ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Putting this PhysX Business to Rest
Let me put things in perspective. Remember our Radeon HD 4870/4850 article that went up last year? It was a straight crown-robbing on ATI’s part, NVIDIA had no competitively priced response at the time.
About two hours before the NDA lifted on the Radeon HD 4800 series we got an urgent call from NVIDIA. The purpose of the call? To attempt to persuade us to weigh PhysX and CUDA support as major benefits of GeForce GPUs. A performance win by ATI shouldn’t matter, ATI can’t accelerate PhysX in hardware and can’t run CUDA applications.
The argument NVIDIA gave us was preposterous. The global economy was weakening and NVIDIA cautioned us against recommending a card that in 12 months would not be the right choice because new titles supporting PhysX and new CUDA applications would be coming right around the corner.
The tactics didn’t work obviously, and history showed us that despite NVIDIA’s doomsday warnings - Radeon HD 4800 series owners didn’t live to regret their purchases. Yes, the global economy did take a turn for the worst, but no - NVIDIA’s PhysX and CUDA support hadn’t done anything to incite buyer’s remorse for anyone who has purchased a 4800 series card. The only thing those users got were higher frame rates. (Note that if you did buy a Radeon HD 4870/4850 and severely regretted your purchase due to a lack of PhysX/CUDA support, please post in the comments).
This wasn’t a one time thing. NVIDIA has delivered the same tired message at every single opportunity. NVIDIA’s latest attempt was to punish those reviewers who haven’t been sold on the PhysX/CUDA messages by not sending them GeForce GTS 250 cards for review. The plan seemed to backfire thanks to one vigilant Inquirer reporter.
More recently we had our briefing for the GeForce GTX 275. The presentation for the briefing was 53 slides long, now the length wasn’t bothersome, but let’s look at the content of the slides:
| Slides About... | Number of Slides in NVIDIA's GTX 275 Presentation |
| The GeForce GTX 275 | 8 |
| PhysX/CUDA | 34 |
| Miscellaneous (DX11, Title Slides, etc...) | 11 |
You could argue that NVIDIA truly believes that PhysX and CUDA support are the strongest features of its GPUs. You could also argue that NVIDIA is trying to justify a premium for its much larger GPUs rather than having to sell them as cheap as possible to stand up to an unusually competitive ATI.
NVIDIA’s stance is that when you buy a GeForce GPU, it’s more than just how well it runs games. It’s about everything else you can run on it, whether that means in-game GPU accelerated PhysX or CUDA applications.
Maybe we’ve been wrong this entire time. Maybe instead of just presenting you with bar charts of which GPU is faster we should be penalizing ATI GPUs for not being able to run CUDA code or accelerate PhysX. Self reflection is a very important human trait, let’s see if NVIDIA is truly right about the value of PhysX and CUDA today.
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SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
Another red rooster who cannot argue with the facts and the truth, and doesn't want them known.Perhaps you'd notice, I didn't comment right away when the STORIED review came out, you FOOL.
I came days later, and made my comments after you had your bs fest of lies, so I don't expect a lot of responders, you DUMMY.
But you're here, and your response is calling for DEATH.
Now, if anyone needs to be banned, YOU DO.
Futhermore, I really don't care if you're here, and have enjoyed some of your posts, but the fact remains, where I have absolutely FACTUALLY retued your BS in some of your posts, you have no response - other than, your own personal rage.
I'll be glad to see how you can defend yourself, but you obviously cannot.
Go ahead, there's 22 pages, and I've pointed out your lies several times. Have at it. Good luck, just calling for DEATH, and spewing "ban him!" while carrying your torch of lies is just what I expect from someone who doesn't care what bs they spew.
You already claimed you can't understand - LOL - of course you can't, you'd have to straighten out yourself and your lies then.
Good luck doing that.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
LOL - the folding was crap forever on ati, and now it's slower.We know the release date for both cards, and the nvidia is already listed on the egg dude.
When you're a raging red rooster, nothing matters to you but lying for the 2 billion dollar loser - ati.
sidk47 - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
You cannot argue with facts and the fact of the matter is that you can't help the world find a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's by buying an ATI!So those of you with an Internet connection, should buy an NVidia and fold@home all the time to help make the world a better place!
Take that ATI and your associated fanboys!
x86 64 - Sunday, April 5, 2009 - link
Folding at home is a total waste and is just an excuse to be smug and think you're special, so there to both of you."Oh I'm going to save the world by buying overpriced hardware and letting some university use it for studying the human genome. I'm such a humanitarian."
Please, you can justify your over indulgence any way you want but it still doesn't cover up the fact that you're trying to justify sitting on your asses instead of doing some real community work to help change the world.
Folding@home = Too fat and too lazy to really make an effort.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Uhh, dude, they're doing it at college, on like triple TESLA machines with the "supercomputer" motherboards - so you know, go get an education and start whining about unbelievable game framerates - that's what's really going on -Professor cuda machine checker " What happened ? "
Gamer students " Oh, uhh, well it crashed again it was a Crysis, I mean uh, no crisis, last night and it took us about 5 hours to to reset the awesome TESLA cards. We'll come in tonight to keep an eye on it, and clean up the pizza boxes and lock up again professor."
" Very well."
WHO LOVES THE EDUCATION OF AMERICA? !!!
hahahahaha
LeonRa - Saturday, April 4, 2009 - link
Well, since you cannot argue with facts, it's a fact you are a stupid fanboy who doesn't know anything! Check your facts before you post something like that. It is a fact that you can do f@h with an ATI card, as I have been doing it for some time now. So STFU and go spill your hatred somewhere else!SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
You're not being honest there. A while back ati either couldn't do it all ( no port ) - or it was so pathetic - they had to make a new port - I know they did the latter, and as far having a long stretch where it wasn't available, or just not used much since it was so pathetically slow in compariosn, the fella has the right idea.Furthermore, unless something has recently changed significantly, the ati port is still WAY slower than the Nvidia for folding.
So anyway, nice try, but telling the truth might actually be something the red rooster crew should start practicing .... or perhaps not, considering lying a whole heckuva lot might make those 2 billion dollar ati loses into "sales" that make "overall a profit" a reality...
On the other hand, if people continuously notice the lying by the red fans, they might gravitate to the competition, for obvious reasons.
So, honesty, or more bs ? I think I know what you'll choose.
marraco - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
I hope to see benchmarks with ATI in charge of graphics, and a Geforce in charge of PhysX.... kind of SLI/crossfire betwen ATIs and Geforces :)
A value-added of the geforces, is that, once you buy a new card, the old can unload Physics from the new card. Nice. I hate wasting old hardare.
On other side, most of the games on PhysX nvidia list don't relly work with GPGPU PhysX. Only with the old AGEIA cards.
Sadly, Crisys and Far Cry don't use PhysX. Only Havoc. And AMD still don't support it in hardware.
spinportal - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
No mention of the death of the HD 4850X2 as the HD4890 trashes the power consumption, price, availability, speed and OC-ability. No mention of advantage of DX10.1 and the games available. Hey, even bad news is good news sometimes by spotlighting. What is really missing is the bang for buck quality (bucks spent for performance increase), and talk about price depression for the HD 4870 1GB model by 10$ to 15$ with $50 step increments.4850 (125)[20.9] 4870 (185)[27.9] 4890 (235)[31.7]
4870X2 (400)[35.0]
Nvidia is cramping its own style:
250 (150)[21.8] 260-216-55 (180)[27] 275 (250?)[31.3]
280 (290)[30.9] 285 (340)[32.8]
The GTX280 is dead now, overpriced for those trying to sneak into SLI. The GTX260 is overlapped with Core216 55nm you'd want to get, but Joe Consumer might mistakenly get the other 2 prior versions to clean out old inventory. The GTX285's price is not justified but more power to nVidia if they get the consumer's buck.
Gladly, by the low temps the dual slot blowback is voiding hot air properly so the vendors are finally manufacturing cards with common sense.
Too bad we have gone the way with power hungry beastly cards needing two 6-pins.
Also, too bad the effects of AF and 0x00, 2xAA, 4xAA and 8xMSAA modes are not investigated. It would be interesting to see how saturated the units get as AF and AA gets bumped and what are the best modes for nVidia and AMD.
Oh, nice blurb for nVidia's shadow enhancement, but ATi/AMD's tesselation enhancement is as much as a hit or miss feature. Will AMD have an tech edge when DX11 tesselation cometh?
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Hmm, that said, Derek might be crying, since he couldn't stop crowing about that 4850x2 last review - oh boy, you know - I guess he had the heads up and ati told him what card he needed to help push...You know how things are.
Anyway, good observation.