Radeon HD X2900 XT or Nvidia 8800 GTS 640mb

[BFG10K]

I guess you must've missed the hot fix released by MS that explicitly deals with the differences between Vista's WDDM graphics driver vs. XP, which was also covered in Part 3 of AT's 2GB Wall article.

I didn't miss it. Does it fix the Final Fantasy XI issues with nVidia cards on Vista? No? Then what relevance does it have?

The hotfix addressing bugs in Vista, it doesn't change the kernel to that of XP.

As for the 7900GTX vs. the 8800, that's fine and good but its also been covered that the NV4X and G80 cards are not running the same driver path, even if NV has managed to shrink the drivers to the point they are packaged in a Unified Driver.

Well that's the point I was making, namely the G80 driver path having issues with legacy games.

Not sure why ATI performance in FFXI is better

Because they have better drivers and they've been better since the GF5 days.

But again, I'm leaning towards an application issue considering SE's continued stance they will not support Vista,

But again ATi runs the game fine on Vista. If it's an application issue nVidia needs to work around it like ATi have.

And again, the fact you say most U2-based games and not all while implicitly acknowledging the games are developed by different devs with different levels of talent suggests that the problems are on the application level.

Uh-huh, more "application issues" which don't exist on Radeon cards (or even on pre-G80 cards for that matter). There is nothing wrong with the applications, it's nVidia's drivers and they're too lazy to fix them.

Even worse, they continue to trumpet the virtues of TWIMTBP while G80 users stutter all over the place ("the way it's mean to be played").

Chances are though you're not seeing them because you're only dealing with your current hardware, which atm is a G80. I couldn't run BG2 on my 9700pro....didn't bother to research a fix for it because honestly, I didn't care enough to look for a fix.

Every video card I own is subjected a battery of tests which includes testing legacy titles as old as ten years old. The only card I've have more issues than a G80 is a 6800 Ultra which is the worst video card I've ever had the displeasure of using.

My 9700 Pro and X800 XL certainly had driver issues but they were consistently more compatible and more stable than anything I've had from nVidia since the GF4 days.

And doesn't ATi have problems with OpenGL?

No, not really. ATi OpenGL has been very good for quite some time now except maybe on the R6xx which understandably requires some optimization.

Again, when's the last time you downloaded a patch or update with Unreal 2? Tried a 2900 or 2600 with Unreal 2? Did your 7800 have any problems running the title?

The 7800/7900 GTX didn't, no. The 6800 Ultra did and so does the G80. It appears Unreal 2's primitive lighting too taxing for nVidia's flagship chipset.

Sorry, you can blame NV drivers all you want, but the reality of it is that not all of your titles are going to be supported ad infinitum. Might as well complain about how you can't get Win95/98 drivers anymore for your current GPUs.

Not really given those titles run fine on ATi. And ad infinitum? LMAO! Unreal 2 was current at the time the DEP issues were happening on the 6800 Ultra.

I suppose you mean after I buy a game from a store I can't expect nVidia to run it after the time it takes me to get home and install it? :roll:

Again, I don't have any problems running any of the games I've played in the 10 months I've owned my GTS, save for the bleached out overlays in FFXI I've already mentioned.

I do.

Almost a year later I still can't play CoD:UO, Jedi Academy and Red Faction due to rendering and/or performance issues and the former two are 2003 titles and also OpenGL which is claimed to be nVidia's turf.

What is nVidia's cutoff for supporting legacy games? Four years? Two years? One year?

If there's a cutoff it needs to be listed on their boxes and website: "nVidia do not support games older than X years. If you require this support please go to another vendor".

If they aren't putting that up then I expect all of my games to run better than they did on my previous GPU instead of getting tiresome excuses like "it's too old" and "it's the application" after they've gotten my money.

If you're fed up with NV drivers and willing to sacrifice some performance in current games for better support with legacy games, go with ATi.

I'm not willing to sacrifice the performance but I'm also not willing to sacrifice legacy support when it?s nothing more than nVidia incompetence and/or laziness causing it.

What I'm fed up is with nVidia apologists claiming it's an application/OS fault every time an nVidia driver problem is exposed.

I'm also fed up of nVidia apologists claiming it's unreasonable to run games made in the last few years while the competition does it without issues.

UT2004 is a TWIMTPB title that is only three years old. Is it unreasonable to expect it to play it properly on nVidia?s flagship chipset? I think not. If you think so then you?re getting screwed over by your vendor.

Again if nVidia have a cutoff for legacy titles they need to list this so potential customers can choose before they make a purchase.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I guess you must've missed the hot fix released by MS that explicitly deals with the differences between Vista's WDDM graphics driver vs. XP, which was also covered in Part 3 of AT's 2GB Wall article.

I didn't miss it. Does it fix the Final Fantasy XI issues with nVidia cards on Vista? No? Then what relevance does it have?

The hotfix addressing bugs in Vista, it doesn't change the kernel to that of XP.

May or may not, I haven't bothered to load it up on my Vista install because I no longer play the game. I've moved on. The others who have reported problems where I've linked the fix have not replied whether it has improved performance or not in some of the main cases where NV has claimed an application/OS issue, namely FFXI and BF2/2142. I have seen from reports that it does in fact fix performance issues in LOTRO. Nzone direct links the hotfix now on their driver page, as does LOTRO's DX10 patch notes, which confirms the problems with Vista vs. XP are in fact real, and not something NV has been making up all along.

As for not changing the kernel to that of XP, no it doesn't, there's obviously still differences in the way the two kernels deal with the video driver (most of which are good, like being able to restart the driver without crashing the kernel), but it does address the single biggest problem with Vista WDDM and G80s, the use of @2x system memory relative to video memory. Sound familiar? It should...since most performance issues and slow downs in Vista are attributed to problems with the G80s flushing cached textures or running out of system memory.

Well that's the point I was making, namely the G80 driver path having issues with legacy games.

Yet you still don't acknowledge different architectures, different shaders, different driver paths simply aren't going to perform as well with code written for completely different hardware years earlier......

Because they have better drivers and they've been better since the GF5 days.

In your experience, I'm sure others would disagree or have just as many horror stories to mirror your own.

But again ATi runs the game fine on Vista. If it's an application issue nVidia needs to work around it like ATi have.

Again, not true at all, especially in cases where the Devs are still "supporting" the product and certainly not in the case where the game runs fine on the legacy platform that the Devs support. And again, ATi may not have needed to do anything to work around it, the R600 may just be running the R300 path with less performance issues than the G80 runs G4X code. Does that mean it couldn't run FFXI better? No. Does that mean they're going to optimize their drivers for a 6 year old port that fewer and fewer people play everyday? No.

Uh-huh, more "application issues" which don't exist on Radeon cards (or even on pre-G80 cards for that matter). There is nothing wrong with the applications, it's nVidia's drivers and they're too lazy to fix them.

Because you can say for certainty there are no problems with any legacy games on the R600 cards you don't have. Right.

Even worse, they continue to trumpet the virtues of TWIMTBP while G80 users stutter all over the place ("the way it's mean to be played").

Haven't experienced any stuttering at all, not even in titles where its been reported as a major problem (BF2/2142).

Every video card I own is subjected a battery of tests which includes testing legacy titles as old as ten years old. The only card I've have more issues than a G80 is a 6800 Ultra which is the worst video card I've ever had the displeasure of using.

Interesting, I had no problems at all running old and new games with a 6800GS, including FFXI. But again that doesn't discount the fact you're assuming there aren't similar problems with R600 or the R5XXs, since they weren't subject to the same battery of testing you put the problematic NV cards you've owned through.

My 9700 Pro and X800 XL certainly had driver issues but they were consistently more compatible and more stable than anything I've had from nVidia since the GF4 days.

The 6800 and 8800 have been every bit as good as my 9700pro, and in the case of the 8800, relative performance has been better as well.

No, not really. ATi OpenGL has been very good for quite some time now except maybe on the R6xx which understandably requires some optimization.

Again, not gonna argue this, just need to run a quick search to find plenty complaining about poor OpenGL performance on Radeon-based cards.

Again, when's the last time you downloaded a patch or update with Unreal 2? Tried a 2900 or 2600 with Unreal 2? Did your 7800 have any problems running the title?

The 7800/7900 GTX didn't, no. The 6800 Ultra did and so does the G80. It appears Unreal 2's primitive lighting too taxing for nVidia's flagship chipset.

Didn't bother answering any of the relevant questions, but I guess its normal to expect full backwards and forwards compatiblity, while assuming performance is fine and dandy with products you don't own or haven't tested. :roll:

Not really given those titles run fine on ATi. And ad infinitum? LMAO! Unreal 2 was current at the time the DEP issues were happening on the 6800 Ultra.

Not familiar with that problem, probably because I was running a 9700pro when I played Unreal 2. I guess the problem doesn't exist. :roll:

I suppose you mean after I buy a game from a store I can't expect nVidia to run it after the time it takes me to get home and install it? :roll:

Should you expect it if the game and hardware are both recent? Sure. Can you expect it? No. Not even on ATi cards. Reality of it is PC gaming and hardware are buggy as hell, a constant work in progress and something you need to research beforehand without making assumptions. If you're expecting plug and play support you might want to check out a console.

I do.

Almost a year later I still can't play CoD:UO, Jedi Academy and Red Faction due to rendering and/or performance issues and the former two are 2003 titles and also OpenGL which is claimed to be nVidia's turf.

What is nVidia's cutoff for supporting legacy games? Four years? Two years? One year?

If there's a cutoff it needs to be listed on their boxes and website: "nVidia do not support games older than X years. If you require this support please go to another vendor".

If they aren't putting that up then I expect all of my games to run better than they did on my previous GPU instead of getting tiresome excuses like "it's too old" and "it's the application" after they've gotten my money.

I'd say its reasonable to expect your games to run titles within their life cycle, or even their warranty period. Even with the "lifetime warranty" on recent cards, there's usually a disclaimer that says its about 3 years. Funny how you don't put the same expectations on the titles themselves. Most games are out of support within a year, no patches, no updates, no support from the Devs. Yet you expect that from hardware vendors both forward and backwards. Makes a lot of sense. Really. :roll:

I'm not willing to sacrifice the performance but I'm also not willing to sacrifice legacy support when it?s nothing more than nVidia incompetence and/or laziness causing it.

What I'm fed up is with nVidia apologists claiming it's an application/OS fault every time an nVidia driver problem is exposed.

I'm also fed up of nVidia apologists claiming it's unreasonable to run games made in the last few years while the competition does it without issues.

UT2004 is a TWIMTPB title that is only three years old. Is it unreasonable to expect it to play it properly on nVidia?s flagship chipset? I think not. If you think so then you?re getting screwed over by your vendor.

Again if nVidia have a cutoff for legacy titles they need to list this so potential customers can choose before they make a purchase.

Except when it actually is an application/OS problem and not a driver-specific problem right? You read the release notes in every patch, there's usually at least 1 "driver problem" thats fixed by simply pointing the game .ini to the proper code path because the game devs didn't do it themselves. Vista hot fix being another example of an OS problem that NV has maintained that seemingly has fixed many "driver problems". Wasn't the fog issue in CS:S finally fixed after Valve grudgingly patched the game?

Again, if you're fed up with NV's drivers and legacy support, go with the competition. I mean all you're giving up is the best performing part and AA in current and future games, but I guess some people just want to have their cake and eat it too.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
2) The issue I'm referring to was NOT the Alt-Tab "issue" because you cannot alt-tab out of Final Fantasy XI. It is designed to disallow that to happen and will kick you from the game's server and force you to sign in again. It is still a problem for people I talk to.

Wow still harping on about problems with a crappy 6-year old PS2 port in Vista, that happens to work fine on the OS the crappy port was coded for when released. The fact FFXI does run fine in XP (always did, except for the small bleached-out overlay problem that was fixed with the 100-series drivers) and SE's continued stance they will not support Vista should tell you its an application problem and not a driver/OS problem. Sorry, expecting old games to work with new hardware and OS over the span of years with little to no support from the devs is expecting too much.

Do you even keep up with what SE says? I think not. The new expansion will have full Vista support. They have released a POL that works 100% in Vista, they are even working on a windower app that they will support.

Just shut up right now because you have no clue...no clue at all.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I'll run DX10 anyway to get the better effects. 30fps is not unplayable in any game.

What is your fixation with DX10? How many games have you played under DX10?

I'll tell you how many I've done: zero, despite having G80 hardware since last November, and I have no immediate plans to change that.

Also MoH:Airborne doesn't even have DX10 and Bioshock only has a marginal IQ gain under DX10. But AA certainly makes a huge difference in these titles.

Well, in the case that the game looks better in DX10 but runs slightly slower I will take DX10.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

and SE's continued stance they will not support Vista should tell you its an application problem and not a driver/OS problem. Sorry, expecting old games to work with new hardware and OS over the span of years with little to no support from the devs is expecting too much.

To be fair he's saying his 2900 has no such issues in which case it's likely nVidia at fault. If ATi runs it fine then you can't really blame Vista or the developer.

I can understand where he's coming from as I have a large investment in legacy games and nVidia's support of such titles is generally lackluster compared to ATi.

I'm still waiting for Jedi Academy and United Offensive to be fixed and those games are only four years old.

This is what I'm saying. SE never said they did not support Vista. They released a PlayOnline application that is 100% Vista certified.

Likely if Chizow actually played an MMO for years and invested thousands of hours into it, he would see what I'm saying. The fact that I could buy a HD2900 and play the games with no trouble says something. Whether Nvidia fixed it NOW or not doesn't apply to me. When I wanted to upgrade, it was a recurring topic of issue. I still see people online asking if people know of a fix, they have tried the latest drivers etc. Sometimes they still have the game dropping to 5fps for no reason. Going back to an old card like a 6800 would fix it for them. I'm not saying that Nvidia has to fix it, obviously I don't care because I can run the game flawlessly. I'm just pointing out the reason I bought my HD2900. The game(s) I played regularly had some issues running on the 8800. I chose to play it safe with the HD2900. Nothing more. Chizow comming here and spewing garbage about a 5year old port and no Vista support is nonsense. You cannot use that argument because SE released a vista supported POL client and is doing more to fix Vista related problems with their monthly update than most other MMOs ever did during their time.

Chizow, if you don't like the game fine. I however continue to play and support the FFXI community. I still enjoy the game after my 5+ years. I keep up with what SE reports about Vista, new updates, fixes, issues etc. There is nothing to say they do not support Vista.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I'll run DX10 anyway to get the better effects. 30fps is not unplayable in any game.

What is your fixation with DX10? How many games have you played under DX10?

I'll tell you how many I've done: zero, despite having G80 hardware since last November, and I have no immediate plans to change that.

Also MoH:Airborne doesn't even have DX10 and Bioshock only has a marginal IQ gain under DX10. But AA certainly makes a huge difference in these titles.

Well, in the case that the game looks better in DX10 but runs slightly slower I will take DX10.

i have played *all* my games in DX10 ... up-till-now ... and only because my resolution was relatively low - 14x9 all the way to 'downright low' at 10x7 on my CRT.
-- i rather liked how the water looked in DX10's BioShock so preferred it to DX9's shaders and didn't find major slowdowns at 14x9 especially since AA was unavailable to me.

On the other hand, with CoJ - it does look nicer with DX10 BUT demands a big performance hit - i had to drop to 10x7 and play it on my CRT for good framerates . ... . that is why i was thinking of X-Fire. Lost Planet also looks a bit better with DX10 except the way they over-implement motion blur made me nervous but runs poorly on my 2900xt last i looked with everything maxed so i went to DX9.

DX10 so far in my games is a big performance hit ... but you guys playing DX9c aren't really missing anything while you are actually playing - as a 'tourist' admiring the scenery and effects, you can tell the difference ... i got to find out that for myself and that is why i am waiting on either X-fire or a faster GPU.

However, this one was an excellent choice as would be a 8800GTS for playing today's maxed out 4xAA/16xAF DX9 games at 16x10.
Seriously glad i upgraded.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Do you even keep up with what SE says? I think not. The new expansion will have full Vista support. They have released a POL that works 100% in Vista, they are even working on a windower app that they will support.

Just shut up right now because you have no clue...no clue at all.

Nope I don't keep up, like I said I stopped playing in late February/Early March. As of that point, they were still on the fence about Vista support but the game ran fine on my 8800GTS and much better than my 9700pro and 6800GS in XP. As for a new expansion that hasn't been released yet with full Vista support....great....we'll cross that bridge when we get there? The fact they did have to release a separate client that supports Vista does in fact tell me it is an APPLICATION/OS issue and not a driver issue. Oh ya, that release came after I stopped playing.

POL Client 3/22/07

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

This is what I'm saying. SE never said they did not support Vista. They released a PlayOnline application that is 100% Vista certified.

Likely if Chizow actually played an MMO for years and invested thousands of hours into it, he would see what I'm saying. The fact that I could buy a HD2900 and play the games with no trouble says something. Whether Nvidia fixed it NOW or not doesn't apply to me. When I wanted to upgrade, it was a recurring topic of issue. I still see people online asking if people know of a fix, they have tried the latest drivers etc. Sometimes they still have the game dropping to 5fps for no reason. Going back to an old card like a 6800 would fix it for them. I'm not saying that Nvidia has to fix it, obviously I don't care because I can run the game flawlessly. I'm just pointing out the reason I bought my HD2900. The game(s) I played regularly had some issues running on the 8800. I chose to play it safe with the HD2900. Nothing more. Chizow comming here and spewing garbage about a 5year old port and no Vista support is nonsense. You cannot use that argument because SE released a vista supported POL client and is doing more to fix Vista related problems with their monthly update than most other MMOs ever did during their time.

Chizow, if you don't like the game fine. I however continue to play and support the FFXI community. I still enjoy the game after my 5+ years. I keep up with what SE reports about Vista, new updates, fixes, issues etc. There is nothing to say they do not support Vista.

I guess you missed the part where I said I'd played FFXI for over 3 years. It was fun, but I moved on. When I left, the game ran great in XP, there were problems in Vista, which I didn't have yet, not that it mattered because SE wasn't supporting Vista yet (there was at least 2 notices saying Vista was not supported and that there was no ETA on a fix).

From what I've gathered on the Windower.net forums, there are still problems with the 8800s, although there does seem to be a workaround that will be fixed on the CLIENT with the expansion due out in November that will update the client to DX9. As I thought might be the case, there seems to be problems with Vista/DX10 and backwards compatibility with DX8 (yes, the game is that old). A workaround is manually installing DX9 on your Vista install and pointing FFXI to run in DX9 mode rather than default DX10 in Vista. Now, if Nvidia is expected to package DX9 with their drivers and force install them on your OS in order to get a 6 year old game working properly, I guess its NV's fault heh.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Do you even keep up with what SE says? I think not. The new expansion will have full Vista support. They have released a POL that works 100% in Vista, they are even working on a windower app that they will support.

Just shut up right now because you have no clue...no clue at all.

Nope I don't keep up, like I said I stopped playing in late February/Early March. As of that point, they were still on the fence about Vista support but the game ran fine on my 8800GTS and much better than my 9700pro and 6800GS in XP. As for a new expansion that hasn't been released yet with full Vista support....great....we'll cross that bridge when we get there? The fact they did have to release a separate client that supports Vista does in fact tell me it is an APPLICATION/OS issue and not a driver issue. Oh ya, that release came after I stopped playing.

POL Client 3/22/07

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

This is what I'm saying. SE never said they did not support Vista. They released a PlayOnline application that is 100% Vista certified.

Likely if Chizow actually played an MMO for years and invested thousands of hours into it, he would see what I'm saying. The fact that I could buy a HD2900 and play the games with no trouble says something. Whether Nvidia fixed it NOW or not doesn't apply to me. When I wanted to upgrade, it was a recurring topic of issue. I still see people online asking if people know of a fix, they have tried the latest drivers etc. Sometimes they still have the game dropping to 5fps for no reason. Going back to an old card like a 6800 would fix it for them. I'm not saying that Nvidia has to fix it, obviously I don't care because I can run the game flawlessly. I'm just pointing out the reason I bought my HD2900. The game(s) I played regularly had some issues running on the 8800. I chose to play it safe with the HD2900. Nothing more. Chizow comming here and spewing garbage about a 5year old port and no Vista support is nonsense. You cannot use that argument because SE released a vista supported POL client and is doing more to fix Vista related problems with their monthly update than most other MMOs ever did during their time.

Chizow, if you don't like the game fine. I however continue to play and support the FFXI community. I still enjoy the game after my 5+ years. I keep up with what SE reports about Vista, new updates, fixes, issues etc. There is nothing to say they do not support Vista.

I guess you missed the part where I said I'd played FFXI for over 3 years. It was fun, but I moved on. When I left, the game ran great in XP, there were problems in Vista, which I didn't have yet, not that it mattered because SE wasn't supporting Vista yet (there was at least 2 notices saying Vista was not supported and that there was no ETA on a fix).

From what I've gathered on the Windower.net forums, there are still problems with the 8800s, although there does seem to be a workaround that will be fixed on the CLIENT with the expansion due out in November that will update the client to DX9. As I thought might be the case, there seems to be problems with Vista/DX10 and backwards compatibility with DX8 (yes, the game is that old). A workaround is manually installing DX9 on your Vista install and pointing FFXI to run in DX9 mode rather than default DX10 in Vista. Now, if Nvidia is expected to package DX9 with their drivers and force install them on your OS in order to get a 6 year old game working properly, I guess its NV's fault heh.

The whole point is dude, that the 8800 has issues with this game. I play this game, thus 8800 was NO GO FOR ME. period end of topic discussion

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
The whole point is dude, that the 8800 has issues with this game. I play this game, thus 8800 was NO GO FOR ME. period end of topic discussion

Worked fine for me in XP, and I'm sure I could fix SE's hackjob 6 year old client to work in Vista since they're too lazy/incompetent to fix it themselves. Period. End of topic discussion.

 

[BFG10K]

As for not changing the kernel to that of XP, no it doesn't, there's obviously still differences in the way the two kernels deal with the video driver (most of which are good, like being able to restart the driver without crashing the kernel), but it does address the single biggest problem with Vista WDDM and G80s, the use of @2x system memory relative to video memory.

Again this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that comparatively nVidia has generally far more issues on both XP and Vista than ATi does.

It should...since most performance issues and slow downs in Vista are attributed to problems with the G80s flushing cached textures or running out of system memory.

Err, no. The performance issues and slowdowns were largely attributed to nVidia driver issues, namely the Alt-Tab slowdown bug I've been reporting since 2004 when I experienced it in on the 6800 Ultra using XP. If you look at the driver readme notes for 163.71 you'll see they've finally addressed the issue three years later.

Again I've never had such slowdowns on ATi hardware.

Vista certainly has/had some issues but most them were caused by poor nVidia drivers given ATi had nowhere near the amount of issues. It's also the first time I can recall people were so upset they threatened a lawsuit over nVidia's drivers. Blaming the OS/game instead of the real cause of the problems - nVidia - doesn't help anyone.

In any case the bugs I?ve reporting are on XP. Are you going to start blaming that now as well?

Yet you still don't acknowledge different architectures, different shaders, different driver paths simply aren't going to perform as well with code written for completely different hardware years earlier......

I acknowledge them but if the competition can do better in the same situation you're simply clutching at straws and making excuses.

In your experience, I'm sure others would disagree or have just as many horror stories to mirror your own.

Perhaps they do but I?ve never seen such disgruntlement over drivers in recent times (especially nVidia Vista drivers) which pushed users as far as wanting to sue. I didn?t see any online petition to sue ATi over Vista drivers, did you?

Again, not true at all, especially in cases where the Devs are still "supporting" the product and certainly not in the case where the game runs fine on the legacy platform that the Devs support.

This doesn't appear to be anything except irrelevant rhetoric on your part. Again it's a fact ATi runs the game fine and since it's the same OS and API and roughly equal hardware characteristic there?s no reason why nVidia can?t do the same.

And again, ATi may not have needed to do anything to work around it, the R600 may just be running the R300 path with less performance issues than the G80 runs G4X code.

Which again points to an nVidia driver issue (specifically backwards compatibility) which needs to be addressed.

Does that mean they're going to optimize their drivers for a 6 year old port that fewer and fewer people play everyday? No.

Right, and therein is the problem. Look at the Catalyst 7.9 release notes and you'll see a bugfix for a minor problem for Quake 3's menus, an eight year old game so don?t tell me it can?t be done, and don?t tell me it?s a game/OS issue.

If nVidia weren't so lazy they could do the same.

Because you can say for certainty there are no problems with any legacy games on the R600 cards you don't have

I never claimed that; that's a strawman on your part. What I claimed was that with past ATi cards I've tried they?ve been consistently more robust, Not perfect and not without issues but in any given scenario I presented to them they were more likely to run correct than comparable nVidia hardware.

Haven't experienced any stuttering at all, not even in titles where its been reported as a major problem

Then you aren't looking the right places. Do you have UT2004 on XP? Fire up CTF Citadel and jump into one of the flag rooms. Run around a bit and then start firing when an enemy comes into the room and you'll see the stuttering/hitching is blatantly obvious. If you have trouble replicating the issue the details are in the thread I linked to.

Currently users are resorting to disabling T&L, stripping out all lighting from maps and/or hiding the weapon because apparently a three year old TWIMTBP title is too taxing on nVidia's flagship chipset.

The worst part is that the issue is fixed on Vista but the majority user base on XP is getting the middle finger from nVidia.

Interesting, I had no problems at all running old and new games with a 6800GS, including FFXI.

In recent times nVidia acknowledged the NF3 + NV40 issue can never be fixed.

But again that doesn't discount the fact you're assuming there aren't similar problems with R600 or the R5XXs, since they weren't subject to the same battery of testing you put the problematic NV cards you've owned through.

I had a passively cooled X800 XL which I gamed heavily on for six months. This thing got so hot it could reach 100C during gaming and it was still an absolute rock. It's one of the most stable video cards I've ever used.

The 6800 and 8800 have been every bit as good as my 9700pro, and in the case of the 8800, relative performance has been better as well.

Not for me they haven't. The 6800 U was the worst video card I've ever used (while the 9700 Pro worked well in the same NF3 system) and the G80 is probably the card with the second most driver issues I've had.

The 7900 GTX is probably the best card I've used in recent times out of both ATi and nVidia (I could count the driver issues on that card on one hand) so that proves it is possible for nVidia drivers to deliver. Now they need to deliver on G80 hardware.

Again, not gonna argue this, just need to run a quick search to find plenty complaining about poor OpenGL performance on Radeon-based cards.

No offense but I think you're a bit out of touch with that situation.

Didn't bother answering any of the relevant questions, but I guess its normal to expect full backwards and forwards compatiblity,

What questions? I haven't tried R6xx hardware so I was responding about what I had tried.

while assuming performance is fine and dandy with products you don't own or haven't tested

I didn't assume anything about the R6xx except to repeat the comments made about Final Fantasy made by someone who has tried the game. Again my comments were based on hardware I had tried.

Not familiar with that problem, probably because I was running a 9700pro when I played Unreal 2. I guess the problem doesn't exist.

On the 9700 Pro it most certainly didn't exist which is exactly my point. The funny thing was back then there were nVidia trolls aurguing it was a Microsoft/Intel/AMD/DEP issue even while ATi had no such issues. It took over six months for nVidia to finally fix the problem.

Should you expect it if the game and hardware are both recent? Sure. Can you expect it? No. Not even on ATi cards. Reality of it is PC gaming and hardware are buggy as hell, a constant work in progress and something you need to research beforehand without making assumptions. If you're expecting plug and play support you might want to check out a console.

This is quite a disingenuous response and you know it. It's yet another excuse to accept second-rate drivers from nVidia.

I'd say its reasonable to expect your games to run titles within their life cycle, or even their warranty period. Even with the "lifetime warranty" on recent cards, there's usually a disclaimer that says its about 3 years.

Then again nVidia should put a disclamer on the box ?we don't support games older than three years, purchase from another vendor if you require such support?.

Quite frankly to accept games to stop working after three years is ludicrous on your part and with such low standards it?s no wonder you find G80 driver quality acceptable.

Funny how you don't put the same expectations on the titles themselves. Most games are out of support within a year, no patches, no updates, no support from the Devs.

In most cases titles don't need patches if the drivers are as good as they should be.

Yet you expect that from hardware vendors both forward and backwards.

ATi can do it quite well. Why can't nVidia? They run the same OS, same API and roughly the same hardware.

Except when it actually is an application/OS problem and not a driver-specific problem right? You read the release notes in every patch, there's usually at least 1 "driver problem" thats fixed by simply pointing the game .ini to the proper code path because the game devs didn't do it themselves.

I have no idea what you're talking about. If the game requests an SM 2.0 path (for example) it should get one because it's up to the driver to deliver a correct one.

Vista hot fix being another example of an OS problem that NV has maintained that seemingly has fixed many "driver problems".

But my issues are on XP.

Wasn't the fog issue in CS:S finally fixed after Valve grudgingly patched the game?

In conjunction with an nVidia driver update (check the readme if you don?t believe me).

Again, if you're fed up with NV's drivers and legacy support, go with the competition. I mean all you're giving up is the best performing part and AA in current and future games, but I guess some people just want to have their cake and eat it too

This is a false dilemma logical fallacy. My third choice is for nVidia to fix their drivers but nVidia apologists do nothing but hinder this goal.

 

[BFG10K]

Well, in the case that the game looks better in DX10 but runs slightly slower I will take DX10.

But most DX10 games don't look much better at all; adding 4xAA improves visuals much more in those situations.

In the case of Call of Juarez the DX10 looks a lot different but the performance hit is massive.

Besides, running games without AA is butt ugly regardless of what flashy tech they use.

 

[CrystalBay]

Originally posted by: betasub
Hmm, how many threads and reviews have there been on 2900XT vs 8800GTS?[/




I used to axx the same question , but this forum "princeples " is for noob's asking advice
thus possibly creating revenue for the owners...

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Again this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that comparatively nVidia has generally far more issues on both XP and Vista than ATi does.

Again, a statement you can't back up with hard data or even comprehensive personal experience. Grass is always greener on the other side.

Err, no. The performance issues and slowdowns were largely attributed to nVidia driver issues, namely the Alt-Tab slowdown bug I've been reporting since 2004 when I experienced it in on the 6800 Ultra using XP. If you look at the driver readme notes for 163.71 you'll see they've finally addressed the issue three years later.

Not aware of that problem, because again, I wasn't playing UT2004 on NV hardware and I haven't bothered to load it up on XP/Vista with my G80. Haven't bothered to look at 163.71 notes because they're XP and not Vista. But I'll take your word for it. The problems I was referring to however are Vista related, namely the BF2/2142 slowdowns in Vista and LOTRO. The LOTRO slowdowns were definitely fixed by the hotfix released by MS and a client update, pretty sure the BF2/2142 problems were resolved as well.

Again I've never had such slowdowns on ATi hardware.

Vista certainly has/had some issues but most them were caused by poor nVidia drivers given ATi had nowhere near the amount of issues. It's also the first time I can recall people were so upset they threatened a lawsuit over nVidia's drivers. Blaming the OS/game instead of the real cause of the problems - nVidia - doesn't help anyone.

Considering ATI had 8 more months to write Vista drivers for their DX10 parts might be part of the reason too. Was Nvidia late delivering Vista drivers? Sure. Is that expected of a new OS? Absolutely. Took some time for the driver situation in XP (and took ATi a longer time iirc) to work itself out. NV did roll out WHQL drivers within what? 2 weeks of Vista retail with steady improvements and constant updates since then. And I've seen plenty of threads here and elsewhere complaining about R600 drivers in both Vista and XP, so assuming everything is rosy on the other side would be presumptuous at best.

In any case the bugs I?ve reporting are on XP. Are you going to start blaming that now as well?

Nope, that just falls under your unrealistic expectations for a new part running old code. Even in cases of current games, if you're willing to live on the bleeding edge of technology, you should expect to bear the consequences.

I acknowledge them but if the competition can do better in the same situation you're simply clutching at straws and making excuses.

But at the same time, you acknowledge you don't know if the competition is doing it better, because if it was doing it better, you'd be using their product lol.

Perhaps they do but I?ve never seen such disgruntlement over drivers in recent times (especially nVidia Vista drivers) which pushed users as far as wanting to sue. I didn?t see any online petition to sue ATi over Vista drivers, did you?

Nope, but then again I've never seen so many people base an entire law suit over a trademark sticker on a box either. And again, ATi had quite a few more months to "refine" their Vista drivers than NV did.

This doesn't appear to be anything except irrelevant rhetoric on your part. Again it's a fact ATi runs the game fine and since it's the same OS and API and roughly equal hardware characteristic there?s no reason why nVidia can?t do the same.

Already found the client/OS-side fix for this one, so I guess its not just irrelevant rhetoric on my part. Again, generalizing not only between platforms and APIs, but now hardware from different vendors?

Which again points to an nVidia driver issue (specifically backwards compatibility) which needs to be addressed.

Again, another example of a trade-off. NV tends to go with vendor-specific APIs and architecture that drastically changes over a few product cycles. ATI may be better at backward and forward compatibility, but at the cost of relative performance and slower product cycles. All ATI cards between R300 and R600 were evolutionary in nature, so ya they should run R300 code better than G80 would run NV3X/4X code. So what would you prefer? NV sacrificing greater performance from generation to generation and slower product cycles? Or better performance between generations and faster product cycles?

Right, and therein is the problem. Look at the Catalyst 7.9 release notes and you'll see a bugfix for a minor problem for Quake 3's menus, an eight year old game so don?t tell me it can?t be done, and don?t tell me it?s a game/OS issue.

And looking over the various driver release notes I've seen NV squash similar bugs with each version. The ones that continue to pop-up from version to version are distinctly labeled as application/OS problems in a different header, whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. But again, in the case of FFXI, it is in fact an application/OS issue that is being corrected by a client update (in the future), as it should be.

I never claimed that; that's a strawman on your part. What I claimed was that with past ATi cards I've tried they?ve been consistently more robust, Not perfect and not without issues but in any given scenario I presented to them they were more likely to run correct than comparable nVidia hardware.

Again, completely subjective conclusions further undermined by the fact that you're never running the competitive part simultaneously. You acknowledge having good parts on both sides, and problems on both sides, yet you still insist there aren't similar issues on competitive parts when you're not even using them. Fact remains you can't say for certaint similar problems or completely different problems dont' exist on R600 parts because you simply don't acknowledge them or haven't encountered them first-hand.

Then you aren't looking the right places. Do you have UT2004 on XP? Fire up CTF Citadel and jump into one of the flag rooms. Run around a bit and then start firing when an enemy comes into the room and you'll see the stuttering/hitching is blatantly obvious. If you have trouble replicating the issue the details are in the thread I linked to.

Currently users are resorting to disabling T&L, stripping out all lighting from maps and/or hiding the weapon because apparently a three year old TWIMTBP title is too taxing on nVidia's flagship chipset.

The worst part is that the issue is fixed on Vista but the majority user base on XP is getting the middle finger from nVidia.

Nope, don't have XP installed anymore, I've moved on, which is why I upgrade my PC from time to time. If I really wanted to play UT2004 I'd just load it up on my P4 rig with my 6800GS and play it TWIMTBP (in 2004 when it was released).

In recent times nVidia acknowledged the NF3 + NV40 issue can never be fixed.

Again, acknowledgement there's other factors besides drivers that can impact compatibility and performance. Sure its a shame NV can't get their own GPU working on their own chipset (there's similar problems with NF chipsets and Creative cards), but again, that's the nature of the business.

I had a passively cooled X800 XL which I gamed heavily on for six months. This thing got so hot it could reach 100C during gaming and it was still an absolute rock. It's one of the most stable video cards I've ever used.

And I ran a 9700pro for 3 years even after its fan died. Great card...but so was my 6800GS and now my 8800 GTS. Still, doesn't diminish the fact the X800XL was just an evolutionary step-up from the 9700pro, so few problems expected in that transition. That doesn't mean you can just associate similar compatibility to R5XX and R600 without putting them through the same battery of testing you put the cards you've owned through.

Not for me they haven't. The 6800 U was the worst video card I've ever used (while the 9700 Pro worked well in the same NF3 system) and the G80 is probably the card with the second most driver issues I've had.

Yet you've bought two G80s now..... Again, sounds like your 6800U was suffering more from a buggy chipset rather than buggy drivers.

The 7900 GTX is probably the best card I've used in recent times out of both ATi and nVidia (I could count the driver issues on that card on one hand) so that proves it is possible for nVidia drivers to deliver. Now they need to deliver on G80 hardware.

That doesn't prove anything really, just proves the card was more compatible with your hardware/software/OS at the time.

No offense but I think you're a bit out of touch with that situation.

You're probably right since I haven't run an ATI part in 4 generations and 2 upgrades and never encountered a problem on a part I didn't own.

What questions? I haven't tried R6xx hardware so I was responding about what I had tried.

But still willing to make the broad generalization that there aren't similar problems with R6XX hardware as the problems you're dealing with on your G80s based on what? Prior experiences with different hardware/OS/games/drivers.........

I didn't assume anything about the R6xx except to repeat the comments made about Final Fantasy made by someone who has tried the game. Again my comments were based on hardware I had tried.

Someone who didn't try hard enough, I guess.

On the 9700 Pro it most certainly didn't exist which is exactly my point. The funny thing was back then there were nVidia trolls aurguing it was a Microsoft/Intel/AMD/DEP issue even while ATi had no such issues. It took over six months for nVidia to finally fix the problem.

Again, not an issue I dealt with. Sounds like it was fixed. I'm sure ATI has fixed a bug or two with their drivers too.

This is quite a disingenuous response and you know it. It's yet another excuse to accept second-rate drivers from nVidia.

Its not disingenous, its reality for those with realistic expectations. I bought a G80 knowing full well it might still have problems with old titles and even new ones. I thought the risk was worth the performance and I haven't been disappointed. And that's not to say I haven't had problems my current rig and the games I've played on it. But in every single case I thought it might be a problem with the card/drivers, its turned out to be something else, whether it was bad memory, bad mobo, creative cards, xp/vista, or the game client itself.

Then again nVidia should put a disclamer on the box ?we don't support games older than three years, purchase from another vendor if you require such support?.

If you wanted to get technical, they do put minimum system requirements, along with supported OS and APIs on the box when you purchase it.

Quite frankly to accept games to stop working after three years is ludicrous on your part and with such low standards it?s no wonder you find G80 driver quality acceptable.

Possibly, but again I have no problems with my G80 and couldn't be more happy with it (unless it were a GTX/Ultra). I think the majority of upgraders are forward-looking with their upgrades, not so they can get another 100 FPS that they won't notice on their 3 year old titles. If I were worried about performance on a 3 year old title I'd never need to upgrade, but then again I'm not someone who would try and shove a SNES cartridge into an XBox360 and expect it to work.....

In most cases titles don't need patches if the drivers are as good as they should be.

LoL, that's a good one. You're right though, you're lucky if you get a single patch to fix the problems with buggy/missing game content.

ATi can do it quite well. Why can't nVidia? They run the same OS, same API and roughly the same hardware.

If you're referring to FFXI, again, NV can under XP, and will be able to in Vista once the Devs fix the client in November (unless you want to do what the Devs are too lazy to do and fix it yourself).

I have no idea what you're talking about. If the game requests an SM 2.0 path (for example) it should get one because it's up to the driver to deliver a correct one.

From the release notes, it seems some .ini files identify a card/family, say 7800GTX > G4X > SM 2.0/DX9.0. If the 8800GTX pointer is missing from an outdated .ini, it would fall back on god knows what leading to whatever bug required fixing. I'd dig up a relevant example in the notes but honestly, they're quite commonplace and you could easily find it yourself (if you haven't come across them already).

But my issues are on XP.

On mostly dated titles. We've been over this.

In conjunction with an nVidia driver update (check the readme if you don?t believe me).

Honestly don't care that much, was fixed.

This is a false dilemma logical fallacy. My third choice is for nVidia to fix their drivers but nVidia apologists do nothing but hinder this goal.

How is it a false dilemma when its the very real dilemma you face? lol. NV "apologists" don't do anything to hinder this unrealistic goal, they just weigh the pros and cons and buy Nvidia or they go with the competition.

 

[BFG10K]

Again, a statement you can't back up with hard data or even comprehensive personal experience.

This is a joke right? Have you been paying attention to anything I've been saying?

The ranking of problems goes something like this: 7900 GTX < 9700 Pro < X800 XL < 7800 GT < 8800 Ultra < 8800 GTS < 6800 Ultra where I experienced the least amount of issues on the 7900 GTX and the most on the 6800 Ultra (the 8800 Ultra ranks better than the GTS since I started using it after the drivers had matured).

Like I said ATi have consistently given me the least amount of trouble in a broad range of games. As an example stock Catalyst 2.2 off the 9700 Pro CD had less issues than I have now with my 8800 Ultra eleven months after release.

So yes, I'm quite qualified to comment on driver support from each vendor especially since I don?t have a moronic cut-off of three years and especially since I don?t build additional boxes if I can?t run games.

Not aware of that problem, because again, I wasn't playing UT2004 on NV hardware and I haven't bothered to load it up on XP/Vista with my G80. Haven't bothered to look at 163.71 notes because they're XP and not Vista. But I'll take your word for it.

The Alt-Tab issue has absolutely nothing to do with either Vista or with UT2004. It's been around since at least 2004 when I first saw it and afflicted both XP and Vista in a range of games until nVidia recently fixed it.

More info

The problems I was referring to however are Vista related, namely the BF2/2142 slowdowns in Vista and LOTRO. The LOTRO slowdowns were definitely fixed by the hotfix released by MS and a client update, pretty sure the BF2/2142 problems were resolved as well.

None of which is relevant to either Unreal 2 engine stuttering or the infamous Alt-Tab issue. In fact some Linux users state they experience stuttering in UT2004 as well so it's really beyond ludicrous for you to try to claim it's the application or OS at fault.

Considering ATI had 8 more months to write Vista drivers for their DX10 parts might be part of the reason too.

When Vista arrived ATi still had cards they had to write dirvers for, drivers which were better than equivalent nVidia offerings. Furthermore as soon as the R6xx arrived ATi were still releasing monthly WHQL drivers for everything as old as the 9700 Pro on both Vista and XP. Even today nVidia can't match that.

And I've seen plenty of threads here and elsewhere complaining about R600 drivers in both Vista and XP, so assuming everything is rosy on the other side would be presumptuous at best.

Again nobody claimed ATi was perfect, just that they were better. I didn't see anyone starting an online petition to sue ATi like they did with nVidia, did you?

nVidia still don't even have Quad SLI or SLI AA working on Vista and they're preparing tri-SLI. I feel sorry for the poor suckers that pick those up.

Nope, that just falls under your unrealistic expectations for a new part running old code. Even in cases of current games, if you're willing to live on the bleeding edge of technology, you should expect to bear the consequences.

You clearly have no clue about the concept of backwards compatibility, do you? I expect not since you've already told us you expect games to stop working after 3 years. The rest of us however have higher standards and don't expect to drop wads of cash and keep getting lesser value.

But at the same time, you acknowledge you don't know if the competition is doing it better, because if it was doing it better, you'd be using their product lol.

They are doing better from a compatibility standpoint but they aren't from a hardware/performance standpoint. Do you understand the notion that how good a GPU is involves several metrics?

Nope, but then again I've never seen so many people base an entire law suit over a trademark sticker on a box either.

That's because nVidia claimed the product was Vista ready when no drivers were available.

And again, ATi had quite a few more months to "refine" their Vista drivers than NV did.

For the R6xx, but not for existing tech which they still did better than nVidia.

Already found the client/OS-side fix for this one, so I guess its not just irrelevant rhetoric on my part.

Post up evidence. Show us nVidia hardware before and after the update running Final Fantasy and demonstrate how it?s an application issue. Once you do properly that I?ll admit it?s the game at fault.

Again, another example of a trade-off. NV tends to go with vendor-specific APIs and architecture that drastically changes over a few product cycles. ATI may be better at backward and forward compatibility, but at the cost of relative performance and slower product cycles.

Except ATi held the performance crown from the R3xx until they lost it with the R6xx. Furthermore the 9700 Pro was a huge change over previous architectures and like I said its CD drivers were superior to that of current G80 drivers eleven months after release.

All ATI cards between R300 and R600 were evolutionary in nature.

As was the GF5 <-> GF7.

And looking over the various driver release notes I've seen NV squash similar bugs with each version.

For old games? Where? They only list new games. The rest of them are cryptically listed under ?numerous compatibility fixes? which really doesn?t tell us anything.

The ones that continue to pop-up from version to version are distinctly labeled as application/OS problems in a different header, whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you.

I?m not talking about the ones in that list, I?m talking about the ones that are driver bugs but not acknowledged.

Again, completely subjective conclusions further undermined by the fact that you're never running the competitive part simultaneously.

Rubbish. I ran a 6800 Ultra and X800 XL side by side for example. That?s comparative.

You acknowledge having good parts on both sides, and problems on both sides, yet you still insist there aren't similar issues on competitive parts when you're not even using them.

But there weren't similar issues when I used competitive parts. That?s my point.

Fact remains you can't say for certaint similar problems or completely different problems dont' exist on R600 parts because you simply don't acknowledge them or haven't encountered them first-hand.

That's why I was never talking about the R6xx in such a capacity, I was only talking about parts I had experience with.

Nope, don't have XP installed anymore, I've moved on, which is why I upgrade my PC from time to time. If I really wanted to play UT2004 I'd just load it up on my P4 rig with my 6800GS and play it TWIMTBP (in 2004 when it was released).

LOL, what's next, building a different rig for each block of three years to cover the games that stopped working during that period?

Whatever works for ya, Sparky.

Again, acknowledgement there's other factors besides drivers that can impact compatibility and performance.

But such factors were not present on the 9700 Pro. If the games are in common, the OS is in common and other hardware is in common except for the GPU it's obviously the GPU.

Still, doesn't diminish the fact the X800XL was just an evolutionary step-up from the 9700pro

The 9700 Pro certainly wasn?t evolutionary and neither was the G80.

That doesn't mean you can just associate similar compatibility to R5XX and R600 without putting them through the same battery of testing you put the cards you've owned through.

Where did I do this? Put up or retract your strawman. I never talked about the R6xx in such a capacity so stop putting words in my mouth.

Yet you've bought two G80s now.....

If the drivers hadn?t improved by such a magnitude I assure you I wouldn?t have. The drivers are good enough now to have a good gaming experience overall but they still need some work, especially since the 7900 GTX functions perfectly in most of the situations that have issues on the G80.

That doesn't prove anything really, just proves the card was more compatible with your hardware/software/OS at the time.

Actually it proves a lot given I can drop the 7900 GTX back into my system now and most of the problems I have on the G80 disappear. I really have to wonder if you understand the concept of a driver bug. Do you understand that if the driver code is bad non-GPU external factors will make no difference to the equation?

But still willing to make the broad generalization that there aren't similar problems with R6XX hardware as the problems you're dealing with on your G80s based on what?

Based on online feedback mainly. I also know for a fact the Alt-Tab and Unreal 2 stuttering issue doesn't exist on R6xx hardware for example and both affected a lot of G80 users for a very long time.

But in every single case I thought it might be a problem with the card/drivers, its turned out to be something else, whether it was bad memory, bad mobo, creative cards, xp/vista, or the game client itself.

You obviously aren't very good at spotting driver bugs or your library contains two titles or something. Do you play Fear Extraction point? How about Quake 4? I can list driver bugs there and those titles are only 1-2 years old, and I'll bet you've never seen those bugs.

If you wanted to get technical, they do put minimum system requirements, along with supported OS and APIs on the box when you purchase it.

Stop talking nonsense. Where do they list "games made in the least three years" as minimum? Your argument is obtuse.

Possibly, but again I have no problems with my G80 and couldn't be more happy with it (unless it were a GTX/Ultra). I think the majority of upgraders are forward-looking with their upgrades, not so they can get another 100 FPS that they won't notice on their 3 year old titles.

If only not getting 100 FPS were the only issue. The issues are often worse than that, as bad as unplayable at times.

If I were worried about performance on a 3 year old title I'd never need to upgrade, but then again I'm not someone who would try and shove a SNES cartridge into an XBox360 and expect it to work.....

Same OS, same games, same platform, same API. In otherwise nothing at all like your simpleton console scenario above.

From the release notes, it seems some .ini files identify a card/family, say 7800GTX > G4X > SM 2.0/DX9.0. If the 8800GTX pointer is missing from an outdated .ini, it would fall back on god knows what leading to whatever bug required fixing. I'd dig up a relevant example in the notes but honestly, they're quite commonplace and you could easily find it yourself (if you haven't come across them already).

I can't say I?ve seen that problem. Your notion is akin to that of DOS programming where games have to be individually programmed to specific hardware when it's not like that. Caps bits and extension are there to identify what the hardware can and can?t do while the OS and/or API abstract away the individual hardware layer.

If ?ini files? were really the problem then using DXTweaker to identify the card as a lesser generation that previously worked would fix my issues but it doesn?t.

On mostly dated titles. We've been over this.

Hence the term ?backwards compatible?, a term that apparently escapes you as you don?t seem to feel a consumer is entitled to such a notion.

Would you be happy if Intel & AMD operated under your paradigm and released processors that couldn?t run code older than three years?
Or how about if your HD and RAM couldn't store data generated by programs older than 3 years?
What about a NIC refusing to transfer data if the application requesting it is more than three years old?

Why then do you accept such a ridiculous concept with GPU hardware?

How is it a false dilemma when its the very real dilemma you face?

Perhaps you should consult a logic dictionary and try again with your response.

 

[SniperDaws]

Another top thread where the 2900XT owners are defending there cards.

when i buy a card i look for Gaming performance and not how quiet, cool or how it looks in my case.

at this current time if you want great performance with all bells and whistles turned on then choose the 8800GTS.

If you want to be able to stroke your graphics card, sit in perfect quiet, feel the heat coming out of your case and play games WITHOUT AA and AF then choose the 2900XT.

Hopfully ATI will pull their fingers out next year and bring a card out that gamers can use.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: SniperDaws
Another top thread where the 2900XT owners are defending there cards.

when i buy a card i look for Gaming performance and not how quiet, cool or how it looks in my case.

at this current time if you want great performance with all bells and whistles turned on then choose the 8800GTS.

If you want to be able to stroke your graphics card, sit in perfect quiet, feel the heat coming out of your case and play games WITHOUT AA and AF then choose the 2900XT.

Hopfully ATI will pull their fingers out next year and bring a card out that gamers can use.

only because people who know nothing about them first hand are spreading FUD about them

it is clear you still know nothing about the 2900XT vs the GTS ... nor do you care to learn about it ...

and *all* of us are hoping for faster cards[period]
-the current crop - GTX Ultra included - SUCK at DX10 games

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Well, in the case that the game looks better in DX10 but runs slightly slower I will take DX10.

But most DX10 games don't look much better at all; adding 4xAA improves visuals much more in those situations.

In the case of Call of Juarez the DX10 looks a lot different but the performance hit is massive.

Besides, running games without AA is butt ugly regardless of what flashy tech they use.

Maybe to you. Personally I'll take the extra shaders and better motion blur etc over removing the jagged edges on a fence post that I will NOT be staring at all day.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: SniperDaws
Another top thread where the 2900XT owners are defending there cards.

when i buy a card i look for Gaming performance and not how quiet, cool or how it looks in my case.

at this current time if you want great performance with all bells and whistles turned on then choose the 8800GTS.

If you want to be able to stroke your graphics card, sit in perfect quiet, feel the heat coming out of your case and play games WITHOUT AA and AF then choose the 2900XT.

Hopfully ATI will pull their fingers out next year and bring a card out that gamers can use.

only because people who know nothing about them first hand are spreading FUD about them

it is clear you still know nothing about the 2900XT vs the GTS ... nor do you care to learn about it ...

and *all* of us are hoping for faster cards[period]
-the current crop - GTX Ultra included - SUCK at DX10 games

QFT! :thumbsup:

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Again, a statement you can't back up with hard data or even comprehensive personal experience.

This is a joke right? Have you been paying attention to anything I've been saying?

The ranking of problems goes something like this: 7900 GTX < 9700 Pro < X800 XL < 7800 GT < 8800 Ultra < 8800 GTS < 6800 Ultra where I experienced the least amount of issues on the 7900 GTX and the most on the 6800 Ultra (the 8800 Ultra ranks better than the GTS since I started using it after the drivers had matured).

Like I said ATi have consistently given me the least amount of trouble in a broad range of games. As an example stock Catalyst 2.2 off the 9700 Pro CD had less issues than I have now with my 8800 Ultra eleven months after release.

So yes, I'm quite qualified to comment on driver support from each vendor especially since I don?t have a moronic cut-off of three years and especially since I don?t build additional boxes if I can?t run games.

Again, shows nothing other than compatibility with the rest of your system and software at any given point in time. The fact you rank cards within the same family differently further illustrates this (7900GTX/7800GT and 8800U/8800GTS) while acknowledging timing/driver differences. Still, does nothing to discount your broad sweeping generalizations that ATI drivers are consistently less problematic than NV drivers. If we went another generation or two back I'd be able to list the 8500 as the single most problematic card I've ever owned, but that doesn't mean I'm going to draw any sweeping conclusions from it heh.

And once again, I don't build boxes if I can't run OLD games, I build them so I can run NEW games that I couldn't run acceptably on my OLD rig. But I guess you'll be pounding on BFGY3K's door as BFG20K in 50 years demanding "lifetime support" for your 8800 and your Library of Congress-esque video game collection on Microsoft Villa. LOL.

The Alt-Tab issue has absolutely nothing to do with either Vista or with UT2004. It's been around since at least 2004 when I first saw it and afflicted both XP and Vista in a range of games until nVidia recently fixed it.

More info

Scanned the link, seems to deal with 8800s and the memory management problems I've already talked about.

None of which is relevant to either Unreal 2 engine stuttering or the infamous Alt-Tab issue. In fact some Linux users state they experience stuttering in UT2004 as well so it's really beyond ludicrous for you to try to claim it's the application or OS at fault.

It certainly is relevant since those are concrete examples where it was an application/OS issue rather than a driver issue.

When Vista arrived ATi still had cards they had to write dirvers for, drivers which were better than equivalent nVidia offerings. Furthermore as soon as the R6xx arrived ATi were still releasing monthly WHQL drivers for everything as old as the 9700 Pro on both Vista and XP. Even today nVidia can't match that.

Except no one cared about ATI drivers because current ATI offerings weren't capable of running DX10, just as no one cared about NV support in Vista with non-DX10 parts. People wanted DX10 support on DX10 parts. Bolded another example where you make a statement that you can't confirm or qualify with relevant experience.

I've been very happy with NV driver updates. Maybe not monthly, but I got 2 WHQL drivers in the last month alone. All of the driver revisions I've tried have consistently improved performance or fixed minor bugs, never breaking anything in the process so no complaints here.

Again nobody claimed ATi was perfect, just that they were better. I didn't see anyone starting an online petition to sue ATi like they did with nVidia, did you?

Another grass is greener argument. LOL the online petition again. You make it sound like its an act of Congress lmao (instead of some nerd with too much time and energy on their hands registering an url). What ever happened to that online petition btw? No, I didn't see any online petition with R600, by the time it was released all would-be petitioners were either emo'ing over its lackluster performance or enjoying their G80s.

You clearly have no clue about the concept of backwards compatibility, do you? I expect not since you've already told us you expect games to stop working after 3 years. The rest of us however have higher standards and don't expect to drop wads of cash and keep getting lesser value.

I've never once said I expect old games to stop working after 3 years. I said its a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to play new games and a reality when those games are no longer supported by the devs that created them. And honestly, I don't think you're in the majority with your unrealistic expectations, as many of the comments in your Ultra vs. GTS review would support. People drop wads of cash to play newer games, not so they can spend countless hours reloading and retesting older games to show the 100 FPS difference they don't notice or to dig up obscure bugs in games you can't even find on retail shelves anymore.......

They are doing better from a compatibility standpoint but they aren't from a hardware/performance standpoint. Do you understand the notion that how good a GPU is involves several metrics?

Yep, I understand it perfectly well and its a point I've been trying to make throughout this discussion. R300 > R5XX = evolutionary. NV4X > G80 = revolutionary. So yeah, based on that metric, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a higher level of compatibility with ATI parts at the expense of hardware features/performance relative to NV parts which happens to be exactly what we've seen when making those transitions.

That's because nVidia claimed the product was Vista ready when no drivers were available.

There were drivers available, Vista RC1 came with G80 drivers.

For the R6xx, but not for existing tech which they still did better than nVidia.

Again, no basis for this statement, which you so neatly fold into your broad "ATI is better than NV" generalizations.

Post up evidence. Show us nVidia hardware before and after the update running Final Fantasy and demonstrate how it?s an application issue. Once you do properly that I?ll admit it?s the game at fault.

Update doesn't ship til 11/22/07, which I probably won't buy since I don't play anymore, but I'll be sure to follow-up on it. Work-around and relevant update info do confirm its an application/OS issue (DX8 problems with DX10, resolved if you run DX9 in Vista or the client migrates to DX9).

Except ATi held the performance crown from the R3xx until they lost it with the R6xx. Furthermore the 9700 Pro was a huge change over previous architectures and like I said its CD drivers were superior to that of current G80 drivers eleven months after release.

There were a few timing swings back and forth but generally I'd agree. Also you'd only need to go 1 generation back to show ATI's drivers have been less than stellar (sup 8500). As for CD drivers being better than current G80 drivers, I'd have to disagree since I did have problems with the 2.2s that weren't fixed until 2.4 in games I was playing then vs. games I'm playing now with my G80.

For old games? Where? They only list new games. The rest of them are cryptically listed under ?numerous compatibility fixes? which really doesn?t tell us anything.

Guess you're not looking hard enough. I guess that's because most fixes for older games fall under the "Application issues" header further down in the release notes.

I?m not talking about the ones in that list, I?m talking about the ones that are driver bugs but not acknowledged.

Sure, there's some bugs that aren't listed, but that doesn't mean they're not worked on or aren't fixed. The FFXI overlay problem was never listed in patch notes as a bug or a fix, but was fixed with the 100-series drivers.

Rubbish. I ran a 6800 Ultra and X800 XL side by side for example. That?s comparative.

One example, where you ran a 6800 Ultra with a buggy and problematic chipset. Using that comparative example as the basis for broad-sweeping generalizations is laughable at best.

But there weren't similar issues when I used competitive parts. That?s my point.

Just as my 6800GS was a seamless upgrade from my 9700pro. That's my point.

That's why I was never talking about the R6xx in such a capacity, I was only talking about parts I had experience with.

You've already made generalizations about parts you haven't tested on at least 2 occasions in this round of replies alone.......

LOL, what's next, building a different rig for each block of three years to cover the games that stopped working during that period?

Whatever works for ya, Sparky.

Um, ya. I tend to upgrade every 3 years or so.....for games I want to play now and in the future. I think that's pretty much the norm for pc gamers or there would be no need to upgrade. Certainly better than shaking your fists full of 3-8 year old titles that you can't find patches for (or even on store shelves for that matter) and expecting support from the hardware vendors.

But such factors were not present on the 9700 Pro. If the games are in common, the OS is in common and other hardware is in common except for the GPU it's obviously the GPU.

Wow now that's just ignorant. So I guess you're just going to conveniently discount the fact you don't get similar problems with the 6800 on a different chipset (again works fine on my 875 set-up). If you're expecting that level of compatibility across the board you really are better off going with a console (which are beginning to mirror their PC brethren more and more with their need for patches and hardware/firmware revisions).

Where did I do this? Put up or retract your strawman. I never talked about the R6xx in such a capacity so stop putting words in my mouth.

Already highlighted a few instances in this round of replies, I'm sure I could find more examples in previous replies, but honestly its tedious enough treading the same water over and over again.

If the drivers hadn?t improved by such a magnitude I assure you I wouldn?t have. The drivers are good enough now to have a good gaming experience overall but they still need some work, especially since the 7900 GTX functions perfectly in most of the situations that have issues on the G80.

I'm sure the R600s overall performance and poor performance with AA have something to do with that decision as well.... And that's before you run into any game-specific driver problems.

Actually it proves a lot given I can drop the 7900 GTX back into my system now and most of the problems I have on the G80 disappear. I really have to wonder if you understand the concept of a driver bug. Do you understand that if the driver code is bad non-GPU external factors will make no difference to the equation?

Lmao, again, unable to make the distinction between different hardware, different software, and different points in time. You really think all problems with games go back to drivers and not the actual game code itself? You're kidding right? I mean ya, I guess on a 3 year old game that spent another 2-3 years in development before it was released (5-6 years if you're counting), the game devs could magically ensure perfect code for all future hardware. Those crystal balls, time machines, and rifts in the space/time continuum are part of the game, not something the devs actually have access to.....

Based on online feedback mainly. I also know for a fact the Alt-Tab and Unreal 2 stuttering issue doesn't exist on R6xx hardware for example and both affected a lot of G80 users for a very long time.

Here's your strawman, with nothing but conjecture and second-hand reports as the basis of your generalizations.

You obviously aren't very good at spotting driver bugs or your library contains two titles or something. Do you play Fear Extraction point? How about Quake 4? I can list driver bugs there and those titles are only 1-2 years old, and I'll bet you've never seen those bugs.

Ignorance is bliss I guess. I've played at least 1 title for each month I've owned my GTS. Never a problem with any of them that wasn't fixed with a client/OS update or a hardware swap. Pretty sure both FEAR and Q4 have demos though, so maybe I'll get around to checking them out if I'm that bored.

Stop talking nonsense. Where do they list "games made in the least three years" as minimum? Your argument is obtuse.

They don't and my argument is certainly more reasonable than your basis for unlimited backwards and forwards compatibility being the lack of explicit documentation to the contrary.

Same OS, same games, same platform, same API. In otherwise nothing at all like your simpleton console scenario above.

Different GPU, different shaders, different architectures, different drivers. Oh ya, happens to be the thingy that renders all those polygons and textures....but I guess I'm just a simpleton.

I can't say I?ve seen that problem. Your notion is akin to that of DOS programming where games have to be individually programmed to specific hardware when it's not like that. Caps bits and extension are there to identify what the hardware can and can?t do while the OS and/or API abstract away the individual hardware layer.

If ?ini files? were really the problem then using DXTweaker to identify the card as a lesser generation that previously worked would fix my issues but it doesn?t.

Again, not looking hard enough. Scroll to Page 17. See handfuls of these in most release notes. My example was general from what I remembered, feel free to reference the exact changes in the pdf.

Hence the term ?backwards compatible?, a term that apparently escapes you as you don?t seem to feel a consumer is entitled to such a notion.

Within reason sure, but again its something I'm willing to sacrifice in order to be "forwards compatible" or "current compatible". Same premise if I bought a console. Not buying one to emulate older games or expecting similar performance in the case they're backwards compatible (if they can that's just a bonus), I'm buying one for new games.

Would you be happy if Intel & AMD operated under your paradigm and released processors that couldn?t run code older than three years?

That's often the case now, and its not due to hardware, its due to OS/drivers/applications. Wait.....where does that sound familiar?

Or how about if your HD and RAM couldn't store data generated by programs older than 3 years?

Another poor example, my 5400rpm drives are collecting dust, as are my 128 and 256MB SODIMM modules.

What about a NIC refusing to transfer data if the application requesting it is more than three years old?

I've got a shelf full of NICs that don't work with current hardware due to lack of drivers. Want one?

Might as well list off all the PCI and AGP graphics cards I've owned throughout the years that don't run on my current rig......

Why then do you accept such a ridiculous concept with GPU hardware?

Because I understand how the PC industry works, accept it, and am willing to put up with it?

 

[CP5670]

I have had roughly an equal amount of trouble with Nvidia and AMD drivers in older games. The 6800GT I had was probably the best in this respect; one game was broken and one half worked, although I didn't play either of those that often. The 7800GT was similar, but had minor issues with two more (I actually had two of these cards, but SLI was absolutely useless in anything older than about 2004). The X1900XTX, which I'm still on, works in all of those games but has minor issues in three others, which I all play regularly.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: simkuriakose
8800 GTS 640mb OC'd

why would you recommend either card when 2900 pro is about 50% cheaper than xt but only 10% or so less performance, while nvidia is coming out SOON with the 8800gts +/turbo/extreme and or g92?

 

[BFG10K]

Again, shows nothing other than compatibility with the rest of your system and software at any given point in time.

No, it shows ATi drivers work better than nVidia drivers overall IME.

The fact you rank cards within the same family differently further illustrates this (7900GTX/7800GT and 8800U/8800GTS) while acknowledging timing/driver differences.

Except for the situations where there are no timing or driver difference issues, like how I can use the 7900 GTX with same 163.71 driver in the same system and not have the issues I have with G80.

What part of this are you having difficulty understanding?

Still, does nothing to discount your broad sweeping generalizations that ATI drivers are consistently less problematic than NV drivers.

The generalization is based on both personal experience and online feedback. It was particularly strong during the earlier Vista days when people who switched to ATi found their ?driver stopped responding and needs to be reset? errors were greatly reduced and even eliminated. nVidia even put a specific thread up at their forums to address the issues.

If we went another generation or two back I'd be able to list the 8500 as the single most problematic card I've ever owned, but that doesn't mean I'm going to draw any sweeping conclusions from it heh.

By all means; I've already stated nVidia drivers took a dump after the GF5. Prior to that I'd class nVidia as having the gold standard.

And once again, I don't build boxes if I can't run OLD games, I build them so I can run NEW games that I couldn't run acceptably on my OLD rig.

I build boxes to run new games but not at the expense of old games to stop working, especially not if I?m staying with the same OS and same other hardware they were previously running fine on.

I don't expect my C2D Duo to stop running Calculator or Notepad. Do you?

Scanned the link, seems to deal with 8800s and the memory management problems I've already talked about.

A known driver issue spanning multiple OSes, multiple GPUs and multiple games. I've never used Vista but I've had the issue at least three games, one with the 6800 U and two on the G80.

It?s even right there in the release notes:

Improved performance of the graphics memory manager on GeForce 8 series GPUs running DirectX 9 applications in single-GPU and NVIDIA SLI
configurations.

These improvements solve cases of reported performance slowdowns in some 3D applications with high graphics settings and resolutions.

As you can see it has nothing to do with Vista or DX10.

Now, are you finally going to admit it's a driver fault instead of playing rhetorical games?

It certainly is relevant since those are concrete examples where it was an application/OS issue rather than a driver issue.

Again neither Alt-Tab or Unreal 2 stuttering are application or OS issues and that you choose to continue to make sweeping unfounded claims doesn?t change that fact.

Except no one cared about ATI drivers because current ATI offerings weren't capable of running DX10, just as no one cared about NV support in Vista with non-DX10 parts.

Huh? When Vista arrived there were no DX10 games so nobody cared. nVidia didn't even have DX10 support for a few releases IIRC. Driver stability and compatibility was the hot topic, not some fantasy DX10 support for titles that never existed.

People wanted DX10 support on DX10 parts.

Nope, people wanted drivers that didn't cause the display driver to stop responding as was so common with nVidia drivers. Again there were numerous examples of people jumping ship to ATi and finding the issues reduced or even fixed. This includes many 6xxx/7xxx users too.

Another grass is greener argument. LOL the online petition again. You make it sound like its an act of Congress lmao (instead of some nerd with too much time and energy on their hands registering an url).

That ?nerd? might've registered the URL but the signatures weren't his. And it looks like no ?nerd? bothered registering a URL for ATi. Why do you suppose that is?

What ever happened to that online petition btw?

I guess nVidia finally got their act together.

I've never once said I expect old games to stop working after 3 years. I said its a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to play new games and a reality when those games are no longer supported by the devs that created them.

But such a sacrifice is ludicrous given you don't expect it anywhere else. Do you expect a C2Duo to stop running Calculator or Notepad? Why then do expect a similar notion for a GPU?

And honestly, I don't think you're in the majority with your unrealistic expectations, as many of the comments in your Ultra vs. GTS review would support.

The only people I've seen share your view are casual gamers that don't really care much about gaming to begin with. Also those that pirate games and hence they don?t care since they never pay for anything.

Any gamer that has invested money into a reasonable collection is going to be upset if games stop working. That's normal. In fact it's quite abnormal not to expect this.

People drop wads of cash to play newer games, not so they can spend countless hours reloading and retesting older games to show the 100 FPS difference they don't notice or to dig up obscure bugs in games you can't even find on retail shelves anymore.......

I actually log more hours in old games than new games because one of the main points of upgrading is to run existing games better. New games seldom run exceptionally well on current top end hardware.

Yep, I understand it perfectly well and its a point I've been trying to make throughout this discussion. R300 > R5XX = evolutionary. NV4X > G80 = revolutionary. So yeah, based on that metric, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a higher level of compatibility with ATI parts at the expense of hardware features/performance relative to NV parts which happens to be exactly what we've seen when making those transitions.

But the 7800 GT was evolutionary but it had more issues than the revolutionary 9700 Pro for example, so no, your example doesn't hold up.

There were drivers available, Vista RC1 came with G80 drivers.

There were no G80 Vista drivers except basic VGA support which couldn?t game; to call a scenario like that ?Vista ready? is false advertising at best

Work-around and relevant update info do confirm its an application/OS issue (DX8 problems with DX10, resolved if you run DX9 in Vista or the client migrates to DX9).

Huh? DX10 is not a factor for <=DX9 on Vista given it has a totally separate runtime.

There were a few timing swings back and forth but generally I'd agree. Also you'd only need to go 1 generation back to show ATI's drivers have been less than stellar (sup 8500).

Again I've acknowledged it wasn't until the GF5 that nVidia?s drivers took a dump.

As for CD drivers being better than current G80 drivers, I'd have to disagree since I did have problems with the 2.2s that weren't fixed until 2.4 in games I was playing then vs. games I'm playing now with my G80.

I wouldn?t. About one third of my entire gaming library had issues on the G80 with the first three drivers (most of them so bad they were unplayable) that were released whereas I think I had 1-2 games with minor problems on the 9700 Pro using CD Catalyst 2.2. The two weren?t even close.

And guess what? Many of them were fixed. It had nothing to do with your OS/application rubbish but the drivers. They now need to take it a step further and get it on par with the 7900 GTX and I'll happy. There are still problems now that simply shouldn't be there.

Sure, there's some bugs that aren't listed

Then don't claim otherwise.

One example, where you ran a 6800 Ultra with a buggy and problematic chipset. Using that comparative example as the basis for broad-sweeping generalizations is laughable at best.

Except that same chipset didn?t have such issues on the 9700 Pro.

You've already made generalizations about parts you haven't tested on at least 2 occasions in this round of replies alone.......

Yep, but not the way you claim. Again there?s no Alt-Tab or Unreal 2 stuttering on the R6xx. I know that for a fact even though I haven?t used the hardware.

Um, ya. I tend to upgrade every 3 years or so.....for games I want to play now and in the future. I think that's pretty much the norm for pc gamers or there would be no need to upgrade.

So again you expect Calculator and Notepad to stop working on your new C2Duo? And if so are you happy to build an P4 box for the purposes of running them because you?re willing to ?sacrifice them? to get a faster CPU?

Certainly better than shaking your fists full of 3-8 year old titles that you can't find patches for (or even on store shelves for that matter) and expecting support from the hardware vendors.

I don't need patches, I just need drivers that work. We have evidence in the form of other drivers that work so it's quite possible.

Wow now that's just ignorant. So I guess you're just going to conveniently discount the fact you don't get similar problems with the 6800 on a different chipset (again works fine on my 875 set-up).

Your experiences are irrelevant to me because my comments aren?t based on them.

If you're expecting that level of compatibility across the board you really are better off going with a console (which are beginning to mirror their PC brethren more and more with their need for patches and hardware/firmware revisions).

Err, no, What I expect is support that has already proven to exist on the PC with other vendors and/or drivers. The problem is your obtuse ?get a console?, ?it's the OS/app? and ?I?m happy to sacrifice games older than three years? reasoning along with your refusal to accept the basic concept of a driver issue.

Lmao, again, unable to make the distinction between different hardware, different software, and different points in time.

What the hell are you talking about? The 7900 GXT is in the same system. Everything is the same including the driver.

Again what part of this are you having trouble understanding?

You really think all problems with games go back to drivers and not the actual game code itself?

Not all, just those that have been proven to run fine on other GPUs and/or drivers. Certainly not even close to the amount you claim where you basically blame everything under the sun except nVidia.

You're kidding right? I mean ya, I guess on a 3 year old game that spent another 2-3 years in development before it was released (5-6 years if you're counting), the game devs could magically ensure perfect code for all future hardware.

Yet more irrelevant claptrap. It has nothing to do with the devs if the competition or even different GPUs from the same vendor run it fine.

Here's your strawman, with nothing but conjecture and second-hand reports as the basis of your generalizations.

Uh-huh, and what first hand experience do you have with the R600? Again I know the Alt-Tab and Unreal 2 issues don?t exist while you didn?t even know your own vendor had them. That puts me in a better situation to compare than you, especially considering you seem totally oblivious to the concept of a driver problem and would likely blame something else even if you found one.

And again I suggest you consult a dictionary as your (mis)usage of logic terms is laughable at best.

They don't and my argument is certainly more reasonable than your basis for unlimited backwards and forwards compatibility being the lack of explicit documentation to the contrary.

Not unlimited, just as good as has been already proven to be with other vendors and/or drivers.

Different GPU, different shaders, different architectures, different drivers.

If the architecture isn't backwards compatible then it's broken; likewise for the drivers. It's ludicrous to accept games to stop working on the basis of an architecture change much like it?s ludicrous to accept Calculator to stop working after moving from a P4 to a C2Duo.

Again, not looking hard enough. Scroll to Page 17

The only thing I see on that page is applications making a specific driver check. That is nothing at all like what you were claiming about code paths and ini files. Furthermore the nature of that problem means it?ll happen on all GPUs using a driver that doesn?t match what the application expects, and likely on multiple vendors too.

So in other words that case is a text-book example of an application issue which doesn?t at all match the driver problems I?m describing

Same premise if I bought a console. Not buying one to emulate older games or expecting similar performance in the case they're backwards compatible (if they can that's just a bonus), I'm buying one for new games.

If I wanted a console I'd buy one. One of the main reasons I don't get one is exactly that: backwards compatibility, or lack thereof.

That's often the case now, and its not due to hardware, its due to OS/drivers/applications.

Often how what is? That modern processors have trouble running code older than three years old?

Seriously, are you for real?

Another poor example, my 5400rpm drives are collecting dust, as are my 128 and 256MB SODIMM modules.

Another strawman on your part. We aren't talking about old hardware, we're talking about the G80. Again would you be happy if your C2Duo stopped running code older than three years and you needed to build a box with a P4 run them?

I've got a shelf full of NICs that don't work with current hardware due to lack of drivers. Want one? Might as well list off all the PCI and AGP graphics cards I've owned throughout the years that don't run on my current rig......

Again none of those are new like G80.

If you purchased a new NIC and it refused to transmit data from applications older than three years old would you be happy to build another box with an older NIC?

?No, don?t use that box to play Call of Duty because it won?t transfer its data since it?s 4 years old. Use my other box to transmit data for applications 3-6 years old. You can?t use that box for Quake 3 though because it?s 8 years old so for that you?ll need my third box?.

:roll:

Because I understand how the PC industry works, accept it, and am willing to put up with it?

No, because you have very low standards and seem almost happy to allow vendors to screw you over.

 

[BFG10K]

Maybe to you. Personally I'll take the extra shaders and better motion blur etc

Again I'll ask if you?ve actually run any DX10 codepaths? Because based on your comments it doesn't appear you have.

Except for CoJ (which has a massive hit for DX10) the differences in IQ are generally marginal and it's often difficult even with still screenshots to tell a difference.

And again Airborne doesn't have DX10 but I most certainly get AA. You OTOH don't get AA or DX10 in that game.

over removing the jagged edges on a fence post that I will NOT be staring at all day

Ironically AA is generally useless if you're just standing still and staring at a fence post. AA shows a huge difference in actual movement.

Based on your comments I also have doubts you've ever used AA.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
No, it shows ATi drivers work better than nVidia drivers overall IME.

Which somehow qualifies you to make broad sweeping generalizations that fall out of the realm of your experience lol.

Except for the situations where there are no timing or driver difference issues, like how I can use the 7900 GTX with same 163.71 driver in the same system and not have the issues I have with G80.

What part of this are you having difficulty understanding?

lol didn't we just cover this? Different GPU, different drivers (again, just because its the same package, doesn't mean its the same driver...), different architecture, different shaders..... Seriously, you're not implying a single driver package guarantees the same level of compatibility for all supported products in that package do you? Or is this what you're expecting? lol. If it is....well, good luck with that.

The generalization is based on both personal experience and online feedback. It was particularly strong during the earlier Vista days when people who switched to ATi found their ?driver stopped responding and needs to be reset? errors were greatly reduced and even eliminated. nVidia even put a specific thread up at their forums to address the issues.

Well lets see: you have no personal experience with NV cards in Vista and you have no personal experience with ATI cards in Vista. So that leaves you with second-hand experience and conjecture as the only basis for your generalizations, while failing to acknowledge there aren't similar or completely different problems with ATI cards in Vista. GG.

NV put up a specific thread saying it was an application/OS problem they were working with MS to resolve. Through hot fixes and driver updates, the problem was significantly reduced if not completely resolved (I'm sure some people still have issues with it). Whether it was fully a driver or OS issue is unclear, but as someone who did use a G80 in both XP and Vista I can say that I never experienced the issue in XP and the driver restarts I had in Vista ended up being a case of faulty memory.

Btw, driver stop/restarts aren't something new with the G80 or Vista, was a prevalent problem (I personally experienced) with R300 in XP as well.

I build boxes to run new games but not at the expense of old games to stop working, especially not if I?m staying with the same OS and same other hardware they were previously running fine on.

I don't expect my C2D Duo to stop running Calculator or Notepad. Do you?

Again, new piece of hardware, new architecture, etc. etc. If you're willing to live on the bleeding edge of technology you should be willing to bear the consequences. Its the nature of the business.

A known driver issue spanning multiple OSes, multiple GPUs and multiple games. I've never used Vista but I've had the issue at least three games, one with the 6800 U and two on the G80.

It?s even right there in the release notes:

Improved performance of the graphics memory manager on GeForce 8 series GPUs running DirectX 9 applications in single-GPU and NVIDIA SLI
configurations.

These improvements solve cases of reported performance slowdowns in some 3D applications with high graphics settings and resolutions.

As you can see it has nothing to do with Vista or DX10.

Now, are you finally going to admit it's a driver fault instead of playing rhetorical games?

I've never said it wasn't a problem that couldn't be fixed with a driver update, I've maintained that the impetus to fix every single problem isn't always going to fall on the hardware vendor when it should/could be fixed on the application side. You seem to think otherwise. Again, the fact the G80 doesn't exhibit similar problems on hundreds of other titles, even titles based on the same engines as the games that exhibit this problem tells me the problem lies just as much with the application as with the drivers.

Still doesn't change the fact my examples were completely relevant instances where the problems were application/OS-specific and not rhetoric.

Again neither Alt-Tab or Unreal 2 stuttering are application or OS issues and that you choose to continue to make sweeping unfounded claims doesn?t change that fact.

See above.

Huh? When Vista arrived there were no DX10 games so nobody cared. nVidia didn't even have DX10 support for a few releases IIRC. Driver stability and compatibility was the hot topic, not some fantasy DX10 support for titles that never existed.

Huh? Who said anything about games lol? People were spazzing because they couldn't run DX10 DEMOS and overreacting over "leaked" Crysis trailers (running in DX9 anyways). And no NV didn't have WHQL DX10 support for a few weeks which was the laughable basis for the online petition you keep referring to.

Nope, people wanted drivers that didn't cause the display driver to stop responding as was so common with nVidia drivers. Again there were numerous examples of people jumping ship to ATi and finding the issues reduced or even fixed. This includes many 6xxx/7xxx users too.

Issue occurred with both ATI and NV cards in Vista, which have been gradually resolved by both camps through driver updates. Again, another case where the problem could be fixed on either the OS/app side or the driver side, but obviously the path of least resistance with MS is going to be a driver-side fix.

That ?nerd? might've registered the URL but the signatures weren't his. And it looks like no ?nerd? bothered registering a URL for ATi. Why do you suppose that is?

Because there were no DX10 ATi parts with Vista-ready stickers to base a lawsuit on when Vista was released lol.

I guess nVidia finally got their act together.

No, because the frivolous lawsuit didn't stand a chance in even Kangaroo Court.

But such a sacrifice is ludicrous given you don't expect it anywhere else. Do you expect a C2Duo to stop running Calculator or Notepad? Why then do expect a similar notion for a GPU?

Strawman. If Calculator and Notepad were standalone apps that were influenced by any of the external factors we've talked about sure, they may or may not work with my C2D/Vista rig. Could I get 32-bit versions of Calculator or Notepad to work in a 64-bit OS? Maybe, maybe not. Did I expect every single DVD player I own to stop working when I upgraded to Vista? Nope, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to live with.

The only people I've seen share your view are casual gamers that don't really care much about gaming to begin with. Also those that pirate games and hence they don?t care since they never pay for anything.

Hahaha. You're really grasping here. The only people who share anything close to your views are people who think their money carries more value than anyone else's and the hardware you purchase is worth more than its weight in gold.

As for casual gaming....lol. Well, not even gonna bother going into details but I don't find much replay value in single-player games. I'm not the kind of person who's going to replay a single-player game over and over to find every easter egg or hidden area so that my clear flag screen says 20/20 instead of 15/20, or play through 35 hours of scripted AI to click a different check box to see if the last 4 hours of scripted AI is any different lol. So ya, games like that are going to be played through maybe once or twice if they're good, then start collecting dust.

I don't pirate any of my games, I shell out $40-50 with the expectation that most purchases are going to be utter crap in search of that diamond in the rough that might hold my attention for more than a few weeks. That's always been my experience with PC gaming, I doubt that'll change, if it does it'll be for the worst. I sure as hell don't purchase them expecting perfect code ensuring a "lifetime of gaming enjoyment" lol.

Any gamer that has invested money into a reasonable collection is going to be upset if games stop working. That's normal. In fact it's quite abnormal not to expect this.

Unless they no longer play those games and could care less. There's nothing abnormal about being indifferent to titles you no longer care to play.

I actually log more hours in old games than new games because one of the main points of upgrading is to run existing games better. New games seldom run exceptionally well on current top end hardware.

Again, a case where I think you're in the minority. I don't see any comments in new card rumor threads basing the merits and expectations of the cards on old games, its always new or current ones. In threads where people specifically ask for support or compatibility with older titles (typically upgraders on a budget who want more performance), the latest bleeding edge part is rarely a consideration or advised as an upgrade.

But the 7800 GT was evolutionary but it had more issues than the revolutionary 9700 Pro for example, so no, your example doesn't hold up.

In your experience, which by your own account is undermined by your experience with the next evolutionary step-up and the 7900GTX. Now, if you ran the 9700pro/7800GT/7900GTX on the same platform/OS/drivers and still came to the conclusion you might have a point, but I'm guessing you probably changed something between upgrades (namely your buggy NF3 chipset).

There were no G80 Vista drivers except basic VGA support which couldn?t game; to call a scenario like that ?Vista ready? is false advertising at best

You could game, just with horrible, buggy performance expected of a new OS and new GPU at launch. There was plenty of early benchmarks and performance reports floating around before Vista even hit retail shelves (even one here on AT I believe) which helped fuel the online petition frenzy lol.

Huh? DX10 is not a factor for <=DX9 on Vista given it has a totally separate runtime.

Yep, a separate runtime that is not Vista's default and isn't enabled by default, requiring either a work-around or a client update. So again, is NV expected to package and install the DX9 runtime on your Vista machine in order to get a 6 year old title working? Or would it make sense more sense for the game dev to simply update their client (which they're going to do, 10 months after Vista released)?

I wouldn?t. About one third of my entire gaming library had issues on the G80 with the first three drivers (most of them so bad they were unplayable) that were released whereas I think I had 1-2 games with minor problems on the 9700 Pro using CD Catalyst 2.2. The two weren?t even close.

Except you made the comparison between 9700pro release drivers to current G80 drivers. And again, that's no surprise since 1/3rd of your gaming library was probably still current
when the 9700pro was released what? 5 years ago?

And guess what? Many of them were fixed. It had nothing to do with your OS/application rubbish but the drivers. They now need to take it a step further and get it on par with the 7900 GTX and I'll happy. There are still problems now that simply shouldn't be there.

And again, I never said G80 drivers weren't without problems, I said many of the recurring problems people wanted to blame on drivers in cases Nvidia claimed OS/application problems were in fact, application and OS problems.

Simple fact of the matter is NV is going to prioritize and fix problems based on numerous factors, but more often than not, older games are going to fall further down that list of priorities. Whether that suits you or not is irrelevant, its just how things work lol. If you don't like it....well, there's always the competition.

Then don't claim otherwise.

I never did.

Except that same chipset didn?t have such issues on the 9700 Pro.

LMAO. You still don't get it. Just like the 6800 didn't have problems with myriad other chipsets. Yet you're going to cling to a single example on a chipset acknowledged by the maker as being a buggy part as the basis for your broad sweeping generalizations. LOL.

Yep, but not the way you claim. Again there?s no Alt-Tab or Unreal 2 stuttering on the R6xx. I know that for a fact even though I haven?t used the hardware.

Yet completely unwilling to acknowledge potential problems in other games, even though you have absolutely no experience or basis for such an opinion other than your experiences with the 5 year old 9700pro. Makes perfect sense, really.

So again you expect Calculator and Notepad to stop working on your new C2Duo? And if so are you happy to build an P4 box for the purposes of running them because you?re willing to ?sacrifice them? to get a faster CPU?

If the two were mutually exclusive sure, except they're not. That's a no-brainer though.

I don't need patches, I just need drivers that work. We have evidence in the form of other drivers that work so it's quite possible.

Hahaha, that's a good one. First thing required for most PC games is to download a patch in order to get the game "to work". Hell, relevant recent example being STALKER. Ran like a pig at launch....month later, devs release a patch and it runs great. Driver problem right?

Your experiences are irrelevant to me because my comments aren?t based on them.

LOL, right because the world in general and the PC gaming industry revolve around your experiences (they don't). But I guess that's already pretty clear based on your unrealistic expectations.

Err, no, What I expect is support that has already proven to exist on the PC with other vendors and/or drivers. The problem is your obtuse ?get a console?, ?it's the OS/app? and ?I?m happy to sacrifice games older than three years? reasoning along with your refusal to accept the basic concept of a driver issue.

Again, much more realistic than your refusal to accept the basic concept of an application/OS issue.

What the hell are you talking about? The 7900 GXT is in the same system. Everything is the same including the driver.

Everything except for the card and the drivers (y'know, back when NV had 8 different drivers for 2 OS, 32/64, and different card families). Oh ya, aren't those what you're having problems with?

Not all, just those that have been proven to run fine on other GPUs and/or drivers. Certainly not even close to the amount you claim where you basically blame everything under the sun except nVidia.

LOL, other GPUS and drivers that aren't G80. Ya, plug and play support and generalizations, grab yourself a Wii and be happy.

Yet more irrelevant claptrap. It has nothing to do with the devs if the competition or even different GPUs from the same vendor run it fine.

ROFL. Again, if the GPUs from the same vendor run it fine and were released when the game was actually current and supported, its very relevant when you try and compare that to a brand new piece of hardware that's completely different from its predecessors running older games that are no longer supported. As for the competition part, again, that was the point in illustrating the evolutionary changes from R300 to R5XX. I don't know if R600 handles R300 code better than G80 handles legacy code because I don't own one, I do know that G80 blows the doors off its predecessors because its a radically different piece of hardware and thus, may have problems running older games coded for older hardware. Sacrifices and acknowledgements I'm willing to make based on the increased performance.

Uh-huh, and what first hand experience do you have with the R600?

I don't claim to have any first hand experience with the R600, nor do I make any claims NV's current driver situation is better than ATIs based on my lack of experience with the part. I just find it ignorant and irresponsible to think ATI's drivers are problem-free or better than NV's based on prior experiences with different games, drivers and hardware lol.

And again I suggest you consult a dictionary as your (mis)usage of logic terms is laughable at best.

I wasn't using strawman in dictionary/logic terms, it was just to throw your strawman (noun, object, think scarecrow) back in your face as I pointed out a specific example rendering your strawman claim null and void.

Not unlimited, just as good as has been already proven to be with other vendors and/or drivers.

Maybe you should write up a memo with your expectations and guidelines for purchasing a part with a dollar amount you're willing to pay for that level of support and performance, then send it out to each hardware vendor. I'm sure they'll be bending over backwards to suit your needs. LOL.

If the architecture isn't backwards compatible then it's broken; likewise for the drivers.

That's about as strong an argument as you can make against progress. But good job simplifying the differences in architecture from unified vs. pixel/texture in previous generations. If game dev's wrote perfect code and NV wrote perfect drivers, then yes, there should be full backward and forward compatibility. Yet, you only expect that of NV, refusing to acknowledge any possible shortcomings of the game devs themselves. Still refuse to acknowledge any possible problems when these games are developed years in advance when the G80 didn't exist, other games on the same engines run fine on the G80, knowing game devs often cut corners and write vendor-specific code, etc. etc. Again, your expectations are unrealistic at best.

The only thing I see on that page is applications making a specific driver check. That is nothing at all like what you were claiming about code paths and ini files. Furthermore the nature of that problem means it?ll happen on all GPUs using a driver that doesn?t match what the application expects, and likely on multiple vendors too.

So in other words that case is a text-book example of an application issue which doesn?t at all match the driver problems I?m describing

There's other examples in previous release notes that are closer to what I described. Its not a specific driver check, since the game .exe/.ini can't check for a driver that it doesn't know exists. Its simply NV altering their drivers to force the game to NOT point to the WRONG driver (which they'll need to do with each subsequent driver update, aka supporting an application in the absence of y'know, actual dev support).

Not that it matters. Clearly illustrated my point that there's simple problems with outdated, unsupported, older games that are in fact application issues easily fixed by a simple update.

Often how what is? That modern processors have trouble running code older than three years old?

Nope, modern processors wouldn't have any problems, they do have problems though if that 3 year old code is no longer compatible with current OS/drivers/hardware because they're no longer supported. Wow sounds familiar doesn't it?

Another strawman on your part. We aren't talking about old hardware, we're talking about the G80. Again would you be happy if your C2Duo stopped running code older than three years and you needed to build a box with a P4 run them?

If it allowed me to run 64-bit code, DX10, 4GB+ addressable memory space, etc. etc. (the reasons I upgraded in the first place), yep I would. In fact that's the case now, since I can't run many of my 32-bit apps and some hardware in Vista because they're no longer supported with 64-bit updates.

If you purchased a new NIC and it refused to transmit data from applications older than three years old would you be happy to build another box with an older NIC?

Strawman on your part. TCP/IP and 10/100/1000 standards haven't changed in a decade. GPUs/OS/APIs/Drivers/Apps change month-to-month. I don't have any problems with new NICs, I have problems with old NICs that are no longer supported by the people that made them. I don't cry about it, I just move on.

?No, don?t use that box to play Call of Duty because it won?t transfer its data since it?s 4 years old. Use my other box to transmit data for applications 3-6 years old. You can?t use that box for Quake 3 though because it?s 8 years old so for that you?ll need my third box?.

:roll:

k. :roll:

No, because you have very low standards and seem almost happy to allow vendors to screw you over.

Or maybe you have completely unrealistic standards and won't be happy regardless. I guess the difference is, I'm happy with my G80 and the way it runs the games I play.

 

[kknd1967]

Read on from This Review

It is just a 8800GTS/320M, which should be slower than 8800GTS/640M at high resolution.
Btw, this is also one of the most comprehensive reviews for 2900PRo so far.