nVidia's Problems

[BenSkywalker]

Alright let's get all of nV's issues grouped together-

Pixel Shader 2.0 performance is horrible

Missing some of the PS 2.0 level features in their drivers, HDR as an example which is going to be used by HL2

Driver bugs completely screwing up the fog in several titles(MOH as an example)

AA quality @ 4x and higher sucks compared to ATi

Gets their @ss kicked in some games embarassingly so(Mafia as an example)

Dropping AF quality compared to the NV2X line while ATi is making huge gains

'Brilinear' hack to improve performance

Cheats in 3DMark2K3 with static clip plains with older drivers

Per app optimizations can create confusion on how the boards will perform across the board

Am I missing any here? Are there any that nV users disagree with? It would be nice if we could just get all of this out so it doesn't have to be repeated ad nauseam.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A valiant but futile effort Ben :beer: Without delving into the psychological reasons for why they do it, people will continue to incessantly reiterate/parrot/disseminate every negative thing they can about nV, or any other company that they take issue with for that matter. In the end it boils down to a paraphrasing of the adage "If someone likes something they will tell a couple people. If they hate something, they will tell 15 or 20 people" Regardless, it's of little consequence to me and they do not influence my spending habits so they can enjoy the carpal tunnel all that typing required by the out pouring of vitriol gives them

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Alright let's get all of nV's issues grouped together-

Pixel Shader 2.0 performance is horrible

but improving...

Missing some of the PS 2.0 level features in their drivers, HDR as an example which is going to be used by HL2

aye, agreed.. what' up with that?

Driver bugs completely screwing up the fog in several titles(MOH as an example)

hmmm.. haven't noticed that, but i don't play MOH either

AA quality @ 4x and higher sucks compared to ATi

i disagree there. there are some subyle differences i've noticed under close scrtutiny in ati's favor, but honestly, overall the differences to me are either unnoticeable or negligible.

Gets their @ss kicked in some games embarassingly so(Mafia as an example)

no personal experience.

Dropping AF quality compared to the NV2X line while ATi is making huge gains

a tradeoff for performance that may offend some more than others. i still prefer nv af over ati.

'Brilinear' hack to improve performance

see previous comment.

Cheats in 3DMark2K3 with static clip plains with older drivers

not that i ever put much into 3dm other than it being a pretty demo, but hey, i raised hell with ati's q3 "cheat" awhile back, so gotta be fair and slam nv here.

Per app optimizations can create confusion on how the boards will perform across the board

only nv does this?

Am I missing any here? Are there any that nV users disagree with? It would be nice if we could just get all of this out so it doesn't have to be repeated ad nauseam.

i had a 9700p. great card imo (and still great even today), especially when considering the fiasco which was the 58xx series of nv cards. when i saw a 5900nu for $170, i couldn't resist and i picked one up. spent alot of time with it over the last 25 days, as it's in may main pc (one of 3 in my work area) & my office is at home do i spend 12-16 hrs almost every day in front of it. i thought it was a good card and a great value.

the 9800p was available locall this weekend for $199, and having several improvements over the 9700p (now residing happily in my wife's pc), i picked one up.

ran some ut demo benchmarks with the 5900, then removed it and installed the 9800p using cat 4.2 and ran some ut demo benchies on it, along with a bunch of screen catpures. i had some issues with daoc, and realizing i had neglected to take screenies w/ the 5900, out came the 9800 and the 5900 went back in.

hmm.. daoc issues went away..

you know, i know i'll get a lot of crap for this, but after throwing the 5900, it dawned on me that i preferred that card over the ati. the 2d was crisper, the 3d colors were more vibrant. performance difference was neglible between the 2, some games favoring the nv a bit, and some games favoring the ati.. and some games it went back and forth depending on the resolution.

maybe some of these issues were related to the new catalyst drivers (i had run 4.1 briefly before i replaced the 9700p w/ that 5900, but i WAS going to go back to the 3.10s actually, not thinking the 4.1s were that great), maybe not. i'll have to put the 9800p back in and fiddle with it some, but having the 5900 back in my main rig, i'm kind of liking it....

 

[Conky]

No, caimam, I don't feel any need to give you grief. I have just switched over from a GF4 to a Radeon 9800 Pro and I am seeing improvements in most places but not in all. It really becomes very subjective.

I prefer the 9800Pro colors and image quality over my my GF4 although to be brutally honest, the speed increase I was hoping for is not there is most games and yet in a few games it is a "night and day" much better improvement. Overall, I think it is a nice improvement in image quality and in FPS.

And considering the price of this upgrade, I gotta give it a thumbs up. UT2004 demo looks so much better that UT2003 with this videocard that it almost seems like a whole new game.

 

[vfibsux]

If you ask me I think both of these guys are getting too far ahead of the software with their technology. I think this is where the problems are coming in.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Crazyfool
No, caimam, I don't feel any need to give you grief. I have just switched over from a GF4 to a Radeon 9800 Pro and I am seeing improvements in most places but not in all. It really becomes very subjective.

I prefer the 9800Pro colors and image quality over my my GF4 although to be brutally honest, the speed increase I was hoping for is not there is most games and yet in a few games it is a "night and day" much better improvement. Overall, I think it is a nice improvement in image quality and in FPS.

And considering the price of this upgrade, I gotta give it a thumbs up. UT2004 demo looks so much better that UT2003 with this videocard that it almost seems like a whole new game.

hmm.. what games are you seeing noticeable framerate differences in?

one thing ati could use is something akin to nv's "digital vibrance". seems alot of ppl would like to see the same thing, there's a long thread (petition even) over on rage3d if i remember correctly.

 

[Blastman]

Lately I?m seeing some comments that with NV cards is that some of the lighting is being rendered too bright in some games. Both were 5700U articles. I?m left wondering if this is a result of NV lowering the precision of their drivers too much to gain additional performance so they?re lost dynamic range and some settings will be over-rendered.

In the hardocp test it was noticed on NFS:Underground. Besides the over bright headlights if you look a the tower by the crane (center of picture) the windows on the tower are completely washed out on the 5700U. 5700U ? 9600XT

It was also noticed in other games in this techware article.

Lighting when using the 5700 Ultra was unusual and not correctly presented. In Halo, NFS Underground, and at times in Quake 3 where lighting from lights, headlights, and gun mounted flashlights was pointed at objects, the transition from light to dark was very prounounced and not even. It looks artifical and captures your attention easily. This could be due to drivers or GPU rendering of the lighting, either way this effect was present with any level of AA and AF, on or off.

 

[Insomniak]

Firstly, these aren't Nvidia's problems, they're NV3x's problems. It's just a shoddy architecture.

Being that it's a shoddy architecture, I think it's rather funny that most of the time it still manages to deliver 75% or so of the performance of ATi's cards, and bests them in most all DX8/DX8.1 games.

Bottom line: NV is slightly better for older games that do exist, ATi is theoretically better for upcoming games that don't exist and perfectly adequate for older games that do exist.

Quit the fanboying for one company or another and just pick whichever card suits you best - both NV and ATi have strengths right now in different areas...it depends on what you want to do with the card. This thread will go nowhere but down.

 

[Schadenfroh]

great another flame war thread

 

[BenSkywalker]

i disagree there. there are some subyle differences i've noticed under close scrtutiny in ati's favor, but honestly, overall the differences to me are either unnoticeable or negligible.

Do you own Mafia? If not, and this goes for anyone particularly those of you with high end graphics cards- Wal-Mart is now selling the game for $10 and it is an incredibly good game, one of the best to come out in years. It also happens to remain one of the two titles I tell people they should check out for the pinnacle of PC graphics to date. Anyone that does have the game there is what I would say is the ultimate torture test for AA to date, the power lines running through the city. With nV's AA you get reduced aliasing but still clearly noticeable while ATi's highest setting have them looking silky smooth. For basic tasks all of the various AA settings do fine, but the same with 'easy' situations and texture filtering. Throw something really nasty at the boards and ATi's AA edge shows up and convincingly so.

great another flame war thread

Not my intention. I want to hear from the nVidia owners about the problems with nVidia parts and see if I'm missing any, or if I'm overstating anything. Not looking to hear from ATi owners who want to jump in with things they have heard from a site that has some guy that saw a game running on someone elses rig that they were pretty sure was using a nVidia part and it had problems

"If someone likes something they will tell a couple people. If they hate something, they will tell 15 or 20 people"

Which I can understand, I'm just hoping to hear from the people that actually have a gripe themselves and not something they heard/read on some site. nV owners sounding off on nV issues.

 

[g3pro]

do you know how crappy the ATi cards are?

1) the rage 128 does not have either AF or AA.

2) the rage 128 can only support RAVE and OpenGL.

3) the performance of the rage 128 is comparable to the voodoo1.

 

[kylebisme]

there are much newer cards to consder g3pro.

 

[high]

Well NV is horrible. My GeForce2 MX400 won't even run 3DMark2k1 SE....WTF IS UP WIT THAT!!!

Seriously tho, anyone know why it won't run it?

 

[BFG10K]

Alright let's get all of nV's issues grouped together-

I have to ask: do you think any or all issues you've posted are valid or are you just listing what general opinion would suggest?

Because we've already argued many of these issues in 20 page discussions before and you certainly didn't show much agreement with me there.

 

[VIAN]

Everytime, someone always has to acknowledge that this is gonna start a war.

Pixel Shader 2.0 performance is horrible

Just not the best. Still improving but, ready to hit a wall. It's just not up to par with ATI's performance.

Missing some of the PS 2.0 level features in their drivers, HDR as an example which is going to be used by HL2

PS2, Idk, just know its DX9, which would then mean that they have been falsely advertising their product. And why DX9 SDK doesn't work is beyond me. Looks suspicious. They probably just focused more on OpenGL than DX.

Driver bugs completely screwing up the fog in several titles(MOH as an example)

I can attest to that. Really screwed up the game. It made the game so much less enjoyable than it should have been.

AA quality @ 4x and higher sucks compared to ATi

ATI just uses a better method. Still don't understand why they didn't use Rotated Grid. I'm curious what the story is behind it. Maybe it would have knocked off the Q AA.

Gets their @ss kicked in some games embarassingly so(Mafia as an example)

Very true. The benches show it. They get demolished at some points.

Dropping AF quality compared to the NV2X line while ATi is making huge gains

I've heard that, but don't know if it is true or not.

'Brilinear' hack to improve performance

It improves performance but isn't like bilinear at all. I think this was a smart move, but they should have given it another name instead of redefining trilinear and given an option to turn it on.

Cheats in 3DMark2K3 with static clip plains with older drivers

Noone said that they couldn't do that. Performance versus IQ is all up to them really. Although I think that they should give an option to the consumer to turn on optimizations one by one and/or for certain games. Defining the optimizations. Their main focus should be to render it just as the reference. Then apply the optimizations and see how good they look compared to the reference and how good the performance is. I don't think this is cheating because there were no rules set. unless they make the reference the rules. That would be a good idea.

Per app optimizations can create confusion on how the boards will perform across the board

Sure, but many other variables, influence that too. Each game may stress different parts of the system. Ex. some CPU bound, others GPU bound, others a mixture of both. Then there are per company optimizations that the developer can code for. Then there are from the company per game optimizations like you are saying here. It is very difficult to not have these. If everyone did the same thing how it is supposed to be done, the the similarities between each company increases and there would be no need for these wars. Just which logo looks the best. I like ATI's old logo a little better. The new one is a little more elegant but not as cool. nvidia is just weird, but original.

Being that they also work at higher speeds seem to make ATI more attractive to doing the same with less power and profile. Better engineering, software geared towards performance. I like that. Makes me think of AMD vs Intel. AMD is to ATI as Intel is to Nvidia. I don't like Intel becaus they don't seem to be doing the smart thing. Luckily they are around becaus of their previous reputation that has given themselves to OEMs and because they control the Motherboard specs and things like that. Just like the PS2 is living off of the PSX. PS2 is some horrible POS, yet wins awards - jus as Nvidia and Intel do even though the smart ones that push better performance utilizing less power stay behind. Also can be compared to the car market. While GMC says they are professional grade - they just add more stuff to it. What kind of professional releases a car with potential defects. America puts on the bulk and the Power, while japanese use the brains to make the most out of the least without defects. I think that is smart.

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Per app optimizations can create confusion on how the boards will perform across the board

I don't understand what's wrong with that as long as they're not specific benchmark programs they're optimizing for. If I play a lot of Unreal Tournament, I'd want a card that does well in Unreal Tournament. Granted I wouldn't want the card to be worthless in all other games, but I don't see nVidia "robbing Peter to pay Paul" when optimizing their card for a certain app. The Athlon and P4 are both different animals with different strengths. I'd say this is no different from video cards.

 

[Rogodin2]

I have a 5950 running in a new P4 box of a clients and I've installed MP2 and UT2003 (both are faster on the XT with equal settings and I'm running a 300mhz slower P4)-compared to my 9800xt the colors are washed out (on the same monitor-and if I use DV it is just too contrasty), the AA is much better and you have to use 6x on the 5950 to get close to 4x on the XT, af is about a draw using 8xquality on both.

I also despise the Nvidia display settings menu.

Other than the price diffence that's what I've noticed.

I am hoping that the NV40 is one hell of a card.

rogo

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Pixel Shader 2.0 performance is horrible

Missing some of the PS 2.0 level features in their drivers, HDR as an example which is going to be used by HL2

I'll worry about that when a game comes out that requires this feature to run properly. Where is HL2? I don't know, neither do any of you.

Summarily, I am really pleased with my 5900. I bought a quality model that overclocks really well. It plays all my games with high or maxed out quality settings and I have a great time while playing. And as for me, well that's why I bought the card.

 

[yhelothar]

Pixel Shader 2.0 performance is horrible

Mostly because of precision differences. NV running at higher precision than ATI... NV running at mixed mode runs pretty much on par to ATI.

Missing some of the PS 2.0 level features in their drivers, HDR as an example which is going to be used by HL2

It does work AFAIK, just not with NV3x path. But if you want to use 32FP precision, I think it should be able to use HDR. NV has more PS2.0 level features than ATI, it supports much longer instructions.

Driver bugs completely screwing up the fog in several titles(MOH as an example)

Same can be said for ATI, except a lot of ATI driver bugs causes the entire game to not work at all, let alone just the fog.
Though I guess you can say this is NVIDIA's problem.

AA quality @ 4x and higher sucks compared to ATi

You can use RGSS AA, or the OGSS, but only with DX games. 4xS and 6xS AA is RGSS. Yes it doesn't perform as well, but it's quality you are talking about here.

Gets their @ss kicked in some games embarassingly so(Mafia as an example)

so does ATI...

Dropping AF quality compared to the NV2X line while ATi is making huge gains

Where exactly did you hear NV3x line has worse AF quality than NV2x? Go get a clue before you come on here making wild claims.

'Brilinear' hack to improve performance

Yeah NV cheated here.. in one game... one driver release.. I don't think this is still a problem

Cheats in 3DMark2K3 with static clip plains with older drivers

I don't think this is a problem. I believe the problem is 3DMark03 being utter crap.

Per app optimizations can create confusion on how the boards will perform across the board

By doing this, the benefits outweigh the problems by far

 

[Pete]

I love how many people have come in and attempted to refute Ben's list almost point by point. And you were worried about ATi fans, Ben?

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Firstly, these aren't Nvidia's problems, they're NV3x's problems. It's just a shoddy architecture.

Being that it's a shoddy architecture, I think it's rather funny that most of the time it still manages to deliver 75% or so of the performance of ATi's cards, and bests them in most all DX8/DX8.1 games.

Bottom line: NV is slightly better for older games that do exist, ATi is theoretically better for upcoming games that don't exist and perfectly adequate for older games that do exist.

Quit the fanboying for one company or another and just pick whichever card suits you best - both NV and ATi have strengths right now in different areas...it depends on what you want to do with the card. This thread will go nowhere but down.

LOL that very first line is quite funny. its like saying honda made a crappy accord (which btw will never happen), its accords fault, not hondas

 

[VIAN]

That is pre-tty funny. Bad accord, no premium gas for you today.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: shady06
LOL that very first line is quite funny. its like saying honda made a crappy accord (which btw will never happen), its accords fault, not hondas

No, you apparently are incapable of associating meaning with words. What I said was like saying "The accord is crappy, not Honda."

You see, my uber-literate friend, NV3x has problems, But GeForces 1 - 4, all the Quadros, and the Nforce chipsets have been nothing but badass. Nvidia doesn't have problems - NV3x does. It's a shoddy architecture, and in no way representative of the company as a whole.

I never said anything about fault. You stuck that in on your own. If my statement is analogous to "It's accord's fault, not Honda's" then Skywalker's original post is like saying "The problem with Honda's board of directors are loose timing belts in the 1996 model year Accord."

Point being, Nvidia is a well diversified company that has put out a lot of great shit and has one bad product line on the market right now.

Please remove head from anus before posting in the future. Thank you in advance.

 

[CaiNaM]

geez.. i just don't see this...

ok, tomorrow the 9800pro goes back in and i give it another chance to somehow mezmerise me like it seems to have done a lot of you guys.. cause i just don't get it at this point.

 

[SilverTrine]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
geez.. i just don't see this...

ok, tomorrow the 9800pro goes back in and i give it another chance to somehow mezmerise me like it seems to have done a lot of you guys.. cause i just don't get it at this point.

Its not going to enhance your sex life but its the best bang/buck gpu out there what do you want dancing monkeys?