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June 2008: Battleground for PC Graphics - Geforce GTX 200 v Radeon HD 4800

Convergys said:
Wow. The physx drivers have been "released" on the interwebs

0823_PhysX_01.png


0823_PhysX_02.png


0823_PhysX_03.png
3D Mark Vantage uses PhysX for its tests and Nvidia owns the company. Srsly, a PhysX benchmark is the most lousy thing since its practically ATI cards competing in a benchmark specialized for Nvidia cards with the purpose of a product that is not used in 95% of games out there and not in any of the best games.
 
MaritalWheat said:
Holy shit!!! Only $170 with some mail-in rebates. Fuck it, I'm gonna buy like 10 4850's I'm so happy.

Man, you have to send me one or something. The cheapest one I can get is $199 at NCIX with instant rebate. And in CAD. :(

I have no idea why Canadian prices are automatically $20-40 more compared to the US.
 
bathala said:
well the review from guru3d worries me about the temp.
i guess I have to buy a vga cooling

I've read on the web but can't confirm that the 8.5 drivers (8.6 is unknown) slow down the fan at idle but don't drop the voltage and current, this could definitely create heat buildup.

I honestly can't hear it at idle and when tasked hard it's far quieter than the loudest cards I've heard.
 
_leech_ said:
Seriously, GPU computing is going to be fucking huge. Very impressive.
On the games that use PhysX... Its up in the air to see which games adopt PhysX whereas right now dozens of games use Havok, including Half Life 2.
 
bathala said:
well the review from guru3d worries me about the temp.
i guess I have to buy a vga cooling

You might be better off with the 3870 and its double slot cooling. If you're going to be spending extra on cooling anyway, why not get higher clocks, and GDDR5 for your money?
 
godhandiscen said:
On the games that use PhysX... Its up in the air to see which games adopt PhysX whereas right now dozens of games use Havok, including Half Life 2.

I meant in general, not just PhysX. Those PhysX numbers just show how much more GPUs are capable of that's currently going untapped. It's pretty exciting stuff.
 
_leech_ said:
I meant in general, not just PhysX. Those PhysX numbers just show how much more GPUs are capable of that's currently going untapped. It's pretty exciting stuff.
I am still not convinced. Maybe in future generations, when games adopt these technologies, but right now, its irrelevant. Also, I dont see how this proves much since its too easy to maka test that suits the best of your videocard and launch it as a valid benchmark which is what just happened.
 
godhandiscen said:
I am still not convinced. Maybe in future generations, when games adopt these technologies, but right now, its irrelevant. Also, I dont see how this proves much since its too easy to maka test that suits the best of your videocard and launch it as a valid benchmark which is what just happened.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/28/adobe-to-integrate-gpu-acceleration-into-photoshop/1

We saw the presenter playing around with a 2GB, 442 megapixel image in Photoshop 'Next', which is codenamed Stonehenge, like it was an image several orders of magnitude smaller. And by that we mean we saw performance more akin to what we're used to seeing with images no bigger than about 1,600 x 1,200.

It was impressive, with zooming and image rotation tools being used with almost instantaneous results. Re-drawing after zooming right in happened in less than a second, while the presenter was rotating the image fast enough to make you dizzy if you stared for long enough.

We asked how the GPU acceleration would work with smaller images and the presenter explained that there would be less of a difference in performance, but then I guess that's to be expected – the reason Adobe opted for such a large image was to show just how much of a speed up it has seen and how things are going to bode for the future when parallelism increases.

Again, I was talking about GPU computing in general. Exciting stuff.
 
Convergys said:
Wow. The physx drivers have been "released" on the interwebs
Vantage is not a game.
UT3 boost is only level specific

Convergys said:
Media transcoding has been possible on ATI/AMD gpus (with v good performance) for over 3+ years. Note that the slide doesnt list any of them. :lol

Real desperate from Nvidia. They were sitting on these all along yet only give value to consumers when forced (by AMD).
 
irfan said:
Vantage is not a game.
UT3 boost is only level specific


Media transcoding has been possible on ATI/AMD gpus (with v good performance) for over 3+ years. Note that the slide doesnt list any of them. :lol

Real desperate from Nvidia. They were sitting on these all along yet only give value to consumers when forced (by AMD).
I have been saying this, but a lot of people will eat the PhysX benchmark and use it as the ultimate test of power now. The Photoshop improvizations are cool though.
 
irfan said:
Vantage is not a game.
UT3 boost is only level specific


Media transcoding has been possible on ATI/AMD gpus (with v good performance) for over 3+ years. Note that the slide doesnt list any of them. :lol

Real desperate from Nvidia. They were sitting on these all along yet only give value to consumers when forced (by AMD).

The worst part is the fact that they're not supporting it on their 8800GT and 8800GTS lines despite the fact they use the EXACT same die as the 9800GTX. If this is Nvidia's way of telling me to upgrade then so be it, though it won't be to an 9800GTX, that's for sure.
 
brain_stew said:
The worst part is the fact that they're not supporting it on their 8800GT and 8800GTS lines despite the fact they use the EXACT same die as the 9800GTX. If this is Nvidia's way of telling me to upgrade then so be it, though it won't be to an 9800GTX, that's for sure.

Really? That's odd, the the GF8 line supports CUDA as well...
 
godhandiscen said:
I have been saying this, but a lot of people will eat the PhysX benchmark and use it as the ultimate test of power now.

That only puts pressure on AMD to help get ATI-optimized Havok running sooner rather than later. Competion rocks. Everybody wins.
 
beermonkey@tehbias said:
That only puts pressure on AMD to help get ATI-optimized Havok running sooner rather than later. Competion rocks. Everybody wins.
AMD already tried Physics on their gpus, Physics never really took off and they abandoned it. I doubt if it will take off in the next 3-4 years.
 
_leech_ said:
Really? That's odd, the the GF8 line supports CUDA as well...

Of course it does, its the exact same chip as the 9800GTX just with parts of it disabled. Yet for whatever reason this PhysX support neglects to include the 8800GT and 8800GTS. Hopefully its just a case of timing but the way it stands atm its seems like a way to sell the 9800GTX+ whilst shafting current customers. Which would suck.
 
irfan said:
AMD already tried Physics on their gpus, Physics never really took off and they abandoned it. I doubt if it will take off in the next 3-4 years.
AMD just announced Havok support a few days ago. Given the whole 'One Tera' marketing campaign, I'll be absolutely stunned if they don't start pushing it hard for these new ATI GPUs.
 
godhandiscen said:
3D Mark Vantage uses PhysX for its tests and Nvidia owns the company. Srsly, a PhysX benchmark is the most lousy thing since its practically ATI cards competing in a benchmark specialized for Nvidia cards with the purpose of a product that is not used in 95% of games out there and not in any of the best games.
I don't trust any PhysX benchmark after some people found some settings in their sponsored game Cell Factor that would halve the framerate if you didn't have a PhysX card. That crossed the line between the usual benchmark fudging and went into super-villainy territory.
 
SapientWolf said:
I don't trust any PhysX benchmark after some people found some settings in their sponsored game Cell Factor that would halve the framerate if you didn't have a PhysX card. That crossed the line between the usual benchmark fudging and went into super-villainy territory.
Want to hear a tale of super villains? Nvidia asked Ubi to remove DirectX10.1 from Assasins Creed with the second patch because the ATI cards were getting considerable better scores thanks to it. AKA Nvidia cuts the advancement of the industry and doesn't allow us to enjoy DirectX10.1 just because their architecture cant support it. Every "The way its meant to be played" title could have been a title using DX10.1 to increase its framerate but Nvidia forces the removal of it if the developers still want Nvidia's sponsorship. Thats when I took a side.
beermonkey@tehbias said:
AMD just announced Havok support a few days ago. Given the whole 'One Tera' marketing campaign, I'll be absolutely stunned if they don't start pushing it hard for these new ATI GPUs.
I hope this allows old Havok iterations to run faster. I want to play Halo 2 (PC) at a higuer framerate.
 
godhandiscen said:
I hope this allows old Havok iterations to run faster. I want to play Halo 2 (PC) at a higuer framerate.


Funny how the game runs just fine on a 750 MHZ Xbox with just 64mb or ram. :lol
 
Kevin said:
Funny how the game runs just fine on a 750 MHZ Xbox with just 64mb or ram. :lol
Dude, I love the Xbox version. IMO the Xbox version is superior because of the online ranking system where everybody uses a controller (my favorite way to play). Its all about how much fun you have and not the graphics. Now, the reason why I still bought the PC version is because I love the campaign and that aspect in the Xbox version just flat out sucked from the technical point of view. The campaign in the PC version is just lovely. Hopefully one day I will have Halo 1, 2 and 3 all running in PC to enjoy their campaigns with beautiful graphics and my 360 controller. However, when it comes to MP, Halo 3 360 is my game of the forever.
 
irfan said:
Vantage is not a game.
UT3 boost is only level specific


Media transcoding has been possible on ATI/AMD gpus (with v good performance) for over 3+ years. Note that the slide doesnt list any of them. :lol

Real desperate from Nvidia. They were sitting on these all along yet only give value to consumers when forced (by AMD).

Actually, when it comes to GPU video transcoding, yes, ATI gpus have been doing this. But, and I like my buts, the application (and marketing) was not handled well. I do use the Avivo converter from time to time - but it hasn't really been updated since the X1000 series, heck my X1950 could use an upgrade on that front.

So I'm glad Nvidia's rejoined the fray and I hope we'd get more GPU applications soon.
 
beermonkey@tehbias said:
I honestly can't hear it at idle and when tasked hard it's far quieter than the loudest cards I've heard.
good to here its not 360 like fan so howz the temp. as long as u have a good fan and ventilation?
 
bathala said:
good to here its not 360 like fan so howz the temp. as long as u have a good fan and ventilation?

My temps are 75C idle, 80-85C full load. No room for overclocking because of the temps.

I think they throttled the fan speed to keep the noise down. The fan only runs at 14% speed idle and you can't hear it. Its a very silent card. I think it was a tradeoff for them - low fan speed, silent card, but higher temps. When the fans kick in you do hear a little high pitched whine, but god its nowhere near Xbox 360 levels. I'm sure there will be some fan control utilities coming out soon, along with other cooling solutions for this card. If I can get fan control, I'd probably run it at 25-40% constantly and try to get those temps down a little bit and then I'd feel a little more comfortable overclocking it.

As for day 2 impressions - I've been playing Company of Heroes and Bioshock all day.

This card performs like fucking ass when running DX10 in CoH. I did some benches yesterday with the in-game and thought I would get a good frame rate with everything high/ultra, DX10 enabled but no AA @1680x1050. The benchmark showed an average of 35fps. In-game performance was much, much worse. Completely unplayable at my resolution. It could be the card, or my processor could be the bottleneck since its only a C2D @ 2.13ghz. Either way, about the only way to get a playable frame rate was to put everything on medium with a couple of things on high. I was pretty disgusted by this, so I decided to see what I could do with DX9 shaders, and low and behold - high/ultra, high model detail, and I get a solid 40-60 fps and can play up to 4xAA in DX9 and still hold a very playable frame rate. The problem could be the way DX10 is optimized in Company of Heroes - it was tacked on a long time after the game shipped and it may very well run like ass on everything except the top end cards in DX10.

Bioshock on the other hand - OH MY GOD !! I went from 1280x720, everything maxed, 35fps on my old 8600gts to 1680x1050, everything maxed and getting solid 70-100fps with a few dips in the 60's. It is so gorgeous and really has given me a new appreciation for this game. The immersiveness of this game is even greater at higher resolutions running 60+fps.
 
I was just playing CoH everything MAX and DX10 @ 1600x1050 no AA. Good framerate, very playable. I would think your processor is bottlenecking it, specially since CoH is the only game is see taxing above 30% of all my cores in my Quad.

BTW, I have a 3870X2 and your card is better according to benches. Specially betetr at handling DX10. Also, it could be your ram, it doesnt show me how much of mine it uses, but I have 8GB, and the bar look like it uses a quarter all memory available.

PS: Or maybe you are right, I was just playing the tutorials. I am barely starting with the game.
 
bill0527 said:
My temps are 75C idle, 80-85C full load. No room for overclocking because of the temps.

I think they throttled the fan speed to keep the noise down. The fan only runs at 14% speed idle and you can't hear it. Its a very silent card. I think it was a tradeoff for them - low fan speed, silent card, but higher temps. When the fans kick in you do hear a little high pitched whine, but god its nowhere near Xbox 360 levels. I'm sure there will be some fan control utilities coming out soon, along with other cooling solutions for this card. If I can get fan control, I'd probably run it at 25-40% constantly and try to get those temps down a little bit and then I'd feel a little more comfortable overclocking it.
i was thinking of that. I thought the software that comes with have one. I would rather have a slightly loud fan than hot temp.

well on newegg they have some zalman fans or artic cooling for cards and cost around 35 but I don't even know if they r compatible yet.
 
For those with high temps, re-apply thermal paste, seems a few people have done that with good quality stuff (Arctic Silver 5 or so) and gotten around 15 degrees Celsius drop in temps.
 
I saw that someone had successfully paired two 3870's and a 4850, without failure, and with a good performance improvement. Should I pair up my 3870 with a 4850, or should I get a new 3870(1GB ver.)? I'm switching to LCD soon, and I want to run games at 1920x1200.
 
Gigabyte 4850 £117.87 inc vat

quit the fanboyism its very boring, downplaying cuda's benefits is pretty stupid, the ut3 physx level fps improvement is damn good, so are the photoshop and video encoding enhancements and yes it does work fine on g92 based 8800's

PhysX 8.06.12

edit : heres mine working, vista 64 + 8800gts 512 + 177.35 + physx 8.06.12

2dihnup.jpg
 
bee said:
quit the fanboyism its very boring, downplaying cuda's benefits is pretty stupid, the ut3 physx level fps improvement is damn good, so are the photoshop and video encoding enhancements and yes it does work fine on g92 based 8800's

Yeah well, this thread is ATI fanboy central it seems.

Thanks for the link tho, this is some good stuff.
 
xemumanic said:
Yeah well, this thread is ATI fanboy central it seems.

Thanks for the link tho, this is some good stuff.

I guess Nvidia fanboys are in bitter tears to see ATI do a 180 in the GPU world.

If you think this thread is ATI fanboy central now, just wait until the 4870x2 comes out.
 
Man this is confusing lol. I thought I'd wait until the thread reaches about 5 or so pages and then catch up but I have no idea what's going on with all these slides. Can someone summarise what the hell is going on, have Nvidia had an ace up their sleeve or something?
 
Does anyone know if *all* of the Radeons with HDMI adapter support sound output this time around? When I was shopping for the 3 series cards and it surprised me that some cards, although comes with HDMI adapter, does not support sound pass thru. It's kind of an important feature for me.
 
RuGalz said:
Does anyone know if *all* of the Radeons with HDMI adapter support sound output this time around? When I was shopping for the 3 series cards and it surprised me that some cards, although comes with HDMI adapter, does not support sound pass thru. It's kind of an important feature for me.

According to Guru3D, yes:

So with the Series 2000/3000/4000 you'll receive a DVI-to HDMI adapter which, and make no mistake here, will carry that sound over HDMI.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4850-review-force-3d--powercolor/4
 
Mash said:
Man this is confusing lol. I thought I'd wait until the thread reaches about 5 or so pages and then catch up but I have no idea what's going on with all these slides. Can someone summarise what the hell is going on, have Nvidia had an ace up their sleeve or something?


  • 4850 became the new 8800GT in price/performance ratio

  • Benchamarks showing 4850 beating 9800GTX in most cases, especially when AA was enabled

  • Nvidia was forced to drop the price of 9800GTX to $199 and come up with another SKU of 9800GTX+

  • Nvidia released benchmarks of 9800GTX+ with physx drivers beating 4850 *The UT3 slide doesn't show AA being enabled*


It will be interesting to see new benchmarks with the 1GB version of 4850. About Nvidia having an ace up their sleeve, I don't know. Some want Nvidia to release a GT200 GX2 version to compete with 4870x2 but the notion was shot down at beyond3d:

There
will
not
be
a GT200-based GX2

it is too large, too hot, and too power hungry. While not technically impossible, it is so unfeasible as to be virtually impossible.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1178626&postcount=128

GT200b won't be enough of a shrink to allow for a GT200b GX2 cardwith two GPUs.

GT200 probably needs a full shrink (to 45nm) and a redesign, to allow a GX2.


9800 GX2 was not two G80s on a card, it was two reduced G92s on a card.
2x 256-bit bus, 2x 16 ROPs.

If a dual G80, GX2 card had been produced, it would've been 2x 384-bit bus, 2x 24 ROPs.

We may never see a dual G200 card.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1178669&postcount=131
 
Hmmm here is another reveiw for the HD4850

http://www.pcghx.com/aid,648086/Test/Benchmark/Radeon_HD_4850_PCGH_Benchmark_Review/

Its a shame its not going to do what I want it too, the oblivion benchmarks with the Qarls texture pack is only giving about 30 FPS, I want 60 :lol
But then again they did use 8x AA and 16 AF, I wouldn't use all that AA when playing at 1680x1050.

So I got a question about the HD4870x2 does it have shared memory or does it have access to the full 1GB? The texture pack for oblivion will need the ram, so I hope it can use the full 1GB.

Also anyone got NWN2 and playing with a HD4850? I'm wondering what kind of FPS you get.
 
JudgeN said:
Hmmm here is another reveiw for the HD4850

http://www.pcghx.com/aid,648086/Test/Benchmark/Radeon_HD_4850_PCGH_Benchmark_Review/

Its a shame its not going to do what I want it too, the oblivion benchmarks with the Qarls texture pack is only giving about 30 FPS, I want 60 :lol
But then again they did use 8x AA and 16 AF, I wouldn't use all that AA when playing at 1680x1050.

So I got a question about the HD4870x2 does it have shared memory or does it have access to the full 1GB? The texture pack for oblivion will need the ram, so I hope it can use the full 1GB.

Also anyone got NWN2 and playing with a HD4850? I'm wondering what kind of FPS you get.

Why are his frame rates so terrible? His frame rate in most those games is like half of what almost every other review out there has scored for the 4850.

PCGHX:
1213869584536.PNG


Tech Report:
cod4-1680.gif


I would take those numbers with a huge grain of salt.
 
Outdoor Miner said:
Why are his frame rates so terrible? His frame rate in most those games is like half of what almost every other review out there has scored for the 4850.

I would take those numbers with a huge grain of salt.

there is no set benchmark for cod 4, which is why i always much prefer user reviews over these benchmark site figures, one could be using a section of game thats most flattering to 4850 performance and the other could be picking a section which performs particularly badly on the 4850 you just dont know unless the game in question has a built in benchmark and they mention that they use it
 
So, sort of a stupid question...so I want to buy this card today and use it in a computer running a s939 mobo on the Nforce 4 Ultra chipset...will I run into any issues? Anything with a PCI Express x16 slot should do fine, correct?

Also, I'm running this card in a computer that currently runs an AMD X2 4200+ and 3GB of RAM...I'm imagining my CPU will bottleneck performance, right?
 
captmcblack said:
So, sort of a stupid question...so I want to buy this card today and use it in a computer running a s939 mobo on the Nforce 4 Ultra chipset...will I run into any issues? Anything with a PCI Express x16 slot should do fine, correct?

Also, I'm running this card in a computer that currently runs an AMD X2 4200+ and 3GB of RAM...I'm imagining my CPU will bottleneck performance, right?
Nah, it should work and it should be a nice upgrade...what video card are you using now?
 
captmcblack said:
So, sort of a stupid question...so I want to buy this card today and use it in a computer running a s939 mobo on the Nforce 4 Ultra chipset...will I run into any issues? Anything with a PCI Express x16 slot should do fine, correct?

Also, I'm running this card in a computer that currently runs an AMD X2 4200+ and 3GB of RAM...I'm imagining my CPU will bottleneck performance, right?

Are you running at an insane resolution? The X2 4200 should be fine as long as you're around 1280x800 or so. 1440x900 may be doable too.
 
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