• The Coliseum Fight

    The Coliseum Fight

    Punit Lodaya, Oct 13, 2006 1700 hrs IST

    Nvidia 7950 GX2 Quad SLI vs. ATI X1950XTX Crossfire. The grand battle between the two on fair grounds.

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The furious battle between ATI and Nvidia dates back to the year 2001, when Geforce 3 was released. ATI is in video display sector for over a decade and had released cards such as Rage Fury and Radeon 7500. But none of them were a match to Nvidia's TNT and Geforce series. It was until Radeon 8500, which truly gave competition to Geforce 3. Though, it lacked behind a little bit in terms of performance, it fully supported DirectX 8.1. Nvidia released Geforce 4 Ti series to take a lead over its own card and let the competitors eat dust. ATI was busy developing R300, which was being claimed as world's first DirectX 9 card. R300 was soon released as Radeon 9700 and for the first time Nvidia lost its performance crown.


The Radeon 9700 was giving twice the performance of its competitor in high AA and AF levels. Nvidia hurriedly released their next-gen card Geforce FX 5800. This fast push cost Nvidia dearly as the card needed dual slot cooler, consumed a lot of power, and was very noisy. Also, the performance was not up to Radeon 9700 levels. The fight continued with Nvidia releasing refined version and renaming it as Geforce FX 5900 and ATI releasing Radeon 9800 to compete it. Then came small speed bumps with XTs and Pros. But Nvidia had already learnt their lessons.


Nvidia started correcting all the mistakes made in Geforce 5 series. The result was the superior Geforce 6 series, which had more features, ran cooler, and consumed low power. Along with that, it supported Shader Model 3.0, which was totally absent in ATI counterparts; X800 series. This fight got extended to the Geforce 7 series from Nvidia and Radeon X1800 from ATI. Today, we have their speed bumped card from the same generation, Geforce 7950 GX2 and Radeon X1950XTX.

While, Radeon X1950XTX remains largely the same, Nvidia Geforce 7950 GX2 is the successor to Geforce 7900 GX2. The 7900 GX2 and 7950 GX2 are actually Dual GPU, single card solution.

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Tag keywords
Nvidia ATI 7950 7900 GTX GX2 Quad SLI X1900XT X1900XTX X1950XTX Crossfire Forceware 91.47 Catalyst 6.9 3D Mark 2003 2005 2006 Quake 4 Serious Sam 2 Fear Half Life 2 Lost Coast AMD ECS ASUS Vantec



Discussion Board
(29) Comments
Gourav_S
,Delhi, on Oct 13, 2006 05:33 PM
Superb Techtree..., Keep up the Good Work :D
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manneru
,Hyderabad, on Dec 07, 2006 11:47 AM
we no that
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Rockfella
,Delhi, on Dec 17, 2006 05:20 PM
Hey..... can you give me some good advices on videio cards...?
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april
,cagayan de oro, on Dec 06, 2006 12:17 PM
can i have an internet in my cellphone unit k310i
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goobimama
,goa, on Nov 05, 2006 09:43 PM
Nvidia's PureVideo HD is the best decoder out there. Better than ATi's. Better than most DVD players.
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Riyaz
,thrissur, on Nov 05, 2006 05:00 PM
nvidia is trying to sacrifice image quality to attain high frame rates.so as you keep on increasing settings the performance difference between ati & nvidia becomes negligible
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JEETU
,INDIA, on Nov 04, 2006 03:58 PM
OK
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Atul
,Pune, on Oct 19, 2006 10:03 AM
analysis, conclusions and quality of content is really peerless.
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alien
,z-13c, on Oct 13, 2006 07:04 PM
By the way, There is one more thing which I feel should have been covered. Along with Performance, there should be over all Image Quality Check... gamers not only invest in card for just maximum FPS but Great Image Quality at Maximum FPS. By what I've been reading over net regarding 7950GX2 vs. 1950XTX, that not only 1950XTX provides features like HDR and FSAA.. they are better than the competetion and 1950XTX beats GX2 in overall image quality. I may sound like ATi fanboy... but the fact is I've been loyal to nVidia since long time. Given the situation of current High-End cards I'm seriously thinking of giving ATi crossfire a shot.
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KingKong
,HongKong, on Oct 13, 2006 07:50 PM
dumbo, read the whole article, there has been image quality checks.
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sumit
,mumbai, on Oct 14, 2006 08:39 AM
i bet this king kong person is the author posting under an alias. busted? ;)
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Punit
,Techtree Test Labs, on Oct 14, 2006 08:51 AM
Oh No!!!! I have been busted. Actually, I post under the name 'Sumit' from mumbai. Yup, dats my real identity.
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sumit
,mumbai, on Oct 15, 2006 07:35 PM
lol cry baby. ;)
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alien
,z-13c, on Oct 16, 2006 07:28 PM
KingKong from HongKong seem to have brain size of flea bee. Anyway, what I said was : here should be over all Image Quality Check....... what does that Mean... that doesn't mean using just ONE GAME at ONE LEVEL (game level, just so you don't get confused). Try comparing both the card using myriad games using verious situation.. outdoor scenes, indoor scenes, ambient lighting and so on. Besides that there is also HD capabilities of these card.
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Vivek Nair
,New Delhi, on Oct 14, 2006 11:25 PM
As a non-gamer, when I play, I look mainly for FPS. A game does not look good if it seems as if someone is clicking photographs very fast! I'm willing to tone down the quality setting to get my XFX 6600GT GDDR3 256MB to give a consistent 60 FPS, because if gives a flow to the game. I think that only die-hard gamers are going to invest all that money for GFX cards.
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Soham Dutta
,Jorhat, on Oct 14, 2006 05:14 PM
Why dont you opt for a Core2Duo processor, may be a Core2Extreme E6800. That would give far better performances.
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Udit Agarwal
,Kolkata, on Oct 13, 2006 08:53 PM
whoa excellent review the first Good review by TT
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Max
,Mumbai, on Oct 14, 2006 12:14 PM
Every second article by TT is termed as "The First good review by TT for a change". Your sarcasm's gone stale. Think fresh kiddos.
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Aatif
,Mumbai, on Oct 14, 2006 03:22 PM
yea ur right max. . .they act like TT reviewers r little kids luking for praise. . .write an article urself and show udit. . THEN say first good review. . show me a better indian tech site. ..
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Douglas Quaid
,Houston, TX, on Oct 14, 2006 05:27 AM
Hey TT in all seriousness how much does nVidia folks pay you to hype up their products?! Problems installing ATi drivers?! nVidia & ATi having same image quality?! Oh Puleassse!!! The whole world knows ATi cards have far far better image performance it has 8-bit color depth compared to nvidias 6. The only reason ATi is was lagging was coz of no shadermodel 3.0 support in X900 cards but things have changed now & you can see for yourself what difference does HDR make. Besides nvidia can't do both HDR+FSAA at once which you already pointed out. By all means ATi is rocking. Not most of us can shell out $800 for a quad-sli or crossfire setups...props to those who can. So in all fairness ATi rules you biased n00bs!
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Max
,Mumbai, on Oct 14, 2006 12:18 PM
"When you are looking for a dual card solution, ATI X1950XTX Crossfire setup wins hands down. Quad SLI still hasn't matured enough, offering very little performance leap. The price to pay for dual card solution directly doubles, i.e. 2 x 7950 GX2 for roughly 70,000 and ATI X1950XTX for 60,000. This makes the X1950XTX Crossfire setup not only a cheaper solution, but also most powerful graphic setup. Not only is it a victory for the ATI cards but also for the implementation of Crossfire technology over SLI; at least for now." - Conclusion by TT. Are you blind or u were just dropped on ur head when u were born? Read the whole thing b4 u rant. At least have a reason to crib.
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Swaroop
,Bangalore, on Oct 14, 2006 09:53 AM
Dear Punit, excellent article dude, but i'd like to point out a fault in the specs. The Radeon 1950XTX has 16 Pixel Pipelines & 48 Pixel Shaders NOT 48 Pixel Pipelines . Hope you correct the discrepancy ASAP. Keep the great articles comin'!
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Manu Vajpai
,Kanpur, on Oct 14, 2006 02:26 AM
How the hell are you supposed to infer differences in image quality in these small images? Let sense prevail. Please include links for larger pics. These small things count a lot, thereby defining the quality of your material.
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Ghosh
,Cal, on Oct 14, 2006 03:00 AM
Good point. Seconded.
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Punit
,Techtree Test Labs, on Oct 14, 2006 08:19 AM
I am really srry for not able to post the high res image of 1920 x 1440 as each image is consuming 8MB. Currently, our CMS is not capable to cupport such high res image. In these small images, check the wall on the right side. One will notice difference immediatly
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sumit
,mumbai, on Oct 14, 2006 08:36 AM
they're out of focus too. you guys need a better cameraman.
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Ghosh
,Cal, on Oct 14, 2006 01:46 AM
Systemmatic and very painstakingly thorough - kudos, Punit! Comments: Surprised to see the 2xATI CrossFire attaining EXACTLY the same score for BOTH 1600x1200 and 1900x1440 in Half-Life 2, Lost Coast, for BOTH 'No AA/AF' and '4xAA/16xAF' settings (Page-12). Typo: "HDR does imapacts..." (Page-5).
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Punit
,Techtree Test Labs, on Oct 14, 2006 08:21 AM
Thats proably due to CPU limitation. I guess, we will have to wait for Kentsfield or sumthing. : )
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Ch453
,Bangalore, on Oct 13, 2006 06:30 PM
Excellent article Punit... Keep 'em coming
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