Slashdot Mirror
GeForce3 Titanium Reviews
Paladin128 sent us
Tom's and Anandtech's respective reviews of the new NVIDIA GeForce3 Titanium series.
DX8.1 compatibility (What is that anyway?), Shadow Buffers, 3D Textures, assorted other stuffs.
Hey, but why is everything 'Titanium' now anyway? Laptops. Batteries. Video cards. I wonder if I can get titanium plating.
HardOCP has quite a nice review and explanation of just what is different with the Titanium compared to normal Geforce 3 cards running the ExploderXP driver set.
g f3 ti500/
http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidcards/nvidia/
This is an excellent addition, and very much needed. Shadows can be one of the hardest thingsto get looking good in OpenGL, and usually they are done in a hacked out, unsatistfactory sort of way, sometimes just by copying the model, setting all textures to black and using shear and scale transforms to squish the model onto the floor. This will hopefully do a much better job.
As for titanium plating -- you don't want it, trust me. It scratches and stains far too easily, and you can't clean it when it does. Looks good when it's undamaged, though.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
ATI has caught up.
The Radeon 8500 is about to be released, and its got better hardware specs than any nVidia card. Check out Anandtech and look. Toms has a preview also I believe.
It's hardware is better, but the drivers are restricting it from performing to its potential. Once that is worked out, it will outperform the Geforce3 ti 500.
It certainly appears that Titanium is the next marketing gimmick metal, to imply the product is another level of value above the old. As mentioned, silver, gold, platinum and now titanium credit cards. I certainly hope they're not using titanium for the connectors to the motherboard slot. Gold is probably the most oxidation resistant metal on the planet, and it conducts much better that Titanium.
What's ironic is that Titanium is much less in value per ounce than silver. If you wanted to suggest a metal in value above platinum, you'd have to say Rhodium, Palladium, Irridium or Rhenium. But who's going to say they've got the newest in purchasing power with a "Rhodium" credit card. If you really want the next level in metal worth far more than platinum, flash out your "Plutonium" credit card.
As another view of how cheap Titanium is, you can buy Titanium crowbars from the old Soviet Union munitions factories now trying to privatize to make consumer products. They've got so much titanium lying around that they'll make just about anything out of it.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
While the GeForce3 is a pretty sweet card, I find the new marketing tactics of NVidia distasteful. The GeForce3 Ti-200 and GeForce2 Ti are actually slower cards[tomshardware.com] gussied up with new drivers and a new name. Not only that, but they timed the release [tomshardware.com] of their new Detonator XP drivers to spoil the release of the Radeon 8500.
I know that "business is war" and all that, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
This
Does anyone see that???
h work.
NO FAN !!!!
That's why my video cards so far have been Voodoo3 2000 and Asus GeForce 2MX.
No fans. For the peace of mind. For the lack of the ugly wire. For _real_ advances from 0.18 to 0.15 microns, not just overclock-it-bruteforce-and-do-some-cooldown-patc
Good job! I'm looking forward to seeing faster no-fan video cards.