A little more than two months after the GeForce FX launch at Comdex, Nvidia recently got in a batch of final reference boards that are representative of what board partners will start releasing next month. While we didn't have much time to test the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, the tests we did run tell an interesting story. As expected, the GeForce FX is a big jump from the fastest GeForce4. The surprise is that Nvidia's best efforts haven't resulted in a card that's much faster, if at all, than the Radeon 9700 Pro. While Nvidia says the drivers are practically ready to ship--they're reported to be stable, compatible, and feature-complete--drivers with optimized performance are months away.

The 3DMark 2001 SE results provide some insights into the card's mixed performance. While the DirectX 9-based 3DMark 2003 is in the works, the 2001 SE benchmark is still a reliable indication of raw performance under DirectX 8. The theoretical tests break down performance in a few critical areas, and as you can see below, the GeForce FX does particularly well in the fill-rate, eight-light geometry, and pixel-shader tests. The advanced vertex shader, written specifically for the ATI hardware features in DirectX 8.1, is the one place where the Radeon 9700 Pro has a clear advantage. In any case, these theoretical tests give an indication that the GeForce FX will be an outstanding card in upcoming games--such as Doom III--that use advanced lighting techniques based on many textures and vertex shaders.

3DMark 2001 SE Theoretical Tests

At a glance, the standard run of 3DMark 2001 SE game tests sums up how the Nvidia and ATI cards compare. The GeForce FX's biggest lead comes at a resolution of 1600x1200 without antialiasing, and even then it's a difference of less than 10 percent. At other settings, the Radeon 9700 Pro posts results that are practically identical to or even lead the Nvidia card. The GeForce FX's speed is still quite apparent relative to the GeForce4 Ti 4600, particularly at the highest resolutions with antialiasing turned on, where the increased memory speed and efficiency come into play.

3DMark 2001 SE Pro

The GeForce FX's lead over the GeForce4 is particularly clear in the Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmarks, and the newer card gets slightly less than double the frame rates at high resolutions and more than double with 4X antialiasing turned on. Some inconsistencies cropped up in the UT 2003 testing, so we've had to leave out comparative Radeon 9700 Pro results in this case, but indications are that the Nvidia and ATI cards run neck and neck here as well.

Unreal Tournament 2003

As surprising as it may be to those who've followed Nvidia's consistent success over the last few years, the graphics giant's newest offering doesn't look like it will be the clear performance leader it was promised to be. It's packed with programmable features that are likely to please the 3D graphics artists that use the workstation version of the card, but with the current drivers, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra doesn't surpass the Radeon 9700 Pro by any significant margin. That's a big disappointment for those who've been holding off on a PC upgrade to get Nvidia's newest card.

It is true that optimized drivers should help performance sometime down the road. Also, what we've seen so far may not be completely representative of final cards that will ship from the likes of PNY, MSI, Leadtek, and other companies that actually produce cards for Nvidia. Still, as important as it is to place first in performance battles, ATI seems to have won this round by virtue of delivering its card sooner. And the story isn't over. Rumors are flying that ATI has a faster card up its sleeve for release just months after the GeForce FX ships. Finally, for those who couldn't imagine paying over $300 for a graphics card, less expensive versions of the GeForce FX will be out later this year. Against all expectations, this year is likely to see very close competition between these two big graphics rivals.

How we tested: All tests were run on systems with the following specs: Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU, Intel D850E motherboard, 512MB PC1066, and Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1. Tests were run with V-sync turned off in the graphics drivers and with texture quality at default driver levels. The Nvidia tests were run with driver version 43.69, and the Radeon 9700 Pro tests used ATI driver version 7.81.

3DMark 2001 SE (build 330) was run at default settings. The Unreal Tournament 2003 retail version was tested on the map DM-Antalus by running individual batch files set to use maximum detail levels at each of the resolutions.