Quad-core CPUs and Graphics performance

[JohnMike]

As of late, nvidia has been beating ati in all areas, if 8.12 does not provide better performance and improve im going to sell of my 4870x2 and get the 55nm gtx 280 SLI

Nice, smooth and bug-free... http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=209402

[Cooper]

To over-simplify by stating this as purely a factor of a TWIMTBP co-marketing deal is not accurate.

Lots of people at NVIDIA work hard to help developers out via technical and driver support, even if their title is not TWIMTBP. It's also a matter of staffing for this task..

There's no reason AMD couldn't/doesn't do the same (in fact they do, they just don't do it to nearly the same scale).

That was exactly my point. Im not sure how all this testing/developing co-operation thing work, but Im sure that ATI started optimizing drivers for several tier 1 titles only when they got a retail copy of the game

As of late, nvidia has been beating ati in all areas, if 8.12 does not provide better performance and improve im going to sell of my 4870x2 and get the 55nm gtx 280 SLI

Id say this comment is far from being entirely true and will cause flaming here. ATI gained huge jump in market presence for the last 4-5 months and it's not cause "nvidia has been beating ati in all areas"

[Nicksterr]

Id say this comment is far from being entirely true and will cause flaming here. ATI gained huge jump in market presence for the last 45 months and it's not cause "nvidia has been beating ati in all areas"

I agree, ATI has made significant advances in many areas and it has resulted in a large increase in market share. But, you can not ignore the comparison in the OP, however rudimentary it may be. Simply put, nvidia is ahead of ATI in the quad core conjunction w/gfx power driver sector. To some informed individuals, this could distinguish a purchase. For example, after seeing this, I am sorta dissapointed in my 4870, even though it does everything I need it to. Right now, I rather have a GTX 216.

[mars]

I agree, ATI has made significant advances in many areas and it has resulted in a large increase in market share. But, you can not ignore the comparison in the OP, however rudimentary it may be. Simply put, nvidia is ahead of ATI in the quad core conjunction w/gfx power driver sector. To some informed individuals, this could distinguish a purchase. For example, after seeing this, I am sorta dissapointed in my 4870, even though it does everything I need it to. Right now, I rather have a GTX 216.

this logic completely blows my mind
I too have a 4870, and this information doesnt impact my gaming performance in the slightest... if ever im bolstered by the fact that my great performance hasnt even been fully optimized yet.

[Shadowmage]

I agree, ATI has made significant advances in many areas and it has resulted in a large increase in market share. But, you can not ignore the comparison in the OP, however rudimentary it may be. Simply put, nvidia is ahead of ATI in the quad core conjunction w/gfx power driver sector. To some informed individuals, this could distinguish a purchase. For example, after seeing this, I am sorta dissapointed in my 4870, even though it does everything I need it to. Right now, I rather have a GTX 216.

I don't get how this logic works. You do realize that pretty much ALL reviews on the internet comparing the 4870 to GTX260/GTX280 are done on quad cores, right? Your GPU can only get faster.

[tiro_uspsss]

Cache diference does not result in 20+% difference mate

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_6.html#sect0

sooo.. that ^ page is.. wrong?

[dasa]

last i checked crysis only makes full use of one core and assigned physics or something to the second core
so how are drivers helping quad core performance in a game that doesnt support it? are they just passing some of the gpus load of to the cpu?

since gtx280 is a more powerful card than the 4870 is the gtx280 performance improving on quad cores or just getting worse on dual cores due to it trying to lighten the load on the gpu

or do i just need to take a step back and re read this

[T_Flight]

That was exactly my point. Im not sure how all this testing/developing co-operation thing work, but Im sure that ATI started optimizing drivers for several tier 1 titles only when they got a retail copy of the game



Id say this comment is far from being entirely true and will cause flaming here. ATI gained huge jump in market presence for the last 45 months and it's not cause "nvidia has been beating ati in all areas"

Cooper do these higher ecscelon companies provide developer kits to other companies who need to write software that works like these drivers and other add-ons like controller drivers, maybe even mouse drivers, TrackIR and other perferals?

I know on many of the flight sims I fly, that this is the case. They want companies to work with them, because it serves to help their sales by offering a software product that works well with a user's system accorss many platforms, and mnay periferals.

I always assumed they did, but it sounds like this may not be the case. Maybe it's a "proprietary info" deal where companies may want to keep things confidential? Of course there are NDA's to protect sensitive info, or pre-release info.

This was one of my majory gripes with Vista in the beginning. Driver support was horrible. It's like it was an afterthought. Users were plagued by driver issues rendering their gaming and multimedia rigs useless with Vista until it was straightened out.

I would hope it would be like the dev work done in the flight sim community where everybody is on board before release and get things nailed down and bug fixed before these bigtime titles are released. I guess I'm kinda confused now after reading this. I know it was a problem with the Vista release, but I'm not sure if this is a problem with grpahics card makers.

With an OS that is just inexcuseable. AFter all, it Microsoft, and they should get those supporting cvompanies on baord from the beginning, and have the funds to do that, but it's a bit different with other companies that don't have the mamouth resources MS does.

I'm curious how the "compatibility trials" work or even if they are doing that. I always assumed they were until this thread.

[GAR]

That was exactly my point. Im not sure how all this testing/developing co-operation thing work, but Im sure that ATI started optimizing drivers for several tier 1 titles only when they got a retail copy of the game



Id say this comment is far from being entirely true and will cause flaming here. ATI gained huge jump in market presence for the last 45 months and it's not cause "nvidia has been beating ati in all areas"

Actually, if you look at alot of the testing done, GTX 216 wins by a large margin over the 4870, and dual GPU's are still buggy as hell, i have a 4870x2 in my system right now, i speak from experience. Testing done after 180 series nvidia drivers have given nvidia the edge for now, me being an ATi owner am hoping for a good 8.12 driver.

[Shadowmage]

To over-simplify by stating this as purely a factor of a TWIMTBP co-marketing deal is not accurate.

Lots of people at NVIDIA work hard to help developers out via technical and driver support, even if their title is not TWIMTBP. It's also a matter of staffing for this task..

There's no reason AMD couldn't/doesn't do the same (in fact they do, they just don't do it to nearly the same scale).

Are you serious with this? Don't you know that NVIDIA's revenue every year (before 2008 at least) is greater than ATI's entire engineering budget? NVIDIA is much much much larger than ATI.

[Miss Banana]

Actually, if you look at alot of the testing done, GTX 216 wins by a large margin over the 4870, and dual GPU's are still buggy as hell, i have a 4870x2 in my system right now, i speak from experience. Testing done after 180 series nvidia drivers have given nvidia the edge for now, me being an ATi owner am hoping for a good 8.12 driver.

First of all, let me say I do not want to turn this thread into some sort of flamefest or ati vs amd thing. If you do not agree with what i say then fine.
In my experience GTX 216 does not win by a large margin at all.

In all those recent reviews it's a small margin, and besides this, most of those new reviews use old catalyst drivers, and settings and resolutions that work best for nvidia cards. (settings and resolutions that nvidia recommends)

Yes, nvidia did a great job with these last drivers. These improvements combined with the excessive pricecuts that have been going on at nvidia make their cards competitive again. Remember that ATI forced nvidia to cut down on profits by this much because ATI simply had a better product. (cost to make/performance)

These drivers and pricecuts did not completely turn the tables like you seem to suggest, and it is real easy to say "Oh my GTX 216 works bugless!" on the internet, but I think if you do make the switch to nvidia you will find they also have lots of things to improve in their drivers.

Things are never that black and white, and in this case both companies have excellent products for excellent prices. What I personally like about AMD is that when DX 10.1 implementation becomes more widely used, I will not have to upgrade again to benefit from a potential speedboost. How well SLI and crossfire work changes every month. So what does not work now, may work in 2 weeks.

[Cooper]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_6.html#sect0

sooo.. that ^ page is.. wrong?

I was implying to 3MB Vs 6MB comaprison. Celeron with it's 512KB has huge performance loss compared even to 2MB Allendale parts.

Actually, if you look at alot of the testing done, GTX 216 wins by a large margin over the 4870, and dual GPU's are still buggy as hell, i have a 4870x2 in my system right now, i speak from experience. Testing done after 180 series nvidia drivers have given nvidia the edge for now, me being an ATi owner am hoping for a good 8.12 driver.

if you consider up to 10% a large margin than yes.

Cooper do these higher ecscelon companies provide developer kits to other companies who need to write software that works like these drivers and other add-ons like controller drivers, maybe even mouse drivers, TrackIR and other perferals?

I have no clue how it works. Just know few example when it doesn't work as logicaly intendent

[AbelJemka]

It's seems that for some 10% is effectively a large margin...

[Luka_Aveiro]

It's seems that for some 10% is effectively a large margin...

if it is a margin, it cannot be large

[AbelJemka]

'Margin' is use for profit so it can be large.

[Nicksterr]

this logic completely blows my mind
I too have a 4870, and this information doesnt impact my gaming performance in the slightest... if ever im bolstered by the fact that my great performance hasnt even been fully optimized yet.

It doesn't affect your gaming performance. It's just a reminder nvidia still has the driver upperhand. I'm not trying to make any kind of obscure point here, should be fairly easy to understand.

I don't get how this logic works. You do realize that pretty much ALL reviews on the internet comparing the 4870 to GTX260/GTX280 are done on quad cores, right? Your GPU can only get faster.

Sure, and this is another comparison to add to the list.

[T_Flight]

I was implying to 3MB Vs 6MB comaprison. Celeron with it's 512KB has huge performance loss compared even to 2MB Allendale parts.



if you consider up to 10% a large margin than yes.



I have no clue how it works. Just know few example when it doesn't work as logicaly intendent

Thanks for the reply. I always kinda curious about thigns like that. It's kinda interesting the way different companies do things. It seems to work pretty well considering all these possible combinations of stuff, but sometimes there are snags along the way.

[spursindonesia]

First of all, let me say I do not want to turn this thread into some sort of flamefest or ati vs amd thing. If you do not agree with what i say then fine.
In my experience GTX 216 does not win by a large margin at all.

In all those recent reviews it's a small margin, and besides this, most of those new reviews use old catalyst drivers, and settings and resolutions that work best for nvidia cards. (settings and resolutions that nvidia recommends)

Yes, nvidia did a great job with these last drivers. These improvements combined with the excessive pricecuts that have been going on at nvidia make their cards competitive again. Remember that ATI forced nvidia to cut down on profits by this much because ATI simply had a better product. (cost to make/performance)

These drivers and pricecuts did not completely turn the tables like you seem to suggest, and it is real easy to say "Oh my GTX 216 works bugless!" on the internet, but I think if you do make the switch to nvidia you will find they also have lots of things to improve in their drivers.

Things are never that black and white, and in this case both companies have excellent products for excellent prices. What I personally like about AMD is that when DX 10.1 implementation becomes more widely used, I will not have to upgrade again to benefit from a potential speedboost. How well SLI and crossfire work changes every month. So what does not work now, may work in 2 weeks.

Good post, agreed.