Discuss BFG 5700 Ultra Review

[rocketmanx]

Nice review

Would have rather seen the direct comparison to a 9600 though, more apples to apples. Driver Heaven has one up with a comparo to a 9600XT using new games such as Max Payne2 and the FX9700 doesn't fair too well.

I hate to be negative but I can't quite understand your conclusion that it's a decent car with the fact it's a new card and has issues with DX9 features? The preformance is also lacking for a new board. Don't intend to argue here I just found the conclusion a little bewildering given the review I read.

Again, nice review, appreciate your dedication to it Hope my comment is taken constructively as it was intended

[Clay]

Originally posted by rocketmanx
Nice review

Would have rather seen the direct comparison to a 9600 though, more apples to apples. Driver Heaven has one up with a comparo to a 9600XT using new games such as Max Payne2 and the FX9700 doesn't fair too well.

I hate to be negative but I can't quite understand your conclusion that it's a decent car with the fact it's a new card and has issues with DX9 features? The preformance is also lacking for a new board. Don't intend to argue here I just found the conclusion a little bewildering given the review I read.

There's nothing wrong with being negative...as long as your civil and respectful I'll listen to every word you have to say. Plus, getting negative feedback is the best kind as it forces me to support my opinions and, if necessary, correct myself, learn from your criticism and be better for it in the long run. Having said that...speaking of "bewildering"...heh heh...that's the perfect word that I was hunting for to describe my impression of the that Driverheaven review.

Let's check against another site's review and see if we can corroborate Driverheaven (or vice/versa) shall we? The 5700 review over at HardTecs4U is the only other review that I could quickly find Max Payne 2 benchmarked as well.

Here are they system specs at Driverheaven and HardTecs4U first off:

Driverheaven
--------------------
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (333fsb) at 2088mhz
Abit NF7-S rev 2.0
2x256mb DDR 333 (Twinmos)

HardTecs4U
--------------------
AOpen AK79D max [ nForce2 ]
2x Corsair 256MB 166 MHz, 2.5-3-3-7
AMD AthlonXP 2700+ (FSB333)

So, equivalent systems for the most part, correct? Now, compare the Max Payne 2 benchmark results between HardTecs4U and Driverheaven.

Hmm...interesting isn't it? Driverheaven benches MP2 at 1024 alone while HT4U benches at 1024 and 1280...at both resolutions the 5700 is clearly the winner. How is it then, that Driverheaven's benchmark results for the 5700 are some 20fps lower than the 9600XT? Why are HT4U's results much closer in scale but with the 5700 being the faster card? I'm not saying who is right or who is wrong...but someone is clearly way off or their specific test run through the game is drastically different than the other.

I wish I'd had a 9600XT to compare against as well (which I clearly stated
on page 3 of my review).

Anyway, my conclusion is based two major points:[list=1][*]The fact that (other than DirectX 9 PS2.0 performance) the 5700 puts up very impressive numbers relative to the much faster (and much more expensive) 9800Pro.[*]This card is targeted towards the mainstream market. Therefore, it is targeted towards the mainstream of games as well, IMO. The mainstream for games today is DirectX 7 and DirectX 8 titles, of which the 5700 performs impressively in.[/list=1]
I completely agree that the DirectX 9 performance issues are disappointing. However, the jury is still out as to whether or not this is a permanent problem or not. So, even though DirectX 9/PS 2.0 has been available for quite some time now, the fact that a such a miniscule percentage of actual games support it leaves me feeling that we're still in the infancy of what DirectX 9 has to offer...and so I find it illogical to weigh my overall opinion of an otherwise excellent piece of hardware so heavily on PS2.0 performance alone (as was done in this review over at Driverheaven). (sorry for that massive run-on sentence)

Whew, that's too much typing for one post. I hope you'll take the time to read it though and please point out anything that you disagree with me on. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, I do appreciate them.

Oh one last thing. The Driverheaven review does state what drivers were used (unless I missed it somewhere). HT4U states that 52.16 and the 3.8s were used in their review.

[Clay]

Originally posted by maxpower
[b]
Anyway, my conclusion is based two major points:[list=1][*]The fact that (other than DirectX 9 PS2.0 performance) the 5700 puts up very impressive numbers relative to the much faster (and much more expensive) 9800Pro.[*]This card is targeted towards the mainstream market. Therefore, it is targeted towards the mainstream of games as well, IMO. The mainstream for games today is DirectX 7 and DirectX 8 titles, of which the 5700 performs impressively in.[/list=1]

I'm correcting this previous statement above in red. Typing faster than I was thinking straight at the time. That statement is faulty. I do believe that mainstream cards are targeted towards the majority of games. However, that does not excuse exceptionally poor quality/performance for those games that are utilizing the latest technology. We don't buy video cards solely for "today"...a huge investment is in "tomorrow" as well most certainly. Where I need to base my perspective on is that the Forceware drivers "may" still be untapped regarding DX9/PS2.0. I have my doubts about this but since I don't know for absolute certainty I choose to give NVIDIA the benefit of the doubt, for now. Are they lagging behind ATI in PS2.0 performance? Absolutely. Could future driver updates fix this, possibly. Time is growing short for NVIDIA to prove the critics wrong in my opinion but I maintain that if anyone can succeed in doing so it is the NVIDIA Driver Team. It's so easy to have an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to this situation. I'm simply opting not to do so because I admit that I don't have all of the facts and that there's still a small window of time for NVIDIA to answer the call.

On a technical note, I favor NVIDIA's implementation of FP16 and FP32 (in theory) even though ATI's single FP24 implementation meets the DX9 spec more closely. I just think that this difference between the two cards could end up favoring NVIDIA in the long run. The next few months will be very interesting and revealing.

[rocketmanx]

Yeah, someones off, don't know who. That's why I take in as many reviews as possible before and make a cumulative assesment from there, or just go buy one for myself

The conclusion I found bewildering because of the fact that the card has DX9 problems. In "todays" market it would seem that having performance there would be a "gotta have". I find it "bewildering" that NV would come out with a new card that has DX9 issues.

Guess Ill see what the "cumulative" take is after the cards been out a while. MAybe after you get done with some other games we'll have a better idea who's closer to being on the mark

[Clay]

Originally posted by rocketmanx
Yeah, someones off, don't know who. That's why I take in as many reviews as possible before and make a cumulative assesment from there, or just go buy one for myself

The conclusion I found bewildering because of the fact that the card has DX9 problems. In "todays" market it would seem that having performance there would be a "gotta have". I find it "bewildering" that NV would come out with a new card that has DX9 issues.

Guess Ill see what the "cumulative" take is after the cards been out a while. MAybe after you get done with some other games we'll have a better idea who's closer to being on the mark

I'm working on getting some more games in the review as an upate. MP2 for sure.

[veridian3]

Hi guys,

v3 from DH.net here, just been sleeping for 14hours so have only just seen your questions, as soon as i've had something to eat i'll head back and answer your questions...i'll even do some 1280 benchies if you wish

Stu

[veridian3]

I'm getting a little tied up here with some "friends broken his new PC" stuff and so will drop by here later...

... till then you may want to have a look at HardOCP's NV/ATI results...they show the same lead for the ATI part....all be it these are high end cards rather than mainstream. Personally taking of my reviewers hat i would expect the same trend to continue in mainstream even before i tested myself.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTM3LDM=

As i say though, will drop by later.

Stu

[Clay]

Originally posted by veridian3
I'm getting a little tied up here with some "friends broken his new PC" stuff and so will drop by here later...

... till then you may want to have a look at HardOCP's NV/ATI results...they show the same lead for the ATI part....all be it these are high end cards rather than mainstream. Personally taking of my reviewers hat i would expect the same trend to continue in mainstream even before i tested myself.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTM3LDM=

As i say though, will drop by later.

Stu

Thanks for stopping by and responding V3. I tend to agree with you that the a similar performance margin would probably be the case with the mainstream cards as well regarding the findings at [H].

I'm not sure if the reviewers over at HT4U speak English or not. If anyone knows (or if you speak German)...we should ask them to help out on clarifying this as well.

[veridian3]

PC problem sorted via MSN . Will do 1280 without aa/af and with aa/af now and be back asap. (1hr approx).

[veridian3]

1280x960x32

Same PC, same install as review...

9600 XT
0aa0af - Avg: 69.347
2aa2af - Avg: 63.935

5700 Ultra
0aa0af - Avg: 50.110
2aa2af - Avg: 45.628


I'll be starting another install for another review v soon, so i'll not be able to run MP2 again today but will check back on my laptop to answer any questions.

Stu

[Clay]

Great, thanks again Stu. I hope we hear from HT4U now.

[veridian3]

HardOCP have posted their 5700U review...benched against the XT and there, as with the DH review, is a substantial performance gap between the two cards in Max Payne 2.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTQw

Stu