GeforceFX=surprisingly slow

[Minion]

Just seen the results for the GeforceFX on Tomshardware - Its totally lame considering it has a 500Mhz GPU clock with 1Ghz DDR=II memory.  On average its a little bit faster than a Radeon 9700 Pro, and in many tests, it is slower.  Bare in mind that the Radeon uses cheeper DDR memory, and lower tech 0.15 micron process.  Now if only ATI can sort out their drivers.
Whoever posted the GeforceFX WOWOWOWOWOW post needs to learn to not be suckered by marketing speak.  (remember the Pentium 4 Specs?)

[Hammer]

As with NV25 and R300 examples, the driver support has to mature. Refer to serious OpenGL driver battle royal for the indications of NV30's potential. At the moment, official release drivers doesn’t even support NV30+ family (only in leaked beta form).

Anyway, nVidia has branched to chipset and integrated audio markets btw…

Likewise with “Pentium 4” product (a core change), it takes time mature.

PS; I recall, NVidia hasn't made the shift to pure 256bit bus unlike ATI, Matrox, 3DLabs.  Geforce FX is one crippled GPU, even with 1Ghz DDR technology (due to DDR overheads).

[Hammer]

On average its a little bit faster than a Radeon 9700 Pro, and in many tests, it is slower

To quote www.tomshardware.com

NVIDIA takes the crown! No question about it - the GeForceFX 5800 Ultra is faster than the competition from ATI's Radeon 9700 PRO in the majority of the benchmarks. However, its lead is only slight, especially compared to the distance that ATI put between its Radeon 9700 PRO and the Ti 4600. Still, when compared to its predecessor, the GeForce4 Ti, the FX represents a giant step forward.

[Ilwrath]

I'd hardly call the GeForceFX pre-release boards slow...  It does trample the current fastest graphics card on most tests, and comes very close on the few it loses...  

However, what DOES concern me is the power consumption and the personal tornado generator that nVidia calls a cooling unit on the thing.  THAT, to me, looks like a sign of desperation.  Much like the wacky things 3dfx was trying shortly before they went belly-up.  (Trying to stuff 4 GPUs on a single consumer-level card, anyone?)  

Hopefully nVidia will manage to turn things around, though.  For the most part, they've shipped quality products in the past, and have done some wise things with drivers, etc...  Of course, if they don't it'll just be ATI's turn to run with the lead for a while...  

Nothing much changes except for the names and the locations of the bugs...   :-D

The GeforceFX may be slower in terms of FPS on 'current' games... but its feature packed...and with Cg its features will be easily implimented... its raw polygon push is much more appealing from what I've read... and I'm sure its drivers will be much better.

Its lock will go up 300mhz from what I've read....


I think it wise to not get sucked in by FPS of current games... its more then just FPS at what AA...

If you judge a GPU by its FPS and not by its features....then your missing the point entirely... we're enter a time where FPS matter less and features matter more... and stability/drivers/etc matter more... the race for FPS was over at the Gforce4 ...now its time to see some features and higher poly counts at the same FPS...


I well remember P4 specs... first generation P4's got beat by Athlons... now look where we are a little while later?


To me personally... ATI will never be in the lead until their able to get decent windows drivers... I dont consider their current psudo-decent-drivers to be of the level of 3dslabs/nvidia or even SiS's Xabre400 or Matrox's parhelia... sure those cards might not all stack up in the hardware department...but as everything includeing the Amiga proves... hardware is only half the battle...until ATI can get decent drivers out there...I wont buy their products...even if their 10x the speed...

[Hammer]

Hopefully nVidia will manage to turn things around, though.  For the most part, they've shipped quality products in the past, and have done some wise things with drivers, etc...  Of course, if they don't it'll just be ATI's turn to run with the lead for a while...  

Unlike 3DFX, there are no problems with nVidia’s financial future since they have branched to other market segments.  

From leak beta 42.70 driver's nv4_disp.inf file. There are other code names.

NVidia.Nv25.3    = "NVIDIA NV25"
NVidia.Nv25.4    = "NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200"
NVidia.Nv25GL.1  = "NVIDIA Quadro4 900 XGL"
NVidia.Nv25GL.2  = "NVIDIA Quadro4 750 XGL"
NVidia.Nv25GL.4  = "NVIDIA Quadro4 700 XGL"
NVidia.Nv28.1    = "NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4800"
NVidia.Nv28.2    = "NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X"
NVidia.Nv28.3    = "NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE"
NVidia.Nv28GL.1  = "NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL"
NVidia.Nv28GL.2  = "NVIDIA Quadro4 780 XGL"
NVidia.Nv30.1    = "NVIDIA NV30"
NVidia.Nv30.2    = "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra"
NVidia.Nv30.3    = "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800"
NVidia.Nv30GL.1  = "NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000"
NVidia.Nv30GL.2  = "NVIDIA Quadro FX 1000"
NVidia.Nv31.1    = "NVIDIA NV31"
NVidia.Nv31.2    = "NVIDIA NV31 "
NVidia.Nv31GL.1  = "NVIDIA NV31GL"
NVidia.Nv31GL.2  = "NVIDIA NV31GL "
NVidia.Nv34.2    = "NVIDIA NV34"
NVidia.Nv34.3    = "NVIDIA NV34 "
NVidia.Nv34.4    = "NVIDIA NV34  "
NVidia.Nv34GL.3  = "NVIDIA NV34GL"
NVidia.Nv34GL.4  = "NVIDIA NV34GL "

[Waccoon]

It's hard to place the blame.  According to Anandtech, overclocking the memory doesn't yeild any performance increase, so the problem is either the drivers or the core itself.

ATI switched to a new core design a while ago (which is why the Radeon 9700 doesn't use unified drivers with the 8500), so they've had time to test the hell out of their drivers, which normally has been ATI's weak point.  NVidia still has some work to do on their drivers, but then the brand new 350 Radeon core will be available.  After all, the GeforceFX only comes out on top if you turn on ALL the effects, including those not supported by any current games.  The Radeon Pro really does a number on NVidia for current games.

Frankly, I think it's like the old AMD vs Intel battle.  Intel has the clock speeds, but AMD is just a more effecient processor.  Raw clock speeds can't save the GeForceFX.  NVidia will have to do some major work with their drivers just to stay competitive with ATI.

I don't think the Cg effects of the GeForceFX will be embraced so quickly with this kind of performance disappointment.  And with that damned leafblower roaring and your first PCI slot blocked, I think the whole GeForceFX release has been a disaster.

Reminds me of the Matrox Parhelia.  That card had more memory bandwidth than anything else out at the time, but the card was still not so hot (but is sure was expensive!!!)

[Ilwrath]

...there are no problems with nVidia’s financial future since they have branched to other market segments.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they said the same things about Enron... (Great growth, corporate diversification, etc...)  Of course, they were blatently cooking the books, where nVidia was only investigated, with no charges brought.  Take that for what it's worth.

In today's microcomputer market, it only takes one botched product cycle to put you in pretty deep trouble.  Personally, I'm a bit worried that through all their other 'market segments' such as mediocre chipsets and XBox alliances, they lost sight of what got them to the top... making a good Graphics Processor.

[KingTutt]

I don't care what manner of PR the FX gets, in my mind and most of the people at Sharkey's, nVidia are sitting on a lemon. I hope they can make as much revenue from selling lemonade as they did selling video cards last year. lol.

[Hammer]

Ilwrath wrote:

...there are no problems with nVidia’s financial future since they have branched to other market segments.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they said the same things about Enron... (Great growth, corporate diversification, etc...)  Of course, they were blatently cooking the books, where nVidia was only investigated, with no charges brought.  Take that for what it's worth.

Does Enron produce and owns real products (for sale)? Or are they just yet another middle man(i.e. energy distributor) ?

In today's microcomputer market, it only takes one botched product cycle to put you in pretty deep trouble.

Can that be said for the first release of Radon?

 Personally, I'm a bit worried that through all their other 'market segments' such as mediocre chipsets

NForce 2 is not a mediocre chipset relative to VIA "crap sets". It maybe true with the first nForce 1 release but not true on the second release. This pattern is similar to the original release of Geforce 256. It took the second release(e.g. Geforce 2 series)  to make this a real success(relative to 3DFX).

On Athlon XP 1800+/ASUS nForce 2/512Mb-DDR-SDRAM)/GF4-4200 delivers 254.1 FPS on QuakeIII(normal settings, timedemo 1, demo001, nosound). This is not bad for 1.53Ghz CPU. 3DMarks2001SE @ 10336. (No overclocking)

It should be competitive with similar equipped 2Ghz Pentium 4.  

My older MSI built VIA KT class mobo(with similar components as above)  doesn’t does deliver the same frame rates as the nForce 2 based board i.e. ~+182FPS on QuakeIII(default, timedemo 1, demo001, nosound). 3DMarks2001SE @ 8780.
(No overclocking)

 and XBox alliances, they lost sight of what got them to the top... making a good Graphics Processor.

Focusing on a single product doesn’t guarantee survival (refer to 3DFX ).

[BlackMonk]

I well remember P4 specs... first generation P4's got beat by Athlons... now look where we are a little while later?

So you mean that the GFFX has a longer pipeline and will be able to scale to higher clockspeeds?  Or are you attributing the P4's current performance to software optimization?

I'd take issue with the P4/software route since many of the P4 optimizations also benefit the Athlon and give it a performance boost as well.  Perhaps not as much as the P4, though.

If you take a P4 at 2 GHz and an Athlon at 2 GHz, clock-for-clock, and ran the same program, the Athlon would perform better.  Sure, software optimization will help the P4 a bit, but... I think the fact that the P4 is something like, what, 600 MHz faster? is more of a factor than anything else.

Since the GFFX isn't exactly positioned as the first "GPU" of a family of chips designed to scale up to 2 GHz, uh, I don't see how the analogy holds any water.

---------

Enron?  Diversification?  Actual products?  Blah blah blah.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=NVDA&d=t

Looks to me like nVidia's motherboard chipset efforts, broad product range (high-end, mid-range, budget, portable), and R&D (creation of Cg and attempting to get it adopted, migration to .13 micron process) has really paid off.

I mean, a year ago their stock was almost 7 times as valuable.  Granted, the stock market is insane, but this means that investors have waning faith in nVidia's ability to provide a competitive product--diversification or not.

And now consumers are also questioning nVidia.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDIxLDY=

I don't know where there was a mention of 300 MHz overclocking or room for improvement.  The sample only went up 30 MHz or so.  They'd NEED to clock it up another 300 MHz the way the current sample is performing.

This is a "reference" board with premature drivers.  I fully expect the card to perform better with the actual retail products and after a few driver revisions.  However, this is a really crappy start.

Oh, and whoever linked to Tom's... that site is generally regarded as biased and bowing to nVidia.  It might not be the best place to cite praise for the GFFX.  

[BlackMonk]

Focusing on a single product doesn’t guarantee survival (refer to 3DFX ).

However, there appears to have been a direct correlation between nVidia's delays in their process shrink and their next flashship product and a lack of consumer and investor confidence.

I'm not sure what your example with 3dfx is supposed to show... they had a great product in the Voodoo2.  Then they had delays with their follow-up products and the products didn't perform as well as people were expecting.

Are you trying to imply that ATI is going to buy and gut nVidia?  That's the only thing I see in a reference to 3dfx (RIP).

[BlackMonk]

Can that be said for the first release of Radon?

The Radeon has sucked for a while.  Only when ATI got threatened by nVidia's growing market presence with OEMs did they decide to try and change their image by initiating their "Catalyst" driver program and rapid betas.

And look, it's mainly on the Windows platform--where they get the most exposure.  Still don't have features from older ATI cards working on the Mac.  Same problem with nVidia, too.

ATI and the Radeons have done well.  The hardware is capable and the drivers have markedly improved.  And they also have successfully been playing the PR game.  Now it's time for nVidia to turn this disappointing first impression (after tons of delays) around into something positive.

Even if 3 months down the line the drivers are giving 30% speed improvement, nVidia needs to do something sooner rather than later or they'll fall out of the public's eye.  Thats' just my opinion, though, so who knows.  We'll all have to wait and see.

[nDude]

A few random thoughts ...
The ATI card actually has a fast memory bus (twice the buswidth)...

The drivers will improve a lot, nVidia usually runs a tweaked prev gen driver when they release new chips ... speedups will come when they put in real support for the chip in the driver.

Toms Hardware was once great (when Tom did most of the reviews himself and took pride in doing them good) but they have degraded to much lately ...i.e. comparing XBox with PS2 and saying the PS2 isn't as good because it lacks vertex shaders ( The PS2 has really kewl vector units that are more programmable than the GFFX btw)

Please don't compare the GFFX with P4 this chip complete blows away the GF4, the P4 never could compete with the P3 really. The P4 was supposed to be faster per clock than the P3 but the chip got to big so they had to cut out a lot of units to make it run. Hope they make it back to the next rev ...

The GFFX has no real advantage over the 9700 feature wise. But hey you can use the Ultra as a hairdryer !

Don't buy a card for features you won't need during the life time of the card ... Do you know any game that looks a lot better with GF3(pixel shaders) than GF4mx ? no didn't think so ...
 
/Babbling off

[redrumloa]

Oh yeah you mean the the most recent P4s based MBs tromping DDR400 based systems? That sure happened, but IMO it was short lived. NForce2 with Double DDR will likely take the crown back soon.