Nvidia also had their dx10 card ready long before ATI. This does make a difference. If the situation was reversed, you'd probably see the opposite happening. It's quite difficult to optimize for something that does not exist. The G80 was probably used as a main reference point for dx10 optimization in most dx10 engines that were being developed during the time.

FanBoy detected... ... neh, i dun care, i'll juz buy the best bang for the buck, be it ati, nvidia or even S3!!! if it doesn't deliver then forget about it... i dunwan to wait 6 months for a great driver coz another few month u probably hear another new gpu on the market again...

Nvidia always had a knack for 'optimising'... which is great. I mean after all, if they indeed do something to a particular test/bechmark WITHOUT affecting the visuals and/or quality, why not? I remember the 3DMark cheat thingy... I was like "as if anyone actually cares if the apple is really full or not full, because all you see is an entire fruit". Nvidia 'cheats' ? That is definitely not nice to say...

how to cheat hardware?o.O

Yeah, +1 to that. I almost wanted to get the 2900xt when it's out in May, but the bad early impressions deters me from doing so. That's 1 less customer for ATI

Not saying that driver improvements over time is bad, but I believe the disappointed initial launch will somehow affect the sales... this is not a pc game, when I want to get a gfx, I don't wait for new drivers to improve the card's performance (can I be sure?), I will get what is good at that time... whereas for a game, I could always wait awhile for new patches to make the game better

Just my humble 2 cents.

I think what you said suits you a lot more.
The 320MB is a piece of junk, failing to run even Call of Juarez in DX10 smoothly.
It delivers- yeah right.
Fanboy detected.



Now, back on semi on-topic.

BioShock is an nVidia SPONSORED game, not optimized by ATi drivers or anything.
It's just the same case as Lost Planet, game devs bought over to code deliberately FOR their cards (and in this case because both cards are very different, AGAINST ATi ones) in DX10. It's not cheating, but it's obviously anticompetitive and all. Futuremark's 3DM08 should be something better to compare to- it's not a game, but it's not using DX10 half-assedly or heavily supported by either side.

Truth is, see any benchmark on Unreal Engine 3 in DX9 and it's obvious that the card you *didn't* buy wins. I did the long outlook, you did the current math. UE3 and other shader heavy titles are the major cornerstone of future games, DX9 or 10. Oh, and happy enjoying your slower card running at 90 degrees load.

They cheated 3DMark03 with 16FP precision replacement IIRC. That does affects quality, otherwise everyone would be using FP16 instead of the DX9 FP24 standard, right?



This post has been edited by X.E.D: Sep 7 2007, 08:32 PM

Usually they just using software to cover hardware weaknesses.

erm.. u guys should noe OpenGL games rite?
Bioshock, Crysis.. i heard they are "openGL" rendered games...

get wat i mean?

These days i think many games/benchmarks are being "optimized" by both companies. In the past what they are doing would have been considered cheating, but definitions seem to change over time. Also is it because of NV specific optimizations that they are losing? You seem to know this for sure. Far Cry is a TWIMTBP game (and you claim that Crytek is a major NV house), yet previous gen AMD cards did much better than NV. In fact, the X1950 does so well in it, it's on par with the R600 in that game. Doesn't that itself point to something? Perhaps a problem. Perhaps their drivers are still bad. There are some nice gains coming in their next few drivers.


They are dx titles, not OpenGL. You "heard" wrong.

Well... all I know is my 8500GT cost Rm270 and plays the Bioshock demo well enough for me not to care. I'd like to see a Rm270 ATi card that can do just as well

i totally agree... ATI is also better in Company of Heroes on DX9...
not into DX10 yet... i wonder if my 7600GS can perform better than my 2600XT in Bioshock...

*BTW... paying game developers to "optimize" the game engine for the payers' ain't wat i call deliver... it's called bribary... imagine if i can afford to pay the whole malaysia PDRM and the court juz to sue fanboys for being fanboys... tat's juz isn't fair...

This post has been edited by t3chn0m4nc3r: Sep 7 2007, 11:28 PM

Haha. At what resolution/settings? The 2400xt should be priced similarly and should be about as good at the same setting. In any case, at this level it doesn't really matter because you have to turn pretty much everything off to get a playable framerate.

1280x1024 (monitor native resolution) -- all settings on high with Vsync on want me to post screenshots ? or a movie ?

That's quite alright. What kind of framerates are you getting?

2400Xt @1280*1024...
i think u fell below 30FPS..
not playable for action or racing game

en. mayb i used wrong def paiseh
btw, what i mean that, these title are "GAMES ON BY NVIDIA"
they are sponsored by nvidia and, the developer will design the game more optimized base on NV cards

yeah...
Nvidia the image quality is lower then the Ati...

but for the performance...Nvidia wins...

that what i know and experiance ar.....

anyway....nvidia....i alwiz be with u....
hahaha

i dunno but maybe i am a fanboy... i'm a fanboy when i pay, i'll get what i want... not after wating for few xtra months... i do have a few ATI gpu too for ur info... i'm not saying ATI isn't good but just 2900xt didn't deliver for what most ppl expect after waiting for it to launch for 6 months... hell, the older 1950xtx works on par with the 2900xt in dx9 games when it was launch... o ya, not every1 play bioshock or call of juarez... n i'm still in XP... not vista... i've gone from 7950gx2 to 8800gts isn't coz 8800gts perform much better than the gx2 but it's juz my 975 mobo ain't frenly with it... i'm even getting a 2600xt for my htpc with abit f-190h mobo coz i wanted them in red color... as simple as dat, n 2600xt has the simpler hdmi jack.... so am i a fanboy of asking for performance/price ratio??? yes i am...

gpu maker sponsor games??? yeah, what's wrong with it??? well, if they dun sponsor, we might dun even have these games around... try no 1 sponsor F1 race... but taking the fully sponsored games as a benchmark to compare to other gpu makers card isn't so nice... over the time, better n greater cards r produced, so arguing wat certain gpu maker might improve in the next 9 to 12 months for current card, isn't wat users wanna think much... by dat time, we might oredi changed to newer card again...

o, btw, anyone playing latest colin mcrae rally game??? wat gpu n wat fps u r getting when everything set to max with 1680 x 1050 resolution???

2600 PRO is only RM30 more, runs circles around the 8500GT.
(Check all the benchmarks, they support the logic- not just in Bioshock, but other games too. 2600XT can beat 8600GT, 2600Pro is 3/4 of a XT, 8500GT is less than 1/2 of a 8600GT. Of course you won't care, since you already have the card. And it runs! )

I do pity nVidia somehow- DX9, where 90% of the market is, can't be "crippled" for any other GPU vendor by non optimmal (not non-optimized) code.
DX9 was pretty much in spec as both vendors know what code they were facing against (well, besides Geforce FX- nvidia always right? RIGHT?) so they did have the balanced solution for whatever was next.

(@ikanayam- Far Cry was shader power bound, IS fillrate bound. X1900s were shader monsters.)

R600 and G80 instead are very different in the aptitude in which they handle certain code, and most code that nV "sponsors" do not take much use of R600's skinny stream units, leaving the fatty ones to do all the work. Lost Planet's was brutal. Optimizations in general? Sure. Deeper level un-crippling? Sure, IF AMD was the sponsor of BioShock. Now that the game's out, the code's done, IMHO little can be done to get the HD2900XT run faster than the GTX- at DX10, like it did in DX9.


But keep in mind that nV can't sponsor every game.

This post has been edited by X.E.D: Sep 8 2007, 05:30 PM

I don't know it's smooth enough to play and isn't a slideshow or totally annoying. The card's response rate is faster than mine I think in the heat of the action, you really don't count framerates. The human eye sees fluid movement as anything over 30fps, so I guess the framerate is somewhere around there. It's good enough to admire the graphics and be fast enough to play. Bioshock isn't exactly a run and gun, the demo has this guy who tells you what to do all the time, so you're basically just listening and watching and shooting in place.

---

Added on September 8, 2007, 5:54 pm

I don't play benchmarks



Exactly.. it's Rm270 and it plays the latest games reasonably well. In fact I'm quite surprised.. I mean it's Rm270, and it's not like 0.1fps with all the settings on high and vsync on.. and those were default too. Bioshock isn't that great a game though, they limit your freedom a lot. You have no choice but to follow this Atlas guy. It's got a horror-house quality about it, they push you through the game like it's an interactive guided tour.



Is, not will be...



Wow Far Cry.. that's so ancient they're giving it away free



Hey it's not like NV is the only one in that game (ha !) -- there are ATi optimizations in 2moons... pity it's boring as all heck

PS. Totally loved World in Conflict. It's quite fun. That's a much better game than Bioshock (at least for me, I'm more of a strategy gamer that a FPS-er )

This post has been edited by wodenus: Sep 9 2007, 11:30 AM