NV40 AA + AF Performance

[burningrave101]

I'm sorta new here so i'm sure this has already been discussed and the links posted but i just wanted to jump in with my FIRST new thread :).

I've been watching the latest driver releases and how the cards have been performing with each release farely close. The 60.72 drivers that were used in the beginning really seemed to cripple the 6800 cards. And since then there hasn't been ALOT of reviews using the new 61.34 and 61.45 drivers.

Anandtech has stepped up to the plate though and has a couple of reviews showing the performance of the 6800u vs the X800XT PE while using the new 61.45 drivers.

Here is one of those reviews:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2096

According to those performance numbers, the 6800u is performing as well if not better then the X800XT at 1600x1200 w/ 4x AA + 8x AF enabled. Out of the 10 game benchmarks used the 6800u won 7 of them at those settings. And one of the three the X800XT won in at that setting was Far Cry where it had the astounding lead of .4 FPS. In games where the X800XT does lead in AA + AF it is rarely more then 1-5 FPS.

It seems as though ATI's strength in AA + AF vs nVidia and the NV30 series has subsided and the 6800u is able to pull the same IQ now at the same frame rates or higher.

The 6800 series cards also support Pixel Shader 3.0 and Vertex Shader 3.0 which have been announced to be implemented in over a dozen games this year. The 6800's also support UltraShadow II Technology which will be used in Doom 3.

There is also the issue of nVidia's superiority in OpenGL and ATI's extreme lack of performance in Linux.

SLI has also been announced for future 6800 cards on PCI-E using two X16 slots.

The X800XT PE is a great performer. And so is the X800Pro. And if the money is right then they are an excellent choice if you like ATI. But the fact remains, i do not see much if any real advantage of the X800XT PE over the 6800u.

The 6800u has more features and using the latest drivers it is able to perform as well or better then the X800XT, no matter the resolution or if AA + AF is enabled or not.

I'm curious to see if the 6800u lays waste to the X800XT in Doom 3 or not like some of the rumors floating around at places like the Inquirer seem to suggest.

What do you guys think? I'm just trying to jump in the mix here with my first real post :p.

And here are some more links using the most recent drivers:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=2091&p=1
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_6800_performance_and_overclocking/default.asp
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03ODcmdXJsX3BhZ2U9MQ= =
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03ODk
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=grfx&id=315&pagenumber=1
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=318
http://www.ixbt-labs.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-2.html
http://www.hwhell.com/articles/xfx_geforce_6800_ultra/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/135/7/

Also, if anyone has any more reviews that test the 6800 using 61.34's or higher, could you please post them for me?

[jAkUp]

I agree, I originally wanted an x800xt... But I am actually glad that I didn't go with it. I believe that SM3.0 will be used on upcoming games, and that farcry will benefit greatly with it. I wish it had 3Dc support though.

I do have a few issues though ocassionally my entire system will freeze, then the display seems to reset, it happens when I'm just browsing the boards, such as if you were switching a resolution or refresh rate... hopefully its a driver issue.

[Edge]

It wouldn't suprise me, all of Nvidia's past cards had much better performance when both AA and Anisotropic were enabled (each seems to reduce the performance hit of the other), whereas with ATI's cards the features are more independant (on my 9600 I had the same performance hit from enabling each feature whether they were used togeather or not). However in the previous generation of cards, ATI's cards had faster AA/Aniso to begin with, so the FX series lost out due to raw arcitecture.

However there is some inconsistancy with those benchmarks, in some the 6800 AGP is faster than the NV45, while in others the NV45 leads by a fairly large margin. Perhaps drivers need a little tweaking?

[Waffles]

It wouldn't suprise me, all of Nvidia's past cards had much better performance when both AA and Anisotropic were enabled (each seems to reduce the performance hit of the other), whereas with ATI's cards the features are more independant (on my 9600 I had the same performance hit from enabling each feature whether they were used togeather or not). However in the previous generation of cards, ATI's cards had faster AA/Aniso to begin with, so the FX series lost out due to raw arcitecture.

However there is some inconsistancy with those benchmarks, in some the 6800 AGP is faster than the NV45, while in others the NV45 leads by a fairly large margin. Perhaps drivers need a little tweaking?

They have the NV45 running at 430mhz vs 400mhz of the standard 6800u AGP. Doesn't explain why the NV45 is slower in some cases, but it SHOULD be faster in all cases. It could just be a fluke because of the hardware combination. I seriously doubt the HSI chip would cause that much of a difference.

[EXLINK]

I agree, I originally wanted an x800xt... But I am actually glad that I didn't go with it. I believe that SM3.0 will be used on upcoming games, and that farcry will benefit greatly with it. I wish it had 3Dc support though.

I do have a few issues though ocassionally my entire system will freeze, then the display seems to reset, it happens when I'm just browsing the boards, such as if you were switching a resolution or refresh rate... hopefully its a driver issue.

On the issue about 3Dc, supposedly there may be a wrapper for the 6800 series to include 3Dc (keyword = may). It probubly won't perform as well as the original ATI version, but it will still be there. I don't have any links or anything, but I have talked to experts on programming and other professionals and they say that it may be possible. Don't get too worked up about this though, because there haven't been any confirmations or anything that there will be a wrapper.

[MUYA]

They have the NV45 running at 430mhz vs 400mhz of the standard 6800u AGP. Doesn't explain why the NV45 is slower in some cases, but it SHOULD be faster in all cases. It could just be a fluke because of the hardware combination. I seriously doubt the HSI chip would cause that much of a difference.

One explanation ...which I think will hold valid for a few months....is "drivers". Both Intel and NVIDIA are hardly mature. So I am willing to bet the performance of PCI Express will improve substantially as time goes by.

[burningrave101]

Ok, i've got a couple of questions for somebody.

First, what speeds are the normal 6800 ultra's shipping at? Someone told me they were shipping in all different speeds, 400, 425, 435, 450. I've seen them running at 400, 425, 450. The XFX 6800 ultra is i believe 450Mhz while i think i also saw a 425Mhz XFX version too. Why are they popping out at so many different speeds?

Second, will there be a 6800GT Ultra Extreme card released? If so, will it be very plentiful?

I've seen alot of references to it but i'm still not positive if nVidia is still planning to release it or not now that ATI decided to not release a vanilla X800XT and just go straight with the X800XT PE.

Well, we don't know what NV45 will be called, we don't know when it will be available, and we don't actually know if these are the final clocks. But that's what we get with a preview or first look. Please note that these speeds could change before the final product is released. Our NV45 is running at 435MHz core and 1.1GHz memory. If our 6800 Ultra Extreme sample from NVIDIA had not been DOA (despite a couple hours of on-site BIOS flashing help from NVIDIA's Jim Black), this is the speed at which it should have run.

Of course, we are hearing something closer to 460MHz core clock (1.2GHz memory) for most vendors who have 6800 Ultra Extreme parts coming out, but that remains to be seen. In any event, since there's no real performance impact, we will finally be able to bring you numbers that are representative of what we should have seen, if we had gotten a working Ultra Extreme sample. Of course, it's on a 3.4GHz P4 EE running DDR2 RAM, so it's not really comparable to the number that we ran on the AMD Athlon 64 3400+, but we have some vendor's 6800 Ultra Extreme parts coming to the lab soon enough, and perhaps before then, we'll switch around our graphics test platform a little.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2096&p=4

And does anyone else have any more reviews that i havn't already linked too using the 61.34 drivers or higher?

[ragejg]

Both cards should be benched using Secret Service: Security Breach and tenebrae2.0 by somebody...

[scott123]

My PNY 6800 Ultra came clocked at 400 2D and 425 3D. I've clocked it up to 450 / 1.2 and no artifacts, or lock ups at all. I don't want to go any further (too expensive).

[saturnotaku]

Both cards should be benched using Secret Service: Security Breach and tenebrae2.0 by somebody...

I do have benches from the AMP II engine which I will be using in my review. But do you have a link to Tenebrae 2.0 so I can give it a look?