X-bit Watch: Prescott, NV38 Benchmarked

by Grigoriy Gubankov
10/02/2003 | 01:21 PM

AnandTech web-site has managed to get its hands on the yet unannounced NVIDIA GPU, currently known under the “NV38” code-name. The guys could not help to benchmark the GPU that will be branded as the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra against the just announced RADEON 9800 XT. They also threw the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and the RADEON 9800 PRO into the high-end battle. Another comparison has been done in the mainstream market segment – between the RADEON 9600 PRO and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. More surprisingly – the test system was based on the 2.80GHz Prescott processor! Processors with this core will reportedly be announced on the 3^rd of December (see our news-story). Unfortunately, AnandTech’s benchmarks of the “Prescott” processor are almost useless since there is no direct comparison with contemporary Pentium 4 processors with “Northwood” core. Hence, let’s go back to GPU benchmarks. AnandTech concluded that “...ATI [RADEON 9800 XT] clearly wins in 6 games, NVIDIA [NV38] wins in 4 games and the two come very close in 5 games”. Besides, AnandTech says that at the moment there is no point to move from current top-end solutions to the new ones. Additionally, the web-site does not recommend buying any of the graphics cards based on NVIDIA GPUs (for the various reasons). Read AnandTech “Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup” here.

The rise of dotcom companies is over, all markets are occupied and nowadays there is nothing new in the Internet. However, some nice and prospective projects still emerge! This month a group of truly legendary hardware journalists – including Riyad Emeran, Lars-Goran Nilsson, Simon Williams, Lawrence Latif and other famous writers you may know – founded Trusted Reviews web-site. The boys plan to review various kinds of hardware, but until now they were lucky enough to check out a number of the so-called “Media Center PCs” (for instance, they have the world-exclusive Elonex eXentia Preview over here). All-in-all, welcome to Trusted Reviews!

A little bit more information on “ATI vs. NVIDIA” topic. ipKonfig.com has two Merrill Lynch reports with some projections about the future of both companies. NVIDIA is described as losing share in desktop market area, beginning next quarter and continuing. In contrast, the report about ATI is a rather optimistic one. Revenues, profits, and margins are all projected to do better than NVIDIA’s, however, Joseph Osha, an analyst for Merrill Lynch, does not expect ATI to rapidly gain its market share. Overall recommendations are – “Sell” for NVIDIA stock and “Neutral” for ATI. Read ipKonfig’s commentaries among with Merryll Lynch’s report over here.

ViperLair has a review of Corsair TWINX1024-4000 ProSeries memory kit. As you remember, ProSeries kits feature LED lights on the heat-spreaders to enhance visual experience. Additionally, heat-spreaders themselves are equipped with larger sized fins to make cooling even more efficient. Moreover, as ViperLair concluded, ProSeries kit has some improvements in engineering, allowing it to work at lower latencies and higher MHz than “ordinary” TWINX1024-4000 memory kit. Read the review here.