Which graphics card is better the RADEON 9800 PRO or GeForce FX 5900

[OO7]

Im Buying a new computer so i want to know. i dont care how much sound either one makes i just want to know performance wise although i heard the GeForce FX 5900 is as loud as a lawn mower. I would like to hear from someone with experience from either.



And i haven't been online for awhile so can some one tell me what happened to my posts and time count.

[Shadowrider]

interestingly, i was just about to post this a min ago about the latest video card comparison. specifically, their advantages, new features, etc.
i was hoping to get more info on the fx since that is the one i'm interested in.

[OO7]

Well thats cool

[jerome187]

I'm wondering about these as well, i would go with the FX only because of the superiour linux drivers nvidia supplys. But if your a windows user i dont know which is better.

[omni_rom]

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/...x5900upd.shtml

That website has a comparison, and it seems as if the GeForce FX 5900 is slightly better when looking at the benchmarks. It does perform poorly compared to the ATI 9800 PRO in some categories however. If you have lots of money, you should get the geforce. If you don't, you should get the Radeon. They seem to perform about the same, with the Radeon slightly behind. However, I heard that Nvidia cheated on the 3dmark tests with a special patch, so don't trust all the benchmarks you see there.

On one hand, we have the "brute force" all out monster frame rates of the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. The card takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. It consumes two PCI slots in your PC chassis, is louder (although a quantum leap improvement over the 5800 Ultra) and bulkier than the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB card. It punches out overall frame rate that is a notch above the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB card, even with ATi's latest extremely mature Catalyst Driver suite, in almost all test conditions. In the end, the 5900 Ultra may end up costing you more, because it clearly must cost more to build. However, you don't care, you are the top end niche' of the Enthusiast PC market. Cost is not an object.

[OO7]

well im buying from alienware computers and there radeon cost an extra 9 bucks then the geforce so i guess the geforce is the way to go although it does ruin the quiet feature of the alienware computers thats ok though because i require the best .even if there is some down fall.

[SniperWolf]

I would also go with the FX, it aint loud, i own one and have compared it ro the radeon, and you would not be missing out thats for damn sure....either way there both amazing just my preferrence is the Geforce FX

[OO7]

yeah im a big nvidia fan. Oh and one more question what video formats does the tv-out support(can you play divx through the tv-out on your tv). And can i play my emulators on the tv-out.

[Lord Riff Raff]

Gamespy did a thing on this (can't be bothered to look for the link) the FX outperforms the Radeon in games (and 3dMark but they kinda cheated to do it (then again it only cheats on non standard stuff so it's probably)) at higher res. with AA + AF. However at lower res with no AA or AF the ATI has the slight advantage.

I myself would go for the Nvidia simply for the rumor that id has been payed some money to optimise Doom 3 for the FX.

[omni_rom]

Also Nvidia has a better reputation for updating its drivers and for game support.

[Magus]

Benchmarks are subjective tests so everyone's tests will have slightly different results.

The Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB version) has a much more efficient memory architecture, despite the Geforce's slightly higher bandwidth. ATI makes much better use of multiple shaders on current games, their shadow and lighting optimizations render just about any scene noticeably more realistically than nVidia's offering, and it can apply FSAA and AF concurrently on high-polygon scenes with a relatively small loss in frame rate.

From nearly every benchmark rundown I have seen, the Radeon maintained a higher frame rate in 6 out of 10 tests, especially when the resolution was cranked up to 1600x1200 and FSAA and AF were activated concurrently.

Bottomline:
Both card's are priced the same, but the Radeon seems to have the edge in today's games, especially in Direct X games and persistent world games (like MMORPG's). The Geforce will ultimately only find usefulness in the game's of tomorrow--games that will be extremely taxing on the Geforce's amazing shader technology and likely use up the card's 26GB/s of memory bandwidth constantly. Games like Half-Life 2 and Doom III (end of 2003) will really show us what the card can do. But by that time ATI will already have their new core ready and be prepared to release a new Radeon, possibly leaving nVidia in the dust.

The new Geforce FX 5900 is not nearly as loud as the now late Geforce FX 5800. The Flow FX system it used with the massive fan is now gone. But the card still manages to take up two slots (the AGP slot and one PCI slot), whereas the Radeon takes up just one. But who really cares about that anyway?

Oh, and the driver angle no longer applies for nVidia fanboys. For the longest time, nVidia dominated with their driver releases. They were plentiful, efficient, user-friendly, and boosted performance more than the competition. But the FX 5900 is already starting out with driver issues while ATI's catalyst driver seems to improve daily.

Anyway, I have a Radeon 9700 Pro and I could not be happier with it. nVidia just can't measure up anymore. My card, which is nearly 1 year old performs nearly as well as the Geforce FX 5900. With as much time as nVidia had to capitalize, the FX 5900 should not be on par with the Radeon 9800 Pro, it should far surpass it. But alas, it does not. In fact, the Radeon (in most benchmarks) seems to have the advantage 60% of the time, as I said earlier.

[Lord Riff Raff]

The thing is though that the FX5900 has more upwards movement ie though it look slow now but there'll be a new version in a few months that is much faster.