Advice: GeForce FX 5600?

noel · Post by **noel** » August 1, 2003, 6:27 pm

Going to get the GeForce FX 5600 tonight. I can't really justify the cost of the 5900 at the moment.

Can anyone think of a reason I shouldn't buy it? Anything I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » August 1, 2003, 6:40 pm

Are you responsible for any children who depend on that money for food?

noel · Post by **noel** » August 1, 2003, 6:44 pm

Only myself.

I'm not sure I qualify as 'little children', but definitely childish!

Revs · Post by **Revs** » August 1, 2003, 7:10 pm

Please compare the two

http://www.nvidia.com/page/fx_5600.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce4ti.html <--Ti4800

noel · Post by **noel** » August 1, 2003, 7:11 pm

Thanks Revs!!!

/hugs Revs

Skogen · Post by **Skogen** » August 1, 2003, 7:13 pm

Aranuil wrote:Going to get the GeForce FX 5600 tonight. I can't really justify the cost of the 5900 at the moment.

Can anyone think of a reason I shouldn't buy it? Anything I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance.

I bought one (5600) on Monday! It pretty much kicks ass...I did have a driver issue. BF1942 was a bit choppy, and had some clipping issues. So I just downloaded the latest one, installed, and that solved that prob!

Shanter · Post by **Shanter** » August 1, 2003, 8:30 pm

I got the 5600 and no complains on my part

Fesuni Chopsui · Post by **Fesuni Chopsui** » August 1, 2003, 8:55 pm

Aranuil wrote:Only myself.

I'm not sure I qualify as 'little children', but definitely childish!

Dude...your avatar makes my nervis shrivel

noel · Post by **noel** » August 1, 2003, 8:59 pm

BTW, I just found out that the 5900 is available in a 128MB version, and that it's within my price range, so I'll be getting that instead! Thanks everyone.

PS Sorry Fes.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 1, 2003, 10:17 pm

Aranuil wrote:BTW, I just found out that the 5900 is available in a 128MB version, and that it's within my price range, so I'll be getting that instead! Thanks everyone.

PS Sorry Fes.

9800 128 > 5900 128

If they are the same price. Both will be very powerful so you can't go wrong with either. 5900 will take two slots.

noel · Post by **noel** » August 1, 2003, 10:27 pm

I've been really happy, and pleasantly surprised with the 9000 in my Alienware Laptop, and I'm not really a video card religion person since I've seen Trident, Diamond, and Voodoo all go the way of the Dodo, so I agree with you. At that level of performance there's not a huge difference, but given that I'll be pulling a GF4Ti4600 to put in the FX, I won't have to change drivers etc. (not that switching to Standard VGA, then installing the new card/drivers is that hard). Additionally, my last few cards have made use of the NVIDIA chipset, and the only reason I've ever had to replace them was to upgrade. Glad you posted, was actually hoping you would.

'sides Winnow, even you have to admit that NVIDIA has one thing that ATI can't touch...
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/io/4414/large1.jpg
I give you, 'Dusk'.

Disclaimer: I feel obligated to now state that the Dusk comment is a joke, and the demo is NOT why I'm buying the card.

murr · Post by **murr** » August 1, 2003, 11:59 pm

wtf you're pulling a 4600 for a 5900? feel free to send that old piece of trash 4600 to me

Zamtuk · Post by **Zamtuk** » August 2, 2003, 12:49 am

rofl.

took the words out of my mouth, err the keys out from under my fingers....

noel · Post by **noel** » August 2, 2003, 1:43 am

I'm playing a certain new game which will remain nameless that overheats the 4600. Since I don't like turning off features, or underclocking my video cards, I'm swapping it out.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » August 2, 2003, 1:57 am

Watcha want for the old crappy 4600 then?

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 2, 2003, 2:13 am

Aranuil wrote:I'm playing a certain new game which will remain nameless that overheats the 4600. Since I don't like turning off features, or underclocking my video cards, I'm swapping it out.

Toon Town?

murr · Post by **murr** » August 2, 2003, 2:24 am

Zamtuk wrote:rofl.

took the words out of my mouth, err the keys out from under my fingers....

zam
i wish ps hadn't gone down the tubes i miss you childrens

miir · Post by **miir** » August 2, 2003, 8:09 pm

'sides Winnow, even you have to admit that NVIDIA has one thing that ATI can't touch...

There are hacks that will allow an ATI run that demo...

The funniest thing about it is that some people have benchmarked an 9800 running it better than a 5900.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 3, 2003, 4:20 pm

miir wrote:
aranuil wrote:'sides Winnow, even you have to admit that NVIDIA has one thing that ATI can't touch...
There are hacks that will allow an ATI run that demo...

The funniest thing about it is that some people have benchmarked an 9800 running it better than a 5900.

Miir beat me to it : )

You can get an ATI wrapper for that demo and the ATI actually runs it faster than the nVidia....

From an earlier thread:

http://www.rage3d.com/articles/atidawning/

Specifically:

It runs 15% faster than NV30 on the 9800pro, and it also runs faster than NV35 (we are unable to personally confirm this but a user with both cards and FRAPS could).
Creates higher quality images than the original due to the normalization being done in a fragment program (dp3/rsq/mul) instead of in a normalization cubemap which the FX extensions does directly in hardware
The OpenGL wrapper adds more overhead, as it has to interperet code calls for Nvidia extensions and map them to ATI/ARB extensions, and yet it still runs faster on the ATI card, due to its more sophisticated pixel shader engine.

I run the dawn demo on my ATI9700 and it looks great : ) All this can be had from the 9800 that fits on a normal sized card and doesn't need two slots and a massive cooling system because of old technology pressed beyond it's abilitites.

Also, if running WindowsXP, switching drivers between nVidia and ATI is easy and quick. Just add/remove programs-->remove the ATI or nVidia drivers then shut off computer, install new video card and XP will install default drivers for the new card, immediately install the latest Catalist or Detonator drivers that you have previously downloaded off the net as whatever drivers came with the video card on the CD should be flung out the window for targeting practice if any birds are near. If using the ATI, Omega's drivers are worth a shot. They improve gaming performance while possibly losing bench score points on 3DMark03. I'm over 5K on 3dMark03 using Omegas and am very happy with my 9700's performance.

BTW, the next generation card from ATI has 12 (6X2) pipelines while nVidias will still be 2X4. nVidia won't be catching ATI anytime soon. My only disappointment is nVIdia slacking so much that ATI can hold off on faster cards and toy with nVidia keeping ahead of them constantly.

Zamtuk · Post by **Zamtuk** » August 3, 2003, 4:43 pm

ill pay for the shipping charges on that video card aran ^^

Mort · Post by **Mort** » August 4, 2003, 2:16 pm

I have been trying those new "Omega" drivers and the results of my testing is....

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! I lub them!

http://www.omegacorner.com Should take you like a fucking month to find a working download, but well worth it. The overclock/artifact tester utilities are teh win!

Also, for the love of God... everyone out there go grab a copy of ACE Utilities! pwn

http://download.com.com/3000-2086-10184535.html

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 4, 2003, 2:28 pm

"Two slots at the same time."

"I believe if I had a million dollars and liquid nitrogen cooling system I could buy one of those nVidia 5900's and take two slots at the same time."

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » August 4, 2003, 2:36 pm

Went to GenCon and my twin brother won one of the 5900s SOE (Hi Saiphos!) was raffling off - my fucking number was just two off.

Couldn't convince him to trade it for the ride back home....

Vannoth · Post by **Vannoth** » August 4, 2003, 4:45 pm

Glad to hear that someone from VV won a 5900. Nvidia hooked me up with a 5900 as well, and I got a freebie 3.0ghz P4 and an Intel board at Fragapalooza the week before. I bought a gig of 800mhz DDR ram and my new machine screams. I love my 256MB 5900.

Over 6000 3d marks non-OC'd.

I'm bragging...I know...but I have to...

-Van/Saip

noel · Post by **noel** » August 4, 2003, 4:51 pm

Winnow, I can change a driver in my sleep, I just don't want to.

I really don't know how the number of slots can be a concern. My motherboard has 1 AGP slot, and 5 PCI slots. It's an Intel Motherboard with an onboard PRO/100 NIC. I have an Audigy 2 in one PCI slot, and the video card in the AGP slot. I'm not sure what else I'd need the slots for as I don't have a need for anything else. Taking up two lots is kind of a silly reason not to get the 5900.

Also, I have yet to see a review (I normally read Tom's Hardware) where any Radeon beats the FX 5900 in any (meaningful) test. I define meaningful as affecting the games that I specifically play.

I have the wrappers for dawn set up on my Alienware, and it looks great.

I don't need wrappers on my desktop for dawn or dusk.

Post by **Sylvus** » August 4, 2003, 4:51 pm

I want your job.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » August 4, 2003, 4:53 pm

Sweet.

I think your machine could run a dozen clones of mine in memory.

So jealous....

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » August 4, 2003, 9:44 pm

Never liked ATI... even when everyone did before they disappeard for a few year (from the gaming scene that is). People always say "ooooooohhh" the ATI looks better at 1600x1200 on my desktop, personally even in photoshop I can't tell a differece on 2D between any of them except Matrox. To me ATI lied to their loyal fan when the 9700 came out with those shitty rigged drivers. I had one, it was unstable as fuk, sold it and bought a Ti4200 which in 3 different boards hasn't hickuped once.

In actuality I think the 9800 Pro is faster than the 5900 Ultra on a couple of games (like 4 out of 10) so it's really a give and take. Either is going to be above and beyond anything else out there. I just like Nvidia, always had excellent stable drivers and that is what I like. I'm sure the ATI ones are great now but who knows what will happen with the next release of a card. I've never worried about that with Nvidia, it just worked. That peace of mind is work a couple of FPS and who cares really when you are are over 80 FPS on any meaningful game anyway.

Bottom line... heh I just don't like ATI.

Marb

noel · Post by **noel** » August 4, 2003, 9:47 pm

The new Doom 3 will have a special graphics mode that you can select in the display options that is specifically designed and optimized for the FX cards. No such mode for ATI.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 5, 2003, 6:40 am

Aranuil wrote:The new Doom 3 will have a special graphics mode that you can select in the display options that is specifically designed and optimized for the FX cards. No such mode for ATI.

Yeah, but just get a wrapper and it the ATI will be faster anyway : )

As for slots...5900 taking 2 slots isn't a big deal...but for nVidia to keep up, the 6000 will take 3 slots, 6100 4 slots...you might need a computer case the size of a mini fridge to handle their cards a year from now! : )

As for the 5900 coming close to the 9800 in performance, that's fabulous. The 9700 has crushed nVidia cards for more than a year. nVidia having a huge card that competes with ATIs for a month is a nice little window for people to buy nVidia before they are overtaken again by the 9900 and then the 12 pipelines shoved up nVidia's ass card soon to follow.

Financially, that doesnt bode well for nVidia...same as the Voodoo line went down the drain after people had a hard time shoving that monstrous Voodoo 5 card in their cases...it will take loyalists awhile to figure things out with nVidia. It will be interesing to see how well nVidia holds up when ATI lowers the price on the 9800 dramatically...hell they were already selling 9500's for 140.00 which were crippled 9700's with 4 pipelines shut down so they have margins to play with.

Competition is good for all of us so I hope a lot of you continue to buy NVidia cards to keep price wars and development working for all of us.

I owned an OC'd ti4400 and it kicked ass so I'm not a blind follower of ATI.

miir · Post by **miir** » August 5, 2003, 10:33 am

People who still complain about ATI drivers obviously haven't owned an ATI card in the past 2-3 years.

Also, I have yet to see a review (I normally read Tom's Hardware) where any Radeon beats the FX 5900 in any (meaningful) test. I define meaningful as affecting the games that I specifically play.

The two cards are nearly identcal in performance with each showing better performance in certain benchmarks.

I gotta laugh at the nVidia followers who blindly defend all of their products faults and have to make up excuses why they wouldn't buy an ATI.

Look at the facts.
The 9800 is cheaper than the 5900.
The 9800 is just as fast or faster than the 5900 in most benchmarks.
The 9800 has no driver issues.
The 9800 does not require extra space (slots).

nVidia has fallen so far behind ATI.
The 5900 will likely be their last competitive card before they fall a complete product cycle behind ATI.

I no longer care about having the best and fastest video card in my machine. I'm more than happy with my ti4600.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » August 5, 2003, 10:45 am

ATI drivers only ever caused hassle for me, although I am a timmy when it comes to computers in general. M'eh

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 11:26 am

miir wrote:I gotta laugh at the nVidia followers who blindly defend all of their products faults and have to make up excuses why they wouldn't buy an ATI.

I'm not blindly defending a damn thing. As I've said on multiple occasions, I'd buy either and not think twice. I happen to have purchased the 5900 at this particular time, and I can tell you that the performance is great, as I'm sure it would be with the 9800. One of my best friends has the 9800, and it too works great. If there was a compelling reason to purchase one over the other I'd be doing that but AT THIS TIME there is not.

Look at the facts.

Hehe OK!

The 9800 is cheaper than the 5900.

I really haven't looked at online pricing, but at every retail store locally, the prices are exactly the same.

The 9800 is just as fast or faster than the 5900 in most benchmarks.

The 5900 is just as fast or faster than the 9800 in most benchmarks (wording is FUN).

The 9800 has no driver issues.

DRIVER ISSUES? You're reaching here Miir. I have never, ever had any issue with drivers for any NVIDIA product and I've owned NVIDIA based cards since the Riva TNT. I've owned the Geforce 2, 3, 4, and now the 5900. You install the drivers, and call it a day.

The 9800 does not require extra space (slots).

This is a non-issue for me. Hence it did not affect my buying decision in any way. As I've already stated, I have all of my slots free save one.

nVidia has fallen so far behind ATI.
The 5900 will likely be their last competitive card before they fall a complete product cycle behind ATI.

Considering the performance on both of the current cards is nearly identical, I really don't care about future cards that aren't out yet, as my purchase was made now.

I'm really not clear on why my purchase needs be mulled over, and over again. I have yet to say one bad thing about the ATI card (apparently God forbid!), I make use of an ATI card on one of my PCs, and the performance on the two cards is for almost all cases identical.

Winnow, As far as the ability to download wrappers for Doom 3 why don't we just download wrappers for everything! I LOVE running software developed by random people on my systems! ... I'm being sarcastic for effect, but in all seriousness, no thank you.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 5, 2003, 11:42 am

Aranuil wrote:The new Doom 3 will have a special graphics mode that you can select in the display options that is specifically designed and optimized for the FX cards. No such mode for ATI.

I remember when id games were actually good. The fact that these two fading titans are teaming up to push product makes me laugh.

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 11:47 am

Yeah the fact that Doom 3 is probably the second most anticipated FPS coming out in the next 6 months after Half Life 2, is clearly the mark of a fading titan.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » August 5, 2003, 11:54 am

I bought and installed my first ever ATI card about 6 weeks ago (9700 Pro). On the day I got it I installed the 3-day old 3.5 catalysts and last week the 3.6. In both cases I installed them and forgot about them because I've had absolutely no issues with the card in any game I play.

Just thought you all should know seeing as driver support seems to be the bigegst beef people have with ATI.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 5, 2003, 12:19 pm

Anticipation doth not good product make. The fact that they're no longer top dog in the niche they invented should tell ya something.

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 12:55 pm

Wait 3 months, or whenever it comes out.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 5, 2003, 1:08 pm

I predict even more spastic bouncing than Q3A! Seisures for everyone!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 5, 2003, 2:18 pm

On the driver issue...things change. ATI has been releasing driver updates continuously on a regular basis and ahead of schedule a lot of the time.

As for wrappers, if some eggheads at MIT can make a wrapper for the Dawn demo that actually runs the demo faster than the card it was intended for while having to "add more overhead, as it has to interperet code calls for Nvidia extensions and map them to ATI/ARB extensions, and yet it still runs faster on the ATI card", then that's got to tell you something or nVidia needs to fire their demo people and write code that ATI won't embarrass them by running their demos faster even with overhead.

nVidia is lucky enough to have a card for a short period of time that's comparible in speed to an ATI card. I'll take the ATI for now as I like my chances for future drivers from a company that has plans for cards that will stay ahead of NVidia than hoping programmers for a sinking ship will stay motivated to stay on top of driver updates.

Have you seen some of the cards nVidia put out trying to stay alive until the 5900? 5200/5600 weren't the greatest efforts by them...adding higher numbers and cramming 256MB on the 5600 in hopes of getting some sales without great performance advances. Weak!

If things change, I'd dump ATI in a heartbeat though.

Loyalty in video cards isn't the same as loyalty to maybe a local Sub shop. If a Subway moves in next to a local non franchised shop that you've gone to for years, you might stick with the old place even of prices are higher and you get less meat because the people are great. I don't know anyone at nVidia or ATI. Their product is all I have to go on.

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 2:25 pm

Ok, I swear to fucking God, why I have to do this for you people is unbeknownst to me, but here goes. I'm going to ARGUE YOUR POINT FOR YOU.

1. THE 5800 was a FUCKING DISASTER! The performance numbers on it were TOTAL SHIT, and that's why the 5900 is out in the first place. The fan on the 5800 was so fucking loud people nicknamed it the DUSTBUSTER.

Tom's Hardware wrote:There are several compelling reasons behind this somewhat surprising step. The previous flagship, the FX 5800 Ultra, was plagued by several problems. Due to the high clockspeed of 500 MHz and the new 0.13-micron process, the yields for this chip were much lower than expected. The DDR-II memory it requires is expensive, not yet available in sufficient quantities and only supports a 128-bit bus, creating a memory bottleneck. On top of that, NVIDIA's reference cooling solution proved to be unacceptably loud, earning the reference card the nickname "dustbuster." Lastly, the chip's image quality when using anisotropic filtering also didn't live up to expectations and was criticized in many reviews. When ATi launched its Radeon 9800 PRO, it was able to beat NVIDIA's flagship in practically every discipline. In short, the FX 5800/ NV30 is too loud, too expensive, offers sub-par image quality and is slower than its direct competitor, the Radeon 9800.

2. Half Life 2 IS ( I fucking DARE YOU do disagree with me Masteen ) the most anticipated FPS in likely the next 2 years.

NVIDIA-based Graphics Cards Will Have a Bug in Half-Life 2?

FSAA Cannot Be Enabled
by Anton Shilov
07/18/2003 | 03:58 PM

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX 9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON 9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround, according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0, such as ATI Technologies’s code-named R420 and NVIDIA’s code-named NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by October.

You can find the thread on the matter with quotes from Valve officials here.

Stay tuned with us because we are looking forward to bring you some comments from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA about the situation.

3. Finally, THE NUMBER ONE argument you IDIOTS should have been using is that I AM REPLACING THE 4600 BECAUSE OF AN OVERHEATING PROBLEM in a very specific case with a very specific game.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick. I LIKE BOTH CARDS. Is that fucking clear?

PS I ALSO own ONE OF EACH, where's the fucking loyatly?

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 5, 2003, 3:22 pm

Half-Life was the shiznat. I'm looking forward to the sequel. What does that have to do with Q3A being shit and id sucking hind teat on the FPS sow?

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 3:24 pm

masteen wrote:Half-Life was the shiznat. I'm looking forward to the sequel. What does that have to do with Q3A being shit and id sucking hind teat on the FPS sow?

No idea. I hated that fucking game.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 5, 2003, 3:26 pm

So do we start sucking each others' dicks now?

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 3:27 pm

Dude, it will never be that kind of party with me.

UT2K3 was the only 'Arena' type FPS I ever enjoyed.

miir · Post by **miir** » August 5, 2003, 5:21 pm

Awfully defensive there Aranuil... my comments weren't even directed at you specifically.

ATI cards are considerably cheaper in Canada... as much as 30-35%.

The performance of the 2 cards are pretty evenly matched but the 9800 was available months before the 5900.

noel · Post by **noel** » August 5, 2003, 5:36 pm

Btw, there's a good article on Tom's hardware about the new 256MB version of the 9800. It basically says that unless your playing games at resos higher than 16x12, there is no noticable improvement.

One other thing. The wrappers for the Dawn Demo were written when the 5800 was the board du jour at NVIDIA. I'll betcha the 5900 will kick the 9800's ass.

Revs · Post by **Revs** » August 5, 2003, 7:05 pm

Screw these guys Aranuil, send me your old Ti4600 for helping you out!

miir · Post by **miir** » August 5, 2003, 8:10 pm

One other thing. The wrappers for the Dawn Demo were written when the 5800 was the board du jour at NVIDIA. I'll betcha the 5900 will kick the 9800's ass.

The 5900 running a program writen specifcally for it's chipset should kick the 9800s ass....

Considering the enormous overhead involved in running a non native application through numerous hacks and wrappers, the 9800 should come nowhere near the performace of a 5900 running the same application.

Thst it runs it with comparable perfomance should indicate how much perfomance ATI potentially has in that chipset and/or how comparatively underdeveloped the NV35 chip is.

VeeshanVault

Advice: GeForce FX 5600?

Advice: GeForce FX 5600?

Re: Advice: GeForce FX 5600?