The Last Bout of ‘03 – NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
by Derek Wilson on October 23, 2003 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Our introduction to NV36 in the form of the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra has really been a different experience than we expected. We thought we would see similar gains on the 5600 that we saw the 5950 make over the 5900. We also didn't expect NVIDIA to drop the veil they've had on the technical aspects of their products.
From the first benchmark we ran, we knew this would turn out to be a very interesting turn of events. In going down to San Francisco for NVIDIA's Editor's Day event, we had planned on inquiring about just how they were able to extract the performance gains we will reveal in our benchmarks. We got more than we had bargained for when we arrived.
For the past few years, graphics companies haven't been very open about how they build their chips. The fast paced six month product cycle and highly competitive atmosphere (while good for consumers) hasn't been very conducive to in depth discussions of highly protected trade secrets. That's why we were very pleasantly surprised when we learned that NVIDIA would be dropping their guard and letting us in on the way NV35 (including NV36 and NV38) actually works. This also gives us insight into the entire NV3x line of GPUs, and, hopefully, gives us a glimpse into the near future of NVIDIA hardware as well.
Aside from divulging a good amount of technical information, NVIDIA had plenty of developers present (a response to ATI’s Shader Day, no doubt). For the purposes of this article, I would like to stick to the architectural aspects of the day rather than analyzing NVIDIA developer relations. It isn't a secret that NVIDIA spends a great deal of time, energy, and money on assisting game developers in achieving their graphical goals. But we believe that "the proof is in the pudding" so to speak. The important thing to us (and we hope to the general public) isn't which developers like and dislike working with an IHV, but the quality of the end product both parties produce. Truth be told, it is the developer's job to create software that works well on all popular platforms, and its the IHV's job to make sure there is sufficient technical support available for developers to get their job done.
We should note that NVIDIA is launching both the NV36 (GeForce FX 5700 Ultra) and the NV38 (GeForce FX 5950 Ultra) today, but since we have already covered the 5950 in our previous roundups we will focus on the 5700 Ultra exclusively today.
First let us look at the card itself.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
it seems toms review puts into question ati's optimizations moreso than nvidia's image qualityAnonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
In any case,.....it's another round of new card releases and hopefully cheaper prices around for the"older" models.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
#19, I don't think it is a fanboy thing. It's an AT thing that's costing them their respect from other hardware sites and readers.Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
ati fanboys above dont look to happy :)Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
# 15, If someone writes a crappy review then he deserves all the problems and flak the come with it.gordon151 - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
#14, "The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra will be debuting at $199 after a mail in rebate. If $200 is your hard limit, and you need a midrange card right now, the 5700 Ultra is the way to go if you want ****solid frame rates****." Now you could say they dodged the image quality bullet on that comment, but that's really the only recommendation they made on the 5700 Ultra.When the new article comes out and they do an image quality analysis, if their findings are similar to that of HardOCP and TomsHardware the conclusion will be something similar to "5700 Ultra still for solid frame rates and 9600 XT for solid frame rates *AND* image quality".
BTW Derek I don't believe was even at the press event, that was Anand. Derek is the sole author of this article it seems and unlike Toms and HardOCP he didn't have any direct aide from other staff.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
#13,No, we don't need to bitch at every AT review. But when the conclusion CONTRADICTS the very data he supplies us, then something is seriously wrong. Wouldn't you say?
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
#14, if anyone buys an expensive video card based on 1 review from 1 tech site, they deserve the problems that could come with it.Anonymous User - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
The review crowned a new midrange segment winner without dealing with image quality. What are they going to do, retract that later after their image tests? What about the people that bought the cards based on their review - and then they find out the cards have image quality problems?Other sites in the past when they discovered issues waited until they had done further testing before coming out with any review. Perhaps anandtech should have followed hardocp's lead, and instead of partying it up and brown-nosing at nvidia press events they should have been doing their image tests so they could put out a full review.
gordon151 - Thursday, October 23, 2003 - link
Do we seriously need the comments crying for the authors head with *EVERY* review? They already said they were working on an article which will do a study on the image quality tests and will be posted laters. This review will clearly stress the numbers and that's where they draw conclusions. Damn, give them a frigging break.