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ATI vs. NVIDIA: The Next Generation
doppler writes: "There's a killer graphics card round-up at TR today that compares the new GeForce4 and Radeon 8500 128MB cards against each other in extensive testing. Very good stuff. Most interesting: a visual representation of a texture upload problem in OpenGL on the Radeon 8500 chip."
I have an original radeon - I've always felt that ATI makes crap drivers... Their chipsets, if you ask me, are on par with NVIDIA's, it's just that their driver support is crap... If only they actually let 3rd parties develop like they said they would...
--NovaScorpio
Matt
Firingsquad just posted a report about the new GeForce TI 4200. They're coming out with two seperate versions, one with 64mb of faster memory, and one with 128mb of slower memory. The 64mb one was faster in the benchmarks that they ran, even though it was $20 cheaper than the other variant. Plus, it even beat their comparison TI 4400 in some of the benchmarks.
But it gets better. The TI 4200 can be overclocked to speeds comparable to the TI 4600, Nvidia's fastest card. Get the fastest performance available for half the cost!
Is anyone doing decent PCI cards these days? I realize I'm behind the times here, but my motherboard (Asus CUR-DLS) has no AGP slot, leaving me with a GeForce2. Still, my dual P3-1.26 ghz setup isn't far enough behind the game to warrant buying a whole new setup. I do have a couple 66mhz 64bit PCI slots going unused in the motherboard, any graphics cards go that route?
I don't see a reason for most people to upgrade to one of these things unless they are developing 3D technology.
When its all said and done, I have to place my vote for nVidia, hands down. There are many reasons for this... howerver this is the most compelling...
nVidia Drivers page link
ATI Drivers page link
At home I run about 7 computers, a mix of linux winXp 2k and 98. The fact that my geforceX cards can and will run great in all of the above os's using proper driver support is all I need to buy from nVidia. Good customer support, and good OS support. That will bring in my dollars...
I know you're talking about software, but I can confirm on the other side of the fence that Nvidia's chip designers are absolutely picky when it comes to their work. I used to work for a standard cell library vendor a couple years back. Nvidia tore apart our 0.25um library when it came to timing characterization. Those guys were pushing the envelope -- they needed timing on the cells accurate to better than couple percent. I'm not talking simple propogation delays, these were setup and hold times of flip flops and latches. We ended up giving them tables of setup and holds, not just a couple numbers like most of our customers were happy with. Real interesting job for a just out of college EE.
This is noting that having over 32MB of memory has proven to be of NO benefit in benchmarks outside of the occasional 1 or 2 FPS difference (and when you are getting over 100FPS any ways. . . .).
:)
Texture size is REALLY not a problem. Do you realize how fr*gin big textures can be byte wise before you get to being just plain old silly?
It is NOT the size of textures people, it is how COMPLICATED those textures can be.
Currently LOD is used in order to keep video cards from having to render full 256x256 textures when an object, say, only appears as 25 pixels in its entirety on the screen. You know, that sniper across the street with that gun? Yah that one, (duck).
This works quite well, until you get up close to the object. Shoddy unrealistic Bumpmapping (I highly disprove of bumpmapping, more on this later) can come into play at really close distances, and games like Serious Sam even make this look halfway decent, but it still is not real, or realistic.
The ONLY way to get good texturing done is to DISPENSE with the concept of textures all together. Polygons do not make this easy in themselves, and competing technologies can even make it worse. Some technologies like vertex coloring are a bit useful, but not much and they are just the texturing model relabled.
But once you DO dispense with textures, ooh yah.
Now for bumpmaps.
Bumpmaps are often times just a cheap shortcut to REAL modeling. Geometry deformation texturing is the next step, but until we get some video cards that can model each little crack and bump of an object we are not going to get anything near 100% photo-realism. Not to mention characters with actual nostrils. Yes there is a level of diminishing returns, but quite frankly, until I can model every last little crack bump and lump in a model and have it render real time on a home users computer, bumpmapping is what we are stuck with, and I don't like it.
But I repeat, I REPEAT, larger textures (and bumpmaps) are just a cheap low quality shortcut They DEFINITELY have a point of diminishing returns, and it is one that HAS ALREADY BEEN REACHED. Most new games do NOT do just plain old texturing any more, and a lot of what is happening now days in relationship to textures (Bilinear filtering and such) is just in fact ways to correct errors in the original texturing model of thinking. Or at least further refine the mathematical model used to show those textures.
But why do games look better you ask?
Mostly because video cards have any number of fancy TnL units that can independently create some rather nifty effects while working AROUND or OUTSIDE of the plain old texturing model. At the very least the texturing model of thinking has some. . . rather funky. . . math applied to it in an artistic manner with the results rendered to the screen.
Look at Nvidias werewolf model as an example.
The HAIRS on it look great.
The actual model though?
Hell looks like shit.
No it does.
Notice the face people. Horrid. The textures. It is not the modeler or textures fault, it is just a fact that, well hell, you CANNOT do realistic skin textures without using Pixar level technology.
Actualy, I recently read an article from awhile back that was an interview with someone at Pixar. They were describing the INSANE level of work that was necessary to even get something that SORT OF looked like a skin texture to render. The FF movie had kinda-sorta-maybe-ifyousquint real looking skin, it was nice, but it took a lot of work and it still was not perfect. Once again, diminishing returns.
While NVIDIA is doing good work in relation to getting various funky technologies out on the market that move around the texturing problem, as long as we rely on textures as our main source of coloring objects, we as a community of people who love to Blow Things Up are going to have problems.
Hell the very idea of textures themselves is exactly opposite to how existence works. Objects are not gray by default with colors added later. Objects are. . . . real. They exist. More or less. The color is an INTEGRAL PART of what an object is. You cannot separate the two.
In other words
I want molecular modeling please.
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I have to disagree with this idea. I used to have some random crashes under linux when using the nvidia drivers and when I dual booted to windows also. When I replaced the nvidia card with an ati card all of the crashes went away. I had tried lots of nvidia drivers and they all had the problems.
Even more annoying was that I found that the nvidia drivers would break up the audio on my sblive. I would get all these crackles in the audio which where very annoying. When I replaced the nvidia geforce with a radeon all of those problems went away. Overall I am not impressed with nvidia quality at all. ATI is better but for a really stable video card I would go with matrox. On a box I have with a G200 X has NEVER crashed. I have never had a single issue with that card.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
about pc hardware, and after reading people's responses to this article it just enforces my belief that PC hardware is really bad because the standards are not strict enough. I've had problems with so maney systems and you never know where to begin debugging a computer that doesn't work correctly. Sometimes a problem that seems like it was a 'video card issue' turns out to be a problem with your main memory. Even when useing the 'high quality' components, one low quality component or slightly defective card can bring a whole system down.
Hell, just not having a pci card plugged in correctly can totatly trash a computer with a low quality MB. Ever pulled out a PCI card when the system is running? Sometimes it reboots, sometimes it don't.
The point of this diatribe is that people seem very polarized on the subject of video cards, mostly due to the other guys card not working for them. When probably in many cases it wasn't the video card causing the problem at all, but rather an incompatibility in their system that was brought out by the video card.
Guess it's the price we pay for getting such cheap, bleeding edge systems.
A modeler has to be a complete nitwit to fill up 128MB with verticies, heh. Or even 12MB with vertices. . . .
:) ) then 128MB of RAM that, err, uh, costs an arm and a leg and MAY provide some future performance, but by that time the texturing units on the video card will be old hat anyways and 'everybody' will have moved up to the next best thing.
:)
:(
It is not like verticies have to be loaded THAT often, and when they are they can often times be predicted, though how Messiah did things sucked (wow, look at that! SERIOUS texturing problems AND ass end load times AND the scripts get fucked up! Bah) but a GOOD loader can load a level dynamicaly and Not Suck.
I would MUCH rather 64*2 Megabytes of ram with a half clock seperation between them (In other words, fast ass access.
I myself will likely still be using my Matrox G400 MAX.
I cannot believe that some complete IDIOTS credit ATI with first having dual desktop displays. . . . grrr. Idiots.
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until i see native support for linux with ATI technology, i don't care what the benchmark results are in comparing these 2 technologies. i'll continue to purchase nvidia based products.
i love the linux support that nvidia provides via updated drivers. other hardware manufacturers should take note.
So Many card owning zealot's on both sides Have expressed there views and now I the confused consumer find myself attempting to interpret and hence pick and purchase.
.
Initialy I was in the market for 2 new card's,one to play my current favorite fps and one to record tv to mpeg2,(at a decent resolution), both of which had to work under linux and both had to be within my budget.
Now initialy the choice seemed simple , a nvidia card for gaming and some other card for tv.Then the 8500/7500radeon'swith all of the seemingly nice pvr options came out and suddenly my inital options seemed a bit broader.
I have yet to see some one lay out the pro's and con's of the 8500/7500dv in a non biased way
There are plenty of reviews of the card's performance under window's , I have yet to see a review of how the card performes under linux.This I presume is due to the ati linux driver situation Which so many nvidia users have gleefully pointed out.
So many ati fans laud the fact that nvidia's drivers are closed,(?), and so many nvidia fans
point out that ati's linux performance is less than amazing and that ati's drivers are only slightly more open than nvidia's,(???).To me this whole situation is confusing.
Basicly from what I can decipher atm ati's radeon 8500/7500 dv drivers for linux do not full fill what I want them to do,(capture tv and play games under linux ), and therefore atm these two cards are not for me.
I would prefer to support ati over nvidia as they 'seem' the more open of the two companies
However there performance or rather the performance of the 3rd party people who develop there drivers seems under somewhat under par.
So in conclusion I think I am going to stick with an nvidia card for gaming under linux and shop around for a different capture card.I am really looking for suggestions as to what i should buy and would be happy to listen to any advice anyone has to offer on this matter
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