ATi Radeon 9800 Pro

ATi is bringing out their new card, the Radeon 9800 Pro, and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews. Here's a few: Hothardware.com, Hexus.net, HardOCP.com, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, Extremetech, PCWorld.

Comments

Damnit!

[Cyno01]

And i just bought a Radeon 9700...

Re:Damnit!

[Trespass]

So how is this offtopic, you pathetic butt shovelers?

Re:Damnit!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to let you know that it was your sig that made me go "what the heck is emo"?

Six months later, I was at a Saves The Day Concert. Two nights ago, I saw Plain White T's (who were incredible)

rosonowski (at) adelphia dot [net]

Independent review sites?

[JKR]

So, are there any independent review sites out there? How do they get their hands on pre-release hardware? Just how close to payola is the whole thing, anyway?

Enquiring minds want to know (before they blow ${WEEKS_WAGES} on new toys...)

Jon.

Re:Independent review sites?

[stroudie]

For what its worth, the Register also has a review.

They may not be any more independent, but at least they're honest...

Re:Independent review sites?

[UberLord]

As an admin for DriverHeaven the only kinda freebies we get for reviewing products is the product itself - usually on loan.

Payola? Damn - I really wish there was some!

Re:Independent review sites?

[UberLord]

As an admin for DriverHeaven the only kinda freebies we get for reviewing products is the product itself - usually on loan.

Payola? Damn - I really wish there was some!

BTW, here's our ATI 9800 Pro review ;)
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r350/index.htm

Re:Independent review sites?

[Zathrus]

So, are there any independent review sites out there

What do you mean by independant? They all take ad revenue now, and often that ad revenue is from either hardware companies or retailers. Most of the reputable ones (AnandTech, Tom's, Sharky's, etc) have guidelines on who they will and will not accept ads from - in the case of retailers they usually have to have a good rating.

How do they get their hands on pre-release hardware

The hardware companies aren't freaking stupid. It's called marketing, and the marketing departments make sure that the top reviewers get the hardware ahead of time. Sure, you could send them something the day it's out, but that hurts the marketing push. Especially since it can take a couple weeks to do some reviews. And you want to make sure that if the reviewer has a problem they can get help.

At least it's better than the old print reviews, where they would get the hardware before release and then print a couple months after release -- since print cycles are so freaking long (especially for monthly magazines).

Just how close to payola is the whole thing, anyway?

Most reviewers have to return the hardware afterwards. Of course, there's always swag, and they get tons of it. From everyone. Occasionally they'll get to keep the hardware, and upon occasion the big sites will have charity auctions or giveaways for random stuff (although that's often just another marketing gimick - the site is donated hardware specifically for the purpose of giving it away).

If you want a "truely" independant site that gets no stuff from anyone, then go look for the chintzy sites that review stuff weeks to years after it's out. You know... the sites that you think suck and are horribly outdated.

If you want to know what you should buy then read the reviews from a couple of the top sites, and then go scan some forums. The forums are by average geeks and will give a wonderfully negative review of pretty much any product.

Re:Independent review sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love reviews that are just copy and paste from the marketing literature.

Re:Independent review sites?

[gl4ss]

forget resellerrating, what we need is reviewrating..

though websites have to be careful, one mistake and you're tainted(thg for example is considered crooky by many).

Re:Independent review sites?

[odaiwai]

I remember reading a review of dual cpu motherboards on Tom's Hardware Guide. Everything scored within a few percent of the others, but he kept going on about how the Asus board was cleary faster than the others. There would be a graph of, for example, encoding mp3s, and all of the motherboard were withing in afew seconds of each other, and yet this guy is raving about one board and comdemning another. I stopped taking him seriously at that point.

Of course, you also get things like the infamous NT vs Linux benchmark: Let's test a rollout of NT specially calibrated and tuned for us by the NT development team, versus some old Linux distro we found in a trashcan.

Whenever you see one of these reviews, just ask yourself: where's the money to do this coming from? That'll tell you whether you should believe it or not.

dave

Re:Independent review sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you people even read the reviews? Doubtful. PC World's is not favorable at all. Where are you getting your info?

Second sentence reads:
But exclusive tests by the PC World Test Center show a preproduction 9800 Pro board struggling to outrun the competition, including ATI's own Radeon 9700 Pro.

Re:Independent review sites?

[kfg]

Well, you have to understand that for those who value simply being able to play with the toys before anyone else, and publicly declare that they have done so, yes, what you describe is a form of payola.

A very minor form of payola, perhaps, but still one that can be used to leverage favorable reviews from many. Which is the issue.

KFG

KFG

Re:Independent review sites?

[Zathrus]

Did you?

From PCWorld: "The 9800 Pro card clearly has the edge is in anti-aliasing tests"

Even Anandtech shows that the 9800 Pro slides slightly if you don't turn on AA or AF as compared to the 9700. There's a bit more overhead it appears. But it's a matter of a few FPS at best.

Turn on AA/AF and you get as much as a 30% advantage on the 9800 Pro, which is significant. Further tests show you essentially get the next higher ansiotropic filtering level for "free" compared to the 9700 Pro.

Frankly, the PCW article is a piece of crap, giving little actual data. Go read AnandTech, Tech Report, Ars Technica, Sharky's, or even Tom's Hardware.

Oh, and I'm not an ATI fanboy either - I still won't buy one of their cards because of previous (lack of) driver support.

Re:Independent review sites?

[Zathrus]

Which is one of many reason's I don't read Tom's anymore. Repeated use of badly done graphs (guys... having the graph range from 150 to 160 so that the guy that scored 157 vs everyone else's 154-55 is crap), sensationalistic reviews, obvious bias for or against particular vendors, and other such yellow journalism tactics made me (and many others it seems) stop reading it years ago.

The question isn't to ask "where's the money coming from" -- it's to read the review independantly and see if they were fair and unbiased at all or just "rah! rah!"-ed the subject (or vastly overplayed weaknesses).

Honestly, while I like AnandTech, I disliked the bit of spin at the end of the ATI article (and I dislike ATI - but the R300/350 beat the crap out of NVidia). Talking about a graphics chip that's 6 months out still is, well, nothing but FUD.

Re:Independent review sites?

[blibbleblobble]

"Which is one of many reason's I don't read Tom's Hardware anymore"

Well, that and the Macromedia plugins. And putting each paragraph on a different page. And that they *never* warn people that "card X" really sucks on Linux because the manufacturer releases it without a driver.

Nope, I stopped reading after they wrote a review of the Philips Acoustinc Edge sound card, and neglected to mention that it will fuck-up any dual-processor machine (Win2K) that you place it into. C'mon guys, how can we buy things that haven't even been tested?

I'd seriously like hardware manufacturers not to think that they can get away with selling stuff without linux drivers, just because Tom's Hardware will write glowing reviews regardless.

Re:Independent review sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

they wrote a review of the Philips Acoustinc Edge sound card, and neglected to mention that it will fuck-up any dual-processor machine

Well, fuck that. At least it doesn't work and you can hopefully return it. I'm still waiting for SoundBlaster to come out with drivers that work on a dual machine. I keep getting little bleeps and skips every so often, what, TWO years later now?

Re:Independent review sites?

[Shanep]

(thg for example is considered crooky by many)

And rightfully so.

I remember when THG was a "3Dfx site", back when dual Voodoo2's rained supreme and 3Dfx "AGP" cards were merely AGP cards operating full time in PCI mode.

He claimed that AGP held NO ADVANTAGE over PCI and then got some "expert" to give reasons why this was the case.

The moron actually had an S3 developed Q2 benchmark map that used very large textures that showed an AGP Matrox G200 running MANY MANY TIMES faster than the dual PCI Voodoo2 setup. This was due to the fact that the textures were larger than any of the cards could fully cache and thus must rely on their PCI or AGP buses... thus the SLOW G200 with the fast AGP bus absolutely creamed the fast Voodoo2's with the SLOW PCI bus.

But of course he never pointed this fact out.

Then suddenly his site became an "official nVidia review site" and a most incredible bias phase change occured. 180 degrees in fact.

THG spins things like no other. Tom is a filthy 2 bit WHORE.

They [cough] "reviewed" [splatter] some PSU's recently, with some dummy loads and multimeters, with some supposed "experts", who did not even measure ripple (I would hold voltage drop and ripple under load as the highest priorities for testing for good PSU design)!!!

THG, taking the S out of CS since 1995.

Another Review

[MjDascombe]

As if you didn't have enough - This one is quite good.

Re:Another Review

[zuralin]

and dont forget the article at The Register

Re:Another Review

[UberLord]

Thanks. After proof reading it many many times last night, my eyes hurt.

Anandtech

[Anonymous Coward]

The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.

Re:Anandtech

[ackthpt]

The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.

The Anantech article is also unabashedly crammed with flash ads for ATI video cards. So polluted I'm finally motivated to remove the flash plug-in. I respect their reviews, but WTF is WRONG with these people?

Re:Anandtech

[KirkH]

Hit the "print this article" link and you get the full article on one page with no ads!

Re:Anandtech

[Rushuru]

if you use a Gecko browser (mozilla phoenix galeon), you can get rid of those annoying flash ads by using a special 'userContent.css'

Put that file in the chrome subdirectory of you mozilla profile, and all the flash ads on anandtech & other sites should be gone, without breaking legitimate flash usage (stupid games, awkward menus, 900kB site intros, etc.)

Re:Anandtech

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of the half-dozen chrome directories ony my system would that be?

What?

[black mariah]

Are you surprised? Vidcard technology is moving faster than game technology at this point. In the 18-24 months it takes a game to be developed you're looking at it go from being bleeding edge, to it being behind everyone else. Eventually someone is going to be burned by this cycle, and it most likely will be the "$400 every six month" video card manufacturers.

Re:What?

[qoncept]

Eventually someone is going to be burned by this cycle, and it most likely will be the "$400 every six month" video card manufacturers.

Perhaps they should take a look at 1) the cpu, 2) the memory, 3) the storage, 4) the broadband and any number of other markets and realize making something ridiculously fast and even more ridiculously expensive isn't a very good idea. If you go out and buy their cheap cards twice as often as you'd upgrade to their top of the line cards, you'll spend half as much money and always have a latest generation card capable of playing all the latest games with all the greatest detail levels with a framerate fast enough that you won't know the difference.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What they need is a standards based API for graphics engines.

All their HL code is written with this and you write the low level stuff last

While you build the game it renders with last years engine and you release with this years

QED

(tongue partially in cheek)

Re:What?

[geniusj]

The test will be how well these cards will render Doom 3 when it comes out :)

Re:What?

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

Eventually someone is going to be burned by this cycle, and it most likely will be the "$400 every six month" video card manufacturers.

Not entirely. Your large software companies are closely tied to the video card manufacturers. For reasons of simplicity, they would need to have specific hardware to run their games on for testing purposes. If you don't have compatibility with a certain type of video card then your game just isn't going to sell. This is part of what's pushing the gaming industry. The video card makers tell the developers what should be possible in the next generation of video cards, and then the developers choose to put in the support for it, or just leave it out.

Without knowing what's going to be available then the software manufacturers won't know what to develop for.

You could also argue that the developers use what's currently the biggest and baddest of the video cards out there to do their testing and coding for, but this does leave them slightly behind the times when it comes to release, because their software doesn't push the envelope on the now newest video cards. This happens alot simply because the software developers can't waste the money on something that might be there in the future.

Re:What?

[qoncept]

They're not really "behind" anyway (exception: Daikatana) because not everyone has the very latest hardware. These companies are just as worried about making sure their game will work on old hardware as making it look incredible on the latest.

Re:What?

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

They're not really "behind" anyway (exception: Daikatana) because not everyone has the very latest hardware.

I agree completely. The point is that game companies have to cater to two enterely different types of game players. On one hand you have the "Power Gamer" who always has to have the biggest, baddest machine they can get their hands on and plows through games like it's their job. Then you have the "Casual Gamer", who doesn't have the most up-to-date hardware, and manages to get by with a little gaming here and there periodically through the week.

The sad part about the whole thing is that it's these "Power Gamers" who drive the whole industry in the first place. Which is why you have speed battles with Video Card manufacturers and CPU manufacturers. The reason behind this is because the industry knows that the power gamers will buy the newest best stuff around so that they can play their games at a blazingly fast framerate, and can brag about it to their friends.

While there are significantly more casual gamers out there than there are power gamers, the software and hardware companies have to get the power gamers interested because they're the ones who push the casual gamers to use specific hardware, and buy specific hardware.

After all this rambling I do have a point. If it weren't for the "Power Gamers" of the world, there really wouldn't be a driving force in this industry. People would release mediocre games, and mediocre hardware.

Re:What?

[xtink]

My god that's brilliant we just need a catchy name to call it X is a popular letter right now we could call it something X something the markentoids can market direct to the gamers. And it should be controlled by some one other then the video card makers like a large company located somewhere in north west region on the united states. Yes I think the idea of a OPEN G raphics L ibrary that is a is a cross-platform standard for 3D rendering and 3D hardware acceleration that ships with all Windows, MacOS, Linux and Unix systems is a great idea almost as good as my idea for using a round object rotating on a central axis to help move heavy objects

Re:What?

[Zathrus]

If you go out and buy their cheap cards twice as often as you'd upgrade to their top of the line cards, you'll spend half as much money and always have a latest generation card capable of playing all the latest games with all the greatest detail levels with a framerate fast enough that you won't know the difference.

Except that's just not true.

Take UT2k3 as an example. Turn up everything on high, set your anti-aliasing and ansiotropic filtering to max, and go play online... your frame rate is going to suck so badly it doesn't matter how good you are.

And if you're hoping the card will perform better when Doom3 is released, well...

That said, you can back things off very slightly - particularly on the AA and AF fronts - and things will be just fine with a $150 video card. And you can do what you suggest. Which, frankly, is probably fine for most people.

And while by and large I don't stare at the eye candy when playing UT2k3 online, there was a massive improvement in going from a GF2 to a GF4 Ti4200 - upping the visual quality very much improved the experience (and the frame rate boost didn't hurt my play either).

And, yes, you really do want your framerate above 60 fps at all times. Below that you will start seeing stuttering -- video cards don't display motion blur like film or video do, so 24 or 30 fps is not good enough.

Re:What?

[UnknownSoldier]

> What they need is a standards based API for graphics engines.

Already done -- middleware such as RenderWare, Net Immerse, etc., already provide this, and are starting to be used more and more.

The reason there hasn't been a standard for graphic engines, is because the problem is an old one -- flexibility (abstraction) vs performance (hard-coded). Game engines that are flexible used to suffer a HUGE frame rate hit, which is completely unacceptable on consoles, where they needed 30 fps minimum.

e.g.
BSP Trees vs Sphere Tree. A BSP Tree needs to be processed off-line (meant for static data, not dynamic), but gives perfect sorting, in linear time. Sphere Trees can handle dynamic objects just fine, but can't be used for sorting.

As CPUs have been become faster, and the graphics work has been offloaded to a dedicated GPU, the CPU has more time for the "general" solution, that is "fast enough."

Cheers

Re:What?

[qoncept]

I think thats kind of backwards. These companies realize that all the money is in the mainstream market (which ATi used to have something like 75% market share in, pre nvidia). I think the idea behind having the very fastest card has more to do with being the company thats better, ie, that makes the casual gamer think that very card in their line is better than the respective price point card from the other company.

Re:What?

[ShadowDrake]

>and things will be just fine with a $150 video card

$150?! 'Just fine?' Sheesh... we talk of the 'Microsoft tax', when it's getting to the point where you have to pay a 'nVidia or ATi tax' to use the computer for amusement purposes. We're talking about graphics cards that cost as much as entire systems... and not fancy workstation cards, cards designed for games!

Let's chain down the game developers and make them use $40 SiS305 cards, or better yet, $20 second-hand Matrox G400s and Voodoo3s.

Re:What?

[Zathrus]

We're talking about graphics cards that cost as much as entire systems... and not fancy workstation cards, cards designed for games!

We're talking about graphics cards that have more transistors and processing power than most CPUs. Have you looked at the R300 or NV30 GPUs? The shaders are fully programmable... just like CPUs are. Except they're a whole lot faster for the operations they're designed for.

You're also talking about video cards with 128 MB of memory that's 2-3x the speed of the stuff you put on your motherboard. Of course, a few years ago, 128 MB was more than you'd put in anything short of a workstation.

In otherwords, that $150 video card has more horsepower than the an entire workstation did just a few years prior. Oh, and the workstation cards are based off the same chips but only cost about 4x as much now - which is a considerable improvement over how it used to be.

Hell, I still remember seeing one of the first VR systems in the early 90s from GVU at Georgia Tech. It was designed to help reduce acrophobia and consisted of a SGI Onyx with a RealityEngine2. It could usually do 30 fps at 640x480 in 8 bit color with non-textured simple solids. Put more than a dozen or so objects in the FOV though and you started stuttering badly. The system cost roughly $600,000 - without the VR goggles.

About a year or so later you could go out to CompUSA and buy a 3DFx Voodoo card for $200 that could handle 100x the polygons, with texturing, at the same resolution with a higher frame rate.

Heck, companies are now looking at the GeForce FX and ATI Radeon 9700 cards and considering doing movie-quality rendering on them. Because they're getting that good. And you can do it in a tenth the time it would take otherwise. Trading a $10,000 workstation for a $400 video card sounds like one helluva deal to me.

Let's chain down the game developers and make them use $40 SiS305 cards, or better yet, $20 second-hand Matrox G400s and Voodoo3s

Why? Those cards are all cheap for a reason - they're crap. They don't support any of the graphics capabilities desired nowadays (the G400 and SiS305 don't even support the graphics capabilities of their time). You may get UT2k3 running on a G400 or V3, but not at a reasonable frame rate, and in order to get that reasonable frame rate you have to ditch visual quality features. There's simply no way around it.

Doom3 on such a card? Yah, right.

If you're happy with graphics from 5 years ago, then keep playing those games. But whining about cost and "it's not a workstation" just shows how amazingly ignorant you are.

Re:What?

[ShadowDrake]

>But whining about cost and "it's not a workstation" >just shows how amazingly ignorant you are.

I'm whining because it's becoming an absurd situation.

1. Video cards are obsolescing faster than any other part of the system. An Athlon 1200 is still adequate for most uses, but had I bought a video card the day I bought the CPU, it would be worthless today.

2. The price of a "reasonable" gaming card is rising faster than inflation. Voodoo Graphics cards were ~USD 150-200 when they were current. Have prices doubled across the board since then to justify doubled video card prices? Increased complexity isn't my problem-- I don't care how elaborate the card is, because I'm not paying for "56 million transistors @ x.xx each"... I'm paying for "Decent performance in modern games."

3. When you do this upgrade, it provides only a narrowly focused benefit. Non-gaming video card benefit has diminished to insignificance, and from what I understand, the few apps that could exploit the benefits (rendering apps) often aren't compatible. If I throw in a 9800 in lieu of a Voodoo 3, I won't get much more from productivity apps, because framebuffers and capabilities long ago expanded enough to swallow any resolution/colour depth/refresh rate a consumer-priced monitor is apt to support.

Re:What?

[Rydia]

I think his point was that there's no great reason for making these games require the latest and greatest cards other than the general consensus in the community that a game is unplayable if it isn't pretty and you need to have a great system to play it decently. I, myself, find that rather silly that everything is aimed towards the highest-end the developers can think of, with the very weak method of stripping random features to the point where it does look like crap because they don't give a damn how their game runs on inferior hardware being the only possible way to play a game on older stuff. Very bothersome.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is forcing you to play Doom3 or UT2k3.

There were plenty of great games from around 1998 or 1999 that you can now buy for $5-$10 each. These games are as much fun as they ever were and they will run great on the cheapest hardware you can buy today.

So stop complaining.

Re:What?

[Zathrus]

Video cards are obsolescing faster than any other part of the system. An Athlon 1200 is still adequate for most uses, but had I bought a video card the day I bought the CPU, it would be worthless today.

A GF3 (about the same era) is not worthless today. When UT2k3 came out I played it on an Athlon 750 and a GF2 (original, w/ 32MB of RAM). It was playable at low enough features and resolution. I used the same system to play DungeonSiege and NWN with no issues.

That Athlon 1200 is about as useful as a GF3 as well... it does most things just fine, but throw something really big at it and it'll choke. Try doing realtime encoding of video to MPEG2 or MPEG4 for instance. It can't handle it.

As it happens, the GF3 has held its value far better than the CPU too - a GF3 (of any flavor) sell for about $80 new, down from a maximum (for a GF3 Ti500) of $400. An Athlon 1200 might get you $25 if you're lucky, and they retailed for nearly $1000 when new.

The price of a "reasonable" gaming card is rising faster than inflation

No it's not. Your comparison is false. The original Voodoo cards sold for $300 when brand new. The Voodoo2's sold for about $300 as well, and a lot of people bought two of them for the SLI feature. The TNT sold for about $200 new, but it was priced as an underdog from a new company that had no marketshare and didn't run most of the games available. The GF and GF2 premiered at about $350 while the GF3, GF4 and GFFx premiered at $400 for the flagship card. The ATI 8500, 9700 Pro, and now 9800 Pro all came out at roughly $400, and the ATI AIW cards premier for closer to $500.

The lower end cards have always premiered at lower prices as well, and both ATI and Nvidia know that they need to have a well performing card at the $200 price point at debut. Even with the GF4 Ti4600 at $400 the Ti4200 came out at $200 - and most sites recommended the 4200 because the price/performance wasn't (and still isn't) there for the 4600. Much the same is true for the Radeon 9500 vs 9700 Pro.

Hell, the GF3 still gives great performance in modern games for $80. It probably won't do that great in Doom3, but you asked for modern games.

When you do this upgrade, it provides only a narrowly focused benefit. Non-gaming video card benefit has diminished to insignificance

Take that Athlon 1200 you mentioned. It probably has 64-128MB of memory and a 10-20GB HD. What's the advantage to upgrading the CPU? Or the memory? Or the HD? If all you're doing is surfing the web, email, and maybe writing a doc or two in your favorite word processor then there's little to no benefit in each. Heck, the computer is massive overkill even for that. The major reason to upgrade any of those nowadays is gaming - sure, there are others, but there are other reasons to upgrade your video card too. Newer cards do a much, much better job of offloading the CPU for DVD playing (or anything else involving MPEG2). They're better for CAD/CAM too - although if you're deeply serious then you'll spend the extra $400-800 for the "pro" version of the video card which has 10% more functionality for 300% of the price... but that 10% makes a huge difference.

I mean, really, how much more are you going to get from productivity apps with a P4 3.06GHz CPU vs a P3 1.2? Not much. The app will spend most of its time waiting for input. Unless, of course, your productivity app is one of the increasingly few that's CPU bound.

The top of the line cards are insanely priced... and most of the people buying them are doing it to brag about the few extra fps they get compared to a card half the price. But the midrange cards ($100-200) are extremely good values and last a couple years unless you're wanting the absolute top of the line all the time. In which case you're digging your own grave.

Re:What?

[_|()|\|]

companies are now looking at the GeForce FX and ATI Radeon 9700 cards and considering doing movie-quality rendering on them.

"Movie-quality" rendering is done in software, often by render farm nodes that don't even have a 3D video card. High-end video cards are used during content creation.

You won't find a GeForce or Radeon on Maya's list of qualified hardware, 3ds max's list of tested graphics cards, or Softimage's list of certified graphics cards. That's not to say that a consumer card won't work, but after spending $2,000+ on the software, plus maintenance, you want supported hardware.

R9800

[atika]

Just enough to beat Gf Fx 5800

Re:R9800

[Anonymous Coward]

Just enough?....9800 is nearly double 5800!

Re:R9800

[10Ghz]

Yep. By being over twice as fast as FX on some benchmarks:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDM5LDM=

Re:R9800

[Destoo]

(poke)
And that would imply XP is around 200 times OSX. (2002 vs. 10)

I'm no mac user, but I don't think it is.

What were you expecting?

[WIAKywbfatw]

...and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews.

Err, what were you expecting? If you give a kid a new toy that's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than his old one then he's going to be impressed and say that it's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than the old one.

I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

Do these cards represent good value for money? No, not unless you have money to burn. Are they interesting to gamers? Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

"..if nVidia...released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it"

They did. It's called the 5800 FX Ultra. And before you call me an ATI fanboy, in the last five years I have only bought Nvidia cards. However considering the underwhelming performance of the FX, that streak will come to an end very soon.

Re:What were you expecting?

[simong_oz]

I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

hmmm ... not so sure I agree with you. I'm confident they don't fake benchmark results because there are far too many sites out there running numbers on all the latest hardware - it would be too easy to spot this kind of blatant bad reviewing.

But I'm not so sure that a bad product will get a negative review, particularly if the product manufacturer is a big player. Some of these review sites are big names (in the right circles; gaming for example) and their opinions count with consumers. But the sites themselves also depend on "breaking the news first" for their customers. A bad review might lead to a hardware company not being so willing to give out pre-production stuff in the future. I'm not saying that the reviewers are kissing manufacturer backsides, but I wouldn't be surprised if they temper their bad reviews.

just a thought ...

Re:What were you expecting?

[Jedi Alec]

Perhaps they will choose their words carefully when making comparisons, but they do criticize the weaker points. I mean, NVIDIA and ATI cards are compared to each other all the time on these sites. Michael's criticism on them for doing a favorable review of this card is completely ridiculous, for if they were indeed untruthful/untrustworthy/whatever in examining this ATI card, NVIDIA ould simply stop sending them hardware early, and the same principle applies the other way around.

However, there does seem to be a tendency to focus on the positive aspects of the products, but still, those benchmarks are out there, and clear explanations with them what they mean, how they were obtained, and why they are the way they are...

Re:What were you expecting?

[rnd()]

Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.

And what's in a $200 graphics card after a few months will be in a $50 graphics card in a few more months, at which point I'll buy one.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Sgs-Cruz]

I find Tom's Hardware to be one of the most honest with this. They never favour Nvidia or ATI, or Intel, or AMD, or Transmeta, or whatever. What they do do that's annoying is talk about the latest card as if everyone needs it. And everyone on Slashdot knows that this isn't true, but it seems to me to be kind of weird when they play up a 2% performance edge that Intel may have as if its a huge thing. INTEL RETAKES PERFORMANCE CROWN! Yay.

I wish hardware sites would talk about more interesting things: serial ATA, 10Gbps ethernet (yes you heard me right... that's what's next...), giant LCD screens (or plasma), 7.1 channel sound, not a graphics card that gives me a 3% edge on directX 9.0 games of which there AREN'T ANY. Okay, rant over :)

Re:What were you expecting?

[epicstruggle]

Its generally accepted that most sites that reviewed Nvidias Geforce FX were disappointed and were very vocal that they expected alot more from NV. This dispite the fact that NV advertises alot.

As for ATi advertising on sites reviewing their product, this might be just part of the sites advertising agency. Alot of times the sites have little/minimal control of who is placed on their sites.

And cards that cost $50 still do not have features that were in cards that costed 200$ a year or two ago. Case and point GeForce4 MX 420 $50 today, whereas 1-2 years ago you could get a GF4-3 TI which will outperform the MX by a hell of alot.

later,

Re:What were you expecting?

[SirSlud]

Well, in terms of gaming cards, new games expect you to have around the 200$ worth mark of current graphics power. By the time a card is 50$, it probably won't run new applications so well .. of course, if you dont mind lagging behind in the application market too, thats all well and good, but as online games increasingly rely on a large user community (online FPSes have been like this for years and years) to make them enjoyable, I think you'll find it'll be more and more useless to stay behind the curve when it comes to games.

Re:What were you expecting?

[NerdSlayer]

And what's in a $200 graphics card after a few months will be in a $50 graphics card in a few more months, at which point I'll buy one.

Why does this get modded up? That's great that you don't have much interest in 3d gaming and/or you don't feel the need to buy the latest and greatest. Lots of people have different interests in different things. If the latest video card doesn't interest you, move on.

However, just because you're not throwing down $400 for a new graphics card, you're no saint. You didn't save any whales, the world hasn't been made a better place. People need to buy the latest and greatest shit so that the technology can eventually filter down to you. That's how it works.

Letting the world know you don't care to spend money on a top dollar video card is about as insightful as me saying how I'm not going to smoke crack and kill hookers all day today.

Re:What were you expecting?

[TheRaven64]

Well, in terms of gaming cards, new games expect you to have around the 200$ worth mark of current graphics power.

And when the games are released in white-box budget editions, I'll buy them too...

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love your sig!

I wonder what you'll change it to next~!

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn.
So I guess thats just me and Rob going out today?

I'll bring home a dead hooker for you.

Seeing as how you get those urges to crack open a cold one.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow Down Cowboy!

Freelancer requires Dx 9

There. I said it. fine.

clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it ....

Which is exactly what they did when Nvidia's latest chipset failed to dethrone ATI's 9700 Pro. Either Micheal didn't get laid this morning or Slashdot has a new First Troll policy.

Re:What were you expecting?

[MsGeek]

I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

It seems like most of these hardware sites are pretty honest. Matrox threw all its eggs into its Parhelia basket, and probably threw around lots of swag in hopes the card would get Super Bitchen press from the Super Bitchen gaming hardware sites.

Guess what? You can't put lipstick on a pig and say it's J-Lo. Parhelia stank on ice, and the hardware sites were more than happy to point it out. Now Matrox is in danger of going bust thanks to the Parhelia's failure.

However, don't put much stock in Benchmarks. The video card companies seem to be able to game the benchmarks...can you say Quack Quack?

Re:What were you expecting?

[gl4ss]

well duh, they have however reviewed rad without fan against rad without fan (both radiators should have had fans), iirc they have changed articles on their site afterwards & the usual stuff like that..

what's best is to read at least 5 to 10 reviews of product..

Re:What were you expecting?

[be-fan]

If you know where to shop, graphics cards haven't hit much more than $350 at most, a far cry from the $600 you cite.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLOL. Tom's Hardware Guide is BS. They photoshop pictures, and Tom has an ax to grind with $RANDOM_COMPANY. It used to be Intel, and Tom would go on and on about the benchmarks the Athlon won, ignoring those it lost; now I think he's an Intel fanboy. His complete lack of journalistic integrity means most of the reviewers his site attracts are also bottom-of-the-barrel.

Re:What were you expecting?

[NerdSlayer]

Damn.

So I guess thats just me and Rob going out today?

Yeah, but don't worry, I'll be out there tonight. After I score some crack.

Re:What were you expecting?

[TKinias]

scripsit simong_oz:

I'm not saying that the reviewers are kissing manufacturer backsides, but I wouldn't be surprised if they temper their bad reviews.

• FooCo's new Bar 9999XQZ card beats all contenders, posting an impressive 10% increase on the Quuxmark, compared with FooCo's previous best card. I know that I, for one, can't wait to get this baby into my gaming box.
• FooCo's new Bar 9999XQZ card, despite costing three times as much as their existing model, can barely manage a 10% increase on the Quuxmark. Guys, don't waste your money.

Same numbers, very different reviews.

Re:What were you expecting?

[trauma]

This actually happened a few months ago with the Matrox Parhelia - it was disappointingly average in gaming performance, and pretty much all the sites mentioned above expressed that. It didn't actually even suck, it was just marketed as a hardcore gamer's card and fell far short of expectations.

At the same time, though, it's difficult to refute what you're saying other than in certain specific cases like the Parhelia, because the vast majority of video hardware is faster and better than the previous generation; that the reviews confirm this doesn't really suggest any lack of integrity on the part of the reviewers.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Firehawke]

I respectfully must disagree. After reading Tom's Hardware's review of the GeForce FX, I was puzzled as to how they could come up with pretty much the same numbers as everyone else, but still call the FX the winner of the performance race. (Which is pretty much what you stated in regards to the whole "Intel retakes performance crown" statements) Anandtech has been a more reliable (and less biased) site, in my opinion, but I still use a basic formula for gauging reviews.

I check a minimum of three sites with previews/reviews on the product and average them out for a good view of the situation. One site may be biased, but the odds of two or three sites being biased are rather slim. Especially since extreme overt bias tends to ruin the review site's relationship with suppliers (e.g. going overboard on the side of Nvidia is going to make ATi think twice about sending you gear, and vice versa.)

Still, everyone expects to lose in the review wars now and again..

Re:What were you expecting?

[ergo98]

You've made my day good sir. Brilliant post that is right on the money. Whenever someone writes one of those "NOT FOR ME!" it gets the circle-jerk of justifications going with people consoling themselves that only suckas buy the latest and greatest.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Danse]

Well, from the reviews I read, the GeForce FX did win on pure performance, but only by a slim margin. So it's not worth the extra expense when you can get a Radeon that performs almost as well, doesn't take up an extra slot, and costs less. So the FX wins in pure performance, barely, but gets spanked in the price/performance category. Apparently Tom's was just looking at pure performance.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freelancer blows. Doesn't deserve to be considered as a DX9 game, or even a game at all. What an incredible mess they made of what could have been a good game.

Re:What were you expecting?

[cheinonen]

Personally, I find what kind of performance I can get from a graphics card for playing games, and providing me more future insurance for games such as Doom 3, more important than what you listed. My cable modem gives me a max speed of 3 Mb/sec, what do I need 10 Gigabit Ethernet for? LCD's big enough for 1600x1200 resolution in games are far too expensive and have too slow a response time for my needs. I use headphones to play games so what use is 7.1 surround going to be to me? The smaller cable in SerialATA is nice, but I don't need anything else it offers.

Before you complain that you want sites to cover information that applies to you and not review another graphics card, consider that what you want covered might not be what someone else wants and we might really card about the graphics card. Maybe you just need to visit different sites? If Storage Review is still around, go there for SerialATA info, they won't be reviewing the new ATI chipset.

Re:What were you expecting?

[thracky]

Benchmarks may not be faked necessarily, but the current run of benchmarking tests are *certainly* leaning towards helping the newer cards or a certain feature on a certain card succeed more than another.

Take the latest 3DMark for example, I have heard that on more than one occasion a radeon 9700 beats out a GeForce FX in more than one category. Now this may be due in part that the GeForce FX is a partially inferior card, however the only REAL benchmark people should be using for 3d cards is games themselves. Not many people buy cards based on what they perform like in the future when games start using such and such a feature of the card. People buy cards based on what they can do now and how it will run their games. Benchmarks are only useful when trying to show off who can squeeze an extra 0.1 fps out of a test that is always bias towards newer technologies. If it doesn't make my games look any better or run any faster, I don't give a damn.

Re:What were you expecting?

[blibbleblobble]

"you can get a Radeon that performs almost as well, doesn't take up an extra slot, and costs less."

And doesn't make a noise like a GR7 Harrier taking off.

Re:What were you expecting?

[X86Daddy]

I'm not going to smoke crack and kill hookers all day today.

Now that makes one hell of a .sig! Or maybe a good .plan...

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't put lipstick on a pig and say it's J-Lo.

Yeah, you're right, you don't even need the lipstick...

Re:What were you expecting?

[mink]

You dont remember the release of the Geforce 2 Ultra or the first Geforce 3 cards. I saw them on Manufacturers sites and pricewatch for about $600.

Re:What were you expecting?

[rnd()]

Letting the world know you don't care to spend money on a top dollar video card is about as insightful as me saying how I'm not going to smoke crack and kill hookers all day today.

I didn't ask for the comment to get modded up, but apparently some people decided to use their mod points on it, and for that my Karma stash is grateful.

I think you're taking Slashdot a bit too seriously.

Re:What were you expecting?

[rwise2112]

Good point.

The Toronto Police Dept. was suprised that adds for an auction they are holding showed up on KaZaA, considering the sites legal uncertainty. They got the add pulled, but neither KaZaA nor the police had control where the adds were placed.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another example of why Sims is a pathetic editor. He doesn't edit, he editorializes and he censors. He makes snide little remarks of no worth. Can this loser.

Re:What were you expecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom's hardware reviewers are idiots. Most review sites stopped counting capacitors as a measure of a mainboard's stability years ago, but at Tom's they still do stuff like that, only they disguise it with technobabble.

Re:What were you expecting?

[AbRASiON]

Mod this fellow up AND email his post to all the damn tech sites out there.

This is EXACTLY why I read dansdata, I'm so sick of "yum-cha" review #9999 of gfx card XYZ - I've seen it 1000 times!

Or 950 reviews of the popular board (Epox 8RDA+, Asus A7N8X) but 1/10'th the reviews of say the leadtek, msi, fic etc boards because they only wanna review the "good name boards" - way too "niche" (but cool!) products out there go un-reviewed.

Then *I* need to trawl deja.com for hour upon hour hunting for info :( /rant over.

Re:What were you expecting?

[unitron]

"Most review sites stopped counting capacitors as a measure of a mainboard's stability years ago..."

Probably about the time that they realized that capacitors that quickly go bad are worse than no capacitors at all.

Re:What were you expecting?

[kryptkpr]

Not everyone needs 10Gbps ethernet.
or giant LCD screens.
or 7.1 channel (or 5.1 channel even) sound.

What's your fucking point?
They're a Hardware review site. Their job is to review the latest and greatest, so that people who are in the market know what their options are. Their VGA Charts are great, I refer to them all the time.

Just because YOU don't care about the latest video card, doesn't mean SOMEONE ELSE doesn't care about 10GBps ethernet, SATA or 7.1 channel sound.

Re:What were you expecting?

[HoboMaster]

Umm... Did you miss the GEForce FX reviews?

It sucked, the reviews said so, GEForce or not.

ATI and NVidia usually get good reviews because they usually make good products, it was true of 3DFX before they stunk up the house too.

Hey Michael...

[gpinzone]

I'm an NVidia fan, too. However, we can do without your digs to the reviewers. So much for unbiased journalism.

Re:Hey Michael...

[the_consumer]

I don't think it's really fair to hold a simple slashdot story submission up to the standards of professional journalistic integrity. It is fair, however, to question the bias of hardware reviewers who recieve free pre-releases to play with and depend on those pre-releases to provide the reviews which earn them a living.

Re:Hey Michael...

[gpinzone]

I don't think it's really fair to hold a simple slashdot story submission up to the standards of professional journalistic integrity.

I think it's extremely fair, especially since the submission came from an editor, not an anonymous source.

It is fair, however, to question the bias of hardware reviewers who recieve free pre-releases to play with and depend on those pre-releases to provide the reviews which earn them a living.

There's no evidence that these reviews were biased in any way. There is only supposition of guilt, which is preposterous, because these same reviewers have the same relationship with ATI's competition.

Re:Hey Michael...

[Surak]

I agree. And I'm an nVidia fan as well. And I'll tell you -- healthy competition is NICE. It gives consumers choices. Neither nVidia nor ATI own the market ... and that's the point. Look how they each keep pushing the other, and look how quickly new products come out with more and more features and performance.

Now look at the operating system market and the lack innovation there. Imagine what we COULD have if Microsoft DIDN'T own the market.

Re:Hey Michael...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no evidence that these reviews were biased in any way. There is only supposition of guilt, which is preposterous, because these same reviewers have the same relationship with ATI's competition.

That's like saying that the Democrats and Republicans can't be in the pocket of big business and producing as your proof the fact that they both get huge campaign donations from megacorporations.

Re:Hey Michael...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like saying that only the Democrats are guilty of such activities, while keeping your stupid mouth shut when discussing the Republicans.

When all the damn "How will Nvidia's next card compare with the current Radeon?" stories keep getting posted here, where's Michael and his payola-hatin'?

Re:Hey Michael...

[gpinzone]

No, that's a bad analogy. A business can donate money to both parties in order to "hedge their bets" on which party will gain power. A reviewer pulishes ratings of the products in relatio to each other. Someone is going to get "hurt" fromt he review. If your analogy were accurate, businesses would publically release articles on why one candidate is better than another. Hardly the same thing.

Re:Hey Michael...

[ellboy]

You seem to be completely ignorant of how this process works in the journalism industry. The practice of sending out pre-release, free product has been around for decades, if not longer. In the print industry, profit margins are so low that most companies wouldn't have the money to review every product their readers would be interested in. Can you imagine how much the various car mags would have to spend? My understanding is that the profit situation online is even worse than in print, so I don't see how anything would be different.

Re:Hey Michael...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's not OK to hold Slashdot to the standards of journalistic integrity when they slight other sites for not holding to the standards of journalistic integrity? Care to re-think that one?

Re:Hey Michael...

[Rinikusu]

Hrm, I dunno.... :: looks at OS X ::

At the very least, MS gives everyone a HUGE target to work at. There are tons of obstacles, but eventually someone will figure it out. Apple may not be that company, but without MS to try and wrench marketshare from, we'd still be stuck with OS7 or something.

Re:Hey Michael...

[bperkins]

There is only supposition of guilt, which is
preposterous, because these same reviewers have
the same relationship with ATI's competition.

You're kidding, right?

What this system leads to is never giving out negative reviews, since you risk not getting pre-released video cards for that particular manufacturer.

The situation would be considerably worse if reviewers lost the ability to get preview cards from (say) ATI if you gave a good review to (say) Nvidia, but it's still potentially corrupt.

Michael's right to question the honesty of the system.

WTF

[Dutchmaan]

I just went out and bought a 9700pro last f@#$c#ing night!

The karma of video cards one of the most constant forces in the universe!

Re:WTF

[mcpkaaos]

Good thing they gave you a f@#$c#ing receipt. Just take it back. I'd strongly recommend you leave the "f@#$c#ing" out of your reason for the return, however. Unless, of course, you bought it at Fry's. :)

mcp:kaaos

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I just went out and bought a 9700pro last f@#$c#ing night!

S'OK, there won't be any games that take advantage of that for months, either, and yours was probably waaaaay cheaper. :-)

Just be glad you didn't spend half as much again on a Geforce FX...

For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Models

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope to bring to the attention of ATI developers, if they are reading, that it would be nice to release official driver support for the R200 models (Radeon, Radeon 7500 etc) and only the latest 8000+ models.

These cards are partly supported by the DRI project on dri.sourceforge.net since they lack important features as texture compression making them useless for games as DoomIII.

Thanks.

ps. Or at least, please help the DRI guys complete the great job.

Not again!!!

[SpanishInquisition]

*throws 500$ video card in garbage*

Re:Not again!!!

[Saint Stephen]

+1 Fell out of my chair

well, at least I had it for two months before it got obsoleted..

Re:Not again!!!

[mcpkaaos]

Hi. Umm, where do you live again?

mcp:kaaos

Re:Not again!!!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Announcer: "Krusty the Klown" is brought to you by the new Gamestation 256: It's slightly faster... to the max!

Bart: 256? [groan] And I'm stuck with this useless 252!

[he drop-kicks the system into the fireplace, where it slowly melts]

Gamestation 252: Don't destroy me! I can still make you happy... to the max!

Which site?

[Anonymous Coward]

So which link did you click first and why? Personally, I went for Tom's Hardware.

Re:Which site?

[Destoo]

Same here.. And I'd really like to know why.

Maybe it was the "review of 80 cards" that happened earlier this week, and the fact that I'm still expecting to see part 2.

Or maybe it's the 'quote' in the name. Stands out. Sorta like that unwritten rule where if there "LOOK!" in the title of an Ebay auction, the price it will fetch is going to be higher..

Re:Which site?

[Anonymous Coward]

earlier this week=year, of course.
and that's not 80.. that's 29

Re:Which site?

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked on this one first:
www.goatse.cx
I clicked on it because I find the picture hilariously funny.

Re:Which site?

[Anonymous Coward]

ExtremeTech, they seam to be a little less eager to suck Bills FUD.

Hey pizza boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like mine with extra pepperoni, please.

Thanks.

Hey michael

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because your a Nvidiot, doesn't mean you can go bash ATI for making a better card or the websites that review them.

I know I speak for everyone here when I say "michael, JUST SHUT UP!!!!!"

Re:Hey michael

[ThatMadeNoSense]

Just because your a Nvidiot...

That made no sense.

Re:Hey michael

[fobbman]

Easily handled. Just go into your preferences and filter him out. Maybe if enough people filter him out the same thing will happen to Michael as what happened to Katz. He just ceased to exist.

Re:Hey michael

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just because your a Nvidiot...

That made no sense.

Actually, that was pretty damn funny! hehehe... i get it

ThatMdeNoSense must be a n00b, look at his # = 65xxxx... so high! or did he make that handle just for that post? how gay.

ahem

[lingqi]

Why does Nvidia's demo with vid-card shows you this and this, but ATI shows you this? I think we should buy Nvidia based on their sense of ascthetics alone.

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

Re:ahem

[dinivin]

Why does Nvidia's demo with vid-card shows you this [tomshardware.com] and this [tomshardware.com], but ATI shows you this [tomshardware.com]?

Because not all men think with their dicks, and ATI knows this? :-)

Dinivin

Re:ahem

[MotorMachineMercenar]

>Because not all men think with their dicks, and
>ATI knows this? :-)

Riiight, ATI concentrates their marketing on a little-known marketing segment with lots of disposable income: eunuchs.

Re:ahem

[KirkH]

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

The 9700 Pro has been available for about six months.

Re:ahem

[foxtrot]

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

It's obviously not, since the new GeForce still isn't out yet, and it was supposed to ship before Christmas...

Seriously, though, the 9700 was released about five months ago. nVidia hasn't gotten around to releasing their competition to it (in their defense, they're releasing it this week), so yes, ATI is ahead of the game.

Given the number of nVidia fanatics running around, ATI needs to be doing it better and faster and more often, at least for a while. The best thing to happen for the video card industry is for ATI to kick nVidia's ass for a while, and then for nVidia to rise to ATI's new level. Competition is what we all should want to see.

We've seen phase one, now it's time for nVidia to collectively say "yikes!" and start competing.

Re:ahem

[the Man in Black]

No it hasn't. The 9700 PRO was ANNOUNCED six months ago. You couldn't actually GET one until about six WEEKS ago.

Re:ahem

[Noehre]

That's complete bullshit.

Perhaps you are confusing the 9700 Pro and GeforceFX?

The 9700 Pro has been available for at least 4 months, and I'm sure it was available before then and I just didn't notice.

Re:ahem

[Openadvocate]

So, ATI gives you a virtual monkey you can spank while Nvidia gives you, hmm

Re:ahem

[Zathrus]

Maybe you couldn't get one if you were in Siberia at the long end of a dog run for post, but for the rest of the world you could get one without any issues back in September 2002 - as long as you were willing to pay $400.

Or, of course, you could just assume that this is all made up. Note the 3rd review, written in early September by some teenage fanboy.

Hell, the ATI AIW 9700 Pro has been available since November.

Re:ahem

[Big_Breaker]

I have owned a 9700 pro for over five months.

Re:ahem

[Quixadhal]

It's ALWAYS Christmas in PC-Hardware land.... it's just that often Santa-Bill brings you lumps of coal.

Re:ahem

[briancnorton]

That's a Damned LIE. You take that back!

Re:ahem

[BlackjackGuy]

Actually the 9700 Pro was out over 6 months ago. 6 month product cycles are the norm in the graphics industry.

Re:ahem

[thegrommit]

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

As noted elsewhere, the 9700 Pro has been available for a number of months.

However, I'd guess the real reason behind this "new" product is due to process improvements on the part of ATI's fab partners. A few tweaks and higher yields means they can squeeze a few percentage points performance out of their high-end cards for no increase in cost.

What the submitter missed is that the higher-volume "mid" range card (9600) is on a new process (0.13-micron). Smaller process = less cost for comparable performance to its predecessor (the 9500). This benefits gamers as the cost of "pretty good" performance continues to fall.

Comparing the two, it's obvious that the performance delta between them is substantially less than the cost difference ($400 vs $150).

Re:ahem

[Elladan]

The monkey is harder to render :-)

Re:ahem

[Firehawke]

Well, I'm currently the owner of an Nvidia card (though I plan to purchase an ATi one before too long. Likely an AIW9700Pro)

Frankly, I agree with your assessment. Nvidia has slipped of late, especially in matters of drivers-- which is a topic I will avoid getting into too much detail in, because I'm still fuming over the 4x.xx series-- and it's really about time that someone rock the boat enough to force Nvidia to actually compete.

Competition IS good-- it'll inspire both companies to put out better products-- but I'm not so sure about the 6-month videocard cycle. Spending $400 every 6-12 months is more than a bit overkill.

Re:ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

the cost difference ($400 vs $150).

You mean the price difference.

Keep it up ATi.

[13Echo]

Keep it up, ATi. Competition is good. I'm really lovin' what I see in the 9X00 series. Keep hammering on improving those Linux drivers while you're at it, because nVidia still has the edge on non-Windows platforms. The day that you release Linux drivers that are on par with those under Windows (as PowerVR and nVidia have done) is the day that I fork out $400 for your car. Rest assured that I will, as long as you back the product.

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah ATI, do spend manpower and money to improve Linux drivers. It would be nice to gain 50 % of the Linux market (10 cards).

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think the majority of game servers on the Internet run Windows? These people who set them up may mostly game on windows, but if they have the opportunity to game on linux with no drawbacks you can be sure they will. Plus it doesn't take that much manpower to port and maintain drivers. Its also foolish to tie yourself to just one OS platform. Why do you they Apple has a current x86 version of their OS they keep updating?

Think.

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[fobbman]

Four hundred dollar car? When did ATI start reproducing the Pinto?

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[Lumpy]

I also only buy Nvidia based on the fact that there are real drivers for linux. And currently am a source of advice for many many computer users and I only reccomend Nvidia because ATI refuses to release Linux drivers.

if ATI wants to have me and others like me start to reccomend their hardware start providing drivers for OS's other than the legacy Microsoft products... Or print on the box "FOR WINDOWS ONLY - ALL OTHERS GO AWAY".

I influence 50 video card purchases a year. i personally have bought 6 of them this year for my use or business use.. and they ALL have been Nvidia because of ATI's lack of linux support.

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[silvaran]

as PowerVR and nVidia have done

I don't know where you're getting the PowerVR. I haven't been terribly impressed with their drivers. Until recently, they didn't even have AGP support, nor XVideo support. The XVideo support is still very buggy. Specifically, I've been experiencing the following on RH8:

- No RH8 support (the last driver release was Oct. 2002)
- Drivers built with GCC 2.95.x, so they won't load safely with stock kernels built with GCC 3.x
- Complete system freezes when watching full-screen TV.
- Horrible sound quality when watching TV and playing sound at the same time.
- Disgusting flicker in 3D apps, including texture blockiness and artifacts.

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, add me to the list that buys only nVidia hardware based almost entirely on the fact that they support Linux and FreeBSD with excellent drivers.

Well, that and the fact that I've never seen any ATI OGL driver that works correctly with 3D modeling and animation packages.

I've said it before and here it is again:
ATI, you need to get new people writing your drivers. And I mean completely new people, everyone from management to the grunts. Sorry but the currecnt crop of ATI driver writers and/or managers suck hardcore.

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[bfree]

Personally I think that ATI are doing an OK job with their Linux drivers. I have an ATI M9/Mobility 9000 and I have been using the Ati X drivers. They aren't perfect, in fact they dissappoint me but I have high expectations of the hardware. The problem is that you are not going to see those drivers integrated into the distro or XFree86 and as such you are always an the mercy of your own configuration attempts. I want the chip/card which has the best performance under free drivers (X 4.3 is coming soon to my card so I can see how all the Radeon work has gone) and afaik the ATI chipsets have far, far, far better support under XFree86 native drivers than the NVidia chips (which I believe are entirely unsupported for 3d). Now why do I care about free drivers? Well I want my laptop to have a long life, and also I don't want to be dependent on a manufacturer who is brown nosing MS to the gills to try and supply the chipsets for the XBox2 (and that's both ATI and NVidia). Could MS hand the contract to whichever company agrees to stop discolsing any information on their chips for X or other Free efforts AND require them to stop releasing commercial drivers aswell (or cripple them). The only thing the really p*sses me off is that the S3 texture compression is required for various games and this is not in XFree86 and unlikely to appear (is it possible or will we have to wait for the patent to expire or XFree86 to start developing this outside of US patent controlled countries)!

Re:Keep it up ATi.

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat. That explains your problem. I run Slackware and they are excellent. I'm not the only one.

Here is an inquire article about it too

[lingqi]

lookie here

Quoting: ATI will call the extended set of DX9 features the DX9++, although we suppose it could add just as many ++++++ as it wanted to. ... ... Nvidia should perhaps call its own DX9 extensions DX9## or DX9.NET.

the sad thing is, though - I would not be surprised if Nvidia did release a DX9# or something stupid like that. I mean, look at Athlons naming themselves AthlonXP. ack

Re:Here is an inquire article about it too

[He Schutze He Scores]

LMAO

OMG I just read that DX9.NET part and chortled so hard I gave a loogie escape velocity via my nose.

Yes, it is a sad when hardware vendors pay homage to a specific iteration of one OS.

I still chuckle to myself when I see a "ready for Windows 95" sticker on software boxes.

Re:Here is an inquire article about it too

[NerdSlayer]

the sad thing is, though - I would not be surprised if Nvidia did release a DX9# or something stupid like that. I mean, look at Athlons naming themselves AthlonXP. ack

Yeah, Microsoft is everywhere. Just the other day I realized my house had these things called "Windows".

Re:Here is an inquire article about it too

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, look at Athlons naming themselves AthlonXP.

I'm pretty sure the athlons didn't name themselves.

Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting...but only interesting to watch. I mean, for less $90 you can get a Radeon9000. It's not the fastest card, but it has enough power to play every game right now, including those with cool Directx8 effects.

More ati = more gooder

[Vodak]

I'm glad to see Ati released another video card. the more ati competes the less likly NVidia will become a company likly Microsoft.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[NerdSlayer]

I'm glad to see Ati released another video card. the more ati competes the less likly NVidia will become a company likly Microsoft.

Yay. And then in two years, ATI will be the big scary company, Nvidia will be the underdog, and we can all applaud Nvidia for providing ATI with some competition. The cycle will complete itself, ad nauseum.

I'm starting to think that Slashdot readers are actually communists; nobody's allowed to root for the big guy (who presumably got bigger because of the better products).

Re:More ati = more gooder

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got things almost exactly backwards. Communist states are like market monopolies - when the big guy has won. Good Capitalists avoid monopolies - most generation of capital is done via usury, so one needs multiple, strong, players to speculate well (e.g. stock market)

Re:More ati = more gooder

[theanorak]

Yay. And then in two years, ATI will be the big scary company, Nvidia will be the underdog, and we can all applaud Nvidia for providing ATI with some competition. The cycle will complete itself, ad nauseum.

...rooting for the little guy seems to be normal human behaviour. More importantly, as someone is guaranteed to have already mentioned, competition is inherently a good thing. Competition can stimulate innovation (gotta build a better product) and pins down prices to realistic levels (gotta be best value).

The alternative is everyone's favourite word, monopoly. How many of those do we like?

Re:More ati = more gooder

[NerdSlayer]

More importantly, as someone is guaranteed to have already mentioned, competition is inherently a good thing. Competition can stimulate innovation (gotta build a better product) and pins down prices to realistic levels (gotta be best value).

Right, I'm not disputing that. It just seems that many around here automatically champion the underdog with no reguard to the circumstances and no loyalty whatsoever. It seems the only way people can be satisfied is if the "bigger" company gives half of it's money away to the "smaller" company, producing two equal companies. This sort of attitude is useless as well, since if this "Slashmocracy" flies in the face of capitalism and the American Dream. The idea that by being really smart or working really hard you can get ahead.

Apparently these people would prefer than nobody ever gets ahead, and we have some sort of Communist/Robin Hood "rob from the successful and give to the unsuccessful" system put in place. Since lord knows, every big company is just shooting to become a giant, horrible, Microsoft-like monopoly.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[lucasw]

nobody's allowed to root for the big guy (who presumably got bigger because of the better products)

Unless they're paying you to do so, why bother? Past superior performance does not indicate present or future performance.

Being the big guy has its own inherent advantages, one of which is leveraging bigness rather than superior products. The little guy has a smaller budget for advertising, so they can use the grassroots support. Also, the little guy can only succeed with a superior product which they've managed to put together without having resources the big guy does. So that is what is being rooted for: better products.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[SillyHamster]

It's more of a balance = good thing...

Too much toward one extreme is the culprit. If ATI or nVidia were the only game in town (ie: monopoly), then innovation would likely slow down. (why bother making a new bleeding edge card that obsoletes previous cards when you can just jack up your prices on those old cards, since you're the only option?)

Now, ATI is giving nVidia a run for its money, and nVidia needs to respond with a better card, which ATI will respond to, ad infinitum. Which hopefully means, 2 or 3 years later, I can pick up a card as powerful as the 9700 Pro for budget prices. = )

Re:More ati = more gooder

[NerdSlayer]

Unless they're paying you to do so, why bother?

Agreed. Is ATI ponying up?

Past superior performance does not indicate present or future performance.

Agreed. Look at NVidia, they sure did Merle up this release, 3DFX-style even.

The little guy has a smaller budget for advertising, so they can use the grassroots support.

Is that was slashdot is? Grassroot champions for the underdog? I thought it was "news", which generally implies some sort of fair balance and discussion of fact. In the end I'd rather have a sweet video card as opposed to possesing the self-rightous knowledge that I had, through my pissing and moaning on Slashdot, single handedly driven a profitable company into the ground, which seems to the implied goal of many here.

So that is what is being rooted for: better products.

Actually, the original poster was specifically rooting for ATI since they would be a "foil" to NVidia's apparently obvious intentions to become the next Microsoft. I was attempting to point out that just because one company has more sucess than another doesn't necessitate it becoming a huge monolithic monopoly. And that sometimes it's even okay to like a company that features such foreign business concepts such as "success" and "profits".

We piss and moan about companies making money, but in the end, they're not fucking charities. People need to pay bills, you all need jobs (at least your parents do) to pay for your internet connection so you can bitch about big companies all day on Slashdot. My 2 cents.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[Firehawke]

Sure, I think we all root for the big guy for at least a time-- we've pretty much all rooted for Nvidia at some point-- but there comes a time when they screw up to the point that you can't afford to support them.

In Nvidia's case, the GeForce FX. The card fails utterly on the price/performance curve and has sick heat and power issues.

I'm rooting for ATi now-- I want them to pressure Nvidia to actually put out hardware that DOESN'T suck! Where the two companies stand in relationship to each other doesn't matter to me; it's the PRODUCT that matters. When a business puts out a product that doesn't meet expectations, whether they're the big dog on the block or not, they don't deserve blind support from consumers.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[Vodak]

I'm not communist in my thinking though I will admit to being against Nvidia. I have been ever since they bought 3Dfx.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[Saeger]

...automatically champion the underdog with no reguard to the circumstances and no loyalty whatsoever.

Loyalty?!

Are you kidding?! Brand/company loyalty is a liabilty, NOT an asset, especially as the company becomes more impersonal and arrogant as it grows (and, yes, this is almost a given). I'll just have to assume you're a defensive NVDA shareholder, as I once was.

Apparently these people would prefer than nobody ever gets ahead...

People? sure. Faceless goliath corporations? not so much. Concentration of power almost never turns out to be a good thing, and that fact is probably embedded in our genes which manifests itself in our evolutionary psychology when we root for underdogs.

--

Re:More ati = more gooder

[mabhatter654]

But ATI has been Top Dog & had it's A%% handed back by the little guy. They only stayed in business this long because they worked to take care of the customers they had trying not to lose them to NVidia.

As long as they start taking care of end-user issues better - drivers/support they should do OK.

Just will some one release real Linux/*nix support already. There's a huge market for it. Besides MS is going to pick only one for their next X-Box. The other will go hungry as MS destroys PC gaming to further xbox!

Re:More ati = more gooder

[blibbleblobble]

"I'm starting to think that Slashdot readers are actually communists; nobody's allowed to root for the big guy"

Well duh! That's negative feedback, and it's the only way to have a stable system, as any electronic engineer knows.

If people preferred the most successful vendor, that's positive feedback, and just ends up with a single-player monopoly.

To anyone whose attitude is "We buy microsoft kit because they're the biggest" or "We buy Creative Labs kit becuase they're the biggest", how much choice do you want for the next time you buy something? If you buy from the more obscure companies now, you're more likely to have alternatives to choose from in the future.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[Anonymous Coward]

then in two years, ATI will be the big scary company, Nvidia will be the underdog, and we can all applaud Nvidia for providing ATI with some competition

What Slashdotters completely fail to understand is that although NVidia ruled the high end of 3d graphics acceleration for a while, it is a much smaller company than ATi.

NVidia has about 800 employees. ATi has about 1800 employees.

The reason is that, although you wouldn't know it by reading Slashdot, the business desktop market is huge, and ATi is its undisputed master.

If ATi loses this battle for the high end, it's no big deal to them. They have another source of profit, and they'll go on making graphics cards. But if NVidia loses in the OEM market, they have lost their base. nForce has not done well, and so they will go the way of 3dfx.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[LesPaul75]

I can't even begin to tell you how right you are. Welcome to my "friends" list. :)

S3 is too big! Go 3dfx!
Wait, now 3dfx is too big! Go NVidia!
Wait, now NVidia is too big! Go ATI!
Wait...

And all the while, no one even mentions the one company that really is a big, fat, bloated monopoly, hell bent on taking over the world: Intel. Soon they will just force their crappy integrated graphics down everyone's throat, and everyone who was complaining about NVidia being too big and monopolistic (even though they have about 1K employees, total) will learn what a monopoly really is.

Competition in the graphics business has been awesome. Faster and faster chips, cheaper and cheaper prices, new technologies... it really is a "race." This means that the customer wins.

Add Intel to the mix, and everything changes. If they win, it will be simply because they are Intel. Not because they crank out an awesome new technology every six months, like the graphics companies, but because they can do whatever they want and people will buy it.

sigh.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[CaptCanuk]

I prefer to think slashdotters easily forget things if it isn't written down on their palms. It wasn't long ago that ATI was everywhere and a small runt company named Nvidia started making a name for themselves with their TNT's and slowly displacing 3DFX from the throne. I'm sure more MACH64 based cards were sold than 3dfx voodoos or voodoo 2's. I always thought the video card industry was a two dog show: big dog and little dog with the rest of the litter hiding in the back. I guess nobody's also noticed that Nvidia has really dropped the ball on this one. Almost no Ultra 5800 releases means the enthusiasts won't have their top card and poor representation at the high end trickles down into the mainstream purchaser and finally the low end purchaser. Video card companies tend to make little or no money selling to the high end. It's boosting the name that they really want cause that means more people will buy 8500LE's and RV designated cards which also, by demand, end up in laptops.

Re:More ati = more gooder

[plugger]

It's interesting that you say nVidia have dropped the ball, and hence are giving away sales to ATI. If I remember rightly, 3DFX suffered the same fate. Their Voodoo 3 cards were rendering in 16-bit colour depth only, while nVidia were offering 32 bit colour. So there is no problem, the better gaming product makes the most sales. Nothing new.

Nice specs...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but I have yet to see ~realtime rendering of my 3D Max projects. When are these supposed advances in video cards going to trickle down to the hardcore 3D artist?...

Re:Nice specs...

[stratjakt]

You want something like this, not a gamers card.

Theres a good article here.

Re:Nice specs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real time rendering would not have much incommon, with todays graphics boards. Just wait for faster processors.

Re:Nice specs...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you model effeciently you can get some extremely good visuals in a real-time scene, that come pretty damn close to looking pre-rendered. The main problem is that most 3D artists that use MAX for pre-rendered animations and movies are used to being able to throw out thousands of extra polygons in their models. While it's true in most cases that more polygons = better lighting effects, there are TONS of tricks that game designers use to make low-poly models look just as good as the high-poly ones.
Games like Unreal2 and Doom3 show us that texturing surfaces and creating organic life has come a long way in recent times. In my opinion the models themselves are not what makes them look 'fake' or not pre-rendered. It's the lighting and shadows. Now with recent versions of modeling software, you can take your radiosity and burned in shadows directly into a real-time environment. But even beyond that, dynamic light and dynamic shadows are beginning to make their way into 3D games, and they are slowly evolving from cheap tricks (ala projected textures) to real solutions in the graphics engine (ala Doom3).

I have been working in real-time graphics for the past few years. We take our models directly from MAX, Maya and Creator and export them into a real-time environment. If you want to try it for yourself, just install the free plugins from NDL that will export your MAX scenes to a proprietary format, which can be viewed with the free software provided. (No I do not work for NDL, I am just familiar with their exporter). With a decent computer and a good graphics card, you will be able to crank out some pretty sweet visuals. You will need to play around with it, of course, it's not a perfect translation. Actually, after much R&D, I have figured out quite a few tricks to make real-time graphics look just as good as my MAX renderings. It just takes a different attitude and a more knowledgable user. Your typical 3D Artist that creates stills/movies knows jack-shit about real-time graphics.

If you really want those MAX scenes in a real-time environment, you will need to change the way you think and the way you model. There is no Presto-Chango button that takes your existing MAX file and puts it in real-time while maintaining every aspect of the rendering quality. Not yet, anyway.

Hum....

[Anonymous Coward]

I just get the toms hardware arrow with each image

Is that deliberate?
Is there some hidden humour that I'm obviously too tired to spot?

And the good news is...

[ackthpt]

It should bring down the price of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, where a punter like me can afford it =)

Tho I won't have the top of the line =(

It beats having the bottom of the line =)

Re:And the good news is...

[aderusha]

yeah, i just bought the "top of the line" 9700 pro from tyan 2 weeks ago.

so much for being top of the heap...

My guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that Tom's has some measures in place to keep you from cherry picking graphics from the page.

You can buy hardware that will do this automagically these days.

Re:Cripes

[UberLord]

Maybe you should try out the new ATI Catalyst drivers then? They've proven to be fast and reliable for a year or so now. And yes, they have released a Linux XFree86 driver (binary only - but better than nothing). But this is pretty pointless as I doubt you have an ATI card anyways :p

Don't be bitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to take cheap shots at other sites in the topic just because you're not on ATI's list, Michael...

What? no ASC?

[Destoo]

So no ascii version of this card yet? What are they waiting for?

I'm browsing slashdot using Telix and the refresh rate is really bad with the 9500ASC.

Re:What? no ASC?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope some mods click that link. That's pretty funn.

Re:linux games

[UberLord]

UT2003 should play nicely in Linux on it.

If I had that card instead of Zardon, I would soon let you know. But I didn't get it, he did so I can't tell you.

Polarising bull shit

[sdack]

It is nice of you to call ATI generous. It is not nice to assume that those who are capable of running fair and large amounts of benchmarks and therefore are a welcome advertiser for good manufactures who on their side give them early access to their hardware even if they sometimes have more bugs than the final product. Don't judge over others. Judge what they are doing.

Damn!

[new_confused_mind]

Something tells me that my Voodoo3 is becoming obsolete... And I have it for what? 4 years only?

Pixel shader horror

[Anonymous Coward]

The GeForce FX has some horrible Pixel shader performance using ShaderMark v1.7 as shown by HardOCP:

"In ShaderMark the GeForceFX pretty much terrible when it comes to pixel shader 2.0 performance compared to the 9700Pro and 9800Pro. Performance of the GeForceFX is horrible compared to what these cards are showing us. The 9800 Pro improves up to 50 FPS in some cases compared to the 9700 Pro. There is no doubt that the 9700 Pro and 9800 Pro have very strong pixel shader speed.

This benchmark also does give some credence to the 3DMark03 PS2.0 numbers.[my bold face] More PS2.0 coming next week that will really get you asking questions."

Re:Pixel shader horror

[Firehawke]

Interesting. This also paints Nvidia in a very poor light over their whining in response to the 3DMark03 benchmark scores.

I'm betting on this leading to a decisive split in the game development community, over the PS1.2/PS2.0 and optimization questions. While I'd normally expect PS2.0 and non-optimization to be the winners of the debate, this time I can't be so sure.. the FX does show a modest speed increase when software is optimized to it, and Nvidia is still considered the #1 card manufacturer by the general public, so game devs might just end up siding with Nvidia on this.

a nice change

[archen]

This is what a really wanted to hear:

(from the Register)
"Effectively a 0.13 micron version of the four-pipeline 9500 Pro, the new chip will run both faster and cooler than its predecessor"

Yes cooler... COOLER.
Not so freaking hot you need to strap a briggs&stratton lawn mower engine up to a card to power the fan to cool the f'ing thing. Are you listening Nvidia?!

Re:a nice change

[shepd]

Maybe they meant cooler as in:

"Man, that fire, it's like burning so much COOLER than that time we burned our school books!"

Re:a nice change

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly the GeforceFX is already using 0.13 micron technology. And it needs a dust buster strapped to it for cooling. If it was 0.15 micron you'd need to strap on that one they show on tv at 3 in the morning that can lift a bowling ball.

More Coverage

[briggsb]

...of the Radeon 9500 ASC which enhances ASCII gaming for serious nethackers.

I have two questions.

[Martigan80]

1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?

I understand this is the business practice of these times. To always wait about 6-8 months before hyping up the next release of something. Why so many changes to squeeze more fps? Is it like trying to add 10 more HP to your Honda? How many people on this place can actually look at a screen shot or video and name what type of graphics card is being used and what options are set like AA and such?

Re:I have two questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The human eye is an analog device, it can notice fps as high as we can currently display them. However, consumer monitors cannot display nearly that many frames, the pixels only change state so fast.

But, yes an average 100 fps is noticable compared to an average of 45. While the average scene is smooth enough for most people at 45 fps, an intense scene could drop it down to 20 or so and which point, people will definately start to notice. However, the 100 fps average in the intense scene might only be dropping to 50fps, still plenty fast enough.

Re:I have two questions.

[dnadig]

One of the great myths propogated by the motion picture industry is that your eye can't detect changes in framerates over X (30 is usually the number tossed around, or 24). It's hooey. The rods and cones in your retina all refresh at different rates, and not in synch with each other. Your eyeball is not a digital system, its an analog one.

I, and most hardcore gamers, can not only tell the difference between 45 and 100 fps, but it makes a very real difference in my response times. I simply do better if I play at a high resolution, high contrast, with a high framerate. So much so that I will tweak the settings in any game to be able to run the max resolution at the highest framerate, even if I have to turn off the pretty stuff and kill my sound quality to do it.

As for AA, no I can't tell you whether I am looking at 16XAA or 8XAA without seeing them side by side. I can however tell you instantly whether I have at least 4Xaa and I am in a flight sim (where it REALLY makes a difference)...

Re:I have two questions.

[vadim_t]

This has already been explained many times. Yes, 45 fps is playable, but it depends on *where*.

If you get 45 fps in an empty place, well, sure, it'll be smooth. Now, if suddenly lots of people appear in it, and start shooting at each other like mad performance could drop to 22 fps, which is definely don't enough for games with fast action. When that 100 fps card drops to 50 fps in the same place, the game is still going to be playable.

Re:I have two questions.

[Maeryk]

1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?

Absolutely! YOu should see Quake3 on my old Rage Pro vs my new 9700Pro! You can definately see the difference.. or get ahold of 3dbenchmark and run it.. see the differences as it tells you waht the actual framerates are.

2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?

Well, I think UT2K3 is pretty cutting edge.. it beats the heck out of my system as is, which is an Athlon XP 2200, and a radeon 9700pro and 512MB of ram. So the games are already here.. and the next big one will probably be Doom3 which, apparently, you will need godlike hardware to even touch.

So yeah.. the games are there.. and will be there.. I just bought the top I could find because I was tired of having to step upgrade each time I found a new game I liked.. the 9700 pro should be sufficient for quite a while.

Maeyrk

Re:I have two questions.

[BlackjackGuy]

1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps? Come on, you can't be serious. We go through this every single time a graphics article is posted. IT'S REDUNDANT!!! Not interesting or insightful.

Re:I have two questions.

[be-fan]

1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
>>>>>>>>>>
Yes. If the average rate is 100, you'll almost never see the game stutter when 10 people are on the screen and everything is exploding at the same time. If the average is 45, it'll become a slideshow when things get hot.

2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Many. Doom III and all its progeny should be out by then, along with stuff like splinter cell. It'll be a good long while before we have cards that will run Doom III at 1600x1200 at 100fps.

Cut the editorializing crap please

[dnadig]

All of these sites do decent work, I read them daily, and they all PILE ON when something is released that is a POS. Whatever axe you have to grind, keep it to yourself or back it up please.

I have BOTH bleeding edge cards right now, and unfortunately for NVDA, it's just plain "true" that the Radeon's are top dog at the moment. If you don't believe them, run your own benchmarks.

Re:Cut the editorializing crap please

[lewp]

You have a GF FX 5800 Ultra? What, did you need a space heater for the computer room or something? :)

Hah!

[JCholewa]

> Just enough to beat Gf Fx 5800

Nonsense. My old GF2MX performs better, just by way of it existing and the 5800 not.

Re:$400 for a car?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I caught it after the post. ;) Hehe.

It is fair.

[juuri]

Slashdot calls itself "News" that simple blip alone is enough to require the editors to keep their opinions constrained somewhat. Sure it is okay to have a slant when calling yourself news, but some editors here, Michael especially, place very strong opinions in almost every link they post. This isn't news, this is treating the site as a personal log.

Thats all well and good if you aren't a paid employee with customers, but this site stopped being that years ago. Unfortunately, we, the slashdot readers let them get away with it time and time again while paying their salaries by adding content and viewing the ads.

GeForce FX taught nVidia a good lesson

[Morgaine]

Well, nVidia fans (like myself too) may be severely disappointed that the GeForce FX turned out to be an almost total turkey because of noise, power consumption, and barely adequate basic performance, but it's actually pretty healthy that ATI is now back in the lead.

Hopefully nVidia will recognize that it made a dreadful mistake way back at design and specification time on the FX, and learn from it. If it doesn't then it's commercially dead, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Within the company, this probably requires booting out some managers and pressing some engineers' noses onto red-hot heatsinks.

I agree, there's no need to bash the reviewers. Everyone knows that they try to butter up the hardware suppliers, but they still deliver fairly objective reviews, so there's no real problem.

Re:GeForce FX taught nVidia a good lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, because its pretty hard to be biased on framerates in UT2003.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[Elendil]

From XFree86 4.3.0 release notes:

2.1. Video Driver Enhancements

* ATI Radeon 9x00 2D support added, and 3D support added for the Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, and M9. The 3D support for the Radeon now includes hardware TCL.

Looks like pretty good support to me... I really prefer that to a binary-only driver such as NVidia's.

ATI Builds Fastest Graphics Card. Film at 11.

[forged]

Was there more to say ? ;)

Re:Independent review sites? There's a sweet spot.

[Uninvited Guest]

There must be a very interesting formula at work for early release reviews. The product suppliers want good press and a wide audience. The reviewers want a larger audience for their web site, and possibly fame or a chance to try out the next big thing --first! The readers want interesting, informative reviews they can believe, use for purchases, and quote with authority. These forces pull early release reviews to a common middle. The product suppliers won't provide their product to a site that reports credible, but consistently unfavorable reviews. Readers won't keep reading reviews that are favorable, but consistently boring, unhelpful, or not credible --then the product supplier drops the review site for lack of audience, anyway. So, the review sites that get the chance to review new products are the ones that produce consistently interesting, informative, and favorable (or at least, not UNfavorable) reviews.

Of course, confounding this formula is PT Barnum's line "I don't care what they write about me as long as they spell my name right." Some suppliers may continue to release early products to unfavorable, but popular reviewers, just to increase the overall level of press coverage. Worse yet, since the early product is provided by the product supplier, it may have been specifically modified from the "retail" version to work better on benchmarks, just for the review. For that matter, the reviewer may be tempted to soften a review for the sake of a site advertiser's new product.

Still, what's a consumer to do? I guess we have to take early reviews with a dose of skepticism. Before we make a purchasing decision, we have to wait for a reviewer to buy an off the shelf unit and test it. That's the best way we can be sure the review is more in our interests than the product supplier's.

On the whole ATI vs nVidia thing...

[mraymer]

I'd like to point out what one of the developers said on Croteam's Website. They developed the Serious Sam games, which use a remarkable engine.

Here's the text I'm refering to below.

----

Pipelines, pipelines... February 25, 2003

Hello, world.

Just wanted to write a word or two regarding the issue raised couple of days ago. Seems like the whole Internet community wants to crucify nVidia about the controversy of how many rendering pipelines GeForceFX realy has. Is it 8 pipelines with 1 texture unit, or 4 with 2, or ... uh... I don't know anymore. And it really DOESN'T matter that much!

The only thing that matters is how fast and how good it can render pixels. And both GeForceFX and Radeon9700 are great products, the kind of hardware that developers long for. So, personally, I don't care much what's "under the hood".

Don't get me wrong, I am into 3D-graphic hardware, but this pipeline thing really went out of proportion. Number of pipelines is a good hardware information, and that's all there's to it. It really doesn't need to reflect the speed of the hardware directly. Come to think of it... currently, there are no games that utilize even 1/3rd of nifty features these two boards have.

Oh, before I forget... I'm not "nVidiot" (and I'm not "fanATIc", either). I'm just a game developer who wants good and fast technology for the future. And both ATI and nVidia have it now!

Just my two cents.

Dean "3D" Sekulic

(Programmer)

P.S. Yes, I snapped.

Re:On the whole ATI vs nVidia thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue is the claims nVidia's PR made about the card, such as 48 gigs/sec memory bandwidth, 8 pixel pipelines, etc, none of which actually exist.

These are purely physical specifications, and PR can't simply change the specifications for marketing purposes. Its almost identical to the RIAA saying we confescated 400 burners when it was actually it was only 50 fast ones (can't remember the exact numbers)

Re:Independent review sites? Payola

[Uninvited Guest]

Payola? Damn - I really wish there was some!

Do you don't. At least, I hope not. You are already getting compensation in the form of early access to the product. If you got to keep the product or any other form of compensation, it would hurt your credibility as a review.

Low credibility = reduced eyeballs = no web site

And then, you don't even get to try out the new toys anymore.

Of all the dumb slashdot spin...

[Junks Jerzey]

...this is the dumbest yet. Usually the misguided, personal agenda laden slap is tacked on at the end of a long story, and isn't the entire story itself.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[Anonymous Coward]

> Looks like pretty good support to me... I
> really prefer that to a binary-only driver
> such as NVidia's.

ATI's driver is binary-only as well.

Are you listening Nvidia?!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't hear you with all those FX's running :-)

Re:Independent review sites? Payola

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, if only that were true, we wouldn't have Ziff-Davis anymore...

Will ATI ever get past crappy drivers and support?

[Friendly]

Every time I bu ATi I am disappointed. The drivers alway suck. I have an old All-in-Wonder Raedon which is sitting in a box because it will not run under Windows 98 2nd ed or 2000 or Xp. Their tech support refused to aknowledge that the card was faulty, instead every response I got from their tech support was - Read the FAQ. You know what the FAQs all said - turn off every feature on your mother board, throttle the card to minumum MHz and set AGP to 1 X. So I do all that and my system runs like a dog and the card still crashes the system every couple hours. Not again, I do not care about the bells and whisles, if I spend $250 on a video card then I expect it to run out of the box and to get phone tech support that will actually help me. Screw ATI, NVIDA al the way baby.

Friendly

nVidia's big mistake...

[MtViewGuy]

...Was the fact they far underestimated the performance of the ATI R300 chipset.

As originally intended, the GeForce FX chipset would have easily outpaced the Radeon 8500 series, but when ATI showed the Radeon 9700, it forced nVidia to do a crash program development to speed up the GeForce FX chipset as far as possible, which resulted in the card with its thermal cooling system akin to the Outside Thermal Exhaust System (OTES) pioneered by Abit for their overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 cards. Unfortunately, the card ended up being quite noisy from the cooling system and its performance was not quite the Radeon 9700 equalizer nVidia had hoped.

Hopefully, nVidia has learned its lesson and the upcoming NV31 and NV34 chipsets will have higher performance without having to resort to a noisy oversized cooling system.

Re:Will ATI ever get past crappy drivers and suppo

[Wrayth]

Yep that sure was "Friendly"

Chunky Capital

[CoolGuySteve]

In macroeconomics this is called chunky capital. If you need to improve the performance of your plant and equipment (in this case machine power) you can't improve it incrementally as you go, you have to buy a lot more performance than you really need at that point so there will be room to grow. The problem with fiber optics and (seemingly) video cards is that they're super chunky capital, the next generation is so much better than the previous that once you upgrade there's no need to do so again for a while, hurting the industry that produces the product and doesn't plan ahead properly.

For examply, many internet links are 'fast enough' so that unless some new bandwidth sucking application comes along, there will be no reason to upgrade, leading to a point of saturation (currently, people for whom dial-up is adequate don't need broadband). If some new faster connection came along, a lot of people wouldn't care unless the company was much better at competing with services and price. So even though your cable company might be faster, most people would be interested the slower adsl provider if their service/price/other factors were better.

Back to video cards, it doesn't matter how fast ATI cards are, if they're not affordable or have lame drivers and support most people won't care. (note: I'm not saying this is the case). Right now, the last generation is fast enough so the only way they can sell this card is to attract a niche market.

I remember how the Savage2000 was really fast in quake3 but the drivers were in beta at the card's release so noone bothered buying it.

note: I've only ever taken one economics course so feel free to shoot me down.

Re:Chunky Capital

[qoncept]

More than anything, I just feel the argument that "that card is good enough FOR NOW, but what about Doom 3" is moot because the people that buy the fastest video cards tend to upgrade even more than the people who buy cheaper ones.

Re:Cripes

[lewp]

Um. Saying "winblows" is t0t4lly k3wl d00d! I understand your dislike of Windows, but "winblows" makes you sound like a fucking tool.

Anyway, ATI's drivers are better now. If there are still problems with some old piece of hardware you're using, oh well. That's the breaks with a 6mo product cycle. Go get an original Radeon for like $20.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[Elendil]

ATI's driver is binary-only as well.

I'm not talking about ATI's driver, this was about
I'd be very surprised if a binary-only driver would had accepted in the official XFree86 distribution!
Maybe the open-source driver doesn't come with all the bells and whistles, but it exists and there is hardware 3D acceleration for all platforms, not just Linux/i386.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[Elendil]

I'm not talking about ATI's driver, this was about

Damn, I'm having a bad morning today. The end of the sentence was supposed to be: ... about the opensource DRI+XFree86 driver.

Re: It's FUNNY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators (at least the ones not on crack), the above post is not offtopic. It's a JOKE. I realize you aren't that good at reading, but let's try some simple pattern matching. Look for the option shaped like "FUNNY" and chose that.

If you don't understand a post, just leave it alone, mkay?

Re:Independent review sites? Payola

[UberLord]

Well, what about pre-release stuff with patch cables and such on the card? They could hardly re-sell it and they don't need it back as they have a finished product.

And if you're reviewing media - like hard drives the fact that you've used it means that it's contaminated.

However, I can assure you - at least in DH's case - there's no payola involved. Zardon had 2 days to review the card before sending it back. I've got some el cheapo kit I'm reviewing and I've gotta send that back as well.

NVidia Microsoft

[reverendG]

by a LARGE margin. At this point I don't think that it's even close.

I would prefer to see a newcomer release a card that can compete with NVidia and ATI. Two party anything is bad.

Re:Is this gay or what?

[Hott of the World]

Yet you use the infamous ^H notation.

Thats for homos and you know it.

Of course a homo in denile is the worst kind of homo.

(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!)

Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.

Re:Ron Jeremy, dead at 42

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it's relevent, but Ron Jeremy turns 50 on March 12. Thanks imdb.com.

Re:Independent review sites? Payola

[Uninvited Guest]

Even the prerelease stuff. You need to return it, so that we (the readers) believe that you are presenting facts and opinions, unbiased by compensation (including relatively low-value equipment and patch cables). The converse is, you keep the equipment, and we (the readers) become suspicious that you write your reviews a little more favorably so that you can get free equipment.

Re:Is this gay or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are so right. real heterosexual men use ^W ! ;-)

Too bad the...

[rirugrat]

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card takes up 3 AGP slots on your motherboard. Otherwise it's pretty good!

Chris

Re:Too bad the...

[rocket97]

I have never seen a motherboard with 3 AGP slots, but that would be pretty damn cool.

Re:Too bad the...

[unitron]

There was a (for its day) high-end video card set-up from IBM that used 3 ISA slots (which is the only kind of slots PCs had at the time).

It also used a whole big bunch of the purchaser's money.

Balanced Review from The Register

[tolan-b]

here
quote:

Unless ATI can manage some major optimisations for the 9800 over coming weeks, before boards become available we're unlikely to be sold on their latest must-have technology

Re:Balanced Review from The Register

[Performer Guy]

This is not ballanced, the Register is absolutely unqualified to review any graphics card.

Re:Balanced Review from The Register

[tolan-b]

Why's that? because they don't review graphics cards much?

ack! recursive argument alert...

Re:Balanced Review from The Register

[Performer Guy]

Have you read their review? It's a Joke.

They've chosen 2x aa on everything which favours teh NVIDIA. All benchmarks where Radeon underperforms FX where other reviews have a mix that shows the exact opposite results. Their review is a disgrace.

The dumbasses even call Doom III a DX9 title. Frikin morons.

Re:Balanced Review from The Register

[tolan-b]

ok fair enough. i guess im not qualified to determine the qualification of sites to qualify the quality of gfx cards ;)

release date??

[rocket97]

So when is this thing supposed to be released to the public? I have a 9700 All-In-Wonder on backorder right now and I was just wondering if I should cancel that order and wait for this card to come out... I figure if it is more than 3 months away I will just stick with the 9700 AIW and wait for the next round of ATI cards to come out before I upgrade again... that is if I can get a job after I graduate. ARGH job market sucks right now (sorry for that off topic)

Ha HA!

[cptgrudge]

Hee hee! My roommate just bought a 9700 Pro, what a sucker! Now I can get the fastest, bestest card, ever!

At least for 6 months or so...

Then I'll need to get a new card, because of course I need to run the newest games at 1600x1200 and higher with all the options on.

Except when I play multiplayer. Then I'll reduce resolution to 640x480 and turn all the effects off. Because having a 200+ framerate really does help, even though my monitor only refreshes at 85Hz.

Re:Ha HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, just wait until next week

There will be the all-new Geforce FX2, that beats Radeon 9800. Then, all those suckers will spend their money with the latest video cards, instead of doing something better, or even buying a cheaper card. I feel sorry for them :)

What to buy? (Slightly Offtopic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Slashdot --

If you had $100 to spend on a video card, which one would you buy?

This is a serious question. I want to reward myself with a new computer for passing my exams, but as I seldom play games, I have no idea what to look for in a video card. I might have time to do some gaming in the future, though, so my Voodoo Banshee will have to go.

Re:What to buy? (Slightly Offtopic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it all depends on what you play.

for me, my neverwinter night is really happy with the Nvidia GF4-MX440 I bought two months ago.

I still don't regret it.
Except when I look at the reviews, and that makes me want to buy another card...

damn consumer maker..

Re: It's FUNNY!

[Anonymous Coward]

References to Home Improvement, strong satire on the ever swelling specifications on video cards, the irony of seemingly meaningless values supplied by reviewers, as well as poking fun at the overall glowing review process from "non-biased" review sites. Yep, methought is was funny. No mod points today, though, so sorry.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[ad0gg]

Their driver department is terrible, I'm still waiting for the next driver release so I can play the freelancer demo without stuttering which ati and digitalavil both say is fault in the ATI's driver.

Please actually read the article next time.

[baggers]

I can't speak for the other sites mentioned, but (speaking as someone who works for PC World), I think that the submitter obviously didn't bother reading the article we wrote. He says "hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews."

And yet the article that PC World posted says "exclusive tests by the PC World Test Center show a preproduction 9800 Pro board struggling to outrun the competition, including ATI's own Radeon 9700 Pro." Doesn't sound like a "necessarily favorable" review to me.

I'd suggest that Slashdot and the poster think twice before they start making that sort of accusation. We don't review products more favorably because we get them first: we look at everything in the context of how well it does what it is designed to do...

next gen ATI card

[brer_rabbit]

I heard a bit about the generation ATI card. Besides using a 90nm process, the beast will pack over 110 million transistors. One engineer described it as a small number of blocks (9 or so if I remember right), but they're the biggest friggin blocks you've ever seen.

Sorry to hear that.

[zeet]

I used an ATI A-I-W Radeon for about a year in a system, on the DVI interface with a Compaq flat panel. The same system had a second video card in it, an older ATI card with DFP interface. The two sets of drives managed to get along fine! Since it was an unsupported config, there were some tiny glitches (like, I had to switch off the second monitor to get 3D acceleration to happen) but overall I can't think of the system ever crashing because of a video problem, and it was on most of 24/7.

This was under W2k, Win98SE, and WinMe. Never tried XP on it, because the system was stolen only a month after XP's release.

Re:Will ATI ever get past crappy drivers and suppo

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd. I have an AIW 8500 128MB card that works just fine under 2000. It is the most robust card I've ever owned. I watch/record TV, capture VHS tapes for the purpose of converting to DIVX format. Games are awesome on this card as well.

My only problem??

I had to use MMC 7.6 to get it to record. MMC 7.7 is crap unfortunately. (undocumented BTW)

When I had problems with my previous vanilla AIW Radeon. I RMA'd it to ATI and received a replacment within a week. I explicitly told them what I did to test the card (clean installs, installed it in other PC's etc) and did not get any resistance.

Try to avoid their online support. I really do not think they know all that much. Just make your case for your card and RMA it. If you are tech saavy and can back up your claims you'll do fine. Unfortunately, this may not bode well for the casual user.

My 2c.

Cheep son of a bitch!

[AnonymousCowheard]

(I need karma)

I like your style. :D
I know this one guy who eats at a restaraunt and leaves no tip for the waitress. I asked him why, and he says that the waitress goes back into the kitchen and calls him a son of a bitch. So, he thinks leaving a regular tip will make no improvement on what they say in the kitchen and at-least they'll call him a cheap son of a bitch. Then he goes on saying that a Good Thing(TM) never hurt anyone and they can shove it up their ass.

Imagine that, you too can be a cheap son of a bitch to the R&D of all these graphics chip manufacturers! I can't stop laughing...

Re:Cheep son of a bitch!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the graphics card manufacturers can't take my graphics card back to the factory and spit in it. That's motivation enough for me to tip if I'm going back to a restaurant more than once.

TOM'S

[BigBir3d]

Owners of a Radeon 9700 PR need not worry, though. Their card has not suddenly become obsolete because of the Radeon 9800 PRO. While there is a difference between the two, it isn't a dramatic one, and certainly nowhere near enough to justify an upgrade, in our opinion.

Huh. Waste of time for the hardcore early adopters I guess.

Re:This was my fault...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does corky have a sister, preferably with mod-points?

Note for ATI and nVidia developers

[AnonymousCowheard]

Please implement a VGA BIOS disable switch on your videocards. Some of us are working on computer platforms that can't work with your VGA BIOS, yet their exists graphics drivers that CAN use your proprietary graphics-acceleration architecture chipset on your related products.

For example, disabling the VGA BIOS would allow users of Alpha/Sparc/MIPS/PPC/Power(3/4) platforms to use a wee-little standard VGA graphics card that we know works (like a S3, Permedia2, G200, or RagePro), then throw a hefty ATI Radeon 9800+ Pro XPERTONIA ++plutonia++ 256MB or nVidia GeForce FX 6000++BrownOut/cooker 256MB L24a adaptor into the AGP port or hopefully see a 64bit PCI model from ATI/nVidia and we could use your hardware!

Sincerily,

The Alpha Troll

Re:Note for ATI and nVidia developers

[mink]

I second this.
Are there any 3d cards that have drivers that work under win2k for the Alpha?

Open Mouth, Change Feet

[ackthpt]

I agree, there's no need to bash the reviewers. Everyone knows that they try to butter up the hardware suppliers, but they still deliver fairly objective reviews, so there's no real problem.

So, who needs to bash reviewers, when spokesweasels utter thusly:

All of Nvidia's latest chips use the CineFX architecture, which supports DirectX 9 and high-level shading languages that the company says provides easier, more realistic lighting and shading effects.

"We're trying to make the PC more like a console, a truly liberating experience for developers to write for," says Bill Rehbock, Nvidia's director of developer relations.

Are they suggesting people not spend $500-600 to have the latest and greatest, instead just buy an Xbox? Perhaps not, only referring to what an ideal world it would be for us coders if we only had one graphics card & standard (yet, a continually moving target, nonetheless) to code for, like with consoles, but the wording context requires an informed listener.

Re:Will ATI ever get past crappy drivers and suppo

[Anonymous Coward]

We've got 24 Dell's and about 10 home-built machines with Abit motherboards that all have ATI Radeon 7200's. With XP running driver version 6.13.10.6166 (came-out Aug last year and it's the newest driver available for the card), there's horizontal lines across the top 1/3 of the display. We sent ATI screenshots (printscreen key to put it in the cut and paste buffer) and also sent polaroids of the screen to ATI, but ATI claims there's no problem. I actually had a tech at ATI say while looking a picture of the problem, "I don't see any lines." I hate it when tech support lies. You can downgrade the driver version, and the lines go away. Of course, ATI claims there is no problem with their new driver so unless they have to release another driver for a different reason, this will never be fixed. Our problem is that their older driver won't work our accounting system (yes, the our idiotic account system uses DirectX to do graphs) so we have to run the newer driver. We've got about $30,000 worth of ATI cards in our office, and they just don't care.

GeForceFX LineUp!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Nvidia's website: They have a new line up of GeForce FX-based GPUs!!! The lowest one, the FX 5200, is as low as 79 dollars, with DX9 and full shader support. Dang, now is the time to buy...

Re:GeForceFX LineUp!!!

[TomHandy]

Hrmm, really interesting......definitely looking forward to hearing more about the GeForce FX 5200..... might not have the latest and greatest, but that price is pretty impressive, and much closer to what I'm willing to justify paying for a video card, as I just don't want to invest $400 to have a top of the line card. If this can handle games well, it seems like a fantastic price point. Looking forward to hearing more about these cards.

-Tom

Parhelia Owner, wish I wasnt.

[LibertineR]

I am one of the six people who bought a Parhelia. I did so, because image quality WAS more important to me than frame rates. The operative being "WAS".

The Parhelia does put out the prettiest pictures, but I can see almost every frame of them as they flip over in some games. As a flight simmer, I need smooth animation, and the Parhelia didnt cut it on any modern sims, so I had to get a game machine and run a Radeon 9700 pro.

Matrox should sell themselves to ATI, and show them how to do screen fonts as well as they do. In the gaming world, Matrox is dead and should be.

Nevermind the hardware review sites!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just listen to John.

Dawn on Radeon?

[G3ckoG33k]

Seriously, has anyone tested nVidia's Dawn demo on a Radeon card?

Considering the poor perfomance on ShaderMark's DX9 test (and as mentioned at HardOCP) we may have a surprise.

Bitching about the hardware sites

[haggar]

I thin that was a very unfair snub, and this is why: the hardware sites this Slashdot editor just scolded, produce their won content! They do a research, write the text, take the screenshots, construct the hardware setup, spend many hours benchmarking... and then comes Slashdot and posts a fucking link to the article and it's done with it. No, it's not quite done: it also accompanies the link(s) with a snub to the fairness or bias or the reviews! Wonderful.

Let's see what Slashdot actually does or does not do: Slashdot creates very little original content; It mostly just takes submissions from readers and slaps it onto the frontpage if it likes it (and we know a lot of good stories are not posted God knows why). We know that Slashdot does not
- copy-edit for spelling or grammar errors
- check the link
- read the original article, and
- check it's own fucking site to see if the same story has been posted in the last few days. Sometimes the same editor posts the same story twice in display of total moronism.

We also know how knowledgeable are the Slashdot editors when it comes to their own mother tongue (English), and that writing even two sentences without a grammar or spelling mistake represents a huge problem.

So, does a site like Slashdot have the moral ground to criticize any other site, let alone a site that has people actually -working- (note to /. editors: new concept, look up in dictionary) and creating their own content?

Multiplayer?

[Anonymous Coward]

improving our FPS in multiplayer is not as important as improving your ping. i can play single player or multiplayer with at GF Ti 4600 at the same quality of graphics settings, but when I experience choppyness, it is the ping to the server which causes problems.

running at 200 FPS vs 100 FPS in multiplayer doesn't make a difference.

READ you shithead

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean expansion slots on the back of the chassis, not 3 AGP slots. The FX uses 2 expansion slots on the back, but only 1 AGP slot.

Plus, if you ACTUALLY READ the article, you would have found that the 9800 Pro only uses 1 AGP slot, and one expansion slot.

THG

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom's Hardware guide for me!

And because I usually read that site more than others. I like Tom's style I guess.

Kinda like, if you started using vi, then you will always use vi... EVEN IF VI IS SATAN HIMSELF!!!

BURN IN HELL YOU FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

you are horribly wrong, ATI had it out within like a month of announcing it(AKA ABOUT 6 MONTHS AGO), go stick a geforce 4 up your ass, bitch.

[H] plug

[Slime-dogg]

[H]ard|OCP usually raises a big stink if a company comes out with a stinker. I remember when there were some GeForce3 cards that were a little out of spec, and some of the capacitors on the card were rubbing up on capacitors on the mobo. They called the company and demanded that they explain why they messed up.

Granted, Kyle and crew do have their favorites, as it seems. Anything that has to do with a massive sized heatsink, or water cooling usually gets more air-time than the generic ship-with stuff. After reading their reviews tho, you get to know that they don't give any bullshit, nor will they praise a card just because it was given to them for free.

Re:Will ATI ever get past crappy drivers and suppo

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be using it on a Linux box like me. So far, no problems :P

Reveiws Under Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me when someone includes Linux performance information in their review. Untill then, most reviews are worthless:(

What I haven't seen mentioned...

[Jon Abbott]

Is what is ATi going to after the 9900? Are they going to call the next card the 10000? I don't know of many products that made it up to the 9000 moniker and kept going. I guess they could just go back to letters like AMD and Microsoft...

Re:What I haven't seen mentioned...

[Dr. Spork]

It depends on Microsoft, actually. Once they decide what they will call the version of DirectX after 9, that's what ATi will use as a base of their numbers. So who wants to make bets what the next DirectX will be called. Probably not DirectXX... It'll probably be something lame like DirectX 2004...

Re:Is this gay or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course a homo in denile is the worst kind of homo.

That's DENIAL to you!

Petition ATI and nVidia.

[AnonymousCowheard]

No 3D drivers are available for Win2k on the Alpha platform, neither for Windows NT 4.0 and previous versions. I don't mean to be rude, but why aren't you using freeBSD or Linux with Framebuffer-DRI? I'll happily explain below. The reason why the latest and greatest graphics accelerators do not work on Alpha is because most of the BIOS on Alpha computers were initially built for the older 16bit extension VGA BIOS. Sad to say, shortly afterwards all the graphics designers started implementing "32bit VGA BIOS extensions" and so the X86 VGA BIOS emulation in all the Alpha computers' BIOS simply can't use one of those graphics accelerators.

To get started on using some fast 3D on your Alpha, the DRI project (http://dri.sourceforge.net) has recently separated itself from XFree86! Yes, now hardware-accelerated openGL (provided by DRI) is working independent of an X Server! So far, framebuffer can now be used with DRI. Now to enlighten you on the drivers... Most graphics accelerators will operate on the Alpha platform using the DRI. The intial problem to begin with is that all these "modern" graphics accelerators are using the *cough* "32bit X86 VGA BIOS" and the problem is there is no way to disable that later VGA BIOS in favor of an older one. As provided by the DRI, graphics is computing on the DRI-enabled graphics accelerator and is simply copied to a X Server's 2D canvas, a framebuffer device, or *gasp* displayed full-screen. To use a DRI-enable graphics accelerator on the Alpha platform as well as others, the graphics accelerator's VGA BIOS must be out-right disabled and a true VGA graphics adaptor must beforehand accompany your 3D crunching workhorse right beside it. The purpose is to have DRI using a 3D accelerator and the openGL is tunneled and output on the nice and compliant framebuffer/2D canvas provided by the VGA adaptor.

The best choices for VGA are often your only choices on Alpha; the whole point is we are bipassing an obvious compatibility problem in an Alpha computer's BIOS. Reading from the DirectFB homepage, we should note that only our nice and friendly Matrox G200 and below is supported in framebuffer. The 3Dfx Voodoo3 is using the later 32bit VGA BIOS, as well as the TNT/2/GeForce.XXX, Rage 128, and the others are unknown to me. The purpose I intend in using a graphics accelerator that has a well-implemented framebuffer driver is because WE NEED TO WEAN XFREE86 AND ALL X SERVERS TO USING FRAMEBUFFER DRIVERS AND NOT BE THE SOLE PROVIDERS OF GRAPHICS. As of note, the chipsets based on ATI's Rage Pro 3DLabs' (Texas Instruments Chip) Permedia/Permedia2, and S3's Virge/*X are a good provider of VGA, but to my knowledge they are not supported on the DirectFB. Sure, the Rage Pro and S3 Virge may be receiving hardware-accelerated GLX from the Utah-GLX project, but that service is dependant on XFREE86 OR SOME X SERVER PROVIDER! WEAN X SERVERS AWAY FROM DIRECTLY SCREWING WITH YOUR HARDWARE! MAK THEM USE FRAMEBUFFER! IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

To date, the best choice for an excellent standards-compliant VGA is of Matrox Mystique/Millenium/G100/G200/G400/G450/G550 and nothing else! Buy a PCI Matrox 4MB VGA adaptor for $10 on Yahoo Auctions or eBay. Most Alpha systems do not have AGP, but those that do should make good use of the AGP as their secondary/DRI-enable graphics crunching device. Users that have AGP to their disposal will have the choice of anything, but notice that their are no DRI drivers for the GeForce.XXX; only utah-glx driver comes close to supporting some of nVidia's features but nVidia doesn't give anyone information. ATI is your best bet and I'm happy to say they are doing an excellent job today, pick what you want from them and use the DRI drivers. For systems that don't have AGP, buy a Radeon 7000/7500/9000 and disable its integrated VGA BIOS by force! To do that, you need to contact ATI. I will not help you do it because I can't fit my disclaimer of liability, should you break somthing on my advice and blame me, on this page and I am short of time now...bye and good luck.

Remember, you can do this with not just the Alpha platform, the Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC, and others that can interface to PCI devices that can use the DRI.

Sincerily,

The Alpha Troll

Re:Petition ATI and nVidia.

[mink]

Thanks for the info.
Oddly the bios in this alpha seems to imply it was built with Win2k in mind (it was bought as "scrap" from MS) and even had a Win2k alpha build cd in the drive still.
I know how to change it's mode of posting (from the windows side to the ARC or whatever the other console is).
Under win2k I actually got a 3d labs card (8 MB) to do open GL, but it wouldnt interface with DX (screen savers work with acceleration tho).
I also picked a permedia 2 that I will be trying out.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[HuguesT]

Yes but how fast does it really go?

Hardware TCL is the equivalent to DX7. How about some DX8 features now that 9 is out?

Mistake, misplaced copy+paste action, Please READ!

[AnonymousCowheard]

I made a mistake on my cut+paste. I hope some moderators mod this message up so everyone isn't mislead. I cut+pasted the DirectFB's text "Matrox Mystique/Millenium/G100/G200/G400/G450/G550 ". On the Alpha platform, only the devices "Matrox Mystique/Millenium/G100/G200" are supported. This is because the G400/G450/G550 are using the 32biy VGA BIOS. This is just my error, a slight slip of the hand. I SHOULD PROOF-READ, but I'm short on time so flame away!

Sincerily,

The Alpha Troll

RV300 Price Points?

[Lazaru5]

Is ATI going to continue to sell RV300 based boards? And if so at what price points? I _just_ (last weekend) bought a 9700 PRO at Circuit City on sale for $299. I realize now that it was to just get rid of it (Best Buy also is listing theirs for $299 presumably for the same reason.)

The 9800 is only marginally better than the 9700, and the 9700 is far far better than the new 9600. The new 9600 is supposed to be $219 and the new 9800 replaces the 9700 at $399. That leaves a big gap.

What I'm worried about is if ATI is going to continue producing 9700's, will they be under $300? Anything less than $299 and I'll feel ripped off. (Unless I can get a price adjustment from CC.)

Still, I got a good deal I suppose. I never would have spent $399, and if they stop making 9700's then I paid a fair price for it too.

Re:RV300 Price Points?

[Lazaru5]

Sorry, I was brain farting. That's R300 and R350.

Re:Independent review sites? There's a sweet spot.

[Anonymous Coward]

My advice? Hunt around and find a site you trust and cross any reviews with their opinions. I review for a site, and we don't pull any punches when it comes to exposing a product's shortcomings, even if it means that a manufacturer might not like to see less than favorable things said about its products. We look at every product with a critical eye because, well, the fun part is finding out what a product isn't good at. The marketing fluff companies send out already covers a product's strong points.

We're not alone, either. I can think of a handful of sites whose opinions, methods, and credibility I trust, but to avoid looking like I'm turfing, I won't list any here. They are out there, and sometimes manufacturers have the balls to send them/us hardware for a day of release review.

One thing to note is that marketing managers know when their products are crap; they know what's wrong with them and how they stack up against the competition before they even send them out to reviewers. Companies would prefer to have good reviews, of course, so initial samples tend to go to sites whose testing methods are at least predictable, or at least sites that are less likely to find a product's shortcomings because they're either easily manipulated or because their testing methods aren't thorough enough to expose a product's weaknesses.

ATI vs nVidia

[KillboyKRR]

How can everyone dis the ATI drivers. Heres the story, my friend recently brought a GForce 4 MX440 and I got the ATI Radeon 9000Pro. We both went home, installed the cards, installed the drivers that came with the card, and decided the first order of the day was a quake benchmark. Click on Quake3.exe and what happens? I go staight in, my friend (with the GF) gets the OpenGL error before it even loads. These are competing cards, and nVidia lacks the drivers. How many Detonator Driver packs are there? With the ATI, I think there are 3, and the one that scores the hightest benchmark scores is actually the drivers that came with the card. Benchmark wise, comparing the two cards is a waste of time. The nVidia fans here are clearly a little upset that the FX card is slightly sad, and that ATI still sits comfortably in the lead. Finally, the BIAS clame of websites? Then there is one here, there are more "ATI sucks" posts here because they released a new better and much improved product, and when the FX posts were up it was "The benchmarks are an untrue reflection" or "The code is not optimised for the FX" etc. If nVidia is so great, what happened to the G-Force 3? Probably the same thing thats about ot happen to FX. I'm also not a fanATIc, nore a nVidiot, but ATI is the leader in the graphics environment right now.

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[AbRASiON]

"for the R200 models (Radeon, Radeon 7500 etc)"

"These cards are partly supported by the DRI project on dri.sourceforge.net since they lack important features as texture compression making them useless for games as DoomIII."

No doubt my reply will be redundant but let me just go over this again........
Radeon 7000 series, and Doom III useless? SURELY YOU JEST?

(give up man, it's like trying to put Doom 3 on an A2600... it's just NOT gonna happen.)

Why does ATI not do better?

[jontsok]

ATI now looks to be 2 steps ahead of Nvidia while Nvidia sorts out its still born cards in fabrication. At present there is a generation gap in graphics cards but many manufacturers are still using Nvidia in preference to ATI. How does this work? or is it a Canadian thing.