Upgrade! ATI or nvidia, DX 11 tessellation???

[Carlos_will]

I have searched the forums regarding the performance loss with ati's cards with direct x 11 tessellation, but failed to find any threads.

Anyway, I was wondering, ATI cards are proving to be cheaper and offer pretty much the same performance as the nvidia cards, e.g 5850 / 470 or 5870 / 480.

But the real question is, is the boost in performance with the furmi architecture really a major advantage in real world gaming and applications? Or is just another benchmark that lacks in any signfigance to us, the consumers?

Both cards have DX11, so I am stuck as I do want to upgrade from a single 8800GTX.

Thanks in advance, I look forward to viewing your advise and opinions on this matter.

 

[Stanners]

All depends on what you want to spend and what resolution you use.

Because it is quite simple really, performance more or less follows cost.

5850 - 470 - 5870 - 480.

Or if you want to pay a little less, have a look at the 460's

Or wait a couple of months for the 6 series from ATI(Maybe worth doing this now as we are not to far away)

 

[Flanno]

I have searched the forums regarding the performance loss with ati's cards with direct x 11 tessellation, but failed to find any threads.

Anyway, I was wondering, ATI cards are proving to be cheaper and offer pretty much the same performance as the nvidia cards, e.g 5850 / 470 or 5870 / 480.

But the real question is, is the boost in performance with the furmi architecture really a major advantage in real world gaming and applications? Or is just another benchmark that lacks in any signfigance to us, the consumers?

Both cards have DX11, so I am stuck as I do want to upgrade from a single 8800GTX.

Thanks in advance, I look forward to viewing your advise and opinions on this matter.

Very few games use tesselation effectively and it's my belief it won't be an important feature due to most games being console ports and the dominace of console gaming.

 

[opethdisciple]

I recently upgraded from a 3870x2 which is in the same performance bracket as a 8800gtx.

I bought a 5870..... so far.... It is indeed a massive upgrade.

I tested playing warhead. Where I was only just able to play at 1920x1200 @ gamer settings with no aa, I can now play with enthusiast settings and 2xaa at 1920x1200 resolution and its pretty smooth.

Havent played any dx11 games however, unless you classify BFBC2 as DX11, which I dont. I can play BFBC2 max settings all the bells and whisltes on at 1920x1200 and its smooth.

Dont discount ATI. Nvidia put a lot more in to their marketing, thats the only reason why your having a difficulty.

Use benchmarks as a way to determie whats right for you. Any of those cards are good, and performance will scale based on how much money you put down on the table.

I would personaly wait for the new 6000 ATI series before making a decision.

Only reason why i didnt get a 480 at the time, was too expensive (dropped down in the last 2 months) too loud and too hot.

My 5870 is whisper quiet and cool.

Actually this leads me to another point. What AMD do is give the consumer products based on the NOW, not the tommorrow. Yes Nvidia do tesselation better than ATI, but tesselation is not something that is utilised in many games at the moment, hence its not something ATI have invested performance in to, yet. Obviosly when tesselation is an important techonology, then Im sure ATI will have gpu's out that can handle the games...

Infact belive it or not, but tesselation has been around for a while already, its just now its officially part of the DX11 specification.

 

[MoRT489]

For a direct comparison showing the cards working tessellation see here:

 

[lay-z-boy]

Havent played any dx11 games however, unless you classify BFBC2 as DX11, which I dont.

What. It is a dx11 game though. You can't just decide if it is or not.

Only reason why i didnt get a 480 at the time, was too expensive (dropped down in the last 2 months) too loud and too hot.

My 5870 is whisper quiet and cool.

Yes, it's hotter. It's also faster too. I love how people judge things they don't own though.

Actually this leads me to another point. What AMD do is give the consumer products based on the NOW, not the tommorrow. Yes Nvidia do tesselation better than ATI, but tesselation is not something that is utilised in many games at the moment, hence its not something ATI have invested performance in to, yet. Obviosly when tesselation is an important techonology, then Im sure ATI will have gpu's out that can handle the games...

A load of crock.

Ati put a tessellation engine in the 2000 series and marketed it quite heavily at the time. They called it truform however it was a total disaster as nobody adopted it.

They subsequently removed it for the 3000 series. That was with all intents designing for the future and it failed miserably. So this 'now not tommorrow' biz is rubbish.

nvidia are no exceptions, they attempted to predict the direction of the changing graphics world with the FX (5) series, way back. Again, disaster. The direction the world took was totally different for what they had optimised their arch for.

 

[psychas]

why just not wait month or two for 6800 series ?

 

[RavenXXX2]

Dirt 2 is DX11 and uses a host of DX11 features and not just tessellation, it runs a lot better on Nvidia hardware, the game was used to market ATI cards and to show off DX11. Nvidia was later with DX11 cards than ATI so it's no surprise they perform better in this area. I would wait and see how the new AMD cards perform against the 480.

 

[Rroff]

I would be careful basing it on any benchmarks right now... the latest nVidia drivers (260+) do seem to have real performance gains in quite a few applications, sometimes not insignificant gains either. But until the WHQL build is out we won't know exactly where we stand with that.

 

[NathWraith]

Actually this leads me to another point. What AMD do is give the consumer products based on the NOW, not the tommorrow. Yes Nvidia do tesselation better than ATI, but tesselation is not something that is utilised in many games at the moment, hence its not something ATI have invested performance in to, yet. Obviosly when tesselation is an important techonology, then Im sure ATI will have gpu's out that can handle the games.

This is total BS. I know for a fact tesselation wasn't a key factor of the 5000 Series because it would have taken ATI a lot longer to impliment it into their cards. They wanted the jump on Nvidia, not because they "care" any more about consumers than nvidia.

 

[vorticalspace]

This is total BS. I know for a fact tesselation wasn't a key factor of the 5000 Series because it would have taken ATI a lot longer to impliment it into their cards. They wanted the jump on Nvidia, not because they "care" any more about consumers than nvidia.

Correct
Market share is king!!
ATI had a good product at low initial prices and were able to do this due to being somewhat conservative in their engineering approach.

Nvidia meanwhile took the alternative approach in trying to re-invent the wheel which ultimately has lost them market share/vast amounts of money.

Time will tell whether nvidia will benefit from this longer term strategy as once a new technology is designed, it can ultimately be refined, improved, made cheaper etc.
This was immediately evident with the release of the the GTX460 based cards.

I suspect that Nvidia may ultimately have the last laugh, but at what cost

 

[Rroff]

It wasn't really nVidia trying to reinvent the wheel... they were readying a process based on the 200 series but shrunk to 40nm and DX10.1 when ATI stole a march on them with a DX11 card rendering it obsolete. The Fermi design was never intended to go up against evergreen if it was even ever intended to be used in the GeForce lineup at all.

 

[kitch9]

This is total BS. I know for a fact tesselation wasn't a key factor of the 5000 Series because it would have taken ATI a lot longer to impliment it into their cards. They wanted the jump on Nvidia, not because they "care" any more about consumers than nvidia.

Haven't ATI had tesselators (redundant none the less) in their cards for years? I'd read somewhere they assisted with the DX11 spec as it was those guys who pretty much were blowing its trumpet?

 

[Rroff]

ATI have long banged the tessellation drum - I'm not really sure why as they've never put the effort behind it required to make anything of it and its the complete opposite approach to the way 99/100 video game developers implement things.

IIRC they first put hardware in to support it in the 8500 (first true tessellation engine tho was in the r600 cores).

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Aye Rroff, you're right. If you look back, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is one of the few games I remember which had Truform support, ATIs earlier tesselation feature. Used it on my 9800Pro, which was at least 5 years ago.

 

[vorticalspace]

It wasn't really nVidia trying to reinvent the wheel... they were readying a process based on the 200 series but shrunk to 40nm and DX10.1 when ATI stole a march on them with a DX11 card rendering it obsolete. The Fermi design was never intended to go up against evergreen if it was even ever intended to be used in the GeForce lineup at all.

This implies that Nvidia had taken their eye off the ball which for a major player is difficult to believe

Surely Nvidia must have known all about DX11, ATI's plans etc.
Its their business to know

If what you say is correct, ATI were very clever in rushing out the 5XXX series and effectively stealing Nvidia's breathing space thus leaving them with no alternative but accelerate the launch of Fermi.

And as such, ATI must have realised that the initial lack of tesselation ability would not be an immediate problem(no games/competition) but would ultimately be found out with the launch of Fermi. But as previously stated, market share is king and anyway, ATI would have time to fully assess Fermi & respond with their 6XXX series cards.

 

[Rroff]

Its a complicated situation, the nVidia cards (that are now the 300 series) were initially supposed to have been out 6-8 months before they were finally abandoned as the next generation. nVidia was having issues with the 40nm process even with an easier to implement design than Fermi :S

ATI capitalised on this.

 

[buttkinz]

32nm may level the field a little, both teams I'm sure are desperate to get the cards out on a new process, let's see who fecks up next time around lol

 

[RavenXXX2]

^^ No 32nm, 28nm after 40nm.

 

[Jules2k7]

why just not wait month or two for 6800 series ?

I've heard word that it may be Q1 of 2011 before they start appearing :/