AnandTech Reviews ATI's Mobility Radeon 9000

Mike Bouma writes "AnandTech has reviewed ATI's latest mobile graphics solution. According to the reviewer this small and energy efficient chip is the new king when it comes to mobile graphic chips for Notebooks. Also John Carmack is apparently very positive about the chip and also stated that Doom 3 will be able to run smoothly with this new Radeon chip."

Comments

Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Peyna]

So, if Doom 3 will run smoothly on this card, how will it run on my lowly Geforce 2?

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Raiford]

I guess Carmack has now formally achieved the the status in the computer world that EF Hutton had in the financial world ...

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Utopia]

Read somewhere it need a video card pixel shader support.
So GeForce 3 or an ATI 8500 at the minimum.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[MisterBlister]

So GeForce 3 or an ATI 8500 at the minimum. That isn't true.

GeForce 1 is the minimum card for Doom 3. Of course, don't expect it to look pretty on anything less than a GeForce 3.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Billly Gates]

I do not know about doom3 but unreal2003 is a little less demanding and will only do 2 or 3 fps on a geforce2 card. I saw the benchmark on the www.firingsquad.com. I believe it uses vertex shaders as well but not to the same extent as doom3. The 2 or 3 fps was done on a pentium4 1.7ghz. A new video card is indeed needed. I believe the cpu has to do the shader calculations in a geforce2 but I could be wrong(correct me if I am).

Anyway could someone tell me what a shader is?

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[BrookHarty]

I play American Army (unreal2003 engine based) and I get 35fps, with lows at 19 on very heavy battles. But I also like pushing my resolution at 1024x768 with 2x AA on an AMD 1800, GF3/TI500, so a GF2 should be able to do 600x480 with no AA at almost playable speeds.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Ender77]

Here is something I found in an online review of the doom 3 presentation:


The presentation was also running the game on a 2.2Ghz Pentium 4 with that lovely Radeon 9700, so it was no wonder that it was moving smoothly. Both Tim Willits during out little talk and Carmack in his keynote later were quick to point out that the game could run on anything as low as a GeForce1 however. "The game running at full features is with a GeForce3 video card or higher. It'll run on anything down to a GeForce1 because of the hardware acceleration, but we feel that some of the graphical features would have to be turned down. But with the new products from ATI and nVidia coming out before the release of the game, we're sure that we'll have great penetration for the game full feature."

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[tshak]

Americas Army is based on a recent build of the Unreal engine, not the unreal2003 engine - trust me, the graphics aren't all that impressive.

Also, Americas Army plays decently on a P3-700 with a GF2 at 800x600 (the lowest the Unreal engine supports anyway).

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[BrookHarty]

Better check again, it is powered by the unreal2003 engine. And the gfx are suppose to be war based, its not suppose to be robots with glowing lasers and floating power ups.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[tshak]

Apparently you are right - then I'm extremely unimpressed. It seems that, aside from small exceptions, that games like MOHAA and RTCW look better then AA. Nevertheless, my orginal contention that the game runs smooth on a GF2 still stants - my roommate was just playing it with such a setup today.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[zapfie]

You mean your Geforce2go?

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[BrookHarty]

Its no MOHAA or RTCW, thats the point, its a SIM that masks as a FPS. Kinda like CS without the cheats. The GFX are extremely good, thou some maps are dull(real life...) It does need a high end card with AA, which the new Radeon will give.

Hopefully we start to see UT2K3 benchmarks in reviews, I'm tired of Q3A, I hope Doom replaces it for benchmarks.

Re:Will doom 3 run on any other card?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that the next generation will be THAT demanding, check out the benchmark reviews on AnadTech. After all if they made it so that these games would only run with a pixel shader, then they'd automatically exclude all the budget GeForce4 MX range that haven't been around for that long. The GeForce4 MX's after all are essentially updated GeForce2 MX's with no pixel shader & DirectX 7 support, with around GeForce2 Ultra performance. According to AnadTech UT2003 will still see have decent performance from these & equivalent cards.

OK you may not be able to set things to maximum quality or be able to use anti-aliasing, but they're gonna be playable around the 30 frame per second mark atleast at most resolution, Doom3 I don't know.

Anonoymous Coward
(where's my login!)

Say it ain't so.

[blowhole]

Today ATI is announcing the 36 million transistor Mobility Radeon 9000, a chip that promises to bring mobile gaming to places it has never been before.

Is there a new Trek game out?

Re:Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

:) No, but seriously, Elite Force 2 showed demos at QuakeCon, it's supposed to be released next year. Still based on the Quake 3 engine, but the screenshots look awesome.

Oh yeah, I think Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force is one of the best FPS games of all time ;)

slow

[jchristopher]

Has anyone noticed how slow MacOS X is?

Re:slow

[momobaxter]

Point? Stupid troll.

Re:slow

[momobaxter]

I get modded offtopic for pointing out a troll. I see moderators are doing their jobs well.

ATI's Mobility Radeon 9000 + AirCard =

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom 3 LAN Party in 5th period. Just need to relabel "boss-key" to teacher-key".

It's great but. . .

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

While it's great that we're getting mobile video that can finally keep up with the processor, it's rather sad that the "fastest" mobile video solution seems to be barely on the "approved" list for this game. New engines are great, but not when 80% of your market can't run them. The impression that I've been getting is that the news sites are telling me I'm going to actually need the New GeForce 5 Ti6660 or perhaps The Radeon 12000 to play this game?

I really feel for everyone that will be playing this thing on their P3 1.2gHz and GeForce3 Ti500.
"Wow John, you got above 15frames a minute? That's incredible!"

Where is my demo! Bring me my demo!

Re:It's great but. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop whining and go back to playing pong.

Re:It's great but. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I like pong.

Re:It's great but. . .

[inerte]

I like ping.

Re:It's great but. . .

[MisterBlister]

id has never really been about hitting the mainstream gamer. All of their engines have been on the very high system requirements side when first released. Since they are a small company they still manage to rake in millions, especially since lots of other companies start to license their engines when the mainstream DOES catch up to their engines.

If nobody pushes the envelope, there will be no reason for consumers to buy new cards and graphics technology will stagnate, so lighten up.

Anyway, what id is doing now has worked out great for them throughout their history -- why would they change it now?

Re:It's great but. . .

[Billly Gates]

Its not as bleak as you say it is. At least compared to when Doom1 was comming out. Unreal2003( the other vertex engine game)can run quite nice on a geforce3 as long as you do not jump up the video settings too high. How many people reading this are using a cheap geforce2 card to play quake3 or UT? Quite alot. Id knows that after the game is out hardware will advance and Carmack himself said the new engine would be standard for most games for the next 5 years!

Sure we can't put our monitors to 1600x 1800 with the latest video cards like we can under quakeIII but do we really need this?

QuakeIII when it first came out had simuliar high requirements. Now even the e-machines desktops can run it fluidly. 800x600 with 32 bit color is fine for me and my new upcomming Radeon 97000 pro.

Re:It's great but. . .

[tshak]

The original Doom3 demo performed very well on GF3 (this is before the Ti500 was even available).

Re:It's great but. . .

[koreth]

This will sound like a troll, but it's not: if you don't want to have to stay top speed on the hardware treadmill, try playing games that are a couple years old -- not only will they run lightning-fast on your year-old hardware, but they're a lot cheaper, they're more stable (having gone through several revisions of patches) and you'll find tons of thorough FAQs and walkthroughs on the net. In terms of gameplay, a 1999 game is just as likely to be fun as a 2002 game; it just won't look as pretty. Heck, I'm only now getting around to playing the first "Baldur's Gate" (for which I paid under $10 a few weeks ago) and it screams on my lowly 1.4GHz Athlon box.

I think there's no way around needing the latest, greatest hardware to play the latest, greatest games; the two go hand in hand, always have. And I for one love it, since it means games get immersive and realistic a lot faster than they would if nobody was pushing the envelope.

Doom 3 will push lots of people to buy fancy graphics cards now rather than a year from now, which will prompt other developers to release their snazzy eye candy games a year from now rather than two years from now, which will cause enough content to be available that the non-Doom crowd will upgrade sooner rather than later, etc. Not good for people on a budget, but people on a budget are rarely on the cutting edge of any technology, so no reason to expect games to be any different.

Re:It's great but. . .

[billcopc]

1.4ghz is lowly now ? My gawd, I'd better order a vapochill and OC the latest Athlon XP2600 to 3500mhz.

i'll believe it when i see it....

[wuchang]

With the updated drivers, my Thinkpad X22 with an ATI Mobility still can't play Counter-Strike for more than 3 minutes before getting screwed up. ATI is notorious for having crappy drivers.

Re:i'll believe it when i see it....

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI Mobility still can't play Counter-Strike for more than 3 minutes before getting screwed up.

Translation: I can't get a decent wallhack for my ATI Mobility.. help me plz

Re:i'll believe it when i see it....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he is right; ATI's driver is VERY crapy.
The only reason I brought my raedon 8500 all-in-wonder was for the hardware. But the driver really sucks.

Re:i'll believe it when i see it....

[drinkypoo]

I have a presario 1692 (K6-2 433) with ati rage mobility m1 and I can play quake1 for hours on end without the laptop choking. Of course, it's hard on the eyes. This is at 800x600, OpenGL. So maybe your problem is IBM and not ATI.

Why?

[ImaLamer]

"Also John Carmack is apparently very positive about the chip and also stated that Doom 3 will be able to run smoothly with this new Radeon chip."

Nice, so I can play on my laptop, almost as great as playing a PS2 on a tv from 1950.

It's not really the screen size, some laptops have better sized screens than my desktop, but the angle.

Re:Why?

[Libor Vanek]

It's not really the screen size, some laptops have better sized screens than my desktop, but the angle.

I usually play sitting just in front of my monitor. How about you?

Re:Why?

[MisterBlister]

It's not really the screen size, some laptops have better sized screens than my desktop, but the angle.

IMO the big problem with laptop gaming is the poor refresh rates of your standard LCD. Lots of nasty ghosty artifacts... But its still nice to have the option, I guess...And you can always plug the laptop into a monitor for desktop use (yeah this misses the point of the laptop, but you can still use it on the go for all your office stuff, and then use it at home for games, avoiding the usual practice of having to have a dedicated desktop gaming rig)...

Re:Why?

[be-fan]

He he. I'm sitting here on my Inspiron 8200 with its 1600x1200 resolution, 25ms pixel response (no ghosting, even in Quake3) and thirty degrees of freedom in either direction. Laptop LCDs have come quite aways since 1990. Plus, there's talk that the Inspiron 8200's might be upgradable, video-wise :)

Re:Why?

[tshak]

Eh, but Dell's have exceptional screens when you pay the buco bucks for their higher end "mutlimedia" laptops. Most affordable laptops still have screens that have some level of ghosting, although it has gotten much better of late.

Re:Why?

[Rude Turnip]

I must back up be-fan. I'm using an Inspiron 8200 with a GeForce 440 Go video card and the Dell Ultrasharp display, which gives you super refresh rates and no ghosting. My current online crack addiction is multiplayer Soldier of Fortune.

If you're going to get a laptop and you still want to play the higher end games, then there's really no excuse not to get an Inspiron with the Ultrasharp display. Of course, the biggest advantage with Inspirons is that you can upgrade the graphics card by calling Dell and having the new card shipped out. True, you don't get the wide range of choices like you would with a regular PC, but then there are trade-offs with laptops.

Re:Why?

[Papineau]

Plus, there's talk that the Inspiron 8200's might be upgradable, video-wise :)

So, you own one, and you're still not sure if it's upgradeable or not? Or are you unsure about which videocard you can actually put in it?

Personnally, that's one of the reason I'm not likely to buy a laptop: you're not told up front what you can and cannot change once you bought it. In a normal self-made tower, you know you can easily change or add any part (except what you chose to be integrated on the MB). And I'm still not sold to an LCD, even if some people like their expericence with them.

(Last thing: thirty degrees of freedom in either direction? What is it supposed to mean in the context of a laptop?)

Re:Why?

[be-fan]

Well, what happens is that since the Inspiron 8000, Dell laptops have had the same graphics add-in card). So you could upgrade from a Geforce2 to a GeForce4 MX. We don't know yet if that will hold for the next Inspiron when the NV31-based mobile GPUs come out.

As for the LCD, its magnificent. 1600x1200 on a 15" screen gives 133 dpi, and with ClearType, its like reading a piece of paper.

As for the degrees of freedom, I meant that you can swing about thirty degrees to either side without losing the image on the LCD.

Re:Why?

[Monkeybaister]

I got an Inspiron 8000, and before I got it I knew how to take it apart. Dell had complete instructions on thier website on how to remove and replace every component in the laptop.

I've recently changed the Mini-PCI card in my laptop from wired ethernet to wireless.

I could also change the screen, swap out the processor, change the video card, or get a different media bay option by finding the parts on Dell's website.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

1sec=1000ms, 1000/25 = 40Hz or 40 fps.

While that's ok, I do notice the difference in pc games, which are not the same as movies/tv which include motion blur in each frame, with framerates between 30-40fps vs 70+. I'll be interested in lcd's when they have 12.5-10ms response time, which the next generation of lcds are supposed to have, and the prices have dropped from the 'keep dreaming if you think I'm paying you that much' range. Also note the response times lcd manufactorers give are an average. Depending on the screen displayed(extreme contrasts, white to black, black to white), there are big drops in response times.

Damn you ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop releasing chips and start releasing better drivers!

/me is with ya

[manux]

ATI's sketchy driver support has always been my reason for steering clear of their graphics prodcuts. It'll be interesting to see if they can improve upon what has always been their "fatal flaw" in the past...

Re: When has this NOT been the case?

[reezle]

Games have always pushed computer systems...

I remember folks whining that their 3d-shooter games wouldn't play fast on the 486SX-16, and that the designers were only writing them for the 'rich-boys' with their 486DX-66's...

A year after the release, most all common computers being sold could run the game just fine. Point being, let the designers create the game with long-term lasting power by putting it at the limit of todays hardware. Let the hardware designers push their new products by showing how well they can do the same job as the most expensive card out there (Using games like this as a benchmark)

which notebooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which notebooks are slated to use this new chip? Even better, which of these notebooks can run FreeBSD and XFree86?

Fair

[batboy78]

Its nice to see Anan being fair to ATI. Even with the appearance of the 9700 Anan said that the new Geforce (vapor)line would blow it away.

Re:Fair

[HimalayanRoadblock]

I'd like to see your link where they say that. They DO say however that ATI is not afraid of the NV30 and that they{ATI} will be ready with another Ace up their sleeve when the NV30 is released.

Re:Fair

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny you should bring that up.
Toms Hardware did a bunch of benchmarks on the 9000 and came up with about the same findings, but Tom didn't seem to think the GPU was any better than the nVidia offerings (apart from the DX8 compliance). So unless you're out playing Aquanox, Morrowind or Comanche4, there's no current benefit to the 9000 over a nVidia part.

I also find it difficult to believe that ATI will be able to keep up with nVidia. Not yet. Maybe in a year or so, if NV30 doesn't completely trounce the 9700. (Current forecasts have the NV30 running double the speed of the 9700, but you know how vaporware goes)

Re:the truth about jon carmack

[alpha17]

Try to do a little research before you rant..

Wow, just think of the implications

[Hott of the World]

You can play Doom 3 and cook an egg at the same time!

but seriously, how hot is this desktop replacement gonna get?

Upgrading My Laptop

[batboy78]

ATI has a unique vision of the future. What they see is one mobile motherboard design being used in everything from the value segment to the high-end segment.
I just can't wait for the days when I will be able to go order a new video card for my laptop. I was very interested to ready that you can already upgrade the video cards on some Dell laptops from the GeForce2Go to the Geforce 4 card, maybe those days aren't far off for most new laptops.

Re:Upgrading My Laptop

[Rude Turnip]

Unless you're talking about a really small motherboard, then having one design for all laptops is a bad idea. Laptops are very specialized devices bought for different purposes. A salesman might want something really small and light that can be carried around, such as a tiny Vaio. Someone like myself would want a large one that would be used for working on all day, to produce the product that would be used to pay said salesman's commissions :)

Re:Upgrading My Laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, its true. the smartest choice today for any laptop to choose from on the market is dell inspirion 8200 which starts at $1399.00 and can be upgraded to the nvidia quadra4 mobile video card that is only made by dell and is sold as a spare part for $249.00 and is certified for cadcam, 3d, and video editing aplications. this is because dell does not build their graphics chip on the motherboard. instead it is a full-on laptop mobile internal plug-in video card that can be changed. if you need more info email me at markorodin@hotmail.com

Speaking of laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Is IBM the only manufacturer of laptops that uses the track-pointer/eraser thingie anymore?

I can't stand those touch pads. You pretty much have to move your fingers off the home row to use.

Re:Speaking of laptops

[tombou]

The Dell Inspiron 8xxx series has both trackpad and pointy thing... but you can always plug in a mouse to your laptop for real gaming if you like.

Re:Slashdot to English Translator-matic

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fscking hilarious. Too bad the janitors don't have a sense of humor. +5 funny

Re:the truth about jon carmack

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put one more item at your Jon's accomplishment list: troll food.

ROTFL

[Anonymous Coward]

But, the sad thing is it's just too true.

Re: When has this NOT been the case?

[FyRE666]

True, I remember splashing out to upgrade my 486dx33 to a staggering 8MB of RAM (not the video card, the actual main memory) just so I could play Doom without it crawling and thrashing the hard drive (170MB HD, BTW...)

Re:stupid

[yomegaman]

A few months ago I really trashed him over on MacSlash about complaining so much, and asked him why he didn't just end his misery and get an Intel notebook. He replied that he was indeed selling his iBook and doing just that. However, I still see him whining around from time to time, like bitching about OS X is some compulsion that he's powerless to resist. Now that I know he's mentally ill I go much easier on him.

Re:stupid

[jchristopher]

I have a duty to tell others so they don't get suckered into the same mistake. I bought my iBook based on recommendations I read here on Slashdot about how nice it was. They were right, it's a very nice machine, except they forgot to mention how slow OS X is!

I was in CompUSA over the weekend and got to play with the new dual machines. Unbelievably, OS X STILL lags, even with Jaguar and the fast CPU! Especially for web browsers and games.

Again, I am not saying "OS X sucks". In fact I like it alot, except for the speed issue. As a result, I recommend that anyone planning on buying a Mac try before they buy to avoid unpleasant surprises. If you can live with the slow GUI speed, great. I couldn't.

P.S. FWIW, the machine that replaced the iBook is an HP Omnibook PIII 700 with half the RAM my iBook had. The HP is far faster for every computing task I have tried despite having a far worse video chip. Go figure.

ATI about more than just games

[AndyChrist]

ATI is also about PORN. That new video smoothing feature sounds sweet.

They've given us some nice features for notebooks for a while now...that anti-aliased resizing on non-native resolutions, for one. Dunno if Nvidea et al eventually got round to matching that one. But ATI had it first by a long shot.

Re:your just a troll....

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad he is right. OSX is painfully slow even on new 800MHZ iMacs. God damn they are slow.

It's "you're" BTW, not "your".

Re:stupid

[woogieoogieboogie]

Have you ever thought that the problem was a misconfiguration of the machine and OS. KDE2.x is sloooowwww if you do not optimize your system. Win XP is slooowwww on a p4 2.4 ghz if you do not have enough memory and have all the gee-gaws turned on. All computers can be extremely slow if you do not optimize them. A P3 700mhz laptop with sdr and shared video memory is useless for all but the most rudimentary computer tasks. You cannot BS anyone into believing you are playing any type of 3d games with decent fps or doing anything of a graphical nature on the machine.

Macs are not game machines, so it is not a surprise that they will perform poorly running games. Your comment in this area makes as much sense as saying an X-Box sucks because it cannot calculate a spreadsheet fast enough. I have often heard that IE is slow on os X, but that doesn't mean that all browsers are slow and FWIW, browsers can render a webpage in one of two ways. Incrementally, or all at once. IE originally overshot NN 4.xx in perceived speed because IE was faster at showing something on the screen first. IE showed the text of the document as it was downloaded and incrementally rendered tables, NN4.xx did not. However nn4.xx will still download and display a complete webpage FASTER than IE 5 as will opera, moz and konq. IE is fast on windows because it shares dll's(libraries) with the OS, Konq performs similiar on a kde system for pretty much the same reasons. Apple does need to wisen up and create their own optimized os embedded browser, but overall, it is a small price to pay for having a system with the power of bsd and the traditional usability of a Mac GUI.

If you are really disatisfied with your Apple, then you have a responsibility to all computer users to take your campaign to Apple. Whether you believe it or not, Apple will read your complaint and take it very seriously. Running around spreading what amounts to FUD does not help improve gaming or browsing on Macs, it only hurts the situation because for each lost sale, there is less money for apple to develop better apps and for Apple to spend on R&D.

Owning a non-mainstream computer comes with certain implied responsibilities and one of them is to take any flaws and try to fix them or to make them better. A strong and loyal userbase is the only way for any OS to compete with windows. The only reason Apple and Linux have actually survived the Windows onslaught is due to the kookery of their user base and their faith in the platform that any flaws will eventually be fixed. If you feel the compulsive need to bash Apple, then you are not mature enough nor ready enough to graduate from the windows platform.

Did you know. -- Re:Damn you ATI

[woogieoogieboogie]

DYK that if you actually RTFM you would have 0 problems with ATI drivers.

Re:stupid

[be-fan]

IE is fast on windows because it shares dll's(libraries) with the OS, Konq performs similiar on a kde system for pretty much the same reasons.
>>>>>>>
Uh no. On Windows, that statement is an unproved rumor. On Linux, its a physical impossibility, since the whole of the GUI is in USERSPACE!

Re:stupid

[jchristopher]

Have you ever thought that the problem was a misconfiguration of the machine and OS.

No, I haven't. I took it out of the box, upgraded the RAM to 512, and immediately downloaded all the patches from Apple. It was slow, right away. What else, exactly, do you think the user should have to do?

You cannot BS anyone into believing you are playing any type of 3d games with decent fps or doing anything of a graphical nature on the machine.

As an example, I use Tony Hawk Pro skater 2. The Mac was 500mhz with OS X 10.1.5 and an ATI Rage 128 and 512 MB RAM. The PC is 700mhz with Windows 2000 and 256 MB RAM with a (far inferior) ATI Rage Mobility (Basically, a Rage Pro). The PC runs the game smoothly, the Mac stutters and jerks.

Mozilla would be another good test. Runs fine as my everyday browser on the Windows machine. Under OS X, it lags at window sizing, launching new windows, text entry, and scrolling up and down lengthy web pages.

I have often heard that IE is slow on os X, but that doesn't mean that all browsers are slow and FWIW, browsers can render a webpage in one of two ways.

Every browser I've used on OS X (and I've used them all - Chimera, Mozilla, IE, Omniweb, et al) is slower than what's available on Windows - sometimes significantly slower.

Running around spreading what amounts to FUD does not help improve gaming or browsing on Macs

It's not FUD, it's true. And yes, hopefully complaining will make a difference! What kind of message does it send when OS X is slow, and all the users just go out and buy new Macs? Doesn't give Apple much incentive to fix it.

On the other hand, if the users were up in arms (as they should be), Apple would have to fix OS X in a hurry. The user's blind loyalty hurts them, they get less for their dollar than they would if they exercised their consumer choices.

Re:stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a 500MHz iMac before OS X was released, but early enough to qualify for a free upgrade. All I can say is "thank God for eBay". I got most of the money I spent on that system back. Everything Apple bashers say about Macs is true... OS 9 is about as stable as Win 3.1, the filesystem EASILY corrupts itself (and utilities to fix the filesystem are 3rd party products that cost $$$), the system sucked for games, couldn't play Divx and Virtual PC was about as fast as a Pentium 60. The system was nice to look at though, I guess.

Since I already have enough PCs, I used the money I got from the auction to buy something actually useful... A used Mazda minivan.

It's not the card it's the drivers

[Phuck Ewe]

My experience with ATI was such it was a curse. I bought once an ATI Radeon 64Mb ViVo. The drivers sucked so bad, Counter-Strike would lag it's ass off. I had a good puter, Dooal P3 1.0ghz and 1Gb Ram. The moment I had the opportunity to change back to Nvidia I got a GF3 Ti500 and it runs Sweet! Dude I am never going back to ATI, I don't care Doom 3 runs pretty in pink. If their drivers suck they SUCK! That is why NVidia is and will be always my favorites (at least until their drivers suck too...)

Re:It's not the card it's the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

i sure hope you knew about ati_npatch before you made that statement

I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Viewsonic]

...while the rest of the world hated them. They have had the worst drivers of any video card maker, EVER. They have had so many bugs with games it's not even funny. Most people when they hear about an ATI run away screaming. If you look at their biggest competitor, NVidia, you are just blown away by their incredible driver support and constant updates. Just recently they squeezed another 25% speed increase out of their drivers. You wont be seeing this anytime soon, if at all from ATI. They'll still be trying to get the latest games to work correctly on theor cards..

And you know what it comes down to? Apple. Apple has a deal to use ATI cards in their Macintoshes. They're STUCK using these crappy cards forever, and it's no wonder Carmack never disses them, he has always had a sweet spot for Apple. Why, I have no idea, but I wish he'd call it like it really is. ATI just plain SUCKS. Their drivers suck, their All-In-One-TV-OUT-DVD-Replay-Work-Your-Toaster SuperRAGEKillerXXXtreme 3D cards STINK.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Admiral Burrito]

Carmack has noted in the past that Nvidia's drivers are far better ("gold standard" were the words he used). But you have to keep in mind that as a 3D games guy, it is not in his best interests for a monopoly to emerge in the consumer 3D video card world. Competition keeps the new features coming, which gives Carmack new hardware to write new games for.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[GuERnix]

And you know what it comes down to? Apple. Apple has a deal to use ATI cards in their Macintoshes. They're STUCK using these crappy cards forever, and it's no wonder Carmack never disses them, he has always had a sweet spot for Apple. Huh? Yea, that was true..like maybe 3-4 years ago. All macs have the build-to-order option of having either a radeon 8500 or a geforce 4 Ti4600 (well i BELIEVE its a 4600), also, the imacs are standard built with a geforce2mx in it. Not entirely sure about the mobile systems though.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Darren Winsper]

Err..."up to" 25%. 3DMark scores shot up, but pretty much every game benchmarked showed marginal improvements.

Please don't buy the hype before seeing the reviews.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Billly Gates]

Ati has learned there lesson and their drivers are better and the raedon series proved it. I believe they listened to their customers and noticed the migration towards nvidia and reacted properly. As a side note macintosh drivers have to be very good quality to have apple's seal of approval. Unlike the Windows world where everything goes, you need to have a license to access some of the inner working of the OS and to actually sell hardware on the mac platform.(this is was what it was like in the 80's)

This is one of the few advantages if any of being tied into a single software/hardware platform. Many Unix guru's prefer sun over Lintel boxes for that very reason. Quality and consitancy. It is likely that apple itself could of partially written the drivers if ATI's own drivers didn't meet the requirements bill or if they prefered to pay apple to do it instead.

Also remember that Windows (Windows95 & 98 particularly)have a horribe and I mean horrible driver model and sdk. Infact this is what caused all the those infamouns bsod. Even NT4 has everything running in the kernel which is supposed to be there server line OS. WIndows2000 is improving however.

Oddly enough I am getting the newer cards because of better linux support. Better linux support...from ATi? Well since ATI never releases Linux drivers but rather reveals all its technical secrets to the community, I can just wait for the write drivers to come on in with dri XF86 support. I have to rely on nvidia with opengl under linux which I have observed will not compile properly with certain kernels and is very unstable with certian VIA athlon chipsets. Not to mention nvidia does not use the standard dri architecture. With now improved Windows drivers and supperior opensource linux ones, I will buy an ati. If there is a problem discovered in the linux ati drivers, it will be fixed and I do not have to wait for a corporation to do it. Its rumoured that ATI is even developing a unified driver model which is simuliar to nvidia's that will upgrade all its drivers for all recent cards! Oh, and its almost twice as fast as a gefore4!

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[10Ghz]

"Just recently they squeezed another 25% speed increase out of their drivers."

They claim "up to 25% increase in performance", but just about the only place where you see that is the Nature-test in 3DMark. In _games_ (you know, the things we actually use these vid-cards for?) there is exactly _zero_ improvement! And I heard that they changed the default-setting for filtering to one notch worse, so the image-quality suffers. Also, these new drivers have severe stability-problems.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[parabyte]

On SIGGRAPH last month I was told by ATI Engineers that the new Linux Drivers from ATI will not be Open Source; they will follow NVIDIA in this. I have no experiece with the current open source drivers, but six months ago there was *no* hardware T&L support a.k.a. 3D hw accelleration with these drivers.

p.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI drivers are not that bad. Most of my non gaming machines run ATI cards and all my MACS of course (I have 13 machines) I have a compaq 2800 laptop with the radeon 7500 and it blow the Geforce2 desktop chips away at least the Mx's anyway. Ive never had probelems running anygames on the original ATI Radeon even American Army (based on Unreal 2003 engine) runs at about 20fps at 800*600*32bit. The new Radeons according to just about everyone blow Nvidia away. I have 1 nvidia GeForce3 and I love it but I paid 400$ for it! I think both companies are great but Ive found ATI boards to be cheaper and generally not much worse. ATI boards are also easier to overclock! Which makes any Nvidia performance advantage mute. My Radeon runs at 200mhz but was designed to run at 180. I get about a 10% performance boost just from that. Overclock the ram and its about 15% and it runs stable to.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[Billly Gates]

Nooo!

Thanks for warning me. This pisses me off. I think nvidia has given the video card industry some nasty idea's. I will probably not buy it since I do not even trust nvidia to come out with good drivers for linux let alone ati.

Re:I've often wondered why Carmack liked ATI ....

[FeeDBaCK]

ATi Radeon 8500 Drivers.

Nvidia's drivers come from the exact same code base as their Windows drivers. This makes them just as fast and stable as their Windows counterparts. They aren't GPL, but the sure are damn good.

Agree, Doom sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Another dark gothic FPS game. Oh joy. Goth geeks everywhere must be creaming in their pants with anticipation.

Re:Agree, Doom sucks

[crapolene]

I have specially lined undies from K-Mart to collect the cream so I can make a lovely dessert with later. Thanks Martha!

The 9000 is SLOWER than the 8500

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been proven in benchmarks. The ATI 8500 outperforms the 9000 in every area.

There is NO way that Doom 3 will run on this card.

Re:The 9000 is SLOWER than the 8500

[Cornelius the Great]

You're wrong. You may be right in saying that the 9000 is basically a neutered 8500 (has less pipelines), but from what Carmack has written about support for ATI chipsets in his .plan files (8500 runs fine with Doom 3), there's no reason to doubt the statement that the 9000 will run Doom 3 okay.

In fact, Carmack has stated that the Radeon 7500 and Geforce 256/2 (1st gen T&L chipsets) will be able able to run Doom3, even though there's no vertex/pixel shaders present (lack of pixel shaders would require more passes for per-pixel lighting and shadowing). What makes you think that a card that runs DirectX 8/OpenGL games as well as a GF3 can be inferior to that of a GeForce 256? I shudder to think about how many passes a GF2 must have to do when scenes with per-pixel lighting, volume stencil shadows, and dynamic light sources are being displayed. A Radeon 9000 wouldn't even have to do more than 2 or 3 passes on that same scene, especially since it supports pixel shader version 1.4 (like the 8500- it allows 6 textures in a single pass).

Besides, from what I've heard, Doom 3 is being limited to 2nd-gen T&L GPUs, and probably won't utilize special features of chipsets like the Radeon 9700 and nvidia's NV30.

FUCKING BRILLIANT !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the truly great trolls of our time

Re:stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

jchristopher, you are a sad fucking troll who won't stop whining. You speak a lot of bullshit.

Or if you just didnt use their cards....

[Viewsonic]

Their manuals dont explain why your games run like crap, lag out, have gfx glitches, etc .. Their drivers are for crap. yeah, read their manual and it will solve all your problems.. I say just dont use their cards to begin with!

Re:Or if you just didnt use their cards....

[woogieoogieboogie]

Reading the manual is worthless if you do not FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.

I have a Radeon AIW 8500DV, a Rage Fury Pro and a rage 2c card in my three home systems. I have 40 machines with Rage 128 boards in them at the office. Does this qualify me as having enough experience with ATI cards?

If you read the manual and install the drivers properly, you will have almost 0 problems, or at least no more problems than you have with any other card.

The manual explicitely states you MUST remove the older drivers and install a standard vga adapter driver. If an issue is encountered where a file is being copied that is older than one on the machine, you MUST copy the older file. If you follow this procedure every time and do it correctly, you will NOT have problesm with ATI drivers. Removing the drivers from the hardware manager is not acceptable, you must uninstall them from the system.

To say that ATI drivers suck is plain wrong. they may not be as user friendly as nvidia's drivers to install where you can install updated drivers over the old ones, but there is nothing wrong with ATI's drivers themselves. If there was, ATI would NOT have succeded in either the corporate market or with OEM's which is their bread and butter.

If you have ever installed an ATI driver over an existing ATI driver without first uninstalling the older drivers,you will have big problems with the system unless you install another physical video card and clean out all the ATI dll's, registry entries and INF files.

Blaming a product because you did not follow the directions is quite silly.

Re:Or if you just didnt use their cards....

[Anonymous Coward]

Err..
No, ATI's driver really suck

> If there was, ATI would NOT have succeded in >either the corporate market or with OEM's which is >their bread and butter.

Well, ATI is known for low cost (onboard)card for corporate market.
we have hundreds of 1U boxes that has ATI cards on them as onboard card as well. but that has nothing to do with their driver (since those are linux server with drivers that are NOT from ATI)

And I have AIW 8500 128mb edition (which is almost same as your card but with more vrams)
The driver really sucks ass. (and I'm not talking about installing and uninstalling)
I'm a heavy gamer (I play alot/both US and Japanese games)and the driver sometime can cause hard crashes on the game. (and the fatal error msg code are directly related to the video card (driver))

Re:Or if you just didnt use their cards....

[cqnn]

FWIW I agree with your comments that ATI's drivers do not
necessarily suck, IMO it is a matter of how the are installed.

But, the point is the user should not have to jump thru
hoops to that extent to get a peripheral working.

I own three ATI cards (8MB AIW Pro, AIW Radeon, and AIW 8500DV,
with the latter two still in use). I have successfully upgraded
over older drivers, but that is still hit and miss whether
everything the card can do will still work afterward.

I have had other devices (sound card, motherboard) that have
failed or worked adversely after an upgrade, but those are
usually fixed by reinstalling the older driver, in some
cases I've had to uninstall the new driver first, and at
least once I have had to restore the system from a backup
image.

Only with the ATI cards has there consistently been such
an expectation of user interaction. That's the real problem.
If the standard instructions don't work or make sense,
you can check forum threads at sites like www.rage3d.com for
good advice on how and why to install the drivers in a
particular order, and what caveats to watch out for.

The drivers in the past have been adequate, the drivers in
current release are actually quite good, but the install/uninstall
process has serious flaws that force the user to do much of the
decision making that should be automated as part of the process.

ATI still has to improve that process to a point where following
the instructions amounts to running the setup program, and letting
it take care of dependencies and legacy issues. They have to deal
with the idea that a lot of users don't care to follow instructions;
particularly when those instructions have the reputation of an
arcane ritual. When they do that, it will do much to help
the reputation of thier drivers.

How long until a Ti PowerBook with one?

[Deviant]

I have been thinking about buying a Ti PowerBook, what would be my first Apple. I have noticed they seem to put the latest and greatest from ATI in them. Up until this that was the Rage Mobility 7500, what is currently shipping in them. I can wait 3-4 months before buying it. What are the chances that they will have a new revision of the PowerBook with one of these by then?

Re:How long until a Ti PowerBook with one?

[Nerftoe]

Well, Apple Expo 2002 in Paris is on September 10th. Something tells me we'll see an announcement for the 9000 to be included in an updated Ti. Maybe a 100 Mhz speed bump as well...

Re:How long until a Ti PowerBook with one?

[Bloodmoon1]

I'd say those are probably pretty realistic expectations. The Ti book line is over due for an update, and that would be the most likely place and time for one, and I'm sure Apple will be looking to capatilize on this newest offering from ATI. If they are announced, updated Ti's with the 9000 might not ship right away due to how close the availability date and the Expo date are, but I do think there is a strong chance if not at the Expo, new Ti's with this option will be announced within 3 months.

This should really speed things up

[Bloodmoon1]

Especially my spread sheet program. Finally, I don't have to have that horrible graphic lag when moving cells. And man, /. is really going to fly. :) In all honestly though, I really would kill to get one of these for my Ti Book.

Anan went to my high school

[Anonymous Coward]

He went to Enloe High School. When he was a senior, this guy bought the house that his parents live in. Amazing entrepreneur.

new website askjohncarmack.com

[Anonymous Coward]

john, what do you think of my sideburns?
john, where can I find a recipe for hash brownies?
john, what is the fiestiest rodent?
john, where can I buy a large tube?
john, what is your favorite type of lube?

Is it just me, or does anyone else not care what carmack says?

What are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

HUH? My G4 came with a Geforce3 when I bought it last year. The new ones have a Geforce4 Ti option...

Re: When has this NOT been the case?

[H3XA]

ah.... the good ol days.... I did something similar to my 486DX50 so I too could DOOM. I remember even Quake test running on that PC though at an unplayable speed..... much like Win95 as well ;)

- HeXa

Geforce 4 2GO

[SuperDuG]

Well I'm using a GeForce4 2GO right now on my Satellite 5005, and well it seems to perform just like your average geforce 3 mx. While I'm used to an ATI rage mobility, the drive support for both windows and linux sucks. ATI is known for making really nice cards, but doing really shitty with driver support. nVidia makes chips and when the manufacturer of the card dies out, that's okay nVidia will jump in and give you their drivers. I have YET to see that from ATI. While I think competition is a wonderful thing, after getting a TNT a long while ago and watching the performance of this toshiba laptop (don't get me wrong even though it doesn't benchmark like a Geforce 4 TI, it still holds its own), I think that it will take quite a bit to take me away from nVidia.

Re:Geforce 4 2GO

[SmittyTheBold]

GeForce 3 MX, huh?

As far as I know...they don't exist. Did you manage to get your hands on some super-special one-off engineering sample or something?

Re:Geforce 4 2GO

[Utopia]

I read the shitty ATI driver complain all the time on slashdot. But I have never ever experienced any problems with ATI drivers. I have a RAGE3D LE on my laptop. I never had a game not work or crash on my computer.

Makes me wonder What do I have that you don't ?

Re:Geforce 4 2GO

[SuperDuG]

they do exist .. they were repackaged as GeForce 4 2Go's ...

Re:stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir are an idoit.

Re:stupid

[Billly Gates]

IT was fast for me. Well compared to my Windows box running the same ms word and IE which is a pentiumIII 700mhz system. I counted1 second for opening IE and 3 seconds for opening MS word. This was on the low end 1699 model as well.

Everything launched quick and was smooth. I did not run any benchmarks because this was a compusa demo machine but it seemed alot, alot smoother then the g3 powerbook with MacOSX 1.1. Believe me when I say its leaps and bounds quicker thanks to jaguar.

Come to think of it I never even saw the ball moving for anything.

However if I had 1699 I prefer a dual athlon or single p4 box for gentoo linux.

Who cares what he says?

[Cornelius the Great]

I do...

Any bit of information about 3D hardware/gaming coming from the legendary programmer that brought us Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake (and its sequels), plus is resposible for plenty of other titles using his tech (Soldier of Fortune (I & II), Jedi Knight 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and many others) is worthwhile and helpful in choosing a new graphics card.

To give a good example, he was one of the first to tell us, the gamers, (in one of his .plan) that the Matrox Parhelia was inferior in performance to that of the Radeon 8500 and Geforce4ti before it was even released.

Plus, regardless of whether you want to hear it or not, Doom 3 may be one of the most anticipated games ever. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the highest-grossing.

For sale

[maroberts]

Anyone want a Dell Inspiron 8200 so I can run Doom 3 on whatever I replace it with ? ;-)

Bloody laptop video cards should be replaceable like their bigger brethren

laptop 3d chipsets have suckde for a while now..

[Lumpy]

Why doesnt Nvidia start making Geforce 3's for laptops? how about ATI making HIGH power 3d chipsets for laptops?

I am in the market for a laptop, but the graphics chipsets suck horribly (Radeon mobility? it's crappy and isnt linux friendly... so under linux you get ZERO 3d accelleration) and are not powerful enough to do squat. I would pay a premium of upwards of $200.00 for high end graphics in a laptop, but nobody want's to offer it.

No problems with ATI drivers

[hoytt]

It seems to be a habit of certain people to bash ATI for their lousy drivers. I've used ATI cards in Macs since 1997 and NEVER had driver issues. Right now I have a Radeon 8500 in a G4/500/DP and it works. On the Mac people are complaining about buggy nVidia drivers. My next card will probably be another ATI.

FYI re: Carmack, & Apple's use of ATI hardware

[Blondie-Wan]

Of Apple's current systems, the new iMacs (the LCD ones) and the eMacs both use NVidia chips, not ATI. The Power Mac G4s use both NVidia and ATI (a given stock configuration having one or the other, and people buying directly from Apple can get custom configurations with whichever they want), and it's been this way for a while now. Only the portables and the old-style CRT iMacs are ATI-only.

As for Carmack, he's very much known for giving his honest opinion. He's certainly never been inclined to hold back legitimate, often quite scathing criticisms of Apple, and it was only when Apple adopted OpenGL as its 3d API of choice that he really began offering praise.

Re: Parhelia

[Anonymous Coward]

Matrox Parhelia was inferior in performance to that of the Radeon 8500 and Geforce4ti

In 3D-gaming performance maybe. In 2D performance, features, and signal quality, do you really think the R8500 and GF4 beat the Parhelia?

dunno about sweet on mac, but he is on next...

[zonker]

i know that he used to like dev'ing on next machines, as the original doom was done on that platform, as well as others i believe. in fact, id software auctioned the old next machines they used a few years ago (posted on slashdot)...

Re:dunno about sweet on mac, but he is on next...

[zonker]

this is important cuz osx is similar to next programatically. developers who like next seem to be sweet on osx.

Re:laptop 3d chipsets have suckde for a while now.

[sciencewhiz]

That would be the problem. You aren't willing to pay a premium of $400 and half the battery life.

find 10,000 people who would, and you'll get your real laptop gaming chip.