Uh oh, an ATi vs nVidia thing...

[Scooter]

Read this article first. Tom always does a god job of whittling back the B.S., and adding a bit here and there too.

The question is: Do you foresee a big battle between the two giants? Or will things stay as they are with, nVidia having the fastest thing around? Or will ATi square away their drivers and add a few more rendering pipelines to leap ahead of nVidia?

Will is be the Canadians against the Americans for world graphics domination? j/k btw.

This isn't intended to start fights or bad mouth either way. Just a begining of what might be an interesting topic.

Scott

 

[Xenon14]

ATI should be feared. If it wants to rival NVIDIA in shear performance, it can... but I think they want to appeal to a wider audience, especially with their multifunctional video cards.

 

[Scooter]

I agree that ATi can come up with some great stuff. but, do you think that nVidia will allow themselves to be out gunned?

Scott

 

[Adul]

it is looking good to me.

 

[Scooter]

What's looking good?

 

[Mem]

Adul looks himself in the mirror .

 

[Oyeve]

Nvidia may have the fastest thing aroung but (IMO) it sure isnt the best looking thing around. I always found the colors on geforce cards to look dull or washed out. The later voodo cards (3k-5k) had much vibrant colors. The radeon (again, IMO) is a nice cross between both the geforce and voodoo. Remember, its not all about framerates but the quality. Just because a geforce3 can pump out much higher frames than a radeon it doenst make it overall better. most people cant even see the above 30fps. Also, it depends on the application. I still think (yet again, IMO) that UT looks better on a voodoo 3k, 4k, 5k card than any other card. Competition will benefit us all in the long run.

 

[nam ng]

<< Nvidia may have the fastest thing aroung but (IMO) it sure isnt the best looking thing around. I always found the colors on geforce cards to look dull or washed out. The later voodo cards (3k-5k) had much vibrant colors. The radeon (again, IMO) is a nice cross between both the geforce and voodoo. Remember, its not all about framerates but the quality. Just because a geforce3 can pump out much higher frames than a radeon it doenst make it overall better. most people cant even see the above 30fps. Also, it depends on the application. I still think (yet again, IMO) that UT looks better on a voodoo 3k, 4k, 5k card than any other card. Competition will benefit us all in the long run >>


Have you taken a look again lately? Your comments only applied to 6.XX and older drivers, from 7.xx on it's a different story... With the later 12.90 driver, poor color image quality comments only came from ignorance.

 

[BFG10K]

The Radeon is looking good with its Smartshader and Trueform features. Technology wise it could give the GF3 a run for its money.

Of course ATi's archilles heel is their driver support. Crappy drivers will destroy any good product. And don't tell me how ATi's driver support has improved because they leak twice as many drivers as nVidia. It's still the case that whenever a new game or benchmark comes out, it's busted on the Radeon until the next driver release.

Heck Anand still couldn't even get the MTBR demo to run properly in his Radeon LE review, and that's after ~30 leaked driver releases from ATi.

 

[jobberd]

<< Just because a geforce3 can pump out much higher frames than a radeon it doenst make it overall better. most people cant even see the above 30fps >>



1: geforce3 reportedly has substantially better 2d quality then before, and may even hold a light to the Radeon now.

2: actually, the human eye can't tell the difference at around 60-70 fps or so. And believe me, the difference between 40 fps and 60 fps is alot

3: Because it can pump out much higher frames, you can sacrifice all those frames for added 3d quality such as anisotropic filtering or FSAA.

4: I don't believe it's fair to compare a Geforce3 to a Radeon anyways, considering the Geforce3 came out over a year after the Radeon and comes with a much heftier price tag.

one of the things Nvidia always seems to be the best at is releasing its products on time. When the Geforce1 came out, it had virtually no competition until the voodoo5 was released. And by then, the Geforce2 GTS had been released. And it again had virtually no competition again until 3 or 4 months down the line when the Radeon showed up. And no new cards have come out to challenge Nvidia since then (excluding the kyro II), while Nvidia pumped out the Geforce2 pro/ultra, and then the Geforce3. These card manufacturers have to pick up the pace if they want to be a poseable threat to Nvidia

 

[BFG10K]

most people cant even see the above 30fps.

actually, the human eye can't tell the difference at around 60-70 fps or so.

Funny, I can easily tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS.

 

[jobberd]

<< Funny, I can easily tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS. >>



thats because youre not normal seriously though, there is a point to having more fps. the smoother the game, the easier it is to play. Maybe its only after you've experienced 60 fps that you can truly notice the difference. or 120 fps, in BFG10K's case

 

[Pyro]

I'm really tired of fools showing their ignorance. ATi may have had bad drivers in the past, but that is over and done with.

If anyone thinks otherwise, please tell me why I've been running my radeon64 under win2k for 6 months without a single problem?

if you're gonna pick faults, then pick the REAL ones.

 

[joeryu]

im with pyro here, you dont have any right to say that ATi's driver support sucks when you dont even have a radeon card. i have the AIW radeon (upgraded from a hercules 64 mb gts) and i have run it flawlessly in every game i played, in winme, win2k, and currently winxp. no problems at all, beautiful image quality and great speed to top it off. if you cant get it to work then obviously you dont know how to configure a system properly. seriously its now time where you can take out the driver support factor when comparing nvidia and ati now, thats a thing of the past.

 

[jeffrey]

Isn't the big news about the R200 the fact that per Tom's article today it appears that ATI has a chip with pipelines that can handle six textures?

 

[mrbios]

<< and that's after ~30 leaked driver releases from ATi. >>



Um, ATI almost never leaks drivers. Nvidia has them every other week, from old ones below 10, to I believe 14 now. But enough of that...

I honestly see ATI really coming on strong soon. Bad driver support seems to be a thing of the past, with more frequent and more stable drivers. And, in case anyone keeps track, technically ATI has released more drivers than Nvidia with its Radeon than the Geforce. It's just that they Detonators get &quot;leaked&quot; all the time. Who has the bad driver support? That's what I thought.

Russell &quot;Mr.Bios&quot; Sampson

 

[Leon]

<< If anyone thinks otherwise, please tell me why I've been running my radeon64 under win2k for 6 months without a single problem? >>



You can run it allright, but the performance...



ATI vs NVIDIA: Driver performance under Win98 &amp; Win2K



<< if you cant get it to work then obviously you dont know how to configure a system properly. seriously its now time where you can take out the driver support factor when comparing nvidia and ati now, thats a thing of the past. >>



People were saying the same just day before this review came up, sorry, I don't buy it



And from Anand recent post, situation did not improve...

Heck, don't listen to me, ask well-known developers and what they have to say about ATI non-working drivers and broken features (especially in OpenGL).

Leon

 

[TravisBickle]

I can't really trust ATi after watching them the last few years.
ATi recommend that you go to 3rd party amateur websites for technical support. WTF?

 

[Scooter]

Dang Leon, well spoken.

...and historically they haven't always bene up to snuff when they've launched a new architecture.

I wasn't trying to bash ATi btw.

Scott

 

[mrbios]

<< ATi always talk a lot of bull about their specs before release. Go look at the Radeon and Rage chips news previews. >>



Ahem.... anyone remember the Nvidia RivaTNT? 125MHz core anyone? Outgun 2 Voodoo2's? I don't think so.



<< nvidia had driver problems too but they work so hard on them. >>



Work so hard on them? How long between official driver releases did we have to wait between 6.50 and 12.41? You call that hard work? If they actually did any work, we'd have OFFICIAL drivers a lot more often. But do we?

BTW, in case you're wondering, I have Nvidia cards. I was a huge fan of them back in the RivaTNT days. But times change.

Russell &quot;Mr.Bios&quot; Sampson

 

[BFG10K]

I'm really tired of fools showing their ignorance. ATi may have had bad drivers in the past, but that is over and done with.

Err, no it isn't. If you kept up with the reviews you'd see that wasn't the case. MBTR, 3DMark2001, DMZG, UT compressed textures, and the list goes on. Almost every new game/benchmark has a problem until ATi patches up the problem.

if you cant get it to work then obviously you dont know how to configure a system properly.

<rolleyes>

Then I guess Anand can't configure his system when he says:

&quot;Note that due to the fact that none of the ATI Radeon cards tested would properly run Synetic's Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing demo, the benchmark was left out of this review.&quot;

In his very recent Radeon LE review.

Um, ATI almost never leaks drivers. Nvidia has them every other week, from old ones below 10, to I believe 14 now. But enough of that...

Pffff. I think you should learn a bit more about the platform you're trying to defend.

Rage3D unofficial leaked drivers.

&quot;The drivers provided below are pre-released unofficial display drivers and are not supported by ATi Technologies.&quot;

 

[rbV5]

<< MBTR, 3DMark2001, DMZG, UT compressed textures, and the list goes on. Almost every new game/benchmark has a problem until ATi patches up the problem >>



perhaps, but I've been running all that stuff(whats DMZG?) for months without any real issues in win2k, and I've noticed MY personal experience with MY radeon card on MY rig does not jibe with many of the reviews including Anands. I'm currently using the 3224 drivers, but really don't see much difference since the 3102 supported drivers came out BTW.

 

[Scooter]

<< whats DMZG >>



Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens

 

[mchammer187]

4: I don't believe it's fair to compare a Geforce3 to a Radeon anyways, considering the Geforce3 came out over a year after the Radeon and comes with a much heftier price tag

i was not aware ATI released a price for RII but i doubt it will cost > $400 dollars and GF3's avg price is still about 350.

but anyways i hope ATI gets the drivers right after R200 because it looks very promising.

 

[rbV5]

Thanks scooter -

but is this why:

Pentium II 333 MHz CPU
Windows 95 or 98
GeForce256 3D Accelerator
64 MB RAM (96 Recommended

or will it run on a radeon card in win2k?