3DMark gurus splurge early
What difference does a few hours make?
THOSE HOPING TO GET a sneak peek at the heavy-weight match up of the week - 3870 X2 v 9800 GX2 in 3DMark Vantage - are in luck, as early screen shots from the benchmarking software have hit the Wibble showing just that combo.
Vantage, the latest in the 3DMark series of benchmarks to come out of Futuremark in Scandinavia, is due for release later on today - which means that 'testers' have had their hands on code for a while now. It seems that one or two just couldn't keep a lid on their excitement and had to post up the results.
In the benchmark, it appears that the Radeon 3870 X2 scores 8259, whilst the Geforce 9800 GX2 knocks 11308 out of the park - a substantial win. The base system for both was a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 running in an Asus P5E3, using the X48 chipset.
A quick and dirty analysis of the screenshots shows that the Geforce has the edge in 'Feature Test 1', which appears to text throughput, with the GX2 scoring 1287 GTexels/s to the Radeon's apparently paltry 780. The Geforce also wins big in 'Feature Test 3', scoring 25FPS to the Radeon's 3. Driver bug or genuine performance delta?
Nobody will know until the world at large has had a chance to dissect the log files, no doubt accompanied by oodles of spin from both the green and red+green camps.
Look out for Vantage to hit virtual shelves this afternoon here, check out the screen shots for yourself here, and wait for the inevitable deluge of web-wide hardware Wibbling on the topic by this evening. µ
Comments
Read between the lines
3870 X2 is half-clocked and 9800 X2 is overclocked...Comments?
seem like fake nvidia fanboy potatoshop.Radeon downclocked and Nvidia not
Well, if you really took the time to check the screenshots, you would see radeon being downclocked(438 from 850) and Nvidia overclocked (from 600 to 732). So the results are not really valid. Anyway 45min till it comes. (new Vantage benchmark that is)Crashes
I've downloaded it and given it a go, it took about three tries just to get into the application because they're running everything through their servers which are being hammered at the moment.I don't have a score yet either as it crashes about halfway through the tests claiming it's tried to make an invalid DirectX call. I'm not sure if it's the Nvidia drivers being rubbish (which wouldn't surprise me) or if Futuremark needed to spend a bit more time bug testing.
Damn!
Nvidia hit it out of the park. Poor ATI, maybe their 770 will make up the difference. Finally nice to see what performance is like in a pure DX10 enviroment.Does 3DMark really matter?
Other than to people that spend more time "testing" (and i use the word loosely) their rig than actually playing with it? I mean, really folks, who gives a crap what a great 3DMark score a card has, if it still runs games only mediocre? Who cares that some idjit overclocked and nitrogen cooled their rig to get 1 bazillion marks, since it doesn't translate into real-world performance? Who cares since both companies hack the s**t out of their drivers in order to "win" using methods not applicable to any real game?Personally, Kyle Bennett's approach is the proper one, take the cards, and run them flat out adjusting the settings to get the best experience per game. 3DMark should die an ignominious death...
**sigh**
The screenshots are 2d mode.The Radeon downclocks itself in 2d mode to conserve power.
Morons.
You honestly thing it could score 8xxx when only half clocked??? lol
Futuremark cheaping out
I think their new standard of allowing only one free test is bullshite and I'm not afraid to say it. The Onion sold out, face it. They used to be about the gamers and now they're only about themselves.Unsure
Admittedly it does look like the 3870X2 has been underclocked however its hard to be sure as once in 2D mode the card should underclock itself to about that level.Regardless its hard to be sure and the results aren't really valid anyway since the 9800GX2 is overclocked.
I want to see some solid trustworthy results. Maybe The INQ could whip some up for us?
Just nit picking :P
"which appears to text throughput"This tells us nothing! Grr!
It's impossible to tell what the real 3D clock speed of the 3870 X2 was, it still may be fanboy slant - then again DUH, a forum for fanboys, what do you expect?The 9800 has a 20%+ overclocked speed advantage over stock. I doubt the 3870 was clocked much. I was hoping to see a apples to apples comparisson....
A fairer dollar-for dollar would be X2 + 3870 for three way CF which could turn the tables.
Oim Discusted!
Who's getting card-spanked? Is the splurg really working? General dismahem (that's what this is)!