want to alter the reference board. To me this point is completely irrelevant as the amount of memory is a "support" feature on a GPU, not a leading one. Speed is what matters, so bandwidth, the amount should merely be sufficient to avoid swapping and is otherwise irrelevant. Which leads to the following point:

True, I did forget about GDDR5, on the other hand though nVidia is the first to use a bus size bigger than 256bit.
And I did also forget about the 55nm process, don't have anything to put up against that.

GDDR5 is the innovation here, not a 512bit bus. But even if you did want to go that way, ATi used a 512bit internal ringbus on the X2900XT and HD3k series of cards. In any case, the reasoning is flawed:

Since it is bandwidth that matters, the bus width is just one of the ways to achieve this. You can either raise the frequency of the memory or widen the bus. What nVidia did was the latter since it didn't make use of DDR5. What this means is that the core has to be connected to the memory with twice the lanes, thus complicating the board design a lot. In fact, ATi's current cards aren't even able to use a 512bit bus due to their much smaller die size. The 512bit bus can be seen as an emergency action because it isn't cost-efficient to use it, why else did companies otherwise avoid it for so long? And why else would ATi force the development of DDR5 so much instead of simply raising the bus width?

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Originally Posted by Cid Highwind

The X1950 PRO I'm talking about was what the budget version of the high end cards, surely it was a new card but its performance never reached that of the X1900XT(X) cards, it never was ATi's intention to do so. So you completely miss my point, since I stated that ATi made cards that simply have a much better architecture. That generation still performs well now, hell the X1900XT is still competetive and can outperform the 3870. Even the X1950Pro still plays games relatively well, while its direct competitor, the 7900GS, has become completely useless.

AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news

Please read up on ATi's "road to success" story. The decisions that lead to their success now were made in 2005, just to show how far these things go back. Observe and conquer? No, the keyword here is anticipation. You cannot change the design of your cards so radically in a period of months in order to create the perfect counter.

In fact, seeing how ATi's cards have been performing much better in the long run for years, I think ATi's engineering is simply superior and their anticipation of the development of games is much better as well. It clearly shows that if it weren't for nVidia's grip on the market, their entire brute-force methods combined with technology bought from third parties (SLI/PhysX) would have left them trailing behind a long time ago. I hate the ethics of nVidia's approach of throwing horsepower at it and making deals with developers, as this is what halts the innovation and the fruits of it. (Assassin's Creed DX10.1 anyone?)

Memory size? Meh, this is usually a decision made by companies like XFX and Sapphire anyway, they decide how they want to alter the reference board. To me this point is completely irrelevant as the amount of memory is a "support" feature on a GPU, not a leading one. Speed is what matters, so bandwidth, the amount should merely be sufficient to avoid swapping and is otherwise irrelevant. Which leads to the following point:

GDDR5 is the innovation here, not a 512bit bus. But even if you did want to go that way, ATi used a 512bit internal ringbus on the X2900XT and HD3k series of cards. In any case, the reasoning is flawed:

Since it is bandwidth that matters, the bus width is just one of the ways to achieve this. You can either raise the frequency of the memory or widen the bus. What nVidia did was the latter since it didn't make use of DDR5. What this means is that the core has to be connected to the memory with twice the lanes, thus complicating the board design a lot. In fact, ATi's current cards aren't even able to use a 512bit bus due to their much smaller die size. The 512bit bus can be seen as an emergency action because it isn't cost-efficient to use it, why else did companies otherwise avoid it for so long? And why else would ATi force the development of DDR5 so much instead of simply raising the bus width?

The 7900GS? That's hadly an achievement beating the LE edition of a graphics card, now if it was the fairly stronger 7900GT then that would be something to shout about. Once again though, the X1950 was a fair bit older so it's no surprise it was better.
I highly doubt the 7900GS cost 400 Euros though, 200 yes, maybe even close to 300, but not 400.
ATI cards don't stay stronger for longer, their cards are merely newer making it seem so...sometimes they screw up though...like with the X800 series...which is still borderline strong enough to run today's games...but does not have PS3... so it's power is wasted.



You have seen how quickly both companies can produce refreshes...you can't tell me that if they can shove something together in that amount of time that they can't quickly produce a counter after seeing the strength of the opposing product...perhaps if ATi was leading some of the time then I would believe this...but since all X series name came about I can't remember them doing that even once...



The rest of the stuff I guess you're right on though. I love arguing/debating with you Cid, I always learn something new

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[strike105x]

Originally Posted by Phil

The hd 4870x2 is faster


But not faster then 2 GTX285's in SLI

This cant really be a comparison, even though 4870X2 has dual gpu's its still just one graphics card, if your going to compare then compare 2 GTX285 SLI with 2 4870X2 Crossfire.

I see this also on the net a lot of sites use this comparison which IMO is a wrong way to put it.

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[Cid Highwind]

The X1950 Pro was positioned/priced against the 7900GS, from what I can remember back when I was intensely observing pricewatches and such. Already in certain shader intensive games the X1950Pro was going on par with the 7900GT though. Did some searching, and I finally managed to find it. It's in German, but that's not a problem for you, is it?

Company of Heroes | 3DCenter.org

Anyway, Company of Heroes, X1950Pro getting double the FPS of nVidia's 7800GTX. Refresh or not, even the X1650Pro outperforms it at medium settings/1024*768. That's kinda what I wanted to say It's a shame about the X800 and X850 cards not supporting PS3 though, I agree with that. They certainly were fast enough, even though they did have some extra 2.0b instructions or so, but of course those were hardly ever used. Still, it took quite some time until PS3.0 only games appeared, they had to miss out on HDR though.

And yeah, I really enjoy the debating as well, it's the best way getting to know more.

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

I have never seen a review that much in favour of ATi...which omitted all of nVidia's stronger cards...look at when the review came out...so then wheres the 7900GT? the 7900GTX? 7950GX2? 7950GT? , both 8800GTSs? the 8800GTX? heck even the 8800GT is missing (those 8 series cards were released within the requirements of the review because as always they were about before their ATI counterpart the HD 3850 (which is shown in the review)).... yes it's about old cards...but those cards were out within the requirements...

And the 7800GTX was beaten by the X1650? It would be quite bad if a mid-range card that's newer by almost two years would not be able to manage that.

I would also love to know how they got the X800s to run Crysis and some of the other games...

Also when I checked reviews the 7600GT was far closer in performance to my X850XT (sure it's not the platinum edition, but 10 extra FPS is still too much)

Still biased but the FEAR and Quake4 reviews are at least closer to reality
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/die-...erationen/fear
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/die-...tionen/quake-4

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Last edited by SCHUMI_4EVER; March 26th, 2009 at 21:19..

[skoreanime]

Originally Posted by strike105x

This cant really be a comparison, even though 4870X2 has dual gpu's its still just one graphics card, if your going to compare then compare 2 GTX285 SLI with 2 4870X2 Crossfire.

I see this also on the net a lot of sites use this comparison which IMO is a wrong way to put it.

I say it's fair

Still doesn't change the fact that Nvidia just needs one core to pump out more power. That's innovation. ATi's slapped together dual GPU core on a single care is just showing their taking the easy way out.

Not that the 4870x2 isn't a good card...but technology wise, the GTX285 still edges out.

[Cheesus]

Originally Posted by skoreanime

I say it's fair

Still doesn't change the fact that Nvidia just needs one core to pump out more power. That's innovation. ATi's slapped together dual GPU core on a single care is just showing their taking the easy way out.

Not that the 4870x2 isn't a good card...but technology wise, the GTX285 still edges out.

Innovation is creating something new. Nvidia have been using more of the same since the 8xxx series. Merely derivatives.

ATI have progressively altered their cards, adding a little something new as more time passed. The fact that they glued 2 cards together is merely a method of reaching their goals. It takes a very well designed card to be able to 'glue' 2 GPUs together. So yes, ATI has innovated. For the past 3 years, at least in the graphics department, Nvidia has failed to innovate substantially. It took props back in 2006/7. Two years later, it does not deserve the 'innovative' title. (Don't forget that performance isn't everything. Cost of production should also be considered. It logically makes more sense to use an old GPU and glue it to another, then charge double the price, rather than to create something entirely new.)

That said, ATI is still only on par in terms of overall performance (all markets taken into consideration) with Nvidia... which goes to show how good the 8series' design really was.

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Originally Posted by TheCloudOfSmoke

"Save the balls, save the world."

[skoreanime]

Innovation doesn't always have to mean something new. If they can make something better by tweaking, that's innovation also IMO. They're taking their 8xxx series design and stretching it to the best it could be.

[tuanming]

No it doesn't, more like optimizing instead of innovating. Nvidia lacks innovation as it is now, they keep rebadging their gpus to try and strive off it for as long as they can. It's a marketing tactics to fools/lure newbies or consumers that lacks knowledge.

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[skoreanime]

ATi has done the same thing if you actually think about it. After the failed 2xxx series, they tweaked it and called it the 3xxx series. It's the same thing. ATi just rebranded it so that they could sweep the 2xxx under the rug and rid them of their shame.

ATi's done the same thing as Nvidia. Don't just accuse Nvidia of trying to lure newbies.

[tuanming]

Sure why not? This is how business should be done, but those nvidiot took it to whole new different level, so much that even theirs fans start to question nvidia rebadging scheme.

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[skoreanime]

ATi's did the same thing and you're still bashing on Nvidia?

True, Nvidia has rebranded and renamed their products. Fans are more confused then upset with them. Their renaming scheme is just a set up for future lines and keeping it in line.

[tuanming]

Naw, i just feel sorry for who got tricked thinking that they have purchased something worthwhile or competitive against ATi offering. This goes to show how much those nvidiot loves you guys, the fan

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[skoreanime]

ATi had nothing to compete with for awhile for top end buyers. Even you should realize that. It's too late now. Most 9800GTX and GTX280+ owners are quite satisfied with their product. Plus, ATi is killing themselves by ignoring OpenGL fans and Linux users.

And if someone gets tricked by the naming scheme, it's their own damn fault. It's not hard to do some research before buying a product that's worth a few hundred dollars. Plenty of reviews and forums out there with plenty of info on anything computer related.

[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI_4EVER

I have never seen a review that much in favour of ATi...which omitted all of nVidia's stronger cards...look at when the review came out...so then wheres the 7900GT? the 7900GTX? 7950GX2? 7950GT? , both 8800GTSs? the 8800GTX? heck even the 8800GT is missing (those 8 series cards were released within the requirements of the review because as always they were about before their ATI counterpart the HD 3850 (which is shown in the review)).... yes it's about old cards...but those cards were out within the requirements...

And the 7800GTX was beaten by the X1650? It would be quite bad if a mid-range card that's newer by almost two years would not be able to manage that.

I would also love to know how they got the X800s to run Crysis and some of the other games...

Also when I checked reviews the 7600GT was far closer in performance to my X850XT (sure it's not the platinum edition, but 10 extra FPS is still too much)

Still biased but the FEAR and Quake4 reviews are at least closer to reality
Artikel: | 3DCenter.org
Artikel: | 3DCenter.org

Well in general a lot of reviews at launch time are off, they use wrong drivers and such or compare old results with new results of a fresh card. From what I read here the aim was to use these cards with matured drivers and fully patched recent popular games and older games that are still played or suitable for benchmarking.

And the 7800GTX was beaten by the X1650? It would be quite bad if a mid-range card that's newer by almost two years would not be able to manage that.

The X1650 was a cut down X1950Pro, that was already positioned against the 7900GS, a card that was supposed to be slower than the 7800GTX, and was definitely priced lower.

I think what this review aims to show is that as drivers and games mature, ATi's architectural advantages really start to shine. I expect the same to happen as this round's cards mature, and the difference will then be even bigger than what you see in this review. Biased? Maybe, but it does point out interesting things (and yeah, I didn't look it through quickly enough, my link can indeed be seen as selective quoting)

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

What exactly do mature drivers have to do with pretty much nVidia's entire high-end line for 2 years missing?

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[Cid Highwind]

ATi often has to catch up with speed because of drivers, nVidia gets more performance in the start, especially in TWIMTBP games. Often in the first couple of months after the release of a card drivers increase performance a lot in both nVidia's and ATi's case, however ATi additionally has to catch up with game specific optimizations as well. Just have a look at more recent Crysis benchmarks versus the ones when the game was just released. ATi has almost completely closed the gap by now.

Of course you could argue the people want immediate results, in that case, yes, I doubt you should stray away from nVidia

(and to catch up with the other posts since I didn't have much time last night )

Originally Posted by skoreanime

I say it's fair

Still doesn't change the fact that Nvidia just needs one core to pump out more power. That's innovation. ATi's slapped together dual GPU core on a single care is just showing their taking the easy way out.

Not that the 4870x2 isn't a good card...but technology wise, the GTX285 still edges out.

I disagree. ATi's design to come up with a cheaper and less complex GPU is on purpose, they didn't slap them together because they were forced to keep up, they did so because that was their intention all along, and it is most likely THE future of GPU modelling anyway. GTX series is brute power, and I applaud them for coming up with competetive cards, but like I said before, nVidia isn't happy with the current situation. It hurts them where it hurts most: Financially. ATi went away from the epic size die to prevent high failing rates and production costs in order to maximize profitability. In order to serve those who want extreme performance they matured the modular design of their cards.

ATi had nothing to compete with for awhile for top end buyers. Even you should realize that. It's too late now. Most 9800GTX and GTX280+ owners are quite satisfied with their product. Plus, ATi is killing themselves by ignoring OpenGL fans and Linux users.

Sales statistics disagree with 2 out of three of your statements. I can understand that these 8800GT owners are largely satisfied, but the largest part of the market is usually one step below these cards, that's where nVidia has not delivered since the 7600GT. ATi brought the 3850 for the price of the 8600 cards, and that's where the power of that series was. Certainly it was a tweaked X2900XT based card, just like the 3870, but you can't deny that these tweaks were much more effective than what nVidia did to the 8800 cards. With these 2 cards ATi was finally able to put the pressure on nVidia by undercutting their prices with affordable yet solid performing hardware. (until you enabled AA, true, their achilles heel)

Now with the 48xx series they did the same trick, and because of nVidia's pricing and their earlier problematic production of the GTX280/260 series it was nVidia that had to lower prices significantly as an answer to ATi's offering. The X2 is clearly superior in a technical point of view. A 260mm^2 chip of 956million transistors performing on par with 577mm^2 chip of 1.4 million transistors (GTX260), how could you possibly disagree with ATi having a much better chip? (yeah, damn me for not being able to find a nice image to put these things in perspective )

The only reason why nVidia remained competetive is because they decided that marketshare is more important than profit. Which is also the reason for the rebranding. If they hadn't taken this loss they'd have seen ATi gain even more marketshare with the risk of losing their control on the development side of games.

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[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Cid you're still not getting why the review is biased. Let me reverse the situation and illustrate what a review done in the exact same way (although I have to use newer cards to illustrate my point) this time with bias for nVidia cards would be like.
The lineup would then be something like this GTX285, GTX280, GTX260, GTS250/9800GTX+, 8800GTX, 8800GTS 512MB and then some lower end and older nvidia cards VS. an HD3650, the lowest HD2900, then a smattering of the X named cards, and then some lower end and older models.
Can you see that I left out pretty much the entire high-end lineup ATI has had to offer over the past 2 years? Don't you find that a little unfair? Well that's exactly what that review did but it created the skewed picture in favour of ATI and left out all of nVidia's high-end cards for 2 years.

It's very easy for "mature drivers" to obliterate the competition when the competition is absent and was never notified of the race.

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Last edited by SCHUMI_4EVER; March 27th, 2009 at 14:35..

[Cid Highwind]

You certainly have a point there, but the only reason why I quoted that review is to show how the ATi cards of those days, that at that time performed on par or inferior to their nVidia counterparts are now actually performing superior due to their architecture simply being much more suited to modern games. Someone who bought an X1950Pro for the same price as for what he could've bought a 7900GS or maybe even GT is now still enjoying a card playing new games, although at low settings, while the others won't even show playable FPS anymore.

I agree there's cards missing though, but I'm also not even looking at the results of the post x1k cards. The X1950 series were from fall 2006, later than the 7900 (spring according to wiki), but certainly not late enough for drastic changes, just optimizations on the path already chosen.

What I wanted to show is that I think ATi back then had a much better anticipation of the gaming market, which they believed to become much more shader intense, which is why they took a more shader-focused approach. Apparently this has paid off, seeing how their X1k products have seen their performance keep their ground a bit better than the GF7 series. I hope you can see this as well when looking through the lines of this indeed faulty review where nVidia cards are missing?

Now I'm no wizard or predictor of the future, but I have this feeling that the same will happen this round, ATi stepping away from the current GF8800 derived cards further as time passes. These are assumptions, based on their decisions in the past which have paid off as well.


Change of topic btw, but there's quite some news about Havok GPU acceleration on OpenCL as well. This sounds like music in my ears: An open standard as opposed to PhysX

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