Erwin’s Pages evaluates early 2002

Well, we all survived the holidays. I, myself, have taken part in the realisation of the ideal to make the world a better place. I threw some euro’s at carolling children’s heads, I mutilated the three kings standing in little Jezus’ shack, and finally, I presented a beggar with a bottle of fine wine while in fact the bottle was filled with a potent laxative. Ok I admit. I woke up one hour too early this morning.

Graphics Deathmatch

20 GeForce 3 cards. ... (giggle)...(hysteric laughing)...

Well, about 3 months ago I was quite enthusiastic about the GeForce 3 Titanium series, and even more with the fierce nVidia-ATI competition. This battle-royale-to-be never really took place though. While ATI is indeed trying hard to convince gamers that their Radeon 8500 is a great deal (and at 330 euros or 280 USD it actually is) GeForce 3 cards remained relatively expensive. I thought I could chalk up a GF3 Ti200 for 200 USD around Christmas, but this remained a fairytale. The Ti200, with a few exceptions, stayed well above the 200 USD mark and thus was a pinch too expensive. And what’s more: while delivering great performance, the surplus of only adding a GF3 card remains rather disappointing. When I bought my P3 1Ghz a year ago, I invested so I could buy a heavy graphics card a year after that so I would remain up to date. My current 3Dmark 2001 score is around 3000. But after a GF3 installed, this would only rise to +- 5500. While significant, it still doesn’t justify the rather high investment. Also, I can still run many games smoothly, although I’m feeling the heat from games like Max Payne and Medal of Honour: Allied Assault. So, the graphics card battle turned out to be rather weak. ATI’s R8500 is a dream card, if it’s drivers would be optimized. If perfected and fully supported, I’m sure the R8500 will beat the GF3 Ti500.


The heart of the GeForce 3 or NV20.


I was just preparing for school when several topics on the graphics scene came to light. First, rumors of the GF4 arriving around February definitely chilled my interest in the GF3 Ti200. The heaviest model, the GF4 Ti 1000 would be the ultimate dreamcard: 2 pixel shader pipelines, 300 Mhz clock, 128 mb DDR ram and, perhaps most revolutionary, AGP 8x bandwith. The Ti 1000 is the only card to boast the AGP 8x standard. If these reports are true, this card should be the card of the future. I compare the GF3 generation (NV20) with the first GeForces (NV10). While extremely fast and boasting new technology (GF1: T&L, GF3: Shaders and nFiniteFX), these cards are rather expensive and not really needed. A Geforce 2 Ultra, while technically inferior, is already quite adequate to run current games, and even tommorow’s ones (Unreal 2). So, I hope the GeForce 4 will succeed. The same sources indicate that the GeForce 4 series will have an MX version (actually, 3 of them: MX 480, 460, 440) and hopefully the “biggest little brother” (about same as GF3 Ti500 but with the GF4 technology) will be and intersting choice. Also, to make things even more juicy, many manufacturers (Abit, Chaintech, Gainward) announced GF3 Ti200’s with 128 mb of ram. Before the release of the GF4’s, these cards will probably be the card of choice.



In other news (already mentioned in our newsposts), interesting hostility has grown between nVidia and Hercules. I already thought that Hercules and nVidia weren’t best friends, when Hercules released KyroII cards (KyroII by STB and a far descendant from the PowerVR 3D accelerators), and even presenting the Kyro cards as the choice for mainstream and budget gamers. Now it’s official. ATI (!) and Hercules are going to work together. That’s going to give off serious fireworks, trust me. ATI already is an extremely nasty fly in nVidia’s soup, but with Hercules, nVidia’s monopoly might be in grave danger. ATI is even now cheap. Add the driver expertise and manufacturing capabilities of Hercules and you have a… dare I say it? A second 3DFX story. NVidia has to carefully watch the market. 3DFX’s big mistake was to cling to the “who cares about eyecandy, gamers want framerate” policy and to produce their own cards. NVidia has handled the market rather good: delivering topnotch performance, great technology and incredible reliability, driver support, and compatibility. Even the pricing policy was good, because the GF2MX really was the card of last year: cheap, overclockable, technologically up-to-date. It’s this “MX” that’s lacking in the GF3 family. Okay, the GF3 Ti200 pretends to be the budget solution, but it remains an investment (similar to buying an AMD XP 1800+ plus motherboard). If ATI can keep their prices this low (and with the Hercules partnership this is almost guaranteed) you can buy an R8500, delivering GF3 Ti500 performance at GF3 Ti200 prices!


The ultimate GeForce 3 Killer: the ATI Radeon 8500, previously R200.

My advice to nVidia is to vigourously retake the market with the GF4 MX’s. These should range from extremely cheap (150 USD) to moderate (250 USD). As a long nVidia customer (I bought nVidia’s first card: the Riva 128 and it rocked with my Diamond Voodoo 1 3 years ago) I hope they’ll remain a mainstay in consumer hardware. At the same time I hope ATI will remain to charge nVidia, and not to give up (like Matrox did).

Cpu free-for-all

While graphics cards have become extremely important, the cpu remains a major factor in system performance. Forget the myth about a P3 500 with GeForce 3 Ti500 outrunning an AthlonXP 1800+ with TNT2. While Geforce cards (especially from the GF2 GTS) dramatically improve graphics performance, actual overall speed is still determined by the processor. This is especially the case with AMD Athlon XP’s. The Pentium 3 (Coppermine) and 4 (both Willamette and Northwood) have a locked core multiplier, so overcloking can only occur though memory latency shifting and fsb increases. Problem is that fsb fondling will make both agp en pci run out of sync, and increasing system instability. AMD XP’s however can be freely overclocked (after tampering with L1 bridges, which is hard on Athon XP’s) by both fsb and multiplier. This allows the fsb to increase, but also to push the cpu to its limits, without making peripheral cards too instable. A P4 1.8 at maximum, 100% stable overclock (about 2 Ghz) with GF3 will underperform to an AMD XP 2000+ also at about 2 Ghz and a GF3. This is because first the XP simply has a better architecure than the Willamette P4 but also because the XP will run more smoothly with cpu overclock and bus overclock divided.


AMD Duron vs. Intel Celeron

In short, heavy graphics cards perform miracles, but will only fully come to their potential when supported by a decent cpu (1.5 Ghz and above for Intel, 1600+ and above for AMD).
Interesting note is the P4 Northwood overclocked to over 3 Ghz. Tom’s Hardware has performed this little miracle, and shows how much potential the P4 Northwood has. The 3 Ghz is achieved by using a “confidential” P4 2.2 cpu that has been rid of the mulitplier lock. Using watercooling to maintain a minus 20 degrees Celsius temperature (to prevent the “throttling” feature to kick in or, the full shutdown of the cpu at extreme out-of-limits overclocking), the P4 really shows how fast it can be. Be sure to read the full article at Tom’s Hardware.

Music, Maestro

There’s some more I’d like to share with you guys. I spent an afternoon browsing through dusty pc boxes and discovered my first Creatve soundcard: the Game Blaster. I then stumbled upon the AWE32 PnP and finally upon the SB Live. I thought the SB Live was the most dramatical improvement in pc sound. While the Game Blaster was one of the first IBM-PC soundboards (with AdLib, Covox and Roland), and the AWE32 was the pinnacle of DOS and early Windows 95 sound, the SBLive with it’s advanced set of effects, environmental and surround output, and extremely clear and full sound was most impressive to me. My question is, what can the Audigy add to this? The only significant improvement from my SBLive Player would be 5.1 Dolby surround, but this feature was already implemented by the SBLive 5.1. It has to be said though: the Audigy Player is relatively cheap (90 USD) and probably produces the best sound to date.

EP sez:

Conclusion of all this? The PC market is alive and kicking, for gamers and business alike (+ 1Ghz laptops, Bluetooth technology, 2,5G or even 3G mobile telephony, Pocket PC-driven palmtops,…), despite the tough corporate economic conditions. Question is when it is the right time to invest in technology. This is one of the hardest questions in desktop pc usage. If you buy too soon, you’ll spend too much money on technology that is largely unsupported (buying a GeForce 3 in March 2001) but buying too late will leave you with progressively ageing machines, and ultimately lagging performance (buying a GF2 Pro or, dear heaven, a GF2MX now). The endless variations make computer configurations a rich and diverse bunch, but leaves the customer with a great sense of disconnection. There are no constants in the PC world. We, the old and worn out near-adult gamers still remember the blazing performace of a Voodoo2 12 mb, while kids aged 13-14 now will vaguely remember 3DFX as a small player trying to reach the level of TNT2’s and GeForce cards. But of course, I’m not telling anything you don’t know. Go forth then, and enjoy the world of the desktop pc. Enjoy it, while it lasts…because digital telvision and computers as mere server clients are already lurking over the ever-so flexible pc platform.

Buying Guide

Recommended pc (value/quality):

AMD XP 1900+
512 DDR Ram
R8500 or GF3 Ti200 128mb (when available)
Abit or Asus RAID DDR motherboard preferably with bios overclocking ability
Additional cooling or watercooling
19 inch screen (at least .27 dot pitch)
SB Audigy Player (Giants included, make sure you get this game with your card)

Most promising hardware:

Intel Pentium 4 Northwood

Links

> GF4 specifications
> Tom's Hardware P4 3 Ghz Speed Project
> Tom’s Hardware

> Intel
> AMD
> ATI
> nVidia