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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.
Enquiring minds want to know (before they blow ${WEEKS_WAGES} on new toys...)
Jon.
As if you didn't have enough - This one is quite good.
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.
...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 $200 one in a few months time.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm an NVidia fan, too. However, we can do without your digs to the reviewers. So much for unbiased journalism.
I hope to bring to the attention of ATI developers, if they are reading, that it would be nice to release official driver support for the R200 models (Radeon, Radeon 7500 etc) and only the latest 8000+ models.
These cards are partly supported by the DRI project on dri.sourceforge.net since they lack important features as texture compression making them useless for games as DoomIII.
Thanks.
ps. Or at least, please help the DRI guys complete the great job.
*throws 500$ video card in garbage*
Je t'aime Stéphanie
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!!!!!"
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
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
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...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
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
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'm glad to see Ati released another video card. the more ati competes the less likly NVidia will become a company likly Microsoft.
Tho I won't have the top of the line =(
It beats having the bottom of the line =)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
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?!
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?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
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.
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.
--- I do not moderate.
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.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
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.
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.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
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.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
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
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.