Slashdot Mirror
ATi Radeon 8500
punkmac writes: "The new ATi Radeon 2 8500 is finally here, with previews at Anandtech and Tom's Hardware. Could ATi finally have the killer card that we've all been hoping for? With promises of a 33% speed increase from the GeForce 3, they might." Gamespot has a piece too, all published simultaneously. I love it when a hardware company decides to lift their embargo and all the "independent" reviewers dutifully follow the herd. Compare the three articles and see if you can determine which images/text came directly from the press kit.
What else would you have the review sites do? Break their NDAs and publish early, thus both violating their agreement and guarenteeing getting snubbed on all future hardware releases? Or sit on their hands and ignore reporting on the latest hardware (sort of the raison d'etre of hardware sites)?
(Say what you will about me wanting actual vendor support, but I went through the DRI hell of owning -- and eventually dumping at a considerable loss -- a Voodoo5 5500. I now have a GeForce2 Ultra and the Nvidia driver was easy to install and works reasonably well. And I could care less that it isn't open source. Their hardware, their driver, my choice to use it. Same as my choice to use Opera. It's the best tool for the job.)
Anyway, I'd really like to see some of the "independant" review sites (especially Tom's and/or AnandTech) start including a bit about Linux compatibility (including whether or not OSS drivers exist), performance, availability, etc. But I guess since the press kit didn't have any mention of Linux, the reviews won't either, like Michael says. Plenty of ad views on those reviews, though...
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
From the article at tomshardware.com:
Let me not forget that the multi-sampling support of Radeon 8500 also allows so extremely important stuff as depth-of-field or motion blur.
Yeah sure, but does anyone remember the t-buffer? The voodoo5 had those, and I don't think any major developer used it.
Developers will always keep per-card-programming to a minimum and simple *ignore* those special FX features. It's not 'this effect, and that effect' that is important, but stuff that leads generally improved image quality (think Doom3, which does the lighting identical for every element in the scene)
- Andreas
But what about the drivers? They are the real issue. I bought an ATI Radeon when they came out. And even on Windows, the drivers were quite buggy. Not just unoptimized, which I think they were too. But also buggy. Many games had clear visual bugs, and you had to be switching options on and off to find something that works. Maybe it's also because the card was new and game makers hadn't been able to test with it to get around the bugs, but I dont think so. I think the drivers were just immature.
I really hope the drivers have matured. We need something besides NVidia in good consumer level 3D cards. And as ATI has been quite good with releasing the specs for their cards, I wouldn't be sad at all to see ATI gaining some market share from NVidia.
The World's Best Music!
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
When will it hit the stores?
Whenever ATI manages to get the beta drivers cut to CD.
Does a faster video card mean that their terrible Windows drivers will bring a faster BSoD?
After buying 180 All-In-Wonder Pros for a client (TV network), upgrading the systems a couple of years later and then not being able to get Windows 2000 support for them that actually works (their "MultiMedia Center" hangs the machine or causes BSoDs, and is in perputal beta), I've sworn off ATI.
Anyone else who is tired of ATI's always broken Windows software want to join me at ATI's lovely Markham, Ontario headquarters? I'll bring the barbecue, and we'll have a video card roast in their parking lot. I know at least one reputable TV network who will cover the protest.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
No cool reviews = no traffic. You can't afford to purchase hardware / games for each review because you're not making any money. If you DON'T toe the party line from ATI or nVidia or whomever ... no more free demo cards / games / widgets.
Sure, mod me offtopic, but this is the reason online 'scoop' reviews are so ... homogenous. I'm not sure I have the solution. Does anyone?
Cheers,
- RLJ
I'm not buying ATI until I start hearing good word-of-mouth stories about their drivers. I've been burnt a few times by their products and absolutely refuse to try them anymore.
Imagine having several hundred flight information displays around a major international airport. These are just the computers that drive the monitors all over the place.
Bone-head decision number one: All the machines are running Windows 95. They won't run under NT or 2000. And the programmer won't port it to Linux or BSD - I tried to convince him, but he didn't have the time, and he thought the airports would balk at it.
Bone-headed decision number two: My fault. ATI Xpert@Play 98 video cards because they have an NTSC video output which can be fed to each of the old displays in the building. Boss really liked the choice - they're a hometown company, and the scan conversion is in hardware; the drivers don't need to load to enable the NTSC video output.
Problem:
All the machines are identical. All the drives were mirror images of each other - same software and ATI drivers, same hardware, same BIOS settings. Windows 95.
Approximately 25% of the machines, upon rebooting, stop at the "New Hardware Found! PCI Display Adapter" message, even though the Xpert@Play 98 drivers are properly installed.
Imagine the fun one can have with a ladder, a keyboard, and suspended ceiling panels after engineering does any electrical work in the building...
Now, do I make a voodoo doll of the guys who designed M$'s crappy Plug and Pray, or do I make a voodoo doll of ATI's incredibly bad programmers?
Whichever, the voodoo doll will take a ride through Bobo.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I really wish reviewers would at least include a blurb about 2d performance. I imagine most people spend most of their computer time dealing with text and 2d images. When I'm gaming I certainly want high framerates and all, but not at the expense of crisp text and graphics at 1600x1200. I didn't see a blip about 2d quality in the Anandtech review.
The first nvidia cards (tnt/tnt2) I used had sucky 2d compared to the matrox cards I had been using. It seems like Matrox card reviews always mention something about 2d, if only because their 3d isn't anything to write home about.
Wow, I wish my duties included minor plagarism... after all, why write reviews when you can have them handed down from above?
I haven't followed ATI for the past couple of years (I've used Nvidia cards). How good are the Linux drivers for current cards, and how much problems have there been with implementing them (specs from ATI, maturity, performance, that sort of thing)?
What I'm wondering, really, is if we are going to see comprehensive support under Linux in the near future, or if these new cards will be glorified framebuffers for the foreseeable future?
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Something that seems to be concensus opinion across the sites is that the card was previewed too early.
Like most pre-releases, it's nowhere near it's potential, and, if all it as in the past, ATI will have problems getting the most out of the hardware due to this.
Is it just me, or does it seem like they could get a boost by releasing all the specs and driver details to the open source world?
For starters, this would make for great driver porting and supporting, and as a side, could help ATI come up with better performance as patches and improvements are fed back to them.
Malk
It is a *very* good thing that NVidia have got some competition. While NVidia are a great company, from my perspective as a developer, the fact that they are coming close to ruling every market unsettles me slightly.
Radeon I was a bit of a disappointment as far as I could make out, not quite cheap enough to be a budget card but not quite good enough to take on GF2. The 8500 looks to be quite a nice piece of kit, and although I wasn't sure at first, the extended Pixel Shader caps should be very good fun to play with.
However, the current benchmarks don't put the 8500 far enough ahead of the GF3 for it to be a clear win, especially since the 8500 will be about GBP350 when it arrives, and I can get hold of a GF3 for under GBP250. What matters to ATI is the driver support - they need to get good enough drivers out of the door to put a clear gap between them and the GF3 in terms of performance, and plenty of decent developer relations to emphasise the feature set (although TruForm doesn't excite me at all - look ma! Hardware tesselation *all the time*!). Otherwise, NVidia will release their next part which will trounce the 8500 (don't imagine it's far away), before ATI have had a chance to reclaim their market share.
I wonder exactly what market ATI are aiming at - will the hardcore gamer market really offer them high enough sales to make a comeback? Or will they target the OEM market, where they used to be king?
Interesting times.
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
I can't help but wonder how ATI can expect to compete with nVidia on the Windows platform with Microsoft and nVidia working so closely together. But I guess it's good that they give it a shot. Competition is a good thing.
Besides, what effing difference does it make? Seeing as how even the most detailed games (Quake III, Max Payne, Black & White) are running at 80 FPS, it's obvious that the cards are way ahead of the games. When is there going to be something that takes advantage of all that power and gives us a reason to plunk down $400-$500 of our hard-earned bucks?
My sigs always suck.
I agree with your ATI driver problems. That's why I ditched my TV Wonder and went to a Matrox TV Tuner with on-board hardware MJPEG compression. Unfortunately, a week later, Matrox announced that they couldn't figure out how to write a driver for it under Win2k, and that they were abandoning driver development for it under all platforms.
This was after months of promising that bug fixes would be addressed in the new version. The bug fix that I needed was for the tuner to bring in any channel other than Channel 6.
Needless to say, there is a strongly miffed group of Matrox owners who shelled out 2 or 3 hundred bucks for a sophisticated video capture and compression card, and ended up (due to driver hell) with a TV tuner card equivalent to one that sells for about $30.
Stay away from Matrox.
Driver support from ATI has been non-existant. Many 3d games and applications do not work under Windows 2000. ATI is aware of the problems, but has no intention of ever fixing them. They seem much more interested in trying to convince the consumer that it's somehow a Dell problem, even though many laptops use the same chipset and suffer the same problems.
Drivers for WindowsXP or any other OS will likely never be written, nor will the existing drivers ever be updated to work better with OpenGL or future games.
They fooled me once: so now they've got the last dollar they will ever get from me. I'd buy something with a Trident CyberBlade before I'll give ATI anymore money and I encourage you to do the same.
Nvidia now has a laptop chipset and I'd prefer to give my money to a company that will actually keep their drivers current. Even the greatest video chipset is worthless without good drivers.
First off, although we don't always see things the same way I definitely agree with Tom on his statements that ATI should not have chose to present the Radeon 8500 this soon. Even had NVIDIA not released their Detonator 4 drivers earlier than expected, the Radeon 8500 was in no shape to be evaluated at all. The drivers were buggy and they lacked support for the full Radeon 8500 feature set. Although it's definitely interesting to see what the Radeon 8500 can do, ATI should be very worried that too many of you will get the wrong idea about the product. All I can do is present you with the picture as I see it.
I for one am glad to see NVidia has some real competition. However, it seems that ATI's driver department is going to let it down again. Although the card hasn't been released yet, I don't have much hope that the drivers will improve very much before the release. I hope that ATI will prove me wrong, in which case a Radeon 8500 may very well be my next purchase.
Marketing: For those looking for the sweet spot between price and performance...
English: You can't afford the card we're reviewing, nerd-boy. Buy this cheaper one instead... Unless of course, you're interested in our exclusive terms. You've got two kidneys, right?
Marketing: ATI has already revealed extensive details on two of the Radeon 8500's key technologies...
English: ATI's underpaid hardware engineers are hard at work turning the mad fantasies of marketing types into reality. Results will vary...
Marketing: It's the Radeon 8500's ability to do many simultaneous texture effects that has led John Carmack to predict that the new Doom graphics engine will perform twice as well on a Radeon 8500 as on a GeForce3.
English: Please, God, Please let the new id Software titles play on our hardware...
Marketing: The revised API is set to launch at the time of Windows XP's release in October but may first arrive on the ATI driver disk.
English: Keep your pants on, Bill. It'll take a few seconds to get lubed up.
Marketing: For the first time in a PC, the Radeon 8500 will include a component video connector that can connect the card to an HDTV. This component output, which will likely come as an adapter for the DVI-I connector, will make high-quality progressive-scan DVD playback possible on a PC.
English: Not that you'll actually be able to do any of that. We're not going to cross the MPAA, Hell no!
Marketing: The performance-enthusiast market makes up only 5 percent of overall graphics sales, so ATI doesn't expect the Radeon 8500 to be a top seller.
English: Everything we've got is riding on this card, so if you don't buy it, we're going to go bankrupt and be bought out by nVidia.
Marketing: The Radeon 7500 is designed to be very fast in the current crop of games.
English: This card will be obsolete and unsupported in six months. Sell a kidney so you can buy the better card.
Marketing: What the Radeon 7500 lacks in future-proof performance it makes up for in display features.
English: Six months? We meant three months.
Marketing: Both the Radeon 8500 and 7500 are priced competitively against Nvidia's GeForce3 and GeForce2 Pro.
English: You're getting bent over either way, so why not buy from us?
Marketing: Summary - This is a great card and we reccomend you make this a part of your workstation.
English: Summary - If we say anything bad, ATI won't let send us any more toys.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It looks like NVIDIA have addressed the performance shortfall by releasing new drivers, the "Detonator 4" Drivers, which, according to Toms Hardware, give about a 30% performance increase, so ATI's performance gain has been slashed to about 3-5%, which, given the allowed variation in component quality in manufacturing, pretty much dissappears in the +/- percentile.
Of course, the card isn't finished yet, so these figures are all meaningless anyway.
Chris.