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Geforce FX - DX9 or DX8?

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I heard that the Geforce FX does not support DirectX 9. Is this true? I checked on Nvidia's site and they mention that the 5900 does support DX9. The reason why I am asking is because I heard people mentioning this in game on several occasions. If someone would clear this up for me, that would be great. Thanks.
 
Yes, the 5xxx series DOES support DX9, but there is a massive hit on performance when enabling DX9. The ATI series of cards for that generation are superior because they run DX9 games remarkably faster, and have a minimal performance hit on the few openGL games.
 
The NV3x cards (5200/5500, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900/5950, etc) all support DX9. Like mentioned above, DX9 performance was lower than the ATI competition.
 
It's a bit confusing... if "Supporting DX9" means that you can use DX9 on it, well, sure... Heck, even TNT cards support DX9 that way.

If you mean "Does it support all of DX9's features?", well, there's no card yet that really supports everything... although the 6800s come reasonably close.

But I suppose usually people mean "Does it support DX9's most compelling new features? Specifically SM2.0", then the answer is "yes and no".
Yes, it supports SM2.0... No, it's so horribly slow that you will have to play games mostly in DX8 mode to get decent framerates.

In short, the whole FX series were trash, really. GeForce4 with some underpowered SM2.0 units added as an afterthought. Just a black page in the history of NVIDIA. Let's hope it won't happen again.
 
Scali said:
If you mean "Does it support all of DX9's features?", well, there's no card yet that really supports everything... although the 6800s come reasonably close.
Click to expand...
Linky?
Agreed that the FX series cards don't support DX9c, but that's because 9c hadn't been released at the time of NV3x; I think that at the time, DX9a was the standard. Also, I believe NV4x (not only the 6800) has just about everything introduced in 9c- the most noticeable new feature is SM3.0.
 
Yes the FX's do support DX9, but their performance was poor while running DX9. Half Life 2 defaults to DX8 mode by default on all FX's except the FX 5950 Ultra do to poor DX9 performance.
 
mavalpha said:
Linky?
Agreed that the FX series cards don't support DX9c, but that's because 9c hadn't been released at the time of NV3x; I think that at the time, DX9a was the standard. Also, I believe NV4x (not only the 6800) has just about everything introduced in 9c- the most noticeable new feature is SM3.0.
Click to expand...

Just get the DXCapsViewer from the DirectX SDK and see what you're missing. No card can do gaussian quad texture filtering yet, for example :)
And ofcourse n/rt-patches are missing too, and there's probably some other stuff that I can't think of right now.
 
gaussian quad texture filtering- Something that sounds really really cool but no one knows anything about.
 
the fx series were terrible

you're better off with a 9600xt today
 
The FX 5900 is a damn good card. It'll run DX9 games fine. The details of how, what, and why, other have listed here. Disregard those that are saying it's a bad card or it sucks, since they're going off on the ATI vs. nVidia fad and likely haven't ever used an FX card. As for HL2, that game was specifically coded to run the FX cards in DX8, thanks to ATI paying for it.
 
Badger_sly said:
The FX 5900 is a damn good card. It'll run DX9 games fine. The details of how, what, and why, other have listed here. Disregard those that are saying it's a bad card or it sucks, since they're going off on the ATI vs. nVidia fad and likely haven't ever used an FX card. As for HL2, that game was specifically coded to run the FX cards in DX8, thanks to ATI paying for it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the blanket statement. The 5900 ISN'T as good as the 9800Pro that it was competing against, and was in many instances outperformed by the 9700Pro. If you're spending money on a card of that gen, get the best that you can. I suppose that the 5900 isn't a "bad" card, but assuming that you don't need linux drivers, it was outperformed by its competition 90% of the time.
 
The FX series sucked because they didn't support FP24 natively...they did either FP32 or FP16...at FP16 (which is fine for most applications) they were about as fast as ATi...however, the ps2.0 spec called for FP24 (even though it mostly wasn't needed) which left the FX cards either running FP32 all the time and taking a huge performance hit...or doing massive shader replacement and optimization in the driver which caused some image quality problems...

All in all the cards weren't bad technology, their timing was just horrible...wrong featureset at the wrong time...and then trying to make up for it in software...basically the FX series was a disaster and if I were you I would avoid it...the 6800 series on the other hand is doing extremely well and I recommend them highly...
 
the FX series support Shader Model 2.0, actually they "support" more than the ATI equivelents of that generation, however, they are much slower

so slow in fact that in some games it's best to run in DX8 mode, PS/VS 1.1 and or reduce the precision to FP16 which is lower than ATI's FP24

if you are buying in that generation your best bet is the ATI equivalent

or go for one of the new cards like a 6600GT which is much much better
 
Brent_Justice said:
the FX series support Shader Model 2.0, actually they "support" more than the ATI equivelents of that generation, however, they are much slower
Click to expand...

They don't really support more, they support different things. Their shaders are slightly more powerful (some extra instructions and higher instruction limits... although some flow control instructions were apparently broken, not sure if that was ever fixed). On the other hand, they didn't support proper floating point rendertargets, while the Radeons did... This made the Radeons able to do more clever HDR tricks and all that.

On the other hand, the Radeons still don't support any kind of depth/stencil rendertarget, while that has been available on GeForce since GF3 if I'm not mistaken. And the FX also offered slightly more clever tricks for stencil shadows, which Doom3 gladly takes advantage of.

It's just a case of implementing the right features at the right time, and optimizing performance for the right features. GeForce FX failed horribly there, so in practice it was nowhere compared to the Radeons... with the exception of Doom3.
 
FX cards are absolutely terrible. I tried that route and I regretted every minute of it. ATi smoked them miserably. Hopefully nVIDIA learned from their mistakes, but even now ATi's offerings are smoking nearly everything nVIDIA has to offer according to all the reviews. nVIDIA fell, and fell hard. We all knew they would though. After the dirty games they played it was only a matter of time.
Anyways, the FX series are DX9 compatible. They just sucked at it. What a terrible fiasco for nVIDIA and cost them the VGA crown they so meanly fought for. I much prefer using the ATi cards because I love their rich colors and 2d IQ.
 
Scali said:
They don't really support more, they support different things. Their shaders are slightly more powerful (some extra instructions and higher instruction limits... although some flow control instructions were apparently broken, not sure if that was ever fixed). On the other hand, they didn't support proper floating point rendertargets, while the Radeons did... This made the Radeons able to do more clever HDR tricks and all that.

On the other hand, the Radeons still don't support any kind of depth/stencil rendertarget, while that has been available on GeForce since GF3 if I'm not mistaken. And the FX also offered slightly more clever tricks for stencil shadows, which Doom3 gladly takes advantage of.

It's just a case of implementing the right features at the right time, and optimizing performance for the right features. GeForce FX failed horribly there, so in practice it was nowhere compared to the Radeons... with the exception of Doom3.
Click to expand...

i was specificially reffering to pixel shader instruction length and features, my apologies for not being more clear
 
Badger_sly said:
The FX 5900 is a damn good card. It'll run DX9 games fine. The details of how, what, and why, other have listed here. Disregard those that are saying it's a bad card or it sucks, since they're going off on the ATI vs. nVidia fad and likely haven't ever used an FX card. As for HL2, that game was specifically coded to run the FX cards in DX8, thanks to ATI paying for it.
Click to expand...

Here's some proof on why you don't run HL2 in DX9 mode on a FX

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=3

notice the 60+ percent performance penalty.

You will undoubtedly see these statistics reflected in the actual performance of the 5900XT in the coming pages, but basically if you are a NV3x GPU owner you will want to run Half Life 2 in DX8 mode and not DX9 mode.
Click to expand...
 
DamienThorn said:
Thanks for the blanket statement. The 5900 ISN'T as good as the 9800Pro that it was competing against.............................. it was outperformed by its competition 90% of the time.
Click to expand...
*sigh* And the 9800p fit into the OP's words, where?

"The 5900 ISN'T as good as the 9800Pro that it was competing against"
Thanks for the blanket statement and attempting to compare 2 cards that weren't competing. The 9800p and 5950u were, and, which outperformed the other was dependant on the game it was used on and/or more mature nVidia drivers.


Met-AL said:
Here's some proof on why you don't run HL2 in DX9 mode on a FX
Click to expand...
As I wrote, HL2 defaults to DX8 with FX cards, for good reason, because of how Valve coded the game. So I'm agreeing with you and don't need proof.
 
Why even consider the 5900U when there's 6600GTs out there for under $200?
 
Having just upgraded from a 5900 I would not call it a bad card. I played D3 @ 1204x768 HQ and averaged 30 FPS, HL2 with everything on High except water (reflect world vice reflect all) and average 40 FPS, I played Far Cry at 1024x768 with most things on high with playable frame rates. In all the card was not a performance beast, but did not do badly. The difference in IQ between HL2 in DX8.1(5900) and DX9 is not that big a deal. After I got my 6800GT I went back through parts of HL2 and the difference was not huge. Higher frame rates but not that big an IQ difference . . . imo. Even games like COREFBB and Doom3 look about the same, but you are able to play them at higher resolutions and higher frame rates.

/steps behind flame shield.
 
I still wonder why the 59XX series is so expensive though. 5950 ultras go for 200+!!!!!

anyway, J/W, is a 5800 Ultra a good deal for $80? My friend said he would give it to me for that price (i have a 6200 AGP unlocked and OC'ed to 400/690, and i realize I shouldn't have gotten it because i only play 800x600 and higher graphics just aren't so spectacular for me. I read the 5800 is noisy, but it seems to be a solid performer (i never use AA or AF)
 
GTPoompt said:
I still wonder why the 59XX series is so expensive though. 5950 ultras go for 200+!!!!!

anyway, J/W, is a 5800 Ultra a good deal for $80? My friend said he would give it to me for that price (i have a 6200 AGP unlocked and OC'ed to 400/690, and i realize I shouldn't have gotten it because i only play 800x600 and higher graphics just aren't so spectacular for me. I read the 5800 is noisy, but it seems to be a solid performer (i never use AA or AF)
Click to expand...
A 5900 series would be better (and quieter), but the 5800Ultra is still an impressive card today. As I said in another thread, if I had a 5800 it wouldn't be in any of my computers- it would be in its box, covered with Saran wrap, waiting a few years to go on eBay! You can get cards like the 5900 Ultra in the $120-$150 range right here in the FS/FT section, I think it would be worth it.

BTW, who is the manufacturer of the 5800? If the warranty is good, it may still not be so bad- BFG, preferably!
 
what brand? I got no clue :) i'll ask him though. Watch it be jaton or some bad brand something lol.

Is 5800 ultra that rare or something? From the specs of the card, it looks like the sucessor to the TI-4200. 128 bit, 4 by 2 pixel pipeline, just with super fast memory and clock speed. just updated for directX 9 (which isn't that great but probably greater then the ti's dx9)
 
Let me add that when the 5900 was initially released it DID suck compared to the ATI equivalent cards. That said, the numerous updated drivers have sped up my card quite considerable since then. I play HL2 at full detail @1024 x 768 flawlessly except the water reflextion isn't maxed.
 
GTPoompt said:
Is 5800 ultra that rare or something? From the specs of the card, it looks like the sucessor to the TI-4200. 128 bit, 4 by 2 pixel pipeline, just with super fast memory and clock speed. just updated for directX 9 (which isn't that great but probably greater then the ti's dx9)
Click to expand...
It was nVidia's top-of-the-line card after the Ti4600, and it is considered a HUGE mistake on NV's part. Try to find any info on it at their website today and you'll be in for a pleasant treat.*
BTW, I believe it was a 256-bit bus, much like ATI's Radeon 9700- the card against which it was (most would say unfairly) pitted. I also wouldn't call it a 4x2 arrangement- IIRC, there was some flexibility behind it, and there were descriptions of it as 4x2, 8x1, and even (*GASP!*) 16x0!

If it is a good name, you want to sent it my way? I can probably get you a reputable 5900 for it!

*Note the sarcasm behind this statement.

And my eBay statement was not in jest. I fully expect them to meet the same fate as 3DFX's Voodoo5 5500 and never released 6000 in a few years time.
 
Huge mistake? why was that? It seems to be about equal to the 9700pro in some benches, sometimes faster then the 5950U in toms (can he be trusted?), yet it lags when the other FX's fall behind.

or was it the loud fan :). haha, get the 5800 ultra and stick it in a computer. mount a vantec tornado on the back part of the card. Get more tornados for your CPU. Very quiet if you ask me!

can it do 32x-1? 64x-2? 128x-3!?!?!?!

EDIT: It seems that the 4x2 pixel system for the 58(9)00's don't work for well, thats why speed is only slightly greater then the 9600 series.

EDIT2: yes probably it will be worth $15 4 years later on :)
 
If you have so little faith in it, I am quite serious- send it my way! Name your price (PM, I guess), I'm sure we can reach an agreement. Again, just check the manufacturer beforehand.
 
Vildayyan2003 said:
That said, the numerous updated drivers have sped up my card quite considerable since then.
Click to expand...

Ofcourse the card didn't get faster, the drivers just included more elaborate cheats. The FX series is the one where NVIDIA got caught cheating in 3DMark03, Doom3, and who knows what else.
And my 9600Pro does HL2 at 1024x768 just fine WITH full reflections... even though it cost about 1/3rd of what a 5900 cost :)
 
The FX series is the one where NVIDIA got caught cheating in 3DMark03, Doom3, and who knows what else.
Click to expand...
Wow, my card is faster and I can't tell any difference if its a cheat or a tweek. So why would I care? NVidia and ATI both "cheat" so who cares man? This is a pointless debate with no winner so lets not take it there please.
 
Vildayyan2003 said:
Wow, my card is faster and I can't tell any difference if its a cheat or a tweek. So why would I care?
Click to expand...

Because the card is only faster in applications that NV bothered to create cheats for. In everything else, it's still as slow as before... and ofcourse NV is not going to be interested in making cheats for new applications for such an old card forever...
Obviously the Radeons and newer GeForces don't suffer this problem, they don't need cheats, so they work fine in any application right away.
Something to care about, if you ask me.
 
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