Careful - that 250% is over the Radeon 9000... these new boards are entry-level to mid-range boards. On the high-end, you are still stuck with a board that is only marginally faster than the Radeon 9700.

Just heard that the new Radeon reviews just came out. Going to check those out. Seeing as how the new FX's have tanked it looks like another season of ATIness. This is just soooo wrong. Poor, Poor Nvidia. (For gaming enthusiasts anyway....well the smart ones at least. )

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDM5

Kyle is good source ... I have been visiting his site for many years now ...

ATI VS Nvidia
Intel VS AMD
Netscape VS IE

Gotta love this ....

Do you think this is actually going to happen though? Given the farce over the FX card, if nVidia really have something that quick, why not just release the damn thing and start clawing back some of their dented reputation (and sales income)?

ATi have already announced their next series of cards. Haven't really looked at the specs on them yet, so I don't know if it's anything that new, or just the 9700 with a faster clock/RAM speed.

Personally I'm going to move over to ATi now. Their driver issues seem to be a thing of the past (or if not, they are hugely better than they used to be), and they can get the products that I want to market on time.

Maybe it won't always be the case, and if ATi screw up in a couple of years when I'm looking to buy again, then I'll go back to nVidia (providing they have a better product). Heh, ya never know, there may even be a new player in town by then.

Go get that ATI!
I've been "NVidia Free" for what, three weeks now and it was one of the best things I've done.
The 9700Pro is an amazing card, it can just about be beaten in a few benchmarks by our friend the GF FX Ultra but then at what cost?
If I was looking to buy right this second then I'd wait on the 9800.
There is no way anybody can really warrant a 9700-9800 upgrade, but as prices will be similar even on launch the 9800 would be the sensible card to wait for.
ATI's road map is looking good, they are ahead of the game and more importantly they have got their driver issues sorted out.
The Cat 3.1's are great and in true "NVidia style" ATI are releaseing the Cat 3.2 drivers this month to really rain on the parade.

I'm sure NVidia will get back on the ball, but the future for me is looking red, no matter what NVidia "paper release" ATI have got just as much waiting in the wings.
Also at the moment ATI are actually managing to get their products released on time, not delaying for six months.

Ah, but that will be pricing just for the GPU. By the time you add on the costs of the memory, PCB and other spangly bits, the price will be well up on that.

I find it hard to believe that this brand new uber-card will come in cheaper than the existing ones. Suppliers would be left with a stock pile of expensive, old generation cards.

Even if you weren't in the market for the fastest card around, you certainly wouldn't spend more money on a slower one. But maybe you would if these new cards have the same cooling system as the 5800 card

True, but that's for cards that are manufactured using the cheaper parts. Existing boards will have been built with more expensive parts. There's only so much profit margin the suppliers can knock off.


It is a bit confusing in places isn't it

If I were nVidia, I'd be worried that my brand new 5600 Ultra card is beaten by ATis older 9500 card.

It does seem as if changing the driver optimisations from Balanced to Performance have a huge impact on frame rate. From being slower than a Ti4200 to faster than a Ti4800.

In order for the card to jump up in that much performance, there must be sections of the scene that are either not rendered, or rendered at lower resolution. For most gaming applications, this won't be an option that players will use.

I'll admit that I don't know what changes actually occur between Balanced and Performance modes, but if they are adjusting the final rendered output to get higher frame rates I'm pretty sure that the gaming crowd are not going to warm to nVidias new technology.

Blimey, I've been going on a bit of an anti-nVidia rant lately haven't I? It's not intentional, it's just at the moment, I don't see any decent products coming out of their doors.

No doubt in 6 omnths time I'll be saying the same things about ATi, as nVidia regain the performance and features crown :p

the 9700 PRO can be bough on many sites for less then $300 now (and will drop even more with the 9800) - and the FX is well over $300 from all of the sources i have seen and a few people who have pre-ordered ones on the way.

So, pay LESS money for a card that out performs a card 6 months newer in a good amount of benchmarks - or pay too much money for card that has min. performance gains over an old card that has all the same feature as this new card - minus a leaf blower attached to it?

mmmmmmmmm, hard choice!





don't hold your breath missing a whole 6 month cycle has put Nvidia behind and they will need ALOT to catch up - even just to gain the middle $100 - $200 card range - as the ATi's 9000,9200,9500, and 9600's will be holding this market pretty good - as the 9000 and 9500 already are - Nvidia MIGHT have a chance - if they can actually releases the new mid range cards on time

Esepcially since the 9500's can be flashed to be a 9700

there is no competition between ATi's cards and nVidia's. It seems that ATi has taken the crown and is unrelenting in giving it up. While nVidia is working on a video card that will beat the 9700 so is ATi. One market ATI is still untouched in is the All-In-Wonder line. No NV cards have the ability to decode TV and function as a video card at the same time.

I bought my 9500 and a A7n8x Deluxe and I am 100% pleased with this setup.

nVidia might learn something about business and how to make good cards if they sold their own reference boards. Now that Visiontek and MSI are making cards for ATi what is nvidia going to do, concentrate on new players to the game like BFG, and PNY or will they finally start selling reference boards to try and get some more income in?? Time will tell my friends but ATI has made me a loyal consumer.