9600XT vs 5700 Ultra - "Next Generation DX9.0 Game"

[Speed_Mechanic2]

Xbit Labs (www.xbitlabs.com) has put out a review comparision between the ATI 9600XT and nVidia FX 5700 Ultra. This review in itself is pretty interesting, as these two cards are set at the right price for most buyers ($150-200 range). But what make's this review more interesting is the fact that Xbit Labs used "A Highly Anticipated DirectX 9.0 Game" to test (Page 16 (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/fx5700ultra-9600xt_16.html)). Correspondingly, this is the same title given by Xbit to Half-Life 2 during it's run through of brief benchmarks in early October.

The review makes for a good read, and is quite in depth - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/fx5700ultra-9600xt.html

[JigPu]

Wonder what they mean by this ;) Highly anticapted DX9 game that automatically scales back to 8.1? Hmmmm... :D

Much to our surprise, the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is running faster than the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. Is it an error of some kind or something? Well, no. The game simply didn’t run in the DirectX 9.0 mode on the GeForce FX 5600, switching to the DirectX 8.1.

JigPu

[YellowDart]

Originally posted by JigPu
Wonder what they mean by this ;) Highly anticapted DX9 game that automatically scales back to 8.1? Hmmmm... :D

Much to our surprise, the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is running faster than the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. Is it an error of some kind or something? Well, no. The game simply didn’t run in the DirectX 9.0 mode on the GeForce FX 5600, switching to the DirectX 8.1.

JigPu

Sounds suspiciously like HL2... (recalling previous HL2 benchmarking) ;)

[slater3333uk]

Nothing new there then

ATi is still on top

[Speed_Mechanic2]

What is new is how much the 5700 Ultra is hurt while playing HL2. The 5700 Ultra was suppose to be a major improvement over the 5600 Ultra, and I, at least, supposed this would be true in HL2 as well. Albeit, the 5600 is running in DX8.1 mode during those tests, but the scores under DX9.0 for the 5700 Ultra are pretty much unplayable. Making it useless to buy a 5700 Ultra to play HL2 in DX9.0 mode unless nVidia optimizes it's drivers to allow for increased performance when playing HL2.

[Evnas]

Originally posted by Speed_Mechanic2
The 5700 Ultra was suppose to be a major improvement over the 5600 Ultra

It is...the 5700 Ultra performs about 50% faster in DX 9 then the 5600 Ultra...still not half as fast as the 9600xt though (in shader tests that is)