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Trident XP4 Reviewed
ceebABC writes "In a new review, the Trident XP4 got a nasty reception. Based on the tests, it sounds like Trident has got some work to do on the thing. Looks like this GPU is dead on arrival." Our last story on Trident mentioned them coming back from the dead. Maybe not.
...And this is why you shouldn't believe the prerelease specs. Nothing ever performs to spec; trust the benchmarks.
It's pretty common, really. But I haven't usually seen it to this degree.
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
It makes me wonder why an AnandTech article gave such a different opinion. Which one is right?
From page two...
I admit that I don't know much about graphics cards or GPUs, and it's obvious that the Trident got smoked. But was it a fair comparison? According to the review, the Trident goes for under $100, yet they benchmark it against what appears to be higher end (more expensive) graphics cards.
Wouldn't it be a more fair comparison if they benchmarked against cards of the same price range? If you were shopping for a cheap card, you obviously wouldn't expect it to perform as well as a more expensive card anyway, would you? What do others think?
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Historically, for the last 6-7 years, Trident has always focused on the mobile graphics market, and in that space, they are much more dominant. The XP4 is basically an evolution of Trident's mobile GPUs, and is really intended for use in mobile systems, hence the considerations such as reduced transistor count, etc. There's little difference between the mobile XP4 and the desktop XP4, and yet Trident is marketing it as a desktop one.
For a laptop, the 3D benchmark scores are actually quite decent.
But for them to call it a desktop GPU is just asking for trouble, as the article clearly describes.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Then he proceeds to run this card at 1600x1200 with beta drivers against cards with excellent debugged drivers. Any sort of numerical or empirical evidence he could get at this point is about .05% useful to me.
Sure the thing may only get 4.9 FPS on a new demanding game at 1600x1200 with beta drivers. I bet you that same card will belt out over 60fps at 1024x768 when the real drivers are released.
People seem to forget that a video card driver's quality can be the difference between horrible performance and class leading performance. If the driver is not debugged and performance optimzed, there is nothing a hardware designer could do to make that card perform well.
I say that this is an excellent card that will allow users who do not want to spend $500 on a video card to play the latest and greatest games on the market. It is a Dx9 card, with full support. To me, this is an excellent card.
I bet they sell a whole boatload of these things to OEM manufacturers and those who do not really want to spend an entire car payment on moving some pixels around. -TinyManCan
Well, the GPU isn't ready for release. So by the time it hits the market, it may be competing, price-wise, with offerings from ATi and nVidia that perform similar to the cards they benchmarked it against. Of course, if Trident can increase performance a bit and keep the price down, they'll no doubt capture a good portion of the low-end market. That is, assuming ATi and nVidia aren't preparing similar products...
Most didn't notice that they compared it to desktop cards, when the GPU is designed for mobile computing.
I wonder how it stacks up against the S4 Savage, NoForce, mobile Radeon or intels Xtreme grafx.
I mean "GPU designed for laptop not as cool as desktop gaming cards!" is kind of a no-shit conclusion.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
They show the results of very different tests. 800x600 vs 1600x1200 resolution. That's a difference of 4x in required fill rate. Since neither of these tests were run at a relevant resolution (most laptops run around 1024x768), neither can be called conclusive. My guess it that Anand is waiting for more stable drivers to test "real" resolutions.
The extremetech.com review is pretty unfair, it's like testing a new Ferrari by seeing how much cargo it can carry and then declaring it a bad car because it doesn't haul as much as a Ford Explorer. This card is aimed at lower resolution (lower fill rate) applications that require low power and cost. Having a DX9 entrant into this arena to me is welcome.
We'll just have to wait for a real review to see if this card is any good.
-Ryan C.
-Ryan C.
For all the issues with XP4 driver performance today, I have no doubt the Trident folks will improve it just like all other competitors in the past ....
Although the XP4 T3 with 128MBytes is listed at $99 MSRP, I would venture to guess that you will be able to buy it next month for less than $85, and next May 2003 for less than $60 (still with 128MBytes of course).
Trident's main value to MOST of us (working consumers with LIMITED income) is their RELENTLESS competitive drive to bring down the cost of high-quality graphics (which so far only affordable to the elite few) starting with DX8.1 today and DX9.0 next summer.
So here is my cautious forecast ....
Next August 2003, Trident offering will include a full DX9.0 card with 256MBytes XP8 for $99 and a full DX8.1 card with 128MBytes XP4 for $59 - all will support the latest AGP-8X of course.
This is why (I think) the OEMs, system integrators, retailers and distributors are so excited about Trident return to the desktop market.
As a final note, in case you did not know ....
It was a mere 45 days ago that the ATI 9000 Pro was selling for $149 with 128MBytes and everyone thought it was a GREAT price ! With Trident XP4 entering the 128Mbytes market with an incredible $99 MSRP, the 9000 Pro price has quickly dropped 33% or more to $99 and below !
I firmly believe that for us consumers, the surest way to get "the best deal in town" is by encouring more intense competition and not by killing it ...
Despite what their marketing might say, Trident is obviously not REALLY trying to compete with the latest and greatest from nVidia and ATI. This is obviously piece of budget hardware for people who don't want to pay a whole lot to get DX 9 compatible card.
Sure, if I build a gaming rig, this isn't the card I'm going to use. I'm going to spend the cash for a high end card, and probably brag about my insane frame rates the next time I take it to a LAN party.
On the other hand, if I built a PC for someone who isn't planning on playing Doom 3 extensively, I might actually consider a card of this calibur. It is a DX 9 card for under $100. This is probably a decent choice for a bargain PC.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
why are they benching it against Desktop GPU's, obviously no matter what the laptop GPU the equivilent class GPU would always be better. Why don't you atleast bench it against mobile GPUs.
While most of the /.ers have noted that the review of the XP4 on extremetech was unfair, they may not realize just how unreasonable extremetech was in putting this sub-$100 card against the best cards on the market.
Because the XP4 deviates from the long-established, direct-mode rendering (which is a brute force method) for tile-based rendering, they are going to need a lot of time to get their drivers in order before they will be able to compete properly with the familiar video cards. The only other card mainstream card that attempted this rendering approach was the Kyro series, which demonstrated that tile-based rendering does have huge potential and that drivers will make or break the card's performance.
Interesting enough, because video cards using the tile-based rendering method are more efficient by 200-300%* when compared to cards using the traditional method, they should see a much lower performance decrease as the screen resolution is increased when compared against direct-mode renderers (e.g. NVidia NV9 cards and ATI Radeon 9500s). While it's true that fill rates do increase substantially with increased resolution, direct-mode renderers simply will experience that much more overfill.
*Direct-mode renderers have an overfill rate of about 2 or 3; this means that for every pixel visible two or three more have been rendered and then disgarded. Tile-based renderers, on the other hand, disgard everything that won't be visible first and only render what's left, giving them an overfill of 0. Figuring out what to cull first before rendering has begun is more complicated than culling excess pixels after they are rendered; this complexity is what makes writing the drivers for a tile-based renderer such a difficult task.
Trident has set for themselves an incredibly difficult challenge: 1) Make a card that uses a tile-based rendering method, which means throwing out nearly everything the graphics card industry has learned the past couple decades. 2) In addition to the first task, they have added the complexity of sharing graphical resources, thus adding all the timing problems associated with such a configuration. If they achieve only 50% of the performance of Nvidia's Geforce4 TI4600, that alone would be a considerable achievement. If Trident meets the 80% performance target they set for themselves, it will be all the more impressive.
Since when does the mainstream computer user play games in 1600x1200? Even mid-range 17" monitors are going to get fuzzy in 1600x1200, 1280x1024 or 1024x768 is much more likely.