Bit-tech tests Bioshock

[Marvelous]

Yeah, drivers are a big deal, but that doesn't mean that your card is future proof for these games.

[JOKE]My 6600GT pwns your card.[/JOKE]

BTW, I wanted to ask you, is this your card? If it is, then I was going to buy the same thing about two months ago, I just didn't have the money. I'll trade you with mine.

Buying for the future is the stupidest thing you can do and is big waste of money. I think lot of high end geforce 7 owners got robbed and gets hammered in shader intensive games.

Sorry no trades. I love the IQ on this thing. Yup that's the one. It's pretty good card. Last week they had $20 rebate on it making the total price to $135 which is competitive to 7900gs and 1950pro prices.

What I noticed about these new generation cards is that it doesn't take a huge performance hit with AF but it does take a hit with AA because of 128 bit memory bus.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/msi-nx8600gts-oc/coh_af.gif

Speeds have grown higher in Company of Heroes as opposed to the older testbed, especially the speed of the GeForce 8600 series. Yet even enjoying a 50% advantage over the Radeon X1950 Pro at 1280x1024, these cards still cannot make the resolution of 1600x1200 playable. Overclocked to highest frequencies the MSI card has a min speed of only 19fps. The Radeon X1950 Pro offers comfortable gaming conditions in 1280x1024.

 

[keysplayr]

That is B.S. cause Phide and Sillus was doing the same thing.

I merely stood out because you don't like people standing up for ATI. You however come to a thread with insults first ask questions later.

If you want to get exact, before anything got heated at all, EastCoast called Silius a "spin-doctor" or accused him of "spin-doctoring", which isn't terrible in itself. But then you follow up with this endorsement:

"Now you know something about that guy. Don't get too self involved. These corporations even pay people to do the PR work for them in forums. Nvidia was caught red handed a while ago if you keep up with PC news. I'm sure ATI does somethings too. I have no idea."

You are basically calling Silius a paid shill in a PC kind of way.. The first REAL personal insult of this particular thread, belongs to you. This is where it all started my friend. And this is why you two were singled out. All because of a difference in opinion. You opened the door for the degeneration of the thread.

 

[Marvelous]

If you want to get exact, before anything got heated at all, EastCoast called Silius a "spin-doctor" or accused him of "spin-doctoring", which isn't terrible in itself. But then you follow up with this endorsement:

"Now you know something about that guy. Don't get too self involved. These corporations even pay people to do the PR work for them in forums. Nvidia was caught red handed a while ago if you keep up with PC news. I'm sure ATI does somethings too. I have no idea."

You are basically calling Silius a paid shill in a PC kind of way.. The first REAL personal insult of this particular thread, belongs to you. This is where it all started my friend. And this is why you two were singled out. All because of a difference in opinion. You opened the door for the degeneration of the thread.

Sillus bashes ATI every chance he gets. Is there a motive? I wonder? I never said anything about Sillus personally just my opinion from what I see from him day to day. I let that other guy know that there are people who work for Nvidia in these type of forums and shouldn't get too involved. It doesn't mean Sillus works for Nvidia.

You come here and say things like need carpool counseling LOL... I think you need come carpool with us. LOL

 

[lillimon04]

I'm not using the card to game. It would stricktly be for hardware encoding (H.264, VC-1, and HD-WMV). I do some occational gaming with DX9 titles, but nothing in DX10. If I wanted to play DX10 titles, I would wait for the Series 9 cards. DX10.1, here I come!

But yeah, I mostly do (or did) work in Premiere and After Effects, so encoding with H.264 was a must for my projects.

well i have heard that it does wat you want to do very well. so you should buy it! get back to us when you get it

 

[keysplayr]

Sillus bashes ATI every chance he gets. Is there a motive? I wonder? I never said anything about Sillus personally just my opinion from what I see from him day to day. I let that other guy know that there are people who work for Nvidia in these type of forums and shouldn't get too involved. It doesn't mean Sillus works for Nvidia.

You come here and say things like need carpool counseling LOL... I think you need come carpool with us. LOL

Well, if you can have a sense of humor about it, then so could I.
Cheers Mate.

 

[Kowan]

I've used both Ati and Nvidia. I am glad the 2900 is performing well. No threat=no counter by the other company=higher prices/less choices.

 

[phide]

Funny to see I was right, way back in the beginning of this thread. I said NV fans wouldnt like it, and wouldnt want to believe it.

I don't think that's the case. I don't understand how it could be perceived any other way: the 2900, for whatever reason at this point, is surpassing the GTS and GTX by a small degree. I think many of us understood that this is something that would have the tendency of happening in some scenarios as time has gone by.

I don't understand what the big deal is. I think we've argued about a lot of other things, but I haven't seen anyone actively dismissing the numbers. Frankly, I'm getting tired of the broken record.

That is B.S. cause Phide and Sillus was doing the same thing.

Wait, what was I doing?

 

[Red Falcon]

Sillus bashes ATI every chance he gets. Is there a motive? I wonder? I never said anything about Sillus personally just my opinion from what I see from him day to day. I let that other guy know that there are people who work for Nvidia in these type of forums and shouldn't get too involved. It doesn't mean Sillus works for Nvidia.

You come here and say things like need carpool counseling LOL... I think you need come carpool with us. LOL

I haven't liked ATI since my 9200 All-In-Wonder. It's heatsync physically MELTED off. The smell was aweful. When I opened my case up a huge heat wave came out of it and the sync itself was so hot the plastic clips holding to the card had melted and the card itself was starting to warp due to the heat. The card broke, my computer broke, and PSU was in very bad shape.

I know that ATI/AMD has come a long ways in terms of video cards, but after that incident (and a few others) I just can't bring myself to buy an ATI card again. I don't think that their cards are bad, but my trust just isn't there yet.

NVIDIA has never steered me wrong and has always got the job done. I especially like the low to mid-end range of the Series 8 cards for their hardware accelerated encoding (Purevideo1 and 2). The quality in the cards is also evident. The difference in screen quality between my 8500GT and my 6600GT is insane. Both cards are always run at forced AA and AO both at 4x and the 8500GT at 0x on both looks better than the 6600GT at 4x on each... and that's just the Windows desktop. In games the 8500GT (even at lower resolutions) is so much better looking.

I think I'm going to put my 8500GT back in my case. I miss it.

 

[Marvelous]

Those 9200 sucked with 4x2 I think. Maybe if it was 9100 it would be 4x4.

Putting tv card on already hot video card is bad idea. That's why ATI stopped making those type of cards in modern 3d chips.

 

[SX2233]

I just love it...When the HD 2900 XT came out and its numbers were low: "Oh it doesn't matter. It's DX9. This card will smoke everything in DX10". And now that there are some games that use DX10, and the XT doesn't exactly perform that good in them (except for CoJ), it's "DX10 doesn't matter, it's only smoke and lighting effects".

It's very funny!

I'm playing Bioshock in DX9 last night, let it tell you that "it looks good enough alrdy" and you can't use AA in dx10 anyways, also DX9 have more realistic shadows judging from those firingsquib shots

 

[SX2233]

i think it is interesting that the 2900xt may finally run with some driver releases

on par with a gtx too, too bad iz not the same in Vista, i guess we wait for magic drivers

 

[DaNotoriousDOM]

Seeing test like that is really frustrating. I need a new card for dx10 games and I can't decide what to go with. Is ATI's bad dx10 performance due to their drivers? If I knew in the future it would beat the Ultra in dx10 I would get it. But I don't know so I'm sitting here with my new PC parts and all I'm missing is the video card.

Why no AA in dx10?

 

[Marvelous]

Seeing test like that is really frustrating. I need a new card for dx10 games and I can't decide what to go with. Is ATI's bad dx10 performance due to their drivers? If I knew in the future it would beat the Ultra in dx10 I would get it. But I don't know so I'm sitting here with my new PC parts and all I'm missing is the video card.

Why no AA in dx10?

How is the performance bad in vista? I don't understand why you say bad performance when the fps is in line with 8800gts. It also cost same as 8800gts.

Now with windows xp 2900xt jump in frame rate and is neck and neck with card that cost $600-$650...

If you want to buy a card go with a GTS or GTX. It gets steady results with most dx10 apps. If you want slightly slower/faster 2900xt with maybe possibility of getting better performance go with 2900xt.

Maybe vista drivers will never get better but you should know this before purchasing 2900xt.

 

[DaNotoriousDOM]

Maybe vista drivers will never get better but you should know this before purchasing 2900xt.

That's what I'm nervous about. I can't justify a $400 mistake.

I think I might just get a low end dx10 card to run vista and I'll wait till a driver or a refresh card come out and there are solid benchmarks showing it can run dx10 games in vista no problem.

Actually I think a better option might be to get a GTS 640 now and step up with eVGAs program or sell it if I decide to go ATI.

 

[Marvelous]

That's what I'm nervous about. I can't justify a $400 mistake.

I think I might just get a low end dx10 card to run vista and I'll wait till a driver or a refresh card come out and there are solid benchmarks showing it can run dx10 games in vista no problem.

How can it be a mistake when it's already fast?

Low end cards can't play this game too great unless you want to run lower resolutions. 19x0xt/x is probably only card that can run this game without any speed issues.

Go with a GTS. You know exactly what you are getting. Go with 2900xt if you don't mind 10fps less than GTS but the possibility of ATI fixing their drivers to run it side by side with an Ultra.

 

[KENNYB]

How is the performance bad in vista? I don't understand why you say bad performance when the fps is in line with 8800gts. It also cost same as 8800gts.

Now with windows xp 2900xt jump in frame rate and is neck and neck with card that cost $600-$650...

If you want to buy a card go with a GTS or GTX. It gets steady results with most dx10 apps. If you want slightly slower/faster 2900xt with maybe possibility of getting better performance go with 2900xt.

Maybe vista drivers will never get better but you should know this before purchasing 2900xt.

I love how you like to play with numbers. If not in this thread, in others. You imply that the 2900XT is competing against a card that cost between $600-650 (a GTX), but most of us know that those numbers are bullshit(at least those of us in the US). Use the Internet to price match next time.

And how is the performance bad in Vista? While the problem isn't across the board, Bioshock implies there is something wrong with ATI's Vista drivers. In Vista, Bioshock's performance is horrible. ATI's mighty driver team's last Bioshock hotfix wasn't much of a fix.

 

[Marvelous]

I love how you like to play with numbers. If not in this thread, in others. You imply that the 2900XT is competing against a card that cost between $600-650 (a GTX), but most of us know that those numbers are bullshit(at least those of us in the US). Use the Internet to price match next time.

And how is the performance bad in Vista? While the problem isn't across the board, Bioshock implies there is something wrong with ATI's Vista drivers. In Vista, Bioshock's performance is horrible. ATI's mighty driver team's last Bioshock hotfix wasn't much of a fix.

Why cause it's truth? LOL

No it beats a gtx and competes with an Ultra that cost over $600 in windows xp. Did you not read the review or the performance numbers in windows xp? Why is benchmark bullshit? Maybe you should tell that to bit-tech.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/08/30/bioshock_gameplay_graphics_and_performance/8

How is the performance number so horrible in vista dx10? It gets 9fps less than a GTS in lower resolutions and only 7fps slower in 1920x1200. Maybe it doesn't fair with YOUR GTX in vista but 2900xt cost less than your card.

 

[DrDoU]

I love how you like to play with numbers. If not in this thread, in others. You imply that the 2900XT is competing against a card that cost between $600-650 (a GTX), but most of us know that those numbers are bullshit(at least those of us in the US). Use the Internet to price match next time.

And how is the performance bad in Vista? While the problem isn't across the board, Bioshock implies there is something wrong with ATI's Vista drivers. In Vista, Bioshock's performance is horrible. ATI's mighty driver team's last Bioshock hotfix wasn't much of a fix.

leatest hotfix is a load of crap hotfix + vista=shitty perfromance.if the hotfix even works.the game gives hard lockup until i remove.so then i open game and wait for textures to straighten out

 

[DaNotoriousDOM]

I guess I could go with either the GTS or 2900 and be happy. Thanks for the replies.

 

[MrWizard6600]

I guess I could go with either the GTS or 2900 and be happy. Thanks for the replies.

Im SO glad you leave this thread with that attitude.

Whenever anything comes up that involves two rival companies, the thread turns into this, its quite sad

Both are supreme cards, both will eat every game out there alive. Review sites are getting into the habbit of only testing the higher resolutions, and its begining to annoy me. There are tens of thousands of people on 17", 19" or 20" monitors where the max res is 1440 X 900 or 1200 X 1000.

Also, it is hard to paint a clear picture right now about whos card is better because we've got 2 OS's, two OS types (X86 and X64), and two Direct X versions. What you end up with is people argueing about a matter of 5 fps.

I built/used 8800GTX rigs, HD 2900XT rigs, and 8800GTS rigs, and I can tell you none of them let me down in terms of performance in the games that they run in, and all of them let me down in terms of stabillity.

I encourage you to go with the HD 2900XT because the NV fanboyism right now is staggaring, and AMDs clearly down for the count. If Barcelona turns into a prescott we will have a company in despirate need of money. The aquasition of ATI was a bad move.

 

[phide]

I encourage you to go with the HD 2900XT because the NV fanboyism right now is staggaring

A damn good justification for buying one $350 video card over another...

 

[Kowan]

That comment had me rolling my eyes also...

 

[Frosteh]

well unfortunately for AMD we can choose to be picky about 5fps.

The card seems like it has a "OK" base performance it's just when you enable anything fancy like AA or DX10 effects that it seems to take a large peformance hit. That is why I feel until we can get some AA scores going in Bioshock DX9 and hopefully DX10 in the end we won't know what the card is worth, It's proven enough times in the past that it takes significant hits from enabling AA which mean any benchmarks without AA are simply misleading.

AA is just so widely used today, and it's a large part of why we spend so much money on video cards, you can't really ignore it.

 

[KENNYB]

Why cause it's truth? LOL

No it beats a gtx and competes with an Ultra that cost over $600 in windows xp. Did you not read the review or the performance numbers in windows xp? Why is benchmark bullshit? Maybe you should tell that to bit-tech.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/08/30/bioshock_gameplay_graphics_and_performance/8

How is the performance number so horrible in vista dx10? It gets 9fps less than a GTS in lower resolutions and only 7fps slower in 1920x1200. Maybe it doesn't fair with YOUR GTX in vista but 2900xt cost less than your card.

You seem to have a difficult time stating exactly what you mean. As in other threads, you always make up an excuse for what you said. When i quoted you, you did not mention an Ultra.

You like to jump back and forth between comparisons. First you imply a comparison to an Ultra in XP. You follow that by comparing against a GTS is Vista. Right... I won't even bother comparing the 2900xt against anything but itself. In Vista FPS drop by 35% at 1680x1050. Yeah, that's horrible all right

Furthermore, you missed the obvious implication I made to your dollar figure remark, not the benchmark, as being BS
I highly recommend you visit your local college and pick up a copy of Writing from A to Z .

 

[ManicOne]

Bleh, why is this even still going? 8800s are clearly the better card, their usage across multiple games far surpasses that of the 2900 series. 1 scenario does not a fan.boy war make.

 

[bangmal]

Bleh, why is this even still going? 8800s are clearly the better card, their usage across multiple games far surpasses that of the 2900 series. 1 scenario does not a fan.boy war make.

The only reason 8800s have better scores on older games is that they got the headstart to tweak the games. and who care about the old games? Get over the past and face the reality. On newer games, even the game made for nvdia, nvidia is getting its ass spanked harder and harder. Better cards in your wet dream only.

 

[Frosteh]

The only reason 8800s have better scores on older games is that they got the headstart to tweak the games. and who care about the old games? Get over the past and face the reality. On newer games, even the game made for nvdia, nvidia is getting its ass spanked harder and harder. Better cards in your wet dream only.

Only time I've seen the 2900 pull ahead is without AA enabled, pretty sad if high end AMD part can only live up to competitors if you turn off the eye candy.

 

[Tolyngee]

well unfortunately for AMD we can choose to be picky about 5fps.

The card seems like it has a "OK" base performance it's just when you enable anything fancy like AA or DX10 effects that it seems to take a large peformance hit. That is why I feel until we can get some AA scores going in Bioshock DX9 and hopefully DX10 in the end we won't know what the card is worth, It's proven enough times in the past that it takes significant hits from enabling AA which mean any benchmarks without AA are simply misleading.

AA is just so widely used today, and it's a large part of why we spend so much money on video cards, you can't really ignore it.

Not to mention also the fact that I believe with DX10.1 that some level of AA will be a mandatory standard.

 

[ManicOne]

The only reason 8800s have better scores on older games is that they got the headstart to tweak the games. and who care about the old games? Get over the past and face the reality. On newer games, even the game made for nvdia, nvidia is getting its ass spanked harder and harder. Better cards in your wet dream only.

Very LOL worthy is all I can say...

But you're right, I obviously have an agenda.....just check my sig and post history.....

 

[MrWizard6600]

A damn good justification for buying one $350 video card over another...

straw that broke the camels back.

 

[Frosteh]

Not to mention also the fact that I believe with DX10.1 that some level of AA will be a mandatory standard.

I think so, that's not especially relevent here since these cards wont be capable of DX10.1 from what I understand. Still that doesn't excuse the fact that people who spend lots of money on high end cards expect decent AA support.

To benchmark with no AA is to benchmark outside the "norm" especially for high end video cards, it's not giving you "typical" scenarios in which games are played therefore the results are skewed.

It's like being told car A has fuel consumption B but only when driving down steep hills, who would make purchasing desicions based on that?

 

[Marvelous]

You seem to have a difficult time stating exactly what you mean. As in other threads, you always make up an excuse for what you said. When i quoted you, you did not mention an Ultra.

Do I need to mention the ultra? Maybe its just you make assumptions.. You see the benchmark for yourself and what do you see in windows xp? 2900xt beating out GTX and neck and neck with the ultra.

You like to jump back and forth between comparisons. First you imply a comparison to an Ultra in XP. You follow that by comparing against a GTS is Vista. Right... I won't even bother comparing the 2900xt against anything but itself. In Vista FPS drop by 35% at 1680x1050. Yeah, that's horrible all right

Of course I make comparison between a GTS because the card is only $400 retail price which is in line with 8800gts. And make comparison with the ultra in windows xp because they compete with each other there. I know in Vista frame rates drop because drivers aren't optimized but there's room for BIG improvement. Up until the hot patch this game wasn't even playable with an ATI card.

Furthermore, you missed the obvious implication I made to your dollar figure remark, not the benchmark, as being BS
I highly recommend you visit your local college and pick up a copy of Writing from A to Z .

I can't help it you get angry whenever ATI wins a benchmark against your $600 retail price behemoth. You have a big problem with that.

 

[ManicOne]

I can't help it you get angry whenever ATI wins a benchmark against your ***$600 retail price behemoth***. You have a big problem with that.

Easy to forget that the only reason X2900XT wasn't $550+ was because of its performance.....

Let's see: R600 wins only in DX9 without AA. And once res hits 2560 Ultra takes it back (oops no make that 1920). In ALL DX10 situations 8800s win. So what exactly are you celebrating Marvelous?

Don't get me wrong, R600 is an alright card. As long as you don't mind less performance in a majority of cases (once again why AMD priced it as they did). Oh, and the fact that its power requirements are ridiculous...

Come on Marvelous. This is STALE STALE STALE.

 

[Marvelous]

Easy to forget that the only reason X2900XT wasn't $550+ was because of its performance.....

Let's see: R600 wins only in DX9 without AA. And once res hits 2560 Ultra takes it back (oops no make that 1920). In ALL DX10 situations 8800s win. So what exactly are you celebrating Marvelous?

Don't get me wrong, R600 is an alright card. As long as you don't mind less performance in a majority of cases (once again why AMD priced it as they did). Oh, and the fact that its power requirements are ridiculous...

Come on Marvelous. This is STALE STALE STALE.

Everyone knows 8800 series are more balanced for current games and have better image quality. I'm not doubting that. But as soon as an cheaper ATI card beats their card in a game they get angry.

 

[Tolyngee]

I think so, that's not especially relevent here since these cards wont be capable of DX10.1 from what I understand. Still that doesn't excuse the fact that people who spend lots of money on high end cards expect decent AA support.

To benchmark with no AA is to benchmark outside the "norm" especially for high end video cards, it's not giving you "typical" scenarios in which games are played therefore the results are skewed.

It's like being told car A has fuel consumption B but only when driving down steep hills, who would make purchasing desicions based on that?

Your comments that I quoted made it relevant.

DX10.1 isn't a great extension from DX10. I believe it's been mentioned that the .1 extensions aren't necessarily going to take a new card. Although the new card will (assumedly) be optimized for it.

You called enabling DX10 and/or AA fancy. And that enabling either/both is a big performance hit.

The next standard is that they are synonomous. DX10.1 has some level of AA enabled mandatory.

How can you do a benchmark comparison between DX10.1, and all that goes along with it, if you comparisons are DX9 without AA, or even DX10 without AA?

I am sure you get my point now.

I just don't want people screaming about Vista problems or immature driver issues prematurely if DX10.1 is going to come with a natural performance hit for having a higher level of visual quality be standard.

So, I for one with rather see benchmark comparisons done at this standard, so I easily see how the DX10.1 approach is truly faring when it's available.

(which could be a while admittedly, as AFAIK nothing is in the works that is 10.1 anyway, and Valve doesn't even seem to care about 10 anyway... But, you never know what the Crysis team will do, throwing more enhancements in the game back to the card, so having Crysis benchmarks with mandatory AA seems the correct action to me...)

Now, you can have AA on/off comparisons as well, but the AA on needs to be there...

And, to be honest, it's very relevant in the fact that if you cannot support AA well right now, that just might be the expectation once your DX10.1 cards hit the market as well! (or if they now have it right, it would be nice to be able to make that clear, as it could steer people back to that manuf...)

 

[Dwight]

I think so, that's not especially relevent here since these cards wont be capable of DX10.1 from what I understand.

What would that understanding be based on? I'm not certain about the 8800 but it seems quite likely that the 2900XT will, at least on the AA aspects of 10.1.

Still that doesn't excuse the fact that people who spend lots of money on high end cards expect decent AA support.

To benchmark with no AA is to benchmark outside the "norm" especially for high end video cards, it's not giving you "typical" scenarios in which games are played therefore the results are skewed.

Well it is VERY typical for Bioshock. Since you have try hack at it just to get it to run in AA, and the results suck hard. I'm not super certain here but this seems to intercept where the 2900XT was going and is built for. With DX10 you'll see more custom AA filtering by games as opposed to just the "filter it all" approach we've seen in the past.

The same "filter it all" approach that the 8800 was built for and just might be why 2K was having difficulty getting AA to look acceptable in DX10? The thing that will slow the 2900XT down somewhat when you use it to "filter it all" (and slow it down a lot when you excesively filter like the HOCP nincompoops did in their review) is the same thing that ultimately makes it better at AA.

 

[trinibwoy]

Not to mention also the fact that I believe with DX10.1 that some level of AA will be a mandatory standard.

And it would change absolutely nothing. ATI and Nvidia hardware already support up to 8xAA. Any mandatory standard would apply to hardware support not application support. Developers still won't be forced to apply AA in their titles. So again, it changes nothing.

 

[Silus]

Hrmmm, were you one of the folks that suggested that for DX9 there would be no way that the 2900XT could match up with the 8800 GTX? Pooh-poohing and belittling by claiming to forsee such was to believe in "driver magic"? Looks like someone at ATI hooked up with Tinkerbell, huh?

Anyway yeah, I'm not concerned about future DX10 games with the 2900XT. Just like I wasn't all tha concerned that the 2900XT would match up well against the more expensive GTX in the long run. Your braying and belittling, if anything, convincing me further of that.

No one could've said that, because even at R600 launch, we've seen quite a few benchmarks, where the HD 2900 XT, already won, even the Ultra. The catch was, it didn't have AA.
So your point was exactly what ?

 

[Silus]

I keep getting you mixed up with all these guys with their screen name that starts with an "S".... I remember having lot of debates with people that blindly favor Nvidia cards. There are so many of them it seems or just hate ATI cards all together. I don't see too many ATI fanboys here.

Come to think of it. I've only had 1 debate with you in ATI subsection and it wasn't about favoring what cards but why 2900xt sucked. I think that's about it. I keep getting mixed up and think it's you. Weird... huh..

I don't know if you're being sarcastic...Anyway. I'm not to blame, if you "get mixed up".

 

[Marvelous]

I don't know if you're being sarcastic...Anyway. I'm not to blame, if you "get mixed up".

Again I apologize Sillus...