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
Final Words
We’ll limit the talk about the new batch of $500 cards to the first few lines of this conclusion. The Radeon 9800 XT offers a marginal performance improvement over the regular Radeon 9800 Pro, definitely not worth upgrading to for current 9800 Pro owners.
As far as people looking to upgrade once for the long run, with new architectures due out in 6 months, a $500 investment today would be significantly more out of date than if you purchase a card right before a refresh. We rarely recommend that you buy the fastest performing card on the market; in fact the last time we did that was with the Radeon 9700 Pro – the impact of which is clearly not equaled by the Radeon 9800 XT (nor were we expecting it to). Whether spending $500 is worth it today is your call, but you can definitely get very similar performance out of a used Radeon 9700 Pro or even a non-Pro Radeon 9800 at much better price points. If money is no object, then we’re sure that ATI wouldn’t mind shipping a few more XTs in your direction.
We’re quite wary of recommending any of the current NVIDIA cards at this point, for two major reasons. First, with NV38 coming right around the corner any FX 5900 Ultra purchases wouldn’t be wise investments. Also, given the marginal performance improvements you can expect out of a 5% core clock increase, don’t have incredibly high expectations for the NV38. We can’t recommend the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra because NVIDIA has already indicated that NV36 (the 5600 Ultra’s successor) will be here shortly to replace it and should offer significantly greater performance. So if you’re looking to buy a video card right now, ATI is the way to go.
Looking at the stats, ATI clearly wins in 6 games, NVIDIA wins in 4 games and the two come very close in 5 games. 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.
What’s clear is that both manufacturers optimize for the more popular games and the focus of optimizations is obviously greater on more visible games. With that said, we’re hoping that by expanding our test suite we will be able to encourage optimizations to make more games run better. We’ll see how the picture we’ve depicted here today changes as time goes on.
Although we did provide some insight into the “next generation” of games with scores from Halo, the real question on everyone’s mind is still Half Life 2 as well as Doom3. The performance crown under Doom3 is still in NVIDIA’s camp apparently, and although the latest drivers have closed the gap significantly, ATI is still ahead in Half Life 2. The numbers we’ve seen indicate that in most tests ATI only holds single digit percentage leads (< 5%), although in some cases ATI manages to pull ahead by double digits.
There’s much more to come, but for now we’ve given you quite a bit to chew on…
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I think I remember that Tron 2.0 asked me to install DX9 so it probably uses some DX9 functions and it's an existing game so why not try to build a benchmark on it? Anyway since we're dealing with unreleased Det50 drivers here... (I rather prefer the THG way of dealing with that)BTW, I think there's a massive misunderstanding on whether a game is DX8/8.1/9; it can be all at the same time. You can use DX8 pixel shaders and DX9 pixel shaders at the same time.
It's just that as soon as you start using DX9 functions you lose compatibility with DX8/8.1 compatible cards. It's up to the developer to replace these convenient DX9 specifics by DX8/8.1 compatible pixel shaders for instance. So DX9 is really an extension to DX8.1 and DX8.1 is an extension to DX8 and so on
Oh and Doom III is OpenGL for God's sake!!!!!!!!!
appu - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
It would be a good idea to include at least FIFA2003 (and if possible, NFS HP2 or PU) mainly for
the same reason why C&C was benched. These are
really popular games and people would like to know
how they "feel" running with these new cards and
drivers. Also, FIFA 2004 is reportedly coming up
with even more impressive graphic quality and AI
(the latter could be a reason to CPU bench it,
perhaps?).
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#59 - halflife2 will be a very important benchmark, but its not out yet.. although a benchmarking tool was promised around this timeAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Well done guys, defintely going down the right track, testing cards with REAL games that people actually play.Still needs a little refining - HL2 can't be ignored as a valid benchmark!
Keep up the good work.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
im in the same boat as you here #57, very excited about the 9600XT although i think that its more a case of not available than lack of want for a review on AT's part.Can't wait to see how they go =)
zxyth - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I'm was hoping to see benchmarks for the 9600XT. $500 for a new card is rather high for someone on a budget. I've been interested in the 9600 Pro cards for a while and I'm disappointed none of the 9600's were shown. Not everyone can afford the high end cards and I for one would like to see more coverage of the cards that many more people are like to have or buy. It's great to see the flagship cards and what they can do, but don't forget some of us just can't go that route. And we'd like to see benchmarks for the cards that we have or want to purchase.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#52 I guess we are both whiners then. I keep whining about Anandtechs review and you about my comments. Peace, I'm getting tired.Evan Lieb - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
A 2.8GHz Prescott CPU was used. Anand probably didn't say anything just to tease you. ;)Take care,
Evan
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Prescott will come out at 3.2 and 3.4 GHz later this year.Lower versions 3.0/2.8...will follow afterwards.
So its for sure no Prescott here.
And if, I wonder why there is no test/word at all about it.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Correction, I meant #41.