I agree with Humus and Zeckensack. Before word got out about the loud cooler, I had every intention of buying the first GFFX I could get my grubby little hands on, without thinking twice. Now that the word about the cooler is out, I’m not that anxious to get one anymore. I’m going to wait and see what Gainward has up their sleeve, and if they can’t deliver then I will look into the non-ultra 5800 instead. Performance is pretty much my last concern when buying a video card.
– Tom
Well, my faith in NVIDIA has been smashed by the FX release and specs. Especially though, the mp3’s I downloaded comparing the sound of the FX cooler to the 9700 pro. It was like listening to an aircraft taking off!
PC noise doesn’t bother me at work, but at home its a big NO!
As for the specs, NVIDIA are barely ahead of the 9700 Pro, if at all. I’m not sure what the potential of this tech is, but I’m pretty sure ATI will release something even funkier in a few months and then, for the first time since 3dfx was at its zenith, nvidia will be playing catch-up.
I’m going either for a pro or for the next ATI card!
In the video that compared the noise from both cards not only were they demonstrated out of the case but the microphone was moved next to the blower which unsurprisingly gave distorted wind noise. You have to wonder whether this was honest journalism or an attempt to create a big news story. However I do agree that the fx is probably too loud.
I wouldn’t say my faith in them has been smashed, although it has been somewhat damaged. This was primarily due to a short dip in driver stability around versions 40.xx and 41.xx, and to a lesser extent due to the NVLeafBlower fiasco. I’m running 42.xx drivers now and they are as rock solid as what I’m used to. Hence, if at least one manufacturer comes out with a quieter card (Ultra or not), I’m still getting one.
I’ve been using nothing but NVIDIA cards since the Riva128 (unless you count my Voodoo2, which I hated for its crappy OpenGL drivers and got rid of after three months). While ATI’s drivers may have improved dramatically over the last months, I still see too many bug reports to trust them enough to switch to a Radeon. Maybe next year 
– Tom
>>[speculation]
>>at least ati works at compilers to compile
>>gl2 slang to arb_fragment and arb_vertex
>>program o today.
>>[/speculation]
WHHAAAT ? where do you get this information from ? tell me !
(this sounds RRRROOOOOAAAAAR -> great !!!)
BTW: the cg-compiler from NV does nearly the same, or not ? I haven’t looked at this proprietary API now, but i have grabbed this information while flying over some descriptions, forum-threads and such things.
Is it possible to get the final compiled vertexprogram code ? This would make it much easier writing complex shaders and usign them on standard GL_ARB_…_program functions. Do you know about this ??
>>i prefer to smoke my money
yes, this is no problem for people located in switzerland - here in germany it is not as easy to smoke your money as it is in your’s country. 
You guys are right that the FX is really too loud. I’ve heard those mp3s too and it’s a HUGE difference. But the thing is, the FX has more featurs than the 9700 PRO and you have to consider the fact that FX is just an intermediate card. Nvidia probably just put out the FX to keep the lead. NVIDIA is working on two chipsets just like ATI is, and I believe that’s where all the true power and work and effort will be shown.
To be honest with you Halcyon, the issue isn’t neccessarily the spec\sound of the card for me, but the difference between the OTT marketing strategy and the reality.
There are only so many times you can hype up a product and not deliver before your customers start to get fed-up with you. I’m just about at that stage now. After reading all of the specs\fantastic “pre-reviews” and marketing information about this card, I was holding off buying a 9700 Pro - for a long while. So I’m thinking i’ve wasted my time because the nvidia marketing was mostly bull.
Originally posted by DJSnow:
[b]@daveperman:
>>[speculation]
>>at least ati works at compilers to compile
>>gl2 slang to arb_fragment and arb_vertex
>>program o today.
>>[/speculation]
WHHAAAT ? where do you get this information from ? tell me !
(this sounds RRRROOOOOAAAAAR -> great !!!)
BTW: the cg-compiler from NV does nearly the same, or not ? I haven’t looked at this proprietary API now, but i have grabbed this information while flying over some descriptions, forum-threads and such things.
Is it possible to get the final compiled vertexprogram code ? This would make it much easier writing complex shaders and usign them on standard GL_ARB_…_program functions. Do you know about this ??
>>i prefer to smoke my money
yes, this is no problem for people located in switzerland - here in germany it is not as easy to smoke your money as it is in your’s country.
[/b]
The GL2 compiler doesn’t work that way. It compiles directly towards to underlying hardware. The way it should be IMO, no need to go the detour by the existing extensions.
mmh, ok - i thought this could be a cool and nice way to program my shaders right today witht the GL2-hlsl and then compile “it down” to “normal” GL_ARB_…_program code which can be used from now on, with todays graphic hardware (not with hardware on the day after tomorrow) - this could be used by the people to avoid todays asm-code typing and it would be “leveling the way for future compatibility with the upcoming GL2-hlsl for your today’s shaders” (i hope you know what i mean with my crappy english)
The second point, mentioned by me, relating to the nvidia cg-compiler was my idea because, if this thing (~the nvidia cg compiler) works as i assume/suppose, then it should be possible to generate/copy/use small chunks of the final/resulting programcode for the hardware you are working/running on ?!?!
This would enable a programmer to use the cg-langugage to write his shader programs in a convenient manner and then “copy/paste” parts of the code into his GL_ARB_…_program-code, if you are working with OpenGL - and the same thing would work if you are a DX-freak: copy/paste the code of the final-compiled cg-highlevel-program to your DirectX shader program code -> i thought of this, because the GL2-hlsl is not available or let me say, there is no way to get this shaders running into my program - so, i thought of the “assistance of the nvidia cg-compiler” for the next few weeks/month/years until the GL2 stuff and the “imaginary ATI compiler”, mentioned by daveperman, is ready. (and you might know: it could take a long while until this is ready one day)
[This message has been edited by DJSnow (edited 02-06-2003).]
Originally posted by Robbo:
[b]
To be honest with you Halcyon, the issue isn’t neccessarily the spec\sound of the card for me, but the difference between the OTT marketing strategy and the reality.
There are only so many times you can hype up a product and not deliver before your customers start to get fed-up with you. I’m just about at that stage now. After reading all of the specs\fantastic “pre-reviews” and marketing information about this card, I was holding off buying a 9700 Pro - for a long while. So I’m thinking i’ve wasted my time because the nvidia marketing was mostly bull.[/b]
Robbo - I feel exactly the same as you, and I too waited a long time for nothing. NVIDIA even went so far as to lie outright when hyping this product (i.e. “Free anti-aliasing”, “it’ll be out by Christmas for sure”, “256 bit bus is unnecessary”, “it is impossible to make a chip like this on .15 micron”, etc). The lesson I have taken away from this is to never listen to PR. You can never know when a card will be released. You can never trust how the company says it will perform. Buy the best card that’s out when you need it.
As our president once tried to say - “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
– Zeno
I feel exactly the same as you, and I too waited a long time for nothing.
The GeForceFX isn’t a bad card for developers. It’s NV_fragment_program extension is more powerful than the ARB’s version (though not a lot more powerful). Granted, from an end-user perspective, if you don’t care about image quality or the racket coming from your machine, the 5800Ultra is the better buy. If you do care about either of those, the 9700 is the better buy.
Not to say that nVidia’s hype machine wasn’t working overtime to decieve the public. I try to avoid listening to any side’s PR; I tend to instead put my faith in impartial judges like Anandtech and other review sites.
Originally posted by Korval:
The GeForceFX isn’t a bad card for developers. It’s NV_fragment_program extension is more powerful than the ARB’s version (though not a lot more powerful).
Don’t get me wrong, I do think the FX is an impressive piece of hardware and NVIDIA’s cards have always been good for developers…very solid. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise in my original post.
However, if they’re going to be 8 months late, take one of my PCI slots, and make me listen to a high pitched turbofan, you’d think they could at least handily outfeature and outperform all older tech.
– Zeno
Hi guys!
I’ve been reading this rather interesting discussion for a while, and something seems amazing to me: none of you ever mention the recent rumors about the GeForce FX being dead-born and aborted by NVidia (as stated on The Inquirer website and others)!?
Since there hasn’t been an official announcement yet, I think neither Cass, Matt, nor Pat can disclose further info on that subject if it’s true.
As an NVidia card owner and long-time NV fan (no pun intended), it would be great news to me since the whole thing’s getting a bit embarassing (12 layers pcbs, Boeing fan, etc.). I hope NVidia will present a nice Quadro at CeBit and will quickly come out with a new card design.
Julien.
Originally posted by Korval:
Not to say that nVidia’s hype machine wasn’t working overtime to decieve the public. I try to avoid listening to any side’s PR; I tend to instead put my faith in impartial judges like Anandtech and other review sites.
Whoa… you think Anandtech is impartial? That is like saying that Tom’s hardware is impartial.
The ONLY impartial reviews you will find is from people who actually bought the card/cpu/MB/whatever, and post their feelings about it.
You can almost bet that someone will do a water cooled GF FX card, and or one of those super cooling nitrogen units. I also bet that Nvidia will not sell over 100K FX cards, and the next product out by them should sell well in the low to mid range level.
ATI is still coming out with their next plans, which should also introduce some nice low to mid range products, so finally, game developers will be able to use most of the features from high end cards, without people crying that the game won’t work on their voodoo 3,gf 2, gf2/4mx, ati 8500/9000 cards
Originally posted by deepmind:
none of you ever mention the recent rumors about the GeForce FX being dead-born and aborted by NVidia (as stated on The Inquirer website and others)!?
The Inquirer? ROTFLMAO!
However, if they’re going to be 8 months late, take one of my PCI slots, and make me listen to a high pitched turbofan, you’d think they could at least handily outfeature and outperform all older tech.
If you’re going to criticize the card, it would be nice if the criticisms were valid.
Only the 5800 Ultra takes up an extra PCI slot and sounds like, “a high pitched turbofan.” The non-Ultra 5800 has a normal fan and doesn’t take up the slot (not that you should use that PCI slot next door anyway, btw. Just for general heat flow from the chip). If you want an 5800, you can’t say that nVidia’s stopping you because of the gigantic, loud fan, since they’re offering you a (slower) alternative.
none of you ever mention the recent rumors about the GeForce FX being dead-born and aborted by NVidia (as stated on The Inquirer website and others)!?
Yeah, right.
nVidia has to ship something. ATi certainly isn’t giving them time to screw around; the R350’s coming out in a few months with undisclosed features and performance. nVidia has to have something on the shelves that is, at the very least, comperable to what ATi has.
The only thing that was keeping ATi’s 9500/9700 line from becoming dominant is the wait for the 5800. If nVidia doesn’t actually release it, and instead goes back to the drawing board for 6 months or so, they can kiss any hope of market leadership goodbye. Such a move, further down the line, could even endanger nVidia’s lucrative relationship with Microsoft’s X-Box, putting ATi as the leading candidate for XBox 2.
Whoa… you think Anandtech is impartial?
Actually, yes. I haven’t seen any significant partisanship on their part, even back when nVidia was on top. Though their reviews do tend to slightly favor whomever is on top at the time, they’re still mostly impartial.
The ONLY impartial reviews you will find is from people who actually bought the card/cpu/MB/whatever, and post their feelings about it.
I don’t consider the reviews of an individual person particularly impartial. You never know when you’re talking to some rabid nVidia or ATi fanboy (unless he/she makes a particular rabid comment).
ATI is still coming out with their next plans, which should also introduce some nice low to mid range products
The 9500Pro is already an excellent mid-range solution, selling for under $200, while still providing the DX9.0/GL1.4 feature set. ATi’s already making strides in this area.
I think 12 bit fixed point is very useful when running good-old fixed-function and register combiner stuff. There are some games and algorithms that expect more or less specific results from specific inputs, which assume fixed precision. Using floating point precision will not give the same results.
The inquirer is not the best source of GFX info, although there are some diamonds in the rough there. Some reviewers never seem to forgive the insult of their pet favourite graphics architecture getting slaughtered in the market and take it out on the guys who give us faster better cheaper products with a different architecture that actually works.
It’s entertaining to watch them switch sides as the underdog changes, I enjoy the race too. There seems to be an tendency to root for the underdog after a year or two on top and the spin in the reviews reflects this. I just look at the numbers from several sources and make the features call for myself. There’s a lot to be said for being on the sidelines and able to choose the card du jour without all the messy business of convincing people that one is better than the other.
Often reviewers opinions are colored by personal slights by marketing/PR and you never get to see that, (not talking about the inquirer) I heard a tale of one engineer at a GFX company punching a very famous reviewer, OK that’s more than a ‘slight’, the guy was totally anti-that company from then on. Another incident with the same guy was that he was pissed off with another company because they didn’t fly him first class and dissed them for ages after that.
Some review sites get pre-production boards also, and claim that they have ‘release’ boards. Then when joe public gets one, and finds out it is missing features (as in case of a MB) or the speed is wrong (gfx cards) or something else, the reviewer just shrugs it off, since they want to continue to get “free” stuff from them. Both the sites I mentioned on my other post are guilty of this.
This is nothing new btw, since I can tell you stories of the Savage 4 or the Savage 2000 or even the Rage 128, that all got glowing (paid) “reviews”, and what do you know, they found nothing wrong with the drivers… and I could go on and on.
I am so way off topic now though, I will hot back on it for a bit.
I don’t think that taking up 2 slots is a major issue, if you choose to go with the ultra, then you got cash to burn, and you most likely have a huge case with tons of fans, and nothing in the 1st slot next to AGP card as Korval said.
What matters to most developers is support (drivers), and feature set, anything extra is a bonus. Just think, at 145 F you can almost cook your hotdogs on the card! 
More rumours about the fx being dumped. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7658