Just bought FX 5900XT - confused!

[BlvdKing]

Your scores seem a bit low. You must have AA and/or AF on. I was getting 11500 on a P4 2.2 GHz with PC2100 and a GF4 Ti 4200 that was overclocked.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: BlvdKing
Your scores seem a bit low. You must have AA and/or AF on. I was getting 11500 on a P4 2.2 GHz with PC2100 and a GF4 Ti 4200 that was overclocked.

Turned of SETI and adjusted driver (latest on NVidia's site) to best performance. Still no external tweaks.

3DMark2003: 5,701

3DMark2001SE: 15,729

Not sure how these stack up...but they seem OK!

 

[MidnightMick]

I uninstalled my new Graphics card today.
Major things started to go wrong with it!
I couldn't find a decent driver to use with it.
Graphical glitches with a lot of games & benchmarks where no texture was on models, just mostly a black screen!
I found that reducing the "Hardware acceleration" by a notch or two helped fix the errors but obviously something is wrong with the card.

I am taking it back to the store for a refund today believing that it has bad memory.

Please note that I had not even attempted to overclock this card.
Maybe a bad batch (I hope).

So I'm in the market for another card now!

 

[BlvdKing]

LOL Hey midnight how do you like what your thread turned into?

BTW that bad luck on your videocard. Better luck next time. Are you shopping around for an nVidia or an ATI this time?

 

[SilverBack]

Darn BlvdKing
You just opened a whole new Todd thread spanking, by asking that question!
Man what were you thinking?

 

[SilverBack]

MidnightMick
That's pretty irregular with nVidia cards, just have them exchange it for a different card.

 

[BlvdKing]

LOL! I love a good spanking....

Originally posted by: SilverBack
Darn BlvdKing
You just opened a whole new Todd thread spanking, by asking that question!
Man what were you thinking?

 

[MidnightMick]

Originally posted by: SilverBack
MidnightMick
That's pretty irregular with nVidia cards, just have them exchange it for a different card.

The store that I got it from only sell "XFX" graphic Cards!
I'm still going with a nVidia though, another shop I know is getting a batch in this Monday:
Chaintech & Gainward.
Both having the same specs so I guess it's down to who has the prettier box! LOL

Originally posted by: BlvdKing

LOL Hey midnight how do you like what your thread turned into?

Diversity is good.

 

[Todd33]

"You just opened a whole new Todd thread spanking, by asking that question!"

Why? I never recommended a Nvidia card over ATI blindly, I even said my next card might be a 9800 pro. Are you just a punk who likes to talk crap? Kids...

 

[SilverBack]

I hope the 1st 32 other Todds fare better than you LOL!

 

[BlvdKing]

I got my XFX 5900 XT in today. First impressions:

Noise: I can't hear it over my two case fans, so I would say it's not loud at all.

2D: Not as good as the ATI card. Seems washed out. One thing I missed from my Ti 4200 is Digital Vibrance. It really makes the colors stand out.

3D: I have only run 3D Mark 2003 so far. Scored 4871 on a Barton 2500+ with 512 MB memory. For some reason 3D Mark 2001 says that I have to install Direct X 8.1 or the correct drivers so I can't bench that. I am thinking format time but that is such a pain in the ass. I will probably wait for the fixed 56.56 forceware before I do that.

The card is physically very long and I had a hard time getting it into the Antec Lanboy case. I had to disconnect all of my IDE cables and then reconnect them after the card was installed.

I have not tested it with AA/AF on yet. Now I'm going to try the bundled games. Not bad for $160!

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: BlvdKing
I got my XFX 5900 XT in today. First impressions:

Noise: I can't hear it over my two case fans, so I would say it's not loud at all.

2D: Not as good as the ATI card. Seems washed out. One thing I missed from my Ti 4200 is Digital Vibrance. It really makes the colors stand out.

weird.. i prefer the display on my nv over my 9800.. oh well, subjective i guess.. .at any rate this card supports digital vibrance as well (heh.. tho i don't like dv, makes it "too" saturated.. again, go figure...)

3D: I have only run 3D Mark 2003 so far. Scored 4871 on a Barton 2500+ with 512 MB memory. For some reason 3D Mark 2001 says that I have to install Direct X 8.1 or the correct drivers so I can't bench that. I am thinking format time but that is such a pain in the ass. I will probably wait for the fixed 56.56 forceware before I do that.

The card is physically very long and I had a hard time getting it into the Antec Lanboy case. I had to disconnect all of my IDE cables and then reconnect them after the card was installed.

I have not tested it with AA/AF on yet. Now I'm going to try the bundled games. Not bad for $160!

glad your liking it so far.. i think it's a great value at $160.

 

[SilverBack]

Guys not trash talking cards, just a little bit of info for Todd33.
As I had said earlier I happen to like nVidia drivers and will be purchasing the new card in May or June or whenever it comes out.
I'm ready to move back over, but to date nVidia hasn't displayed a good reason to.
I've owned at least 8 nVidia cards going back to a TNT2 which replaced an aging 3Dfx V2 SLI set up.
Most people would agree that NewEgg is one of the best places on Earth to buy hardware, there you can buy the following:
5900XT $185 (lowest price in a quick search anywhere was $160 )
9800 Pro $211 for the math impaired $51 difference.

No one will argue that the 5900XT performs extremely well at default settings.
But if you pay money for a higher end card, you should get good performance at quality settings.




UT 2003 Inferno Timedemo
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso

9800 Pro 75.8 FPS
9700 Pro 68.2 FPS
5900XT 47.6 FPS

$51 gets you a 59% speed increase


Nascar Thunder 2004
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso


9800 Pro 57.8 FPS
9700 Pro 51.4 FPS
5900 XT 32.4 FPS

$51 gets you a 78% speed increase



Call of Duty
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso

9800 Pro 65.1
9700 Pro 57.7
5900XT 39.7

$51 gets you a 65% speed increase


All this shows above is that if you don't want to run at quality settings the 5900XT is an extemely good card, but it doesn't put up a good showing at all when you turn up the quality settings.

 

[MidnightMick]

The thought of shopping Online doesn't appeal to me one bit!
I know you can get bargains, but I also hear (A lot) of people moaning about "Returns" & how long it takes to sort out etc...
It takes 5 minutes to take a faulty product back to a local shop & that's why I prefer to pay the little extra.

 

[SilverBack]

To each his own
I won't buy anywhere else.

 

[JJN]

While I won't argue that Radeon's peform better than Nvidia with 4AAx8AF I don't think that the difference is nearly what Silverback reported. The latest anand gpu review, the firingsquad evga5900se review both show its more like a 10-20% difference at 10x7 or 12x10 with 4AAX8AF. Without AA&AF its much closer between the two cards.

Its hard to argue against buying either card, I think were talking about the 2 best cards from a bang for your buck standpoint.

 

[SilverBack]

The benches were taken from here:

THG's VGA Charts Lot's of vid cards to look at
The reporting for 4x AA and 8AF is accurate

 

[chsh1ca]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

In any case, NVIDIA?s GeForce FX 5900 XT core has been popular since its inception due to its attractive pricing and good performance in today?s titles. NVIDIA has certainly delivered a card that has given the mainstream market what it wanted, a graphics solution that offers all the features of the flagship cards and much of the performance, but at a price point that is much more attractive to the wallet. The GeForce FX 5900 XT is one of the best bargains on the graphics market right now, and is truly a worthy successor to GeForce4 Ti 4200.

If it is such a mainstream card how come everybody isn't buying them? How come the bulk of the two companies' sales are coming from the FX5200/R9200s, or rather, all the integrated chipset. ATI even attributed their increase in revenues in Q42003 to the increase in integrated chipset sales (page 4). Don't kid yourself, these guys don't make their loads of cash off the 2% of all users who happen to buy top of the line (or even the 3% who might buy a middle of the line) graphics cards. They make it off integrated chipset sales and budget cards.

 

[rbV5]

and is truly a worthy successor to GeForce4 Ti 4200

If it stays in the market anywhere near as long as the ti4200, I might agree with you. I think the market moves too fast, and we won't see many of these for long..but time will tell won't it. The ti4200 proved itself as a great value for quite some time, I have one myself that I got long after they entered the market.

 

[JJN]

Tom's hardware.... those results are interesting. Its also interesting that the intent of the article was to compare overall video card performance with price. In overall score the R9800Pro beat the FX5900SE by a score of 938-870.6 making it a 7% "better" card.

There isn't really that many reviews that have 4AA and 8AF enabled that I could quickly find.

In Anand's latest GPU review they tested 2 games at 4AA and 8AF and the FX5900XT beat the R9800Pro in Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy by 9.7% and the R9800Pro beat the FX5900XT in UT2k3 by 18.9%

Anand

In firingsquads review of the evga card with 4AA and 8AF on the R9800Pro beat the FX5900SE by 16.6% and 25% in CoD and UT2k3. Without AA and AF the results were nearly identical with the FX5900SE even beating the R9800Pro in CoD at 10x7.

Firingsquad

At Guru3d they did some testing with AA and AF on. At 1280x960/1024 resolution these games: Unreal 2003, return to castle wolf, serious sam, firestarter showed the following performance differences respectively: +18% radeon, +12% nvidia, +8% radeon, +24% radeon. They also had other tests without AA&AF enabled and the results were even closer.

Guru 3d

There's several other reviews out there that either do not take into considertion AA&AF or do not have both cards paired off. Like an earlier poster mentioned, I have never seen a bad review of the FX5900XT(SE).

 

[JJN]

It might also be worth mentioning that when nvidia brought this card out in december at ~$187 with Call of Duty and it competed with the 9600XT because the 9800Pro was $250-280 most places. Since then the 9800Pro price has been lowered to ~$210 to compete better.

 

[Pete]

All the cards in that AT link were overclocked.

 

[MidnightMick]

Hey Silverback!
I ordered "Online" - God help me...?!

Anyway, I ordered up a "1 x MSI Fx5900-TD128 8xAGP 128MB TV-Out DVI DirectX 9 Retail Box " from EBuyer.

MSI 5900 - EBuyer

Click here for more specs on another site

Looks a little better than my old 5900XT aswell.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: SilverBack
Guys not trash talking cards, just a little bit of info for Todd33.
As I had said earlier I happen to like nVidia drivers and will be purchasing the new card in May or June or whenever it comes out.
I'm ready to move back over, but to date nVidia hasn't displayed a good reason to.
I've owned at least 8 nVidia cards going back to a TNT2 which replaced an aging 3Dfx V2 SLI set up.
Most people would agree that NewEgg is one of the best places on Earth to buy hardware, there you can buy the following:
5900XT $185 (lowest price in a quick search anywhere was $160 )
9800 Pro $211 for the math impaired $51 difference.

No one will argue that the 5900XT performs extremely well at default settings.
But if you pay money for a higher end card, you should get good performance at quality settings.


UT 2003 Inferno Timedemo
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso

9800 Pro 75.8 FPS
9700 Pro 68.2 FPS
5900XT 47.6 FPS

$51 gets you a 59% speed increase


Nascar Thunder 2004
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso


9800 Pro 57.8 FPS
9700 Pro 51.4 FPS
5900 XT 32.4 FPS

$51 gets you a 78% speed increase



Call of Duty
P4 3.2 Asus P4P800
1024x768 32 bit color
4x AA + 8x Aniso

9800 Pro 65.1
9700 Pro 57.7
5900XT 39.7

$51 gets you a 65% speed increase


All this shows above is that if you don't want to run at quality settings the 5900XT is an extemely good card, but it doesn't put up a good showing at all when you turn up the quality settings.

how many people here actually run their 5900 series card at the default clock setting? the truth is, most (but not all) bought these cards due to thier great overclocking ability, and the benchmarks you quote don't refelct the cards running at those speeds. you should be printing 5900u/5950u benchmarks which are comparable to the type of performance most people are getting from these cards (with the exception of a couple games which may benefit from the additional 128mb memory from the ultra cards).

also, you (and many others) completely overlook the fact that while online sales are significant these days, they only account for a small % of overall video card sales. walking into B&M outlets such as bestbuy, crapusa, fry's, etc. you will generally see $80-$100 difference in the price of the card.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: chsh1ca

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

In any case, NVIDIA?s GeForce FX 5900 XT core has been popular since its inception due to its attractive pricing and good performance in today?s titles. NVIDIA has certainly delivered a card that has given the mainstream market what it wanted, a graphics solution that offers all the features of the flagship cards and much of the performance, but at a price point that is much more attractive to the wallet. The GeForce FX 5900 XT is one of the best bargains on the graphics market right now, and is truly a worthy successor to GeForce4 Ti 4200.

If it is such a mainstream card how come everybody isn't buying them? How come the bulk of the two companies' sales are coming from the FX5200/R9200s, or rather, all the integrated chipset. ATI even attributed their increase in revenues in Q42003 to the increase in integrated chipset sales (page 4). Don't kid yourself, these guys don't make their loads of cash off the 2% of all users who happen to buy top of the line (or even the 3% who might buy a middle of the line) graphics cards. They make it off integrated chipset sales and budget cards.

well, first of all, the 5900se/xt wasn't even out during that time (there was one exception, the pny 5900se which came our right before christmas), so there is no reason to expect them to be reflected in those numbers. furthermore, it's not me defining it as a mainstream card, it's nvidia themselves and the press....