Because I have no personal experience with them obviously. I don't play Sacrafice, CS and I'm not sure which games are Lithtech engine games, apparently none of mine since none of the games I play suffer from input latency issues.
The older Lithtech games that I have that have problems are NOLF, AvP and KPC. AvP2 and NOLF2 are based on the newer Lithtech builds and don't suffer from such issues. The Sac issue is massive Z fighting artifacts throughout the game. They were present in launch drivers and were still there as of the 3.2 release at least. Everyone knows about Coutnerstrike.
I have read your posts over the years, and I have noted your past knowlegeable but biased style.
My bias is based on what I want, and I will gladly buy the product that offers it best no matter who makes it. Drivers are paramount and always have been for me. Feature support is another major issue, but it is fairly a wash as of this point between the big two. Texture filtering is also a major concern of mine, with AA being relatively non important(it's nice, but it isn't close to the level of importance I place on the others).
I am not a hardcore gamer however, and definately don't buy numerous games each month, but I do play alot of the demos, and pick the games I really like to actually purchase.
I'll say this, I don't know of a single person who buys as many games as I do that thinks ATi has good drivers.
I have also assembled several rigs over the last couple years using various cards. The fact is, when I say the ATI's drivers are good, its based on that experience and that alone.
You ever seen me criticize ATi's VIVO capabilities? I don't bash a company because they are that company. When a gamer comes looking for a card and hears that ATi's drivers are equal to that of nVidia's then I certainly take exception. I was lead to believe the same thing and was extremely irrate when I had to actually use the product.
Say what you want, but the vast majority of users share my same experience despite what you claim.
Most PC users seem to think the Intel i810 graphics are fine. You sure you want to go that route?
Currently have Morrowind, Offroad from Rage Software, UT, UT2003, Q3a, WolfET, MOHAA and MotoGP installed and working fine....honestly
I don't doubt any of that. The titles you list are mainly high profile titles, shouldn't be any surprise that those work(although ATi did have the CS issue and also problems with Freelancer when it came out also but I digress). It's when you pick up the game that isn't the kind that is used by the tech sites or for promotional reasons that you start having a greater chance of running in to problems.
BFG-
Unlike nVidia who don't even bother posting release notes?
For what exactly? Are they faster?
Likewise, why is nVidia leaking betas when each of their driver releases are "bug free"?
Speed. The AF speed on the GF4 Ti line as a general example has gone up considerably in the last few months, although that pales in comparison to the massive performance boost the FX 5800 saw from newer drivers.
And don't even try to pretend that the WHQL drivers (often months apart, unlike ATi's 4-6 week cycle) are even remotely bug-free, not after all of the IQ degradation that reviewers themselves (who are usually pretty slow on such things) picked up.
Which IQ issues? The shader search/replace scripts that ATi and nVidia use? ATi had their 4-6 week cycle going when I was using a R300 core board and it wasn't close to fast enough. They had numerous serious bugs that needed to be fixed. I'm waiting to hear an example of nV's game impacting bugs.
Boom-
Just to add to the arguement. Ive never had an mouse latency issues in any litetech engine game i own. Those include AvP2 and NOLF2. With my 9700pro, with cats 2.2 to 3.5.
Older Lithtech games- NOLF and KPC in particular were unplayable.
But, i had very bad mouse latency issues with my GF3. In DeusEx, and GTA3, and ProjectIGI. And that was with the latest drivers at the time. v30.41
DeusEX had the same problem on ATi boards and also the Kyro2(that I had a chance to experience first hand). It only ran properly on 3dfx hardware for quite some time. GrandTheftAuto3 has the same problem with the R9500Pro with all the drivers I tried unless you patch the game and then do the workaround for it(lower your AGP aperture setting to the lowest possible), that is a game bug. I don't own ProjectIGI, didn't look appealing to me in the least. If I find it in a bargain bin somehwere I'll pick it up and test it out. Really want to see some of these examples played out.
The AF implementation on ATI cards has equal to, if not better IQ than nvidia cards.
No, it really isn't close.
You dont notice the textures being AF`ed at certain angles
Maybe you don't, I do.
Have a look at the reviews that compare nvidia cards to ATI ones in 3D IQ.
You mean reviews like Anand's where he can't even tell the difference between bilinear and trilinear? Most reviewers don't see too much properly. ATi's AF implementation besides having the obvious issues with improperly filtering angles also is too agressive with their LOD bias which actually
increases texture aliasing instead of reducing it. The FX isn't perfect either, they drop the ball on certain angles(although not nearly as bad as ATi) with their adaptive filtering. The only board that I've seen that really does AF right is the GF4, unfortunately that is very slow in comparison. Between the FX and the R3X0 boards the FX offerings are noticeable superior in AF quality. The majority of reviewers harp on AA. I read one of the reviews someone posted a link to hear and they posted some screenshots from an AA comparison tool and using that
alone judged the R3x0 boards to have superior IQ. Considering that AF impacts a significantly larger portion of screenspace then AA, you would think that at the very least they could cover the shortcomings with the various implementations. Whenever the majority of reviewers do look at AF IQ, they almost always look at LOD Bias. That makes about as much sense as running HD Tach to test your vid cards fill rate. We saw this with the R200 core boards and some reviewers praising ATi's disgustingly horrendous AF implementation on that board. Obviously the R3x0 is leaps and bounds above that, but you wouldn't know it by reading some reviewers comments about the R200 core boards AF. If the only thing you care about in terms of IQ is AA on recent titles then obviously the R3x0 boards come out ahead and comfortably at that.