You’ve been living too perfect of a life if you’ve never used the phrase “it’s been a long day,” and for NVIDIA it has most definitely been a very long day. Just over two weeks ago the graphics industry was shook by some very hard hitting comments from Gabe Newell of Valve, primarily relating to the poor performance of NVIDIA cards under Half Life 2. All of the sudden ATI had finally done what they had worked feverishly for years to do, they were finally, seemingly overnight, crowned the king of graphics and more importantly – drivers. There were no comments on Half Life 2 day about ATI having poor drivers, compatibility problems or anything even remotely resembling discussions about ATI from the Radeon 8500 days.

Half Life 2 day was quickly followed up with all sorts of accusations against NVIDIA and their driver team; more and more articles were published with new discoveries, shedding light on other areas where ATI trounced NVIDIA. Everything seemed to all make sense now; even 3DMark was given the credibility of being the “I told you so” benchmark that predicted Half Life 2 performance several months in advance of September 12, 2003. At the end of the day and by the end of the week, NVIDIA had experienced the longest day they’ve had in recent history.

Some of the more powerful accusations went far beyond NVIDIA skimping on image quality to improve performance; these accusations included things like NVIDIA not really being capable of running DirectX 9 titles at their full potential, and one of the more interesting ones – that NVIDIA only optimizes for benchmarks that sites like AnandTech uses. Part of the explanation behind the Half Life 2 fiasco was that even if NVIDIA improves performance through later driver revisions, the performance improvements are only there because the game is used as a benchmark – and not as an attempt to improve the overall quality of their customers’ gaming experience. If that were true, then NVIDIA’s “the way it’s meant to be played” slogan would have to go under some serious rethinking; the way it’s meant to be benchmarked comes to mind.

But rewind a little bit; quite a few of these accusations being thrown at NVIDIA were the same ones thrown at ATI. I seem to remember the launch of the Radeon 9700 Pro being tainted with one accusation in particular – that ATI only made sure their drivers worked on popular benchmarking titles, with the rest of the top 20 games out there hardly working on the new R300. As new as what we’re hearing these days about NVIDIA may seem, let us not be victim to the near sightedness of the graphics industry – this has all happened before with ATI and even good ol’ 3dfx.

So who are you to believe? These days it seems like the clear purchase is ATI, but on what data are we basing that? I won’t try to build up suspense senselessly, the clear recommendation today is ATI (how’s that for hype-less journalism), but not because of Half Life 2 or any other conspiracies we’ve seen floating around the web these days.

For entirely too long we’ve been basing GPU purchases on a small subset of tests, encouraging the hardware vendors to spend the majority of their time and resources optimizing for those games. We’re not just talking about NVIDIA, ATI does it too, and you would as well if you were running either of those two companies. We’ve complained about the lack of games with built-in benchmarks and cited that as a reason to sticking with the suite that we’ve used – but honestly, doing what’s easy isn’t a principle I founded AnandTech on 6+ years ago.

So today we bring you quite a few new things, some may surprise you, some may not. ATI has released their Fall refresh product – the Radeon 9800XT and they are announcing their Radeon 9600XT. NVIDIA has counterattacked by letting us publish benchmarks from their forthcoming NV38 GPU (the successor to the NV35 based GeForce FX 5900 Ultra). But quite possibly more important than any of those announcements is the suite of benchmarks we’re testing these cards in; how does a total of 15 popular games sound? This is the first installment of a multipart series that will help you decide what video card is best for you, and hopefully it will do a better job than we have ever in the past.

The extensive benchmarking we’ve undertaken has forced us to split this into multiple parts, so expect to see more coverage on higher resolutions, image quality, anti-aliasing, CPU scaling and budget card comparisons in the coming weeks. We’re working feverishly to bring it all to you as soon as possible and I’m sure there’s some sort of proverb about patience that I should be reciting from memory to end this sentence but I’ll leave it at that.

Now that the long-winded introduction is done with, let’s talk hardware before we dive into a whole lot of software.

The Newcomers
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  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    #81 and anyone who thinks it isnt important to benchmark dx9 performance:

    When you have 2 of the most highly anticipated games due for release over the next few months (halflife2 and doom3 for those who are asleep at the wheel) which both include dx9 features, Why in gods name would you buy a $500 card that _doesn't_ support dx9 features effectively? You would obviously have to be someone who isnt interested in having the best quality visuals you can get, and that is the exact opposite to the reason anyone would spend that amount of money on a video card in the first place. People want to see the best quality with the best performance! I simply cannot understand why someone would buy one of these expensive cards expecting that they would need to buy another equally or more expensive card as soon as such new dx9 titles appear... the simple truth is that you would have to be a fool with money to burn if you are prepared to pay $500 for a card that cannot perform well in new games that arrive after a couple of months

    It's not a matter of whether dx9 features should be benchmarked, it's a matter of how.. I will avoid the whole benchmarking fiasco going on with regard to cheats, but why do you think people put such weight in programs which are designed to predict the performance of hardware on future games? People want cards that will perform well with _future_ games! It is just a pity there arent more tools available that can provide a RELIABLE prediction of how hardware will perform with these future games.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    #90

    If you're serious enough to inquire about BF1942...why not test it using TFC? I personally enjoy the soles of my Air Nikes, but come on, Reebok? I think I'd rather buy a pair of New Balance at my local shoe wharehouse. ATi has proven itself to be capable of running today's graphically intense games, just as smooth as STEAM is running HL. Thx for the tests, ATech.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    How about benchmarking the game with Battlefield 1942? I know it isn't one of the most graphically intensive games out there, but it is one of the most popular.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    Any chance of benchmarking Soldier of Fortune 2, it may be old but still very popular online.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    No discussion of image quality for each game?
    Other sites now do this as a matter of course as it is clear that Nvidia is taking shortcuts on quality to maximize speed. Hey I own a 4600 Gold Sample so I am not an ATI zealot, but I know where my next card purchase this year is going, that is clear from all the reviews I have seen.

    I think its time you look beyond raw frame rates.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    id like to see doom 3 when available
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    thanks #65\#77, that is very interesting

    it doesnt make a lot of sense as to why such scores would increase... unless it was some sort of driver 'bug'...
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    #73, who in their right mind would use the PCI slot next to the AGP slot? That's a surefire way to give you graphics card trouble.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    I would suggest adding a few sports games to the mix; I myself would prefer Madden 2004. Thank you :)
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link

    ADDD HL2

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