Check out these discrepancies with Anandtech's review, boy has this site been going downhill lately:

From your older review:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/ati%...0x1900%20launch_012406100152/10664.png

Then today's review:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/7900...%207600%20launch_03090670334/11159.png


How did the XTX Crossfire lose 11 FPS with a very mild bump in resolution? Worst yet, their editors didn't even mention which drivers they used for their review.

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That is really odd. I'd expect the numbers to swing a little, but 11 fps is 25% of 44fps. Could they be using different benchmarks? Atleast they aren't simply using the numbers from the X1900 review and are actually retesting stuff.

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We retested with an updated motherboard (RD580) and an updated driver (CAT 6.2).

We used the same test for F.E.A.R. (the built in performance test).

I'm not sure why performance would drop in this case.

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I've been looking into this, and we also are now using F.E.A.R. 1.03 rather than 1.02 which we used last time.

I retested the x1900 xtx crossfire and got the same results. I'm really not sure what happened with this, but I'll keep poking around.

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quote:

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Check out these discrepancies with Anandtech's review, boy has this site been going downhill lately:

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Wow, its like numbers change with different motherboards, chipsets, and driver revisions. ALRET THE PRESS!

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Where the heck is the X3: Reunion rolling demo benchmark? I was all geeked when AT reviewed it and said "it will make a fine addition to our round of benchmarks." Well then when the heck are you going to start using it? I have yet to see it being used for any of the articles posted since the review.

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We really will be including X3 in our benchmarks ^_^;;

The benchmark does take quite a long time and we needed to optimize our performance testing in order to make sure we could get the article up for the launch.

As I have mentioned, we will be doing a follow up article, and I will look into including the X3 demo.

Thanks,
Derek Wilson

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I think it's safe to say that atleast for now, there is no clear winner with a slight advantage to ATI. From the bechmarks, it seems that the 7900GTX performs on par with the X1900XT with the X1900XTX a few fps higher (not a huge diff IMO). The future will therefore be decided by the drivers and the games. The drivers are still pretty young and I bet we'll see performance improvements in the future as both sets of drivers mature. The article says, ATI has the more comprehensive graphics solution (sorta like the R420 vs/s the NV40 situation in reverse?), so if code developers decide to take advantage of the greater functionality offered by ATI (most coders will probably aim for the lowest common denominator to increase sales, while a few may have 'ATI only' type features) then that may tilt the balance in ATI's favor. What's more important is the longevity of the R580 & G71 families. With VISTA set to appear towards the end of the year, how long can ATI and NVIDIA push these DX9 parts? I'm sure both companies will have a new family ready for VISTA, though the new family may just be a more refined version of the R580 and G71 architectures (much as the R420 was based off the R300 family). In terms of raw power, I think we're already VISTA games ready.
The real question is, what does DX10 bring to the table from the perspective of the end user? There were certain features unique to DX9 that a DX8 part just could not render. Are there things that a DX10 card will be able to do that a DX9 card just can't do? As I understand it, the main difference between DX9 and 10 is that DX10 will unify Pixel Shaders and Vertex shaders, but I don't see how this will let a DX10 card render something that a DX9 card can't. Can anyone clarify?
Lastly, one great benefit of Crossfire and SLI will be that I can buy a high end X1900XT for gaming right now and then add a low end card or a HD accelerator card (like the MPEG accelerator cards a few yyears ago) when it is clear if HDCP support will be necessary to play HD content and when I can afford to add a HDCP compliant monitor.

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I didn't read all of that, but I'm glad it's close becasue the consumer becomes the real winner.

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The major difference that DX9 parts will "just not be able to do" is vertex generation and "geometry shading" in hardware. Currently a vertex shader program can only manipulate existing data, while in the future it will be possible to adaptively create or destroy vertecies.

Programmatically, the transition from DX9 to DX10 will be one of the largest we have seen in a while. Or so we have been told. Some form of the DX10 SDK (not sure if it was a beta or not) was recently released, so I may look into that for more details if people are interested.

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