Graphics cards & power

Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Sun May 25, 2003 3:05 am

Does anyone have a comprehensive list of the new (aka FX5600, 5900, the new ati's etc) graphics cards' power consumption? I have the vague impression that the ATI cards consume significantly less power, and here therefor easier to cool and keep quiet .. Or am I mistaking?

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Sun May 25, 2003 3:18 am

Try to search the forum...

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Sun May 25, 2003 3:42 am

Tomshardware review: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20 ... fx-05.html

Quote:
"Additional voltage connector. The FX consummates up to 75 watts! The Radeon 9700 Pro has 54 watts."

Wonder if the additional connector uses 12V or 5V though. Usually 5V and 3.3V goes on the same consumption limit.

Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Sun May 25, 2003 4:11 am

Thx Yo.
Guess I'll be buying a Radeon

.

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Sun May 25, 2003 5:23 am

I hope no one really considers the Geforce FX 5800++, they are noisy even by overclockers standard.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Sun May 25, 2003 6:58 am

And slower. That is, when they're not cheating the benchmarks.

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Sun May 25, 2003 8:20 am

And crappier. They use a Fixed Point pipelines for pixel shaders where ATI uses floating point. This might cause FX to be quicker in apps that uses FP since ATI emulates FP with floats. But floats are much better in several ways. More precision and the circuit design becomes more clean.

And one important thing. I suppose you people who care about noise are more likely to care about something like image quality. For another technical reason (lowpass filter onchip instead of in board design) ATI cards are more likely to have sharper image quality. OEM can remedy the Nvidia problem by using better and more expensive components.. which they ofcourse seldom does.

For you that didnt understand ziltch of that.. it basically means that ATI has a much better technical solutions. Nvidia is dangerously close to doing a 3DFX type of blunder (Which got beaten out of competition by Nvidia a couple of years ago).

If it wasnt for NForce I would give them a thumbs down.

Athlon Powers · Post by **Athlon Powers** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:03 pm

Gandalf wrote:Thx Yo.
Guess I'll be buying a Radeon .

Radeon rock anyway, they have MUCH better AA and AF than the new GeForces. If you turn those on on the new GeForces they fall behind the Radeons about 50-70% of the time.

somebody · Post by **somebody** » Fri May 30, 2003 12:48 pm

Yomat wrote:And crappier. They use a Fixed Point pipelines for pixel shaders where ATI uses floating point. This might cause FX to be quicker in apps that uses FP since ATI emulates FP with floats. But floats are much better in several ways. More precision and the circuit design becomes more clean.

And one important thing. I suppose you people who care about noise are more likely to care about something like image quality. For another technical reason (lowpass filter onchip instead of in board design) ATI cards are more likely to have sharper image quality. OEM can remedy the Nvidia problem by using better and more expensive components.. which they ofcourse seldom does.

For you that didnt understand ziltch of that.. it basically means that ATI has a much better technical solutions. Nvidia is dangerously close to doing a 3DFX type of blunder (Which got beaten out of competition by Nvidia a couple of years ago). If it wasnt for NForce I would give them a thumbs down.

Is the image quality problem you are describing similar to the one on this page? I have a Geforce 256 that I use a VGA pass-through with, for my HDTV card. There is degradation that I notice in the image quality that I don't notice when using my brother's Radeon 9000. If I were to buy a Geforce FX would I likely encounter the same problem?

bsdgeek · Post by **bsdgeek** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:01 pm

Yomat wrote:And crappier. They use a Fixed Point pipelines for pixel shaders where ATI uses floating point. This might cause FX to be quicker in apps that uses FP since ATI emulates FP with floats. But floats are much better in several ways. More precision and the circuit design becomes more clean.

And one important thing. I suppose you people who care about noise are more likely to care about something like image quality. For another technical reason (lowpass filter onchip instead of in board design) ATI cards are more likely to have sharper image quality. OEM can remedy the Nvidia problem by using better and more expensive components.. which they ofcourse seldom does.

For you that didnt understand ziltch of that.. it basically means that ATI has a much better technical solutions. Nvidia is dangerously close to doing a 3DFX type of blunder (Which got beaten out of competition by Nvidia a couple of years ago). If it wasnt for NForce I would give them a thumbs down.

It's really quite silly to be comparing nVidia to 3dfx, nVidia is nowhere close to ending up like them. The only cards they have "messed up on" have been the high end cards, which bring them basically zero revenue. All the $ is made in the OEM sector, the area that 3dfx just ignored. 3dfx didn't have a stranglehold (~40%) on the market, or any other areas like integrated or standalone chipsets, or even notebook plans.

Just for the record the AF on Geforces is comparable and sometimes better than on Radeons in Max Quality modes, while the AA (primarily the gamma correction) on Radeons is far superior.

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:11 pm

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDc5

read that review. watch the 5600 ultra be beaten out by the 9600 pro in every benchmark (at stock speeds, overclocked vs stock is not really viable in my opinion)

Not to mention the 5800 ultra and 5900 ultra are huge and noisy.

IMO and many other hardware enthusiasts the FX line is a failure. (and maybe even in nvidia's)

bsdgeek · Post by **bsdgeek** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:52 pm

DryFire wrote:http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDc5

read that review. watch the 5600 ultra be beaten out by the 9600 pro in every benchmark (at stock speeds, overclocked vs stock is not really viable in my opinion)

Not to mention the 5800 ultra and 5900 ultra are huge and noisy.

IMO and many other hardware enthusiasts the FX line is a failure. (and maybe even in nvidia's)

1. That is not an Ultra, it is a normal 5600.
2. The Ultra is faster than the 9600Pro, and in some cases the 9500Pro which is being phased out anyway.
3. I did say that I thought the high end cards were "messed up".

4. I was referring more to the 5200 rather than 5600.

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Fri May 30, 2003 9:03 pm

somebody wrote:Is the image quality problem you are describing similar to the one onthis page? I have a Geforce 256 that I use a VGA pass-through with, for my HDTV card. There is degradation that I notice in the image quality that I don't notice when using my brother's Radeon 9000. If I were to buy a Geforce FX would I likely encounter the same problem?

Could be something else but it most probably is a quality problem with the card. If you need good signals you should get better quality. Simple as that. There are a couple Nvidia OEMs that does a better job, like Hercules.. but its safer to get ATI and if you _really_ care about it you should get Matrox.

If you for some reason you still want an FX you could try the tip on the page you are refering to on the Gf and see if it helps. I've chatted to and read about people that did it with success.

bsdgeek wrote:t's really quite silly to be comparing nVidia to 3dfx, nVidia is nowhere close to ending up like them. The only cards they have "messed up on" have been the high end cards, which bring them basically zero revenue. All the $ is made in the OEM sector, the area that 3dfx just ignored. 3dfx didn't have a stranglehold (~40%) on the market, or any other areas like integrated or standalone chipsets, or even notebook plans.

Hehe.. not getting into a pissing contest about 3dfx and economy. I would surely loose there.

But you, as a BSD-person, indirectly brings up a point. Nvidia puts some more effort into making their product work on other platforms than Windoze. If I were going to use Linux on a higher level, I would probably have to go Nvidia at this moment.

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Sat May 31, 2003 8:00 am

1. That is not an Ultra, it is a normal 5600.

oops sorry it was late at night when i posted that.

more proof nvidia cheats: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33688967
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_ne ... 6349_1.jpg

bsdgeek · Post by **bsdgeek** » Sat May 31, 2003 9:01 am

DryFire wrote:
1. That is not an Ultra, it is a normal 5600.
oops sorry it was late at night when i posted that.

more proof nvidia cheats: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33688967
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_ne ... 6349_1.jpg

More proof? When did you first bring it up? What is this argument about anyway? All I was trying to say was that nvidia is definitely in a better position than 3dfx was in December 2000.

@Yomat I didn't mean to start one, and yeah nvidia does have better non-MS driver support, I am very surprised that they even released a beta FreeBSD driver. Heh, BSD-person it's ok you can say GEEK!

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Sat May 31, 2003 4:10 pm

bsdgeek: Have to respect the minority groups.

And according to some rumour ATI cheated in 3Dmark buy influencing the programmers (as a partner where Nvidia is not?) to do some ATI optimization.

grambo · Post by **grambo** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 8:37 pm

Hehe nvidia forced Futuremark to shut up with the threat of a lawsuit. Personally I think the FX 5900 Ultra is the best card out there, because I hate ATI's damn driver issues. The 5900 Ultra is not as insanely loud as the 5800 (vacuum cleaner haha). The biggest problem of course is actually getting your hands on a 5900.

starsky · Post by **starsky** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 9:20 pm

grambo,
I have no driver issues, and have had my ati card (8500) for ages.

They only had significant driver issues before the Catalyst series. The last 12 months have been a joy in my opinion.

The only "supposed" issue I am aware of is a stuttering, which I will blame on DX9 Audio. Just dropped my sound accelleration one notch and everything is fine. It seems to affect some users and not others even with identical configs This problem is also experienced by Nvidia users on mass also (with certain cards and again, some affected others not). So I am confident it is not an ATI issue.

Good Wombo · Post by **Good Wombo** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 8:59 am

Starsky, sure it's got nothing to do with the game you're playing (if you are indeed experiencing this while playing a game), since UT2k3 has had its issues with EAX.

Just hope people aren't jumping on the pro-ATI + anti-Nvidia bandwagon since the 9700P beat the GF4s and the GFFX 5800 Ultra not meeting expectations (not saying anyone here are, but I know quite a few people in other forums have really started to act like so). Things are a lot different now than when the first NV30 reviews started appearing. The GFFX 5900 Ultra has dealt with many of the problems with the 5800 ultra. The new 5600 ultras are performing a lot better now. IQ is much better too.

It's good that there are two strong competitors. Nvidia is still in a very strong position in the industry, particular with OEM deals and mid-range cards. They aren't going to just die overnight. The nforce2 is doing well too. Both companies make good cards - you are not going to go wrong with either a 5900 ultra or 9800P. Don't get a 5800 ultra though, since you may as well get a 5900 ultra.