Carmack Offers His Spin On The GeForceFX

John Carmack, Technical Director at Id Software and Lead Programmer of Doom III renders his opinion of the GeForceFX vs. the Radeon 9700 Pro in his latest .plan file. John provides a heavy in depth technical in analysis of the two cards and their performance with Doom III.

John says, "At the moment, the NV30 is slightly faster on most scenes in Doom than the R300, but I can still find some scenes where the R300 pulls a little bit ahead." While on the surface this appears to be good news for Nvidia, John explains that "The issue is complicated because of the different ways the cards can choose to run the game.".

It appears that John, like our own Lars Weinand found some disadvantages to the GeForceFX as well. John goes on to highlight these issues by saying, "The current NV30 cards do have some other disadvantages: They take up two slots, and when the cooling fan fires up they are VERY LOUD. I'm not usually one to care about fan noise, but the NV30 does annoy me.". It seems like Lars, John is also unhappy about the fan noise. Lars has caused quite a stir by releasing recorded MP3 files that compare the GeForceFX fan noise levels.

Gamers have come to pay very close attention to evaluations offered by Carmack about video cards and video card technology. Carmack ends his .plan file by saying, "As always, better cards are coming soon." Although, he does not define what he considers "soon" to be, as reported earlier in the week ATI will fire off another shot with the expected announcement of the R350 very shortly. What perhaps is the best news to come of all of this is that the price of solid Doom III capable cards will continue to fall.

You can click here to read Carmack's entire .plan file in detail.

In case you have been living under a rock and have missed it, you can click here to read Lars Weinand's in depth look at the GeForceFX and listen to the fan noise for yourself if you like.