Introduction
The R300 chip (ATI Radeon9700) has become the world’s first graphics processor to offer full support for DirectX 9 and to take a lead over its age-old competitor during half a year. What’s more, when NV30 (FX5800) finally arrived to the reviewers (while ATI Radeon9700 had been on sale in every computer shop by then) it turned out that by the consumer qualities it wouldn’t be a match for ATI Radeon9700. It was really expensive, lost at performance, the driver hadn’t been optimized enough for the entirely new FX micro-architecture by then, and the main thing was video cards on its base were heating up and whistling too much.
Nevertheless, nVidia’s partnering companies were unanimously demonstrating futurist masterpieces made with NV30 at expos but were strangely reluctant to sell them. The main cause is the card proved too expensive, and the tradeoff for using scarce DDR-II memory was prohibitive. Even on the condition that nVidia had to sell NV30 chips at a loss! As they say, the prestige is above any price.
The miseries were lasting for half a year. They were trying to switch NV30 to the professional sector Quadro where prices as high as $1000 is a norm, with NV35 (FX5900) declared as a new king of the hill. In response to that, ATI released two new Radeon9800Pro video cards based on the R350 chip.
The current stage of competition between ATI and nVidia looks like this:
| Level | nVidia | ATI |
| Hi-End | FX5900 (NV35) | Radeon 9800 |
| Middle | FX5600 (NV31) | Radeon 9600 |
| Low-End | FX5200 (NV34) | Radeon 9200 |
The inquisitive reader might easily point to the lack of NV35 on sale, while Radeon9800Pro has been on sale for a month. That’s true, but let’s be indulgent. If NV35 has been sent out to testers, it means the video card does exist and let’s hope it will not suffer the fate of its predecessor, and the production in sufficient quantities will be arranged anyway.
Today we’ll be taking a closer look at both rivals. ASUS’ V9950 128Mb (GF5900) has been called up to uphold the honor of nVidia. For ATI, two versions of R9800Pro – 128 and 256 MB – made by Gigabyte come into play. These cards are in a way “reference boards” since their core speed values fully match those recommended.
| VGA | Gigabyte RADEON 9800 PRO | Asus V9950 | |
| Core | R350 | NV35 | |
| Process technology, (mk) | 0.15 | 0.13 | |
| Q-ty of transistors | 110 mln | 130 mln | |
| Core speed | 380MHz | 400MHz | |
| Pixel pipelines | 8 | 8 (or 4) | |
| Fill Rate (Mpixels/s) | 3,040 | 3,600 or (1,800) | |
| Texture units per pipeline | 1 | 1 (or 2) | |
| Textures processed per Texture Unit | 8 to 16 | 8 to 16 | |
| Memory speed | 340MHz (680MHz DDR) | 425MHz (850MHz DDR) | |
| Memory bus DDR | 256-bit | 256-bit | |
| Memory bandwidth | 21.8GB/s | 27.2GB/s | |
| Proprietary technologies | SMARTSHADER 2.1SMOOTHVISION 2.1 – Color Compression (up to 6:1 ratioHYPER Z III + : Z-Compression (up to 24:1 ratio) and Z-cache optimized for real-time shadow renderingTRUFORM 2.0 | CineFX 2.0 EngineLMA IIIntellisample HCT Technology – Color and Z-Compression (up to 4:1 ratio) | |
| Pixel shaders | 2.0 | 2.0+ | |
| Vertex shaders | 2.0+ | 2.0+ | |
| FSAA mode (max) | up to 6x | up to 8x | |
| AF mode (max) | up to 16x | up to 8x | |
| Support for DirectX | DirectX 9.0 | ||
| Additional features | Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACsIntegrated TV Output support up to 1024×768 resolutionIntegrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant)VideoShaderHydraVision | Dual integrated 400 MHz DACsIntegrated TV Output support up to 1024×768 resolutionVideo Mixing Renderer (VMR)Extended programmability with CgnViewDVC 3.0 | |
