52.14 Benchmarks...

[dnottis]

I was checking out some of the new 9800 XT previews and noticed the 5900 ultra kicking some ass in the Anandtech review. After checking the driver revision I found this...

"We used ATI’s publicly available Catalyst 3.7 drivers and in order to support the NV38 we used NVIDIA’s forthcoming 52.14 drivers. The 52.14 drivers apparently have issues in two games, neither of which are featured in our test suite (Half Life 2 & Gunmetal)."

And regarding Aquamark 3 testing...
"Image quality appears to have improved for NVIDIA in this benchmark over what has been reported of previous drivers, and the NV38 handled the massive overdraw portion of the test the smoothest of all the cards."

Now we just have to wait for these drivers to "leak" or for nvidia to finish them..gah!

http://www.anandtech.com/video/show...?i=1890&p=5

[Nutty]

Sounding good to me soo far.. provided those problems are fixed..

[theultimo]

I dont know, but I'm hoping IQ is better than 51.75's
EDIT Link down?

[Nutty]

And regarding Aquamark 3 testing...
"Image quality appears to have improved for NVIDIA in this benchmark over what has been reported of previous drivers,

Did you forget to read this bit?

[theultimo]

Whoops, misread post bah :\

[dnottis]

The IQ improvement was encouraging. Scores were very good and IQ is improved...sounds like nVidia may pull this one off....just leak us a beta already!!

Originally posted by dnottis
"We used ATI’s publicly available Catalyst 3.7 drivers and in order to support the NV38 we used NVIDIA’s forthcoming 52.14 drivers. The 52.14 drivers apparently have issues in two games, neither of which are featured in our test suite (Half Life 2 & Gunmetal)."

Why is he beating around the bush? Either they have issues or they don't. Notice how he doesn't say what the issues are, but at the conclusion talks about the speed of HL2 being greatly improved by the drivers. Why didn't Anand reiterate that the drivers "apparently" have problems in HL2 at the same time instead of hiding it in the front?

And regarding Aquamark 3 testing...
"Image quality appears to have improved for NVIDIA in this benchmark over what has been reported of previous drivers, and the NV38 handled the massive overdraw portion of the test the smoothest of all the cards."

Reported by who? Did Anandtech look into the issue with previous drivers? What does he mean it "appears" to have improved. Why didn't he look into this?


If you're going to use unreleased drivers you better damn well investigate how they affect your benchmark suite Looks like Anand cares more about having an exclusive than about providing correct, factual information to his readers. Then again, I'm not sure I trust Anand's eyes. This is the guy who didn't realize FSAA caused visual problems in Splinter Cell and said it worked fine on NVIDIA cards(drivers hardcoded to not enalbe FSAA), did he even play the game

[Tsunami]

Originally posted by dnottis
The IQ improvement was encouraging. Scores were very good and IQ is improved...sounds like nVidia may pull this one off....just leak us a beta already!!

I hope so but my NV35 performs great anyway so with the det 50 boost........ should be interesting as long as Gunmetal and hl2 problems are both fixed

[windwaver]

Sounds good!

[dexiter]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
Why is he beating around the bush? Either they have issues or they don't. Notice how he doesn't say what the issues are, but at the conclusion talks about the speed of HL2 being greatly improved by the drivers. Why didn't Anand reiterate that the drivers "apparently" have problems in HL2 at the same time instead of hiding it in the front?



Reported by who? Did Anandtech look into the issue with previous drivers? What does he mean it "appears" to have improved. Why didn't he look into this?


If you're going to use unreleased drivers you better damn well investigate how they affect your benchmark suite Looks like Anand cares more about having an exclusive than about providing correct, factual information to his readers. Then again, I'm not sure I trust Anand's eyes. This is the guy who didn't realize FSAA caused visual problems in Splinter Cell and said it worked fine on NVIDIA cards(drivers hardcoded to not enalbe FSAA), did he even play the game

If you check out that review, it's titled "Preview of.. Part I" He will supposedly answer all those IQ questions and issues with 52.14 in Part II, which should be coming out in the next couple of days. Why did he leave all those unsubstantiated comments in his article? I don't know, maybe Anand wanted people to look forward to Part II, maybe he didn't realize he should've thought twice about writing anything positive about NVIDIA, maybe NVIDIA paid him off to write those comments so that.. I dunno, keep NV fanboys excited and ATI fanboys enraged for a few days? Patience.. Much ado about nada at this point.

[nfhq|matrix]

so far I haven't been able to find any serious visual differences between the two using the CAT3.7s and the 52.14 drivers but we'll be taking screenshots to make sure.

from anandtechs latest weblog

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/index.html

[Tsunami]

Wow this is really great news looks like NV problems were software related. I know people are gonna come in here saying NV payed them off and they are cheating so i though i'd add quickly a well done to Nvidia