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Radeon 9700 Pro: ATI Ahead
Keefe writes "The epic battle between ATI and Nvidia wages on. While Nvidia awaits arrival of their near-fabled NV30 for redemption, ATI conquers all by introducing the fastest and most advanced graphics card to date. The next-generation ATI Radeon 9700 Pro marks the second time Nvidia cedes the performance crown to ATI (the first time being the brief glory when the ATI Rage Fury beat the Nvidia TNT). See how the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro stacks up at Techware Labs."
fp.
Fuck unlimited mod points for moderators!!
PC Gamer reviewed the 9700 four months ago.
???
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
I wonder how much extra circuitry this chip has in order to be backwards compatible. I rember reading that the Geforce 3 had to have some legacy circuitry that wasn't used in Direct Draw 8 games in order to run Direct Draw 7 games. Now that we're into DD8.1 and DD9.0, how much more legacy circuitry is in there?
Worst Repeat Ever!
The Radeon 9700 Pro has been out for MONTHS. This was news when it was first posted, but now its like posting that Kernel 2.4.2 is out.
Editors kill themselves.
... it wants its news back.
First they point out a Salon piece mentioning "selling out" and now we get an ATi puff piece for a video card taht has been out for months...
If only I had a brain, I could figure out what this meant!!
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
3-500 dollars today for a card that will be severely outclassed by a card in a few months. There are no new games that demand a card this instant. I personally plan on buying a new computer and geforce fx when doom3 comes out. Unless you have to buy a new system in the next 3 months why not wait?
The internet is on computers these days.
First I heard about this was on Tom's Hardware months ago:
ATi Radeon 9700 PRO - Pretender To The Throne
In case there were any doubts from the title of the article, the Conclusion page says this:
The King is dead! Long live the King! How's this for a plot-twist? The challenger Radeon - a real "Performeron" - has actually done it and usurped the throne from the former king! ATi has earned itself not only the performance crown in gaming environments, but also that of the technology leader!
"Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so."
-Douglas Adams
David Borowitz
No news is good news no?
is that it's currently God's Own card until the next one comes along (Probably from nVidia) then it'll be crap.
Repeat as necessary.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I think the point the author is trying to make is that the card has been out for months, and Nvidia STILL hasn't released their next big thing. Look what happened to 3dfx when they where slow out of the gate with next gen cards.
Being faster means little when you have no modern competition. If the current ATI's remain in the lead performance wise when the next Nvidia chipset is released, that will be a major victory for ATI. On the other hand, ATI does have the crown at the moment, and the longer they are in the lead the more market share they could take from NVidia. Then back to the first hand, a whole lot of people aren't ready to upgrade yet and may not be for a while, so being in the lead when nobody is buying isn't really an advantage after all. On the other hand once again... oh, nevermind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Hmmm
Nvidia GeForce4 TI : approx $100
ATI 9700 : around $300
Games or software that need 9700 over GeForce4 : 0
Maybe I'll wait until the cost comes down and until there is a true need for that card
9700
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Seriously, did you guys just not know the Radeon 9700 was out? Maybe its time to add some new blood to the site. Like somebody who is hip to whats current?
nVidia has convinced me with their FreeBSD drivers. Good work.
[Reflex mistake above. Pressed enter instead of tab.]
Anyway, for 3dsmax and such apps, I would still stick to nvidia Quadro and softquadroed Geforce cards.
is not that this is the second time that ATI has been faster than nVidia, it's that this is only the second time that this has been the case.
Back in The Day, it seemed that 3dfx would come out with their card, and hold the performance crown for a few months, then someone else would release theirs, and hold the performance crown for a few months, then 3dfx would release their next generation of cards, and the cycle would continue that way.
It's been all ATI and nVidia now for a number of years, and ATI has only just now figured out that if they want to sell graphics cards to gamers, they have to be faster every once in a while?
I hope it reverts to the old model. Competition can only yield better graphics cards at lower prices.
The NV30 will be a better value than you think. Not only will it replace your old video card, but it'll replace your old hair dryer, too!
-Teckla
Man I just upgraded to a Riva TNT2... Does this mean I have to upgrade AGAIN???
"No Matter Where You Go.. There You Are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Magna Carta signed!
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
Wasn't this card released a few months ago? About two days after I bought my GeForce 4 Ti4600 :-(
But having seen the videos for the Nvidea Fx card I can't see ATI holding the crown for long.
Is the politic of Nvidia for the Free Software developer has changed ?
If not, please don't buy this proprietary hardware.
PC Gamer reviewed the 9700 four months ago.
Perhaps next, we'll be seeing stories posted about how Saddam Hussein caved in and let UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
Does anyone have links to any recent news (cough, ahem) about ATI's Linux drivers? I know they released binaries not very long ago, but heard rumblings about them not working well (or at all) on some OEM Radeon 9700 cards.
An article comparing the performance of Nvidia's and ATI's drivers would be new info.
Okay, i was checking up on Pricewatch to see the price differences between the R9700 and nVidia's offerings. WTf is up with this GF4 TI 4800? Is it just a version that supports AGP 8x ? Because, it's MORE expensive by 20 bucks than a Radeon 9700Pro (at 232$)
I still agree with whoever (likely several people) said that its pointless to spend so much cash when this kind of polygon pumping power isnt even needed yet.
By the time you actually NEED one of these it will be in the 150$ range; the only reason you need one now is the geek equivalent of penis envy
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Generally an epic battle involves a good force and an evil force alaa Axis and Allies in World War 2.
This is just a commercial battle of products, seen by every other commercial product on the market. It's not a milestone by any means.
Much like the War on Terrorism, there is no clear enemy, therefore there is no war.
The Radeon 8500 outperformed the Geforce3 Ti500 and came out months before the Geforce4 Ti series. They're continually trading the performance lead. The only instance of nVidia ever keeping the performance crown continuously from one product generation to another was Geforce2-->Geforce3.
From the time the Geforce2 came out until the Radeon 8500 came out 17 months ago, ATI had the unquestionable performance crown, but since then it has been juggling back and forth, which is to be expected since each new product release is about 6 months after the competitor's last release and the technology improves as time goes on. nVidia has a habit of shooting for a holiday release but not actually shipping until the new year, and ATI has made their last two releases in August. So when either one of them makes a new release they have a 6-month lead over the other company's product, so you should expect them to always trade performance crowns unless one of them is more than 6 months begind the other in R&D, which would be saying quite a lot.
Repeal the DMCA!
Last time I checked, NVidia had an obnoxious policy of not releasing technical info for all the functionality of their cards. Is that still the case?
How is ATI regarding open source support? Can I run a fully powered video card from ATI without having to download special drivers directly from ATI, like I used to have to do with NVidia?
well the jerk store called and they're almost out of you!
That was classic intercourse!
Apparently, although I'm not sure why. That was my first reaction also. I was really hoping to settle down to a good Slashdot story this morning, like some accomplish with a cup of joe, but I guess somebody who waits for technology reviews to show up in their local small-town gazette doesn't share my vision.
Does anyone besides ATi make graphics anymore?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The only difference is 1/2 the memory bandwidth. While that may seem like a lot, the 9500 pro actually gives @ 70% of the performance of the 9700 Pro.
and....
The 9700 Pro, 9700, and the 9500 Pro use the exact same GPU. So download a new bios at www.3dchipset.com/temp/warp11.zip and you can overclock the GPU to get almost 90% of the performance of a 9700 Pro.
Read all about it here Firingsquad.com
Also make sure to get DirectX 9
and New Catalyst 3.0 Drivers
And the 9500 Pro is a cheap at $180 delivered.
www.pricewatch.com
ATI has made some truly amazing cards, and I am the proud owner of a all-in-wonder-radeon. Linux support is coming along nicely, and it looks like ATI is supporting the Linux community quite nicely. As per usual and ANY new piece of hardware, some hand- tuning might be nessesary. :)
Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana.
The Radeon 9700 has been leading for months upon months now. There have been countless articles about it slaughtering the GF4 Ti4600. This is not news.
If you want some videocard news, you should look at the newly released ATi Radeon 9500 Pro. It supports AGP 8x, something that only a couple special GeForce 4 "Ti4800" cards do, and it can be had with 128mb and 64mb of RAM for around $50-80 less than a GF4 4600.
In the benchmarks on Anandtech above, it comes within 2fps of the Ti4600 in most cases.
Not only is ATi giving Nvidia's top dog a run for it's money, but also their value products.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Issola!
The problem with the 9x00 series is that ATi still has a long, long way to go in the driver department. I cannot tell you how many "cutting edge" gamers I've run into who cannot extract a decent picture or more than 5FPS out of this card due to horrible driver problems. To the best of my recollection, this has pretty much always been the case with ATi, and although they have been better recently they stil have a long way to go before they match nVidia's stability.
Just a warning to those of you who (inexplicably) want to pay a gigantic premium for the fastest card on the market for about another quarter.
levine
If I'm not mistaken, the card described in the article is the Radeon 9700 Pro and not the few-month-old Radeon 9700. To my knowledge, this card is newer and therefore better. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
As for the card itself, screw it. I'm willing to wait and spend up to $500+ to get a good GeforceFX card. I don't care who is fastest. I want quality that I can depend on and a good driver set.
Flamebait ?? /. editors partied too much on new years !!
Looks like
There should be a section called as archives (who knows, it might already be there) for stale news like this.
The card has been out for months. Tom's Hardware reviewed it in August !!
ATi Radeon 9700 PRO - Pretender To The Throne
The single most important factor for me when buying a graphics card is the availability of good open source drivers.
I don't want to support manufacturers that ship proprietary drivers (I'm trying to "vote with my wallet" like so many capitalist freaks say to do). But lately I feel like my only option is "don't pay anyone"
And I really don't want to support artificial market stratification by people like Nvidia who use different software drivers for essentially the same hardware for their "professional" and "gamer" hardware - open source drivers seem to be the best defence against such shady practises.
What graphics cards have good open source drivers for 2D and 3D?
I've heard ATI have the best Open-Source 3D drivers and that Matrox have the best Oepn-Source 2D drivers (and coincidentally the best 2D hardware), but that neither compare to the binary drivers, thanks largely to the failure to release complete chipset documentation ( Mesa and the 3dfx drivers prove that, given hardware information, good open source drivers can be forthcoming).
Yes, the card is a bit old...You can blame ATI for not sending it to use in a timely fashion!
When ATI releases its latest and greatest - buy NVidia stock and sell ATI.
When NVidia announces its latest and greatest - buy ATI and sell NVidia.
Same thing goes for buying the physical cards as well - they come out too high, but will drop when the competition comes out.
Other than that - wow - look at all the pretty colors.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I don't know about you, but I have been burned by ATI over and over again with regards to driver quality. I sincerely hope they are still not bad about drivers but I'm not going to risk it again.
NVidia has always had top notch driver support, and they continue to support even the oldest TNT cards with driver updates. ATI tends to drop new driver support after a couple years.
I'm waiting for the GeForce FX. I just hope I can get one with dual DVI.
[H]ardOCP. Seriously, this is the upteenth time that i have seen an article that is posted here that hasn't been posted on the [H] already. I think we should give them all a break and just have a big link to the [H] and say: "All hardware news that's anygood is found here " save us all some time..
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
I guess the pro cards are just becoming available now. Are these just cards with higher clock rates than the non-pro cards? I can't check because the site is slashdotted.
Maybe this article about ATI's Radeon 9500Pro would have been a better one to link to. It shows how this cheaper R300 based product compares to other offerings and how it beats the Ti4200 hands down and often outdoes the Ti4600. It may not be the killer card that the 9700 is, and may not be a true entry level card, but for the mainstream gamer market it gives mighty fine performance for your cash.
I know I'm going to get blasted for being a Luddite, but try to read more into this than a rehash of "640K is more than anyone will ever need." Please?
First, PC video has gotten very fragmented in terms of capability. Hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) first appeared in the GeForce 1 several years ago. The follow up, the GeForce 2 became a very popular, almost standard, card. But there are still major PC retailers that ship with motherboard video, such as Intel's extreme-whatsit and so on. These chipsets are not T&L capable. Still, several years after the first T&L cards appeared, there is a huge segment of the market that doesn't have hardware T&L. These are fast machines in every other respect (bottom end these days is 1.8GHz), just not T&L accelerated 3D.
Of course the hot video feature these days is programmable shader logic. But realistically what percentage of very capable PCs support this? 10%?
Second, the bottom has fallen out of 3D gaming on the PC. The sales figures of games that are perceived as Big Hits, like No One Lives Forever 2, are, in reality, abysmal. We're talking under 50,000 copies. There are some 3D games that are doing well, but it's a small, small handful. Just that "Oh yeah, what about Doom 3?" comes up in these discussions shows how weak the market is.
My point is that video cards keep improving, but at the same time, there's no market for these features, nor is there a market for the features of cards two generations back. I don't like this, but that doesn't change anything. Certainly it's fun to write shaders and to be able to buy something for $400 that's significantly better than $100,000 hardware from just a few years ago, but that's looking at the situtation from a "look at what I have in MY computer" perspective, not something I can realistically expect to be in most of the PCs out there.
I think they're still kicking around. They don't really seem to be up on the superfast3dgamer market, but they make good cards for graphic editing, and the dual-head is nice with the multi-monitor suppose.
If I had the cash, I'd be playing my games on three monitors... which is supposed to work nicely on the matrox dual-head cards.
have a Windows box around "just for gaming." Yet we lambast Microsoft regularly on Slashdot and to our friends? Seriously, if you want people to switch, how about only buying games that run on Linux or other Open Source OSs'? All I play is Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake III, and Unreal Tounament 2003 which run great on Debian Testing (my Redhat 8 laptop is another matter-HELP!). Is gaming that important that you have to run a Windows box and buy Windows-only games? A little monetary support to the manufacturers who help us could go a long way. Gaming could be the "killer app" for a lots of would be Open Source converts.
This guy is way out there
The NV30 will beat the 9700 Pro in every benchmark, just wait.
I have been reading articles and previews about the NV30 and it will definitelly beat the 9700.
One field that ATI has never beat Nvidia is the driver field. Nvidia has better stability/installation/upgrade features than ATI has.
Also, Nvidia has Official Drivers for Linux since years ago, and that is a feature that we all wants.
But I think that competion is good for all of us, the consumers.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
ATI is in REALLY good shape right now. As far as their drivers go, they're really getting much better. ATI will have had the performance crown for 6 months or so by the time the FX comes out, by that time they'll have a card based on the R350 core that should at least equal the FX, and come June or July the completely new R400 core based cards should be around, more than likely beating Nvidia's next big thing by a long time. Nvidia is a hype machine, but they're not delivering, they dropped the ball big time by not getting the FX out at least by Christmas. And I bet if you took the dustbuster off the top of the FX and ran in at clock speeds that normal cooling can facilitate it would be on par with the 9700. And top performance means nothing anyway, it's what, like less that 5% of the market? ATI currently has the fastest mobile chipset, pocket chipset, value chipset, and their mainboard chipset is for the P4, not the Athlon like Nvidia, who do you think is in a better market position? They've basically got Nividia beat everywhere right now (as far as stuff already on the market goes) they seem pretty serious about being the one to beat themselves.
With all due respect to the submitter of this news article, I have to question the statement that the Rage Pro beat the TNT.
As I recall the days when Quake 3 was getting ready to be released, the id guys specifically said that they were trying to really hard to make Q3 work on the ATI Rage Pro, and the way they were going about making it work was allowing the user to turn off enough eye candy (ie remove enough features) so that the game would be compatible with the Rage Pro. The end result was that it looked rather ugly. On the other hand, as far as I know, the TNT1, although probably too slow to play Q3 feasibly, could support full eye candy, including 32-bit color.
I actually played the game on a TNT2 for a while, which, I believe, had the same features as the TNT1 with a speed boost.
Now if you are talking about quake1 benchmarks or something, I don't know which card would've been faster (rage pro or tnt1) but let's face it, there's more to video cards than just high framerates, as 3dfx found out (the hard way).
This has been Elmer Fudd weporting. We now weturn you to your wegular newscast.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
First of all, take a look at ATI's sales figures for the first quarter which included 9700P sales--UP 34% sequentially! In fact, shortly after shipping the 9700P ATI announced that the demand for its new high-end graphics product was going to materially affect its earnings in a positive sense--and that's just what happened. By the first of October ATI had shipped 1 million + of its $400 3D accelerators into the market, according to an article I read. By now I would image they've shipped somewhere between 2-3 million of them. Twice I saw various enews outlets carrying stories on ATI being surprised by demand for the its R300-based products and having to seek out additional FAB space immediately. Actually, this market is vigorous and very healthy, and if anything there is a pent-up demand for products like this.
Second thing you forget is that M$ is driving 3D into the mainstream with its DX initiatives--which basically means that someone using a GF2 and someone using a 9700P can run the same 3D program--the only requirement being that the hardware developer has written DX-compliant drivers. Of course the guy running the old 3D card won't get anything close to the performance and atmosphere of the guy running the 9700P, but he can still run the program, and that's what counts. Upgrading his 3D card is up to him. Those who like 3D games will buy these cards--those who don't, won't.
*chuckle* If everybody had to run 3D games prior to their being published we'd never have seen the first 3D game--so obviously that's not a requirement. 3D gaming software is just like any other--there's never a case where "everybody" buys it, no matter what it is. There are still tens of millions of people who are still running Windows 98, for instance. "Everybody" participating isn't required for an unqualified success in this market because the market is segmented.
That's my last point--you talk about videocard markets being segmented--that's because the market itself is segmented! Not everybody wants a 9700P, but millions of people do, and that's plenty enough demand to create a sizable market. Talking about fragmented--look at the automobile industry. It's extremely fragmented, but the market is so huge that companies make money anyway.
I guess it all boils down to the fact that "one size does not have to fit all" for markets to succeed and thrive. Indeed, the raw diversity of the American economy stuns people who experience it after the limitations of planned economies. They often find the amount of choice staggering.
There is a cohesion and a method to it all. APIs like DX and OpenGL are making it happen, along with the competitive efforts of hardware companies like nVidia and ATI. In another year or so you won't be able to buy a graphics accelerator, for any cost, that won't include a decent level of 3D acceleration--indeed, even ATI's current value line of videocards is OpenGL 2.0/DX9-compatible. The 3D card market is just like any other--higher end products get designed and built because there's a real demand for them.
Also, instead of looking at one 3D game--why not look at combined sales for all of them to judge the success of the market. People's tastes differ--I can't stand the "Sims", for instance, but many people love the games. Looking at the sales depth of a single 3D game will tell you little about the overall market.
In my system at home for instance I replaced a GF4 Ti4600 with a 9700P and couldn't be happier. I make use of the features of the product--especially its incredible fill rate and bandwidth which allow me to run older games faster than was possible before, along with stunning visual effects like FSAA and anisotropic filtering--which are applied by the driver and can be used with any 3D game. So even running older 3D software I can see a big difference between my former GF4 Ti4600 and the newer 9700P which I bought back in September. I feel very much as if I've gotten my money's worth.
Just to let you know there's another side of the coin here...
I've had 3 ati cards in my life, and 3 of them had drivers and software as stable as a tau lepton.
BoD
Where have you people been? I knew 3-4 monthas ago that the ATI 9700 prototype card blew Nvidia's top card out of the water. And a month later it was replaced by a review that fromally said ATI's final release won.
ATi only ships binary drivers, and they are rather buggy so far.
Bullshit.
The Radeon drivers are as open as ATI could make them -- all the functions they had to keep closed for whatever pointy-haired reason are exported into a static lib, so that all the rest could be open-sourced. Want to compile them against a custom kernel such as Gentoo's? Sure, you can, the drivers are designed so that this is absolutely possible.
As for buggy, I own a 3rd party card built around an ATI chip, the worst-case scenario, and I would sincerely like to know what you mean by 'rather buggy'. Outside pure FUD, of course.
So cut them some slack. You like your nVidia card, it's cool, I'm happy for you. But if you don't reward companies that get out of their way to provide us minority Linux folks with good drivers, like ATI did, then you provide strictly no incentive for those companies to support us. So let's drop the dick^W GPU contest and stop peeing in the soup, hmm? Thank you.
Rant over.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
$180 on pricewatch? how about $188 for a real card that will actually be supported for a while (the ATI does driver support about as well as trailer trash do child support).
lookie here, the 9500 lost in every single test vs the 4400, and even the 9700 lost a few.
ATI sucks for support. For a couple of months you couldn't play BF1942 with your 9700's because they're so unsupported. Also ATI's looks like crap and drops more frames.
nfiniteFX anyone? nfiniteFX (which is going to be prevelent in DoomIII) isn't on ATI cards and never will be. This feature provides true-to-life textures and was first featured in the GeForce3 (Don't buy a Geforce4MX, they don't have this feature and they don't have the FPS of the GeForce3)
This short gain by ATI isn't like 3dfx. 3dfx released the voodoos 4 and 5 when the geforce 2's were out, at 1/3 the price.. total slaughter. Well that and 3dfx was so mismanaged even Enron cringed.
Latewire
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Quote from ???: "There are lies; there are damn lies; and there are benchmarks."
Nvidia releases binary drivers. ATI releases specs. If you think about it, which is better?
Don't be suckered just because Nvidia has thrown you a bone. If you read some of the developer mailing lists for say, Mplayer, the Nvidia binary drivers leave a lot to be desired.
Several months ago for work. When you develop graphics software (not just games, VR simlulations & similar) with a high poly count, it (no, not soviet russia) pays *you* to have the quickest card around - within reason. For what these cards cost, they are truly amazingly fast and serious value for money (especially when it's not your money 8o)).
At the time, Intel stated that the lower price of the 486SX wasn't just a marketing ploy, but representative of the fact that the FPU required significantly more (and more complicated) QC testing than the integer logic on the CPU, so the lower price reflected the lower cost to manufacture. Not that anybody believed that, mind you. Intel also claimed the FDIV bug in early Pentiums was incredibly rare and not worth worrying about.
I think the other guys maybe right about Number Nine and STB, but Hercules is still around, they just stopped producing chipsets in house.
For instance, I have a Hercules card with a nVidia GF2 Pro (which is showing its age *grumble*). However, I think they got in a tiff with nVidia over something awhile back and now they produce ATI based cards exclusively.
They have also been producing some interesting sound solutions here lately...
Ok, i might guess what 64bits are for (16bits red, 16bits green, 16bits blue, 16bits alpha?), but what are 128bits used for?
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
Slashdot is probably being paid by ATI for shit news like this.
Website owners grease some palms at slashdot to garner some extra pagehits to pay the bills?
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Newer doesn't always mean better. Drivers that haven't been tested outside of ATI could have issues. For instance, I know that my (very) old 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 works perfectly in linux while the ATI 9700 may not work, or may not be stable.
I had (or still have, somewhere...) a Rage Pro card. While it was a good card for day to day junk, when it came to games I'm pretty sure I would have gotten better framerates (and image quality) with an abacus and a few colored pencils...
Two weeks ago, I bought a Radeon 9700 Pro. In that time, I have managed to get three out of my huge pile of 3D games to work with it, and only Quake III works well. ATIs driver coders are off in lala-land, and games can't cope with them. No two people seem to have the same problems with the Radeon 9700 Pro, which makes troubleshooting a nightmare. I would have been better off just getting an Nvidia card for half the money to hold me over until the next Nivida card came out.
ATI cards are just not good for gamers. While Nvidia focuses on speed and stability, ATI focuses on cramming any possible feature they can into their All-In-Wonder cards, at the cost of a decent driver set for people who want a card that just attaches to a CRT and WORKS. I will NEVER buy another ATI card, and I will always remember why I ran all my systems on Nvidia for five years before screwing up and getting this fucking ATI card.
Your right, it wasn't good vs. evil at all. World War II was just a big Saturday night kegger that Hitler let get way out of hand...
Jet Set Willy is about to be launched following on from the successful Manic Miner.
You do mean "formerly an intern at Nvidia", right???
I haven't worked for nvidia but where I DO work, interns don't exactly make company policy...
You can wait for the day when there isn't a new piece of hardware on the way that'll toast your current kit, but then you just wait forever.
I actually bought a 9700 Pro just the other day, to go in a new PC. All the parts for that PC were custom chosen, a few to have a good price-performance ratio (e.g., only an Athlon XP 2100+) and a few because they're the best around and I don't expect to upgrade them any time soon (the 9700 Pro).
I've been watching the market for several months now, and AFAICS the 9700 Pro I bought is way cheaper than it was those few months ago when it came out, and is likely to be way cheaper than anything new by nVidia initially will be, if and when that comes out. The performance of the 9700 Pro is still way ahead of everything else currently available, so buying a new PC now, with games very much in mind, what would you have done? Saved a whole 25% and bought a Geforce 4 Ti4600 instead?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Feeling more righteous now, are we?
The point was not about nationalities, the point was that a diversity of products in *any* economy is a sign of health. My point had nothing to do with either elevating America or disparaging anyone else. Try putting the remarks in the context of the topic I was addressing. As I am an American it's natural for me to frame ideas from that perspective, just as it is natural for you to say, "Fuck you, you arrogant yankee prick," in the context of wherever it is that you come from.
I can't believe anybody still listens to MP3; it's such a lame format.
May be redundant but I'd like to see some BENCHMARKS under Linux between the ATI 9700 - GF4 4600 and the ATI 9500 - GF4 4200. Wouldn't we all?
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
I've had the opposite experience since September when I replaced the GF4 Ti4600 I had (moved it to the wife's machine at home) with a 9700 Pro. I have found the drivers terrific so far, from the included version on the CD up to the current 3.0 DX9-compliant Catalysts. What's more, I've tested the card with more than 35 3D games in my library--closer to 40--and have yet to find one that wouldn't run, or either ran so poorly the game was unplayable. From my point of view it's simply the best 3D card I've ever owned--especially for 3D gaming.
Also, this is the second motherboard I've used the card with--the first was an MSI KT333 chipset board, my current board is a nVidia-based nForce2 chipset board manufactured by Chaintech, which supports AGP x8 and several other things. The card runs extremely well. I've not even been tempted to swap cards with the wife and go back to the nVidia Ti4600 product--no way...
I would strongly suggest that either you have some underlying system incompatiblity of which you are unaware which prohibits the card from working properly--or else you simply had the bad luck to pick up a defective card (in which case an RMA is order.) Your experience is certainly not representative of that of the reviewer of the article on which this thread is based, none of the other reviews of the product (and there have been dozens of them), or my direct personal experience. Think how you like but I thought you should know your experience is anything but typical.
I've always had nothing but bad experience with ATI's drivers, while I've had no problems with nVidia's. This might have changed recently, but due to my past experience, I'd probably hold out for the GeForce FX if I were going for a top-end card.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
So what kind of linux support is available for this card?
I purchased this video adapter 2 weeks ago, and while i did have one minor driver duke out between catalyst and detonator :), all was well. every game i own plays fantastically as well as some older legacy games which the GF 3's and later would chop up, such as Xwing Alliance. i do get minor shadow corruption out of "Mafia" but that game hasnt been very fun anyways so just as well. I must concur with the slashdotters who feel you have some other underlying hardware incompatibility and/or driver issue. Ive had bad experience with ATI products in the passed in relation to driver support and poor game functionality, and i can assure you, dear fellow gamer, that the Radeon 9700 pro is a different animal entirely... :)
Similarly, I laugh at how far away unix desktops are for beginners. As for games, well, I just know that it will be practically impossible for me (and I consider myself to be pretty unix-literate) to set up all the shit that will be required. It will probably involved being flamed in a 'help' forum for daring to ask such a non-1337 question.
What I'm saying is that different operating systems have different strengths. So long as windows provides a gaming environment which I feel is good value for money, I'll keep spending.
Which is that the 9700 performs significantly better than the GF4 when you crank up AnIso filtering and FSAA. Now personally, I love the way these look. My GF4 performs adiqutely with them, but on newer, more demanding games, I have to turn them off to keep a good frame rate. The 9700 is not so encumbered since it's a faster card and has a MUCH more efficient AnIso method.
Now personally I've had too many problems with ATi's drivers and too good an experience with nVidia's to switch (stability is more important than speed for me), but I can see reasons why someone would want a 9700. Also, it is preped to run DX9 games when they come out, which will happen.
Gaming with a Beowulf Cluster of These!!!
Well, if you need help with any of the games I listed above, you can email me. Biggest hurdle was getting nVidia drivers installed bt once I asked the question on my distro's mailing list, it was no problem. baxshep(at)hotmailDOTcom
This guy is way out there
I don't actually PLAY games much, but I do 3D animation. Looking to upgrade to XSI or MAX, and looking at cards. Anyone know how this compares to the FireGL 8800 or the 3D Labs VP870 or other mid-range workstation cards? I'm especially interested in the AIW version-it would be so nice to have one card for everything. I don't know how rendering will be with this card, and I haven't checked out drivers and compatibility yet (just ordered the box today).
There is no "DirectDraw 8". DirectDraw was the 2D graphical component of DirectX, and it went away (except for backwards compatibility) in DirectX 8. DX8.1 and DX9.0 also don't have DD except for backwards compatibility. I think what you meant was either Direct3D (the 3D graphics component of DirectX, now also used for 2D graphics unless you code to the DX7 interfaces), or more likely DirectX. Just a semantics issue, but it makes things more clear.
nVidia still doesn't seem to plan on producting a card capable of outputting HDTV.
For some months now ATI has had a cheap Component breakout cable available that can output 1080i/720p/480p/480i.
For the rabid HTPC person, there really is no way to compareATI and nVidia. ATI seems to be the only one to support home theatre applications.
"[...] I've tested the card with more than 35 3D games in my library--closer to 40--"
:)
Why not just say 38?
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
It's already been mentioned, but I'll put my 2 anonymous cents in... God, ATI just cannot do drivers. Those of you who have followed and owned ATI products in the past KNOW what I'm talking about. I would never spend that kind of money for an ATI product, ever. There is only one technical reason why I would prefer an ATI card of NVidia. More on that one later. If I were to buy an ATI card, it would be because it was cheap, and if it's cheap, then that means it's probably older technology. If it's older technology (and this might be the ironic part), the X drivers might be more stable, or at least mature enough to be able to use the card.
How long did it take for ATI to come up with their "Catalyst" drivers? As far as the drivers are concerned, they're following, and they'll always be following. I've owned both, and I still own both ATI and NVidia, and the driver situation has been more pleasant with NVidia. Last I checked, ATI's support/download site was a big freakin embarassment.
There is one thing that I haven't seen mentioned, however, which may or may not be of significance around this crowd. ATI output quality has traditionally been better than NVidia based card output quality. ATI's are generally the preferred choice for people who have HTPC's. I can pull out an old ATI AGP Rage Pro, like, 16MB's I think, and while it couldn't keep up speed-wise with any of my GeForce's, the output's contrast/sharpness/color and performance in the lower light levels was waaaayy better than any of the GF's that I have seen. And I'm not just being some wacko "oh I can totally hear the difference in these $500 speaker cables" fanatic; I had friends come over and wonder if there was something wrong with my TV when we were watching the GeForce cards. If you're viewing it on a PC monitor you probably don't care, but when you move it to a 55" HDTV, you will notice the difference. As HTPC's become more popular I think NVidia cardmakers will start doing a better job at this, but at last check, ATI was still much better.
A beowulf cluster imagines YOU
Someone, on Slashdot, is posting information for a comparison between the 386SX and 386DX platforms. I can't wait to replace my agin DEC Alpha with one of these! oh wait... Can you imagine, a distributed NCP cluster of these?
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
[letting everyone know] that Kernel 2.4.2 is out.
Damn, you slashdotted kernel.org. Shame on you.
in middle of a lake?
...or 1000... anything larger than 37 is ok.
The 386SX was used in 286 boards. Intel released a package called "SXNow!" which was basically a 386SX in a 286 package.
In the early models the 486SX was indeed just a rebadged 486DX with the coprocessor disabled. When Intel realised it was stupid to manufacture the same die for different prices they started on a 486SX without the coprocessor circutry on the die. These eventually made it into production in 1991-1992.
The market is saturated with expensive overpriced cards. ATI paddling ahead will definitely tickle Nvidia's pricing. So competition is good.
The big question is whether ATI can deliver on the software front. Their drivers are downright blue-screen prone, though their hardware is still top notched.
> You do mean "formerly an intern at Nvidia",
> right???
yup, sorry.
> I haven't worked for nvidia but where I DO work,
> interns don't exactly make company policy...
I don't want to argue but according to your resume:
Oct 2001 - Aug 2002
Intern, NVIDIA Corporation (www.nvidia.com)
Worked on different parts of the NVIDIA Linux (ia32/ia64) and on the FreeBSD driver as a member of the NVIDIA Linux/FreeBSD development team. This included work on the core resource manager (kernel-space), the open-source Linux/FreeBSD "glue" and kernel-userspace interface layers, the XFree86 module and GLX.
In the end I don't care, but I would be thankful if you could tell me how I could interpret that part of your resume differently than "has worked at X".
Thanks in advance
Interpret it as he isnt Mr. Zander
Another reason, us developers have to support older video cards -- look at what the market is using ...
Half Life Hardware Survey
I believe it is 2 years old. If anyone can confirm the year of the survey, please post a follow up.
Cheers
> Interpret it as he isnt Mr. Zander
:D :)
And suddenly evertything makes sense
Thanks for pointing me to the obvious
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