Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
This was a difficult game to benchmark with. Anand struggled for a long time to work something out that got around the randomly generated weather. We finally got a benchmark together, but we had to turn off weather completely. As time allows, we may introduce another benchmark that incorporates the weather feature in a repeatable fashion. For this test, FRAPS was used to determine the average framerate while flying over a specified section of sea and land.
Clearly this test shows ATI as the leader in performance for this MS game. CPU scaling should also prove to be valuable as it seems like the ATI cards want to go further but they are just being held back by the rest of the system.
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
No #40, the fact that I can write and read clear English sentences is probably why I was confused by your grammatically incorrect and mistyped statements.And surrrrrre #36 wasn't you, whatever you say....And yes, you're a whiner, and no, #42 brings up good points.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#47 - So what you are saying is that people who invest in a $450-500 video card shouldnt worry about how their card will perform in future games? Are they supposed to buy a new card for each new game thats released implementing new features? That does not seem very wise to me, and I would expect that most people paying such a high price tag for a card would EXPECT their card to have some decent lifespan where it can perform well in the latest games(6months? a year?). Of course there is going to be a point where you simply need new hardware to run new games, I don't know about you but suddenly finding that your card doesnt make the cut when a new crop of games comes out wouldnt be my idea of celebrating a $450-500 purchase.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Funny how after reading this review and seeing all the very marginal gain my 150$ more could buy me, the only thing that got me interessed was the fact they used a prescott to benchmark.As long as they keep "tweaking" the curent crop of cores, those new cards are just to keep the performance crown, and by what, .3fps to 5fps?.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
"Games such as Command & Conquer Generals: Ground Zero and Simcity 4: Rush Hour are examples where ATI clearly has the lead over NVIDIA and the argument could be made that ATI holds the lead because they optimize for all games, while NVIDIA just optimizes for benchmark titles. However, looking at games like Homeworld 2 and Neverwinter Nights you could make the exact opposite argument."Except that Command & Conquer is an EA title. The company which officially works with nVidia...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Yeah, include it. Makes at least more sense than including Sim City, etc...The whiner
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Hey I'm disappointed. This isn't a real flame war, it's more like handbags at 30 paces.What the review says is that even with a top processor most current games are CPU rather than GPU limited if you have one of the better cards and that for these games there's not much to choose on framerate between ATi and NVidia. IQ is a different matter though. It certainly suggests that while NVidia does have some advantages they are generally outgunned by ATi unless they "cheat" by lowering IQ.
No point in worrying about future games - when they come out is the time to make a decision on that. However at the moment it looks like the card you will be buying will be made by ATi, unless you are some kind of masochist.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I would like to see Battlefield 1942 benches. It's a very popular game that has many players.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
500 bucks for a slightly overclocked 9800 pro? Good work ati, please take my money!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Again perfectly rightThe whiner
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
word