Really old thread somebody bumped.

[rbV5]

I guess you don't want to draw any attention to the levels that ATI is not able to compete at all. Incidently, which is what this thread is really about...

Ha, this thread is thinly veiled ATI bashing. Keys with his feigned horror at ATI's issues with Chip production, Ben spreading his widsdom on purchasing decisions, yet oddly seems to have stuck with an ATI board long after he was unsatisfied with it in virtually every way. Rollo with his unending supply of high-end parts to play with as if thats how a normal enthusiast experience could possibly be.

They'd have you believe that you need to to have the high-end stuff to have a decent gaming experience, or that if you've spent your money on virtually any ATI hardware at all, you've wasted it on old, slow crap. Nonesense.

I simply say BS, I feel pretty good about most of my buying decisions. I feel I've got a good value for my money (Nvidia and ATI products) with the possible exception of NV DVD decoder, which I just feel should have been gifted to NV40 owners...not a bad value when compared to other DVD decoder software of its quality on its own.

Obviously Nvidia owns the high end at this point...obviously. That doesn't make ATI crap, not by a long shot.

 

[Killrose]

Go play with your toys children and enjoy them :roll:

 

[imported_g33k]

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: g33k

Originally posted by: QueBert
question, aside from the custom resolution/refresh issues what's wrong with ATI drivers?

I might be going out on a limb here, but if a game doesn't work with my card, shouldn't I put at least some blame on the maker of the game? I can't expect ATI to make their drivers 100% with 100% of games released.


I've never had a problem with my card in any game. No, I don't play a lot of games, but I've played enough to where I can safely say ATI has great drivers *shrug*

You already mentioned the the refresh rate and resolution issue. nV also has better dual monitor support. In my experience nV has better OGL support. Wolfenstien would stutter badly on my 9800pro, doom 3 would crash. ATi eventually fixed the problems. But it took almost a year later in the case of wolfenstien.

I ran Wolfenstein just fine on a Radeon 9500, and played Doom 3 without issue on the same card. There's not much difference between a 9800 and a 9500 architecturally. It could have easily been something else with your system.

Nope it was definitely the 9800pro and the ATi drivers. Single player Wolfenstien ran great. It was more of a conflict with Punkbuster on multiplayer. The game would stutter badly when Punkbuster would update itself. If you look at ATi's driver archives, they did eventually address the problem, but it took about a year after the game was released.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: dug777
i'm not quite sure of the point of the thread but my understanding was that the x850XT PE (or even just XT) stomped the 6800 U pretty badly (looking at that latest 7800 review on AT anyway IIRC) in most areas...if you are just talking fps anyway, having played on neither thats all i can comment on...

(in fact it got pasted in the bf2 benchs on AT by the X850XT PE...very close, in fact ATI winning at the highest res in d3...thumped soundly in hl2...seems to be a pretty convincing showing to me just from looking at those )

The big problem with posts like yours and Russian Sensations is people who don't know any better could read them and think "Oh yeah! I want the X850XTPE! It's doin' the stompin'!"

Of course what you don't say, and perhaps don't know, is that in 95% of all popular settings neither card is playable at a resolution/setting the other isn't.

So while the X850XT PE may be "stomping" a 6800U by 7fps on some Far Cry level/setting, they're both pretty much the same for playability most of the time.

BUT- with the ATI product you're giving up SM3, soft shadows, HDR, and SLI- things we've all seen in current games are very nice to have.

The real performance difference is with high end SLI and 7800s- where you can say,"I run Game X at 19X14 4X8X- ATI can't".

Food for thought.

 

[imported_Noob]

Just a question to everyone. Do you really see a difference between 1600x1200 and 2048x1536? I sure don't. Sometimes I see a very small difference between 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, depending on the game.

 

[BenSkywalker]

RS-

And it is those same "crappy" ATi drivers that actually allow video hardware acceleration and for 3 year old X800 tech to outperform 7800GTX, right?

Reread it multiple times- where was the part about horrific image corruption? I can't find it.

9800Pro for $120> 6600

A discontinued clearanced part.....

X800 PCIe for $152 > 6600GT (and there are many more x800s for low $150/160)

The link you provided is the x800PCIe at $185.99- what are you talking about? Try and purchase one and see what it comes up to- you have a very interesting way of presenting prices. I listed PriceWatch's best prices- you come up with some tactics to try and make ATi look favorable.

X800XT AGP is $358, X800XT AIW AGP $330, x850xt platinum is $399 AGP - all are faster than 6800Ultra AGP for $420.

Really? Losing the overwhelming majority of benchmarks is now considered faster.... I hadn't heard about the definition change of the word 'faster'- must have missed that memo.

Noob-

Just a question to everyone. Do you really see a difference between 1600x1200 and 2048x1536?

Huge difference- what monitor are you not seeing it on?

 

[imported_Noob]

Ben, I used to have a 21 inch CRT. I played games such as HL2 and others on it at that high resolution. I didn't really see any IQ increase. Needless to say the performance was terrible. So I just decided to replace it for a 19 inch CRT with one touch brightness options.

 

[imported_Kensai]

I'm in favor of owning one ATI setup and one nVidia setup.

 

[cbehnken]

Originally posted by: BroadbandGamer
In the meantime I'll be enjoying my 7800 GTX.

If and when ATI comes out with their nex gen card and it does in fact blow away whatever NVIDIA has, I will have no problem selling this GTX on ebay.

I'm loyal to no ONE company.

QFT

If you want 7800 performance now, then get it. It's stupid to wait just because there is no ATI part.

 

[xtknight]

They better get out some games to take advantage of these suckers. Unfortunately STALKER isn't due 'till sometime in '06. I hope they are improving the image quality of it while they're at it. To be honest I think Quake 4 will have no better image quality than Doom 3 (no engine improvements that is). Here's hoping SEDs will reign supreme. I heard they can make SEDs as small as 2" or as big as 60 some inches, so we should see some computer SED monitors. And I hope the pixel pitch is smaller than the best CRTs'.

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: xtknightUnfortunately STALKER isn't due 'till sometime in '06. I hope they are improving the image quality of it while they're at it.

They may add displacement mapping since the new generation cards and a 6800 SLI setup can probably handle it.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Pete-

So, the good: ATI seems to be able to produce at least one fairly complex card at 90nm.

Which one? MS has control of the R500.

I'll admit I'm just going by what I read and naive deduction, but I don't think MS is handling anything but the purchase order for R500/C1/Xenos. Surely ATI was responsible for (architecting it according to MS's specs and) designing it using TMSC's fab tools/limitations, and thus was the primary/sole party working on it? MS may be free to put it on a smaller process or whatever, but do they have the expertise to tweak it themselves if a shrink requires it, or will they simply ask ATI or TMSC or whoever for help with the shrink details?

As for lies and statistics, well, I'm sure each has their problems. I also didn't view the PVP as anything but tangential to the cards' primary function, which is 3D. Considering nV didn't charge a premium for it, at least compared to ATI's prices, I didn't think of it as anything but a bonus--albeit, one that didn't arrive. So, nV's rep takes a hit, but I don't think it affected their cards' competitiveness. (Yeah, I know, that was pretty obvious.)

I guess ATI's PR and simple release consistency is paying off in terms of driver mindshare, but I don't believe it's all smoke and mirrors, judging by my limited experience.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
RS-

And it is those same "crappy" ATi drivers that actually allow video hardware acceleration and for 3 year old X800 tech to outperform 7800GTX, right?

Reread it multiple times- where was the part about horrific image corruption? I can't find it.

9800Pro for $120> 6600

A discontinued clearanced part.....

X800 PCIe for $152 > 6600GT (and there are many more x800s for low $150/160)

The link you provided is the x800PCIe at $185.99- what are you talking about? Try and purchase one and see what it comes up to- you have a very interesting way of presenting prices. I listed PriceWatch's best prices- you come up with some tactics to try and make ATi look favorable.

X800XT AGP is $358, X800XT AIW AGP $330, x850xt platinum is $399 AGP - all are faster than 6800Ultra AGP for $420.

Really? Losing the overwhelming majority of benchmarks is now considered faster.... I hadn't heard about the definition change of the word 'faster'- must have missed that memo.

Noob-

Just a question to everyone. Do you really see a difference between 1600x1200 and 2048x1536?

Huge difference- what monitor are you not seeing it on?

According to xbits roundup the x800 cards win the majority of AA/AF tests. It's not by much though, and availability was a problem.

If you want high high end >$500 cards Nvidia is your only option. But for users with less than that budget ATI is a solid choice.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: zendari
According to xbits roundup the x800 cards win the majority of AA/AF tests. It's not by much though, and availability was a problem.

If you want high high end >$500 cards Nvidia is your only option. But for users with less than that budget ATI is a solid choice.

Xbitlabs- last sanctuary of the ATI true believer. If there's a way an ATI card can come out on top of a benchmark, they'll find it. I remember in days gone by they used to follow ATIs directions that for comparable image quality you need to turn off all AF optomizations in the nV drivers, because they "didn't have any".

Of course then when it was discovered they did, and that they reduced IQ, ATI said "Our definition of trilinear is the new definition, we have no optomizations."

Anyway, ATI and XBit= thick as thieves

 

[imported_Noob]

Well they are showing really popular games Rollo. The benchmarks are undeniable. God I hope you didn't support the 5900 Ultra to this degree.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Noob
Well they are showing really popular games Rollo. The benchmarks are undeniable. God I hope you didn't support the 5900 Ultra to this degree.

Yeah let's hope not. :roll:

I love how the ATI faithfull like to bring up the FX series over......and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.......again.....


Why do they do this? Simple: it's the one point in recent history where ATI had the lead over nVidia at something "meaningful". (DX9 performance)
Problem was, by the time many DX9 games came out, the "reign" of the 9700/9800s was over, and ATI got shuffled back into second place obscurity......

 

[imported_Noob]

It's undebaitable that the game in the Xbit benchmarks are popular. It clearly shows that the X800 has the advantage in AA/AF, high shader based games. Look at HL2/CSS, Far Cry, UT2004, COD, BF2, all these are a lot of the most popular games to date that perform better on the X800. Even if some of them are by a few FPS. It still doesn't change the fact.

Now of course ATI not supporting SM 3.0 was dumb. I would like to see HDR in the game besides screenshots, not to mention the high bit precision on the 6800. But I know for sure that once I saw it I wouldn't play with it after because I'd never sacrifice AA. But no doubt having the option is better. But the truth is UE3 games that take full advantage of VS 3.0's IQ enhancing features will require at least a 6800 GT SLI to run at a high res. But what is the point of getting next gen performance today when you can get it in the card tomorrow with new features?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: dug777
i'm not quite sure of the point of the thread but my understanding was that the x850XT PE (or even just XT) stomped the 6800 U pretty badly (looking at that latest 7800 review on AT anyway IIRC) in most areas...if you are just talking fps anyway, having played on neither thats all i can comment on...

(in fact it got pasted in the bf2 benchs on AT by the X850XT PE...very close, in fact ATI winning at the highest res in d3...thumped soundly in hl2...seems to be a pretty convincing showing to me just from looking at those )

The big problem with posts like yours and Russian Sensations is people who don't know any better could read them and think "Oh yeah! I want the X850XTPE! It's doin' the stompin'!"

Of course what you don't say, and perhaps don't know, is that in 95% of all popular settings neither card is playable at a resolution/setting the other isn't.

So while the X850XT PE may be "stomping" a 6800U by 7fps on some Far Cry level/setting, they're both pretty much the same for playability most of the time.

BUT- with the ATI product you're giving up SM3, soft shadows, HDR, and SLI- things we've all seen in current games are very nice to have.

The real performance difference is with high end SLI and 7800s- where you can say,"I run Game X at 19X14 4X8X- ATI can't".

Food for thought.

fair point

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: southpawuni
I'm open to hear what I'm wrong on though.

I'll grant you, ATI has decent workable drivers.. to some extent.
But its not me making them sound bad.. complain to Anand and make him edit out the fact that they dont display above 1600x1200 properly maybe?

You cannot hide the truth just because you do not like it.

Apparently you also missed THIS article

ATi definately has better 2D quality than Nvidia, and especially at higher resolutions. Maybe there is a specific problem for running ATI cards in BF2 above 1600x1200, but you make it sound like it is for all games.

"World of Warcraft - WOW, infamous WOW. Since I had approximately five hours to kill before my queue for Battle Grounds, I took the opportunity to take the display at 1920x1200 through Stratholme (all of it). Gaming at a resolution like this really doesn't get any better; for the first time, I feel like I finally have enough space to lay out all of the icons, and the X800 Pro is more than enough to keep up the FPS just fine." - anandtech

It's just that above 1600x1200 analog generally looks worse than digital, regardless of ATI or Nvidia. If you realize that both look crap compared to digital, I am not really concenred that one is crap and the other is even more crap.

--------------------------------

And it is those same "crappy" ATi drivers that actually allow video hardware acceleration and for 3 year old X800 tech to outperform 7800GTX, right? Windows Media HD Video Playback

HOw about all those skipped frames by 6800 series in "Step into Liquid" thread?

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Line them up against their comparable nVidia parts and only the X850 is looking very good. The X800XL was looking very strong at $100 less then a 6800GT, but at $5 less it looks pretty weak. ATi's lineup right now is extremely weak overall, only their top tier board fairs decently against nV's soon to be dropped second tier part- they need to get their new line out the door ASAP.

9800Pro for $120> 6600
X800 PCIe for $152 > 6600GT (and there are many more x800s for low $150/160)
ATI has no real competitor to 6800nu AGP.
X800XL PCIe is $249 at monarch vs. $340 for the cheapest 6800GT PCIe
X800XL AGP is $318 vs. $280 for 6800GT (not too bad) - overall tie between these 2 since one is better for AGP, one for PCIe
X800XT AGP is $358, X800XT AIW AGP $330, x850xt platinum is $399 AGP - all are faster than 6800Ultra AGP for $420.
X850XT PCIe for $439 and X850xt platinum PCIe for $474 are again faster than 6800Ultra PCIe for $490.
Nvidia has no competitors to ATI's AIW lineup on any level
So whats your point again?

Many of NVIDIAs OEMs offer cards with VIVO, many add the feature for less than $5, on top of that, the drivers work the way they are supposed to, the 1st time, for capture.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: dug777
i'm not quite sure of the point of the thread but my understanding was that the x850XT PE (or even just XT) stomped the 6800 U pretty badly (looking at that latest 7800 review on AT anyway IIRC) in most areas...if you are just talking fps anyway, having played on neither thats all i can comment on...

(in fact it got pasted in the bf2 benchs on AT by the X850XT PE...very close, in fact ATI winning at the highest res in d3...thumped soundly in hl2...seems to be a pretty convincing showing to me just from looking at those )

The big problem with posts like yours and Russian Sensations is people who don't know any better could read them and think "Oh yeah! I want the X850XTPE! It's doin' the stompin'!"

Of course what you don't say, and perhaps don't know, is that in 95% of all popular settings neither card is playable at a resolution/setting the other isn't.

So while the X850XT PE may be "stomping" a 6800U by 7fps on some Far Cry level/setting, they're both pretty much the same for playability most of the time.

BUT- with the ATI product you're giving up SM3, soft shadows, HDR, and SLI- things we've all seen in current games are very nice to have.

The real performance difference is with high end SLI and 7800s- where you can say,"I run Game X at 19X14 4X8X- ATI can't".

Food for thought.

Pretty much the same is not the same. The Infamous Rollo just can't admit that the x850xtpe beats the 6800u in majority of the benchmarks. And if you're gonna discredit xbitlabs, why should I believe the firingsquad benches you rave about so often? How about this benchmark?
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x850xt/index.x?pg=8
The x850xtpe even beats a 6800gt sli setup at 16x12 4x8x, and trounces the single ultra, what are you gonna whine that techreport is biased too? Or that nobody can tell the difference between 48 and 34 fps? :laugh:

The big problem with posts like yours is that you sound like a broken record player about the soft shadows, sm3, and all that crap. The truth is, cards as old as the radeon 9500 are fully capable of doing soft shadows, and if one half-wit developer choses to implement them in an nv-specific way, then I'll just chose not to buy their half-a$sed game. The same thing goes for the morons who'd rather code sm1.1 than 2.0. I've seen demos of soft shadows, dynamic branching, and even HDR done without sm3, so the x850 is fully capable of such effects if the developer choses to implement them appropriately. Hell, even an 9800p can do them, so stop with the bull$hit already.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Noob
Well they are showing really popular games Rollo. The benchmarks are undeniable. God I hope you didn't support the 5900 Ultra to this degree.

Yeah let's hope not. :roll:

I love how the ATI faithfull like to bring up the FX series over......and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.............and over.......again.....


Why do they do this? Simple: it's the one point in recent history where ATI had the lead over nVidia at something "meaningful". (DX9 performance)
Problem was, by the time many DX9 games came out, the "reign" of the 9700/9800s was over, and ATI got shuffled back into second place obscurity......

By the time many sm3 games come out, the reign if the 6800u will be over. Hell, it's over already, and I've yet to see more than a handful of games using sm3. Wait... It never even had any reign except in a few games and benchmarks. And yet the Nv faithful kept bringing up sm3 during the past year like it would be the holy grail of the gf6 series. I have a hunch that when Unreal 3 is out, you will not be bragging that your 6800u can run it an full eye candy, and instead you'll be wondering which settings you should turn down so you can get decent fps. :laugh:

 

[BFG10K]

I've had more then my fair share of reboots running ATi also

Same here but the only two games I can list are COD and CFS3 which would consistently hard-lock. nVidia was much worse during the 66.93 and 71.84 days because a wide range of games would randomly crash at random times (usually Direct3D titles). Add DEP to that list and you've got some real issues.

Fortunately 77.72 seem to working very well so far.

That is why I stated to use app detection(or allow users to disable all optimizations).

Did you try turning off Catalyst AI?

OGL support. Wolfenstien would stutter badly on my 9800pro, doom 3 would crash.

I never had a single problem on my 9700 Pro in those games. RTCW ran like butter at 1792x1344 with 16xAF and while Doom 3 was quite slow it never crashed or had any visual glitches.

we don't have a bunch of people pretending that it is useable although we do have a lot of people right now pretending that ATi's drivers are class leading which is laughable at best.

Likewise we have a bunch of people pretending nVidia's drivers are the holy grail which is also false. ATi tends to have more visual glitches and general incompatibilities but nVidia's drivers fall over much more often, and fall over hard.

5. It remains to be seen if Devs will continue to support SM2b as it has not been the MS standard for over a year.

Considering 1.4 has only recently become the minimum standard I don't see any issue there.

 

[rbV5]

Many of NVIDIAs OEMs offer cards with VIVO, many add the feature for less than $5, on top of that, the drivers work the way they are supposed to, the 1st time, for capture.

Not if you want a 6800 series card with VIVO (IIRC). However every ATI GPU has VIVO support, and all the top end cards have it for no extra, since you can't get them without VIVO......and I recall very few issues with Radeon VIVO cards, mainly because the driver model for simple VIVO is far less complex than somethinf feature packed like AIW. Compare apples to apples.

Of course, if you want "Personal Cinema" Nvidia's real counterpart to AIW, they died at FX 5700. Forceware Multimedia Suite, Nvidias answer to ATI's MMC, was well over a year late, never made public, and is only available with the 5700 version of personal Cinema.

So if you really want Nvidia VIVO, you are at 6600 or below or 7800GTX....thats it, what about the market gap from sub $200 to >$500+. There is no Nvidia answer to AIW 9700+ period, and their VIVO support took last generation-off.

 

[imported_g33k]

I never had a single problem on my 9700 Pro in those games. RTCW ran like butter at 1792x1344 with 16xAF and while Doom 3 was quite slow it never crashed or had any visual glitches.

Again I already replied to this upthread. Single player ran fine. It was an issue with Punkbuster on Wolfenstien multiplayer. There is no question the issue was there as ATi released a driver revision to fix the problem. You can find it in the release notes in their driver archives. It took them almost a year to do so though.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: munky
How about this benchmark?
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x850xt/index.x?pg=8
The x850xtpe even beats a 6800gt sli setup at 16x12 4x8x, and trounces the single ultra, what are you gonna whine that techreport is biased too? Or that nobody can tell the difference between 48 and 34 fps? :laugh:

No, I'm going to say, go to the next pagewhere you'll see the 6800U performing on par with the X850s and the SLI stomping them flat, like usual. :roll:
Anybody can find an isolated benchmark to prove their point, the real trick is showing a pattern of benches that support your point at a given setting?

The big problem with posts like yours is that you sound like a broken record player about the soft shadows, sm3, and all that crap.

It's nice you like your games to look like the old days, some of us want them to look more realistic?

The truth is, cards as old as the radeon 9500 are fully capable of doing soft shadows,

Ah, the old "the card could do it if only the developers would code it". Who cares? If they're not, the end result is the same? (you don't get to see it on that card)

and if one half-wit developer choses to implement them in an nv-specific way, then I'll just chose not to buy their half-a$sed game. The same thing goes for the morons who'd rather code sm1.1 than 2.0. I've seen demos of soft shadows, dynamic branching, and even HDR done without sm3, so the x850 is fully capable of such effects if the developer choses to implement them appropriately. Hell, even an 9800p can do them, so stop with the bull$hit already.

Yeeeearrggggg! It's nice you'll choose not to play games where the developers didn't go out of their way to retrocode for the primitive ATI GPUs, but a lot of us want to see HDR and soft shadows, or SM3 vs SM1.1? You sound like a 3dfx apologist in the days when framerate was about the only card they had to play.