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ATI vs. NVIDIA: ATI Steals the Show
(54)T-Dub writes "Apparently a group of MIT engineers made an OpenGL wrapper for the NVidia Demo of 'Dawn.' (a fairy with high sex appeal) Even though the wrapper adds more overhead the demo still runs faster on the 9800pro and creates higher quality images." Yet another reason it's good to have engineering students on your side.
That's gotta hurt... I feel sorry for nVidia... it does look like they're going the way of 3dfx... Maybe I should buy an ATI card next. nVidia do have good linux driver support, though - does ATI have that too?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I mean if you're going to have medieval fantasy characters in your demos, might as well go the whole way and have a proper Princess.
You know, when a page gets slashdotted, isn't it just coincidence when the only thing that will load is the banner ad!
1) Get to the top of the video card market.
2) Get lazy.
3) Competitor gets to the top of video card market.
Rinse, lather, repeat as necessary.
Didn't NVIDIA learn from 3DFX? Hell, they bought them. I'm hoping this is a driver issue and that subsequent optimized releases of Detinator will speed it up. If not, it is a sad day for NVidia.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
...does she have a sister?
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
Sure, the card is faster so you can now play your existing games with anti-aliasing on all the time (well, mostof the time...) but unfortunately your games won't look any different.
Remember the first time you installed your 3dfx card (inc pass-through cable) and played GLQuake? Amazing! High res smooth graphics on your P166, the envy of consoles everywhere. Then nVidia brough our their TNT cards which did 32-bit colour... nice. But since then, what's changed? Answer: not much. There are only a handful of games which use 50% of the features offered by a Geforce 3. I have a Ti4600 and a Ti200 and it's nigh on impossible to tell them apart.
Why the Sam Hill should I buy ANOTHER new card when there's simply no compelling reason to upgrade?
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Summary of next 500 posts.
nVidia is dying...
No their not..
ATi linux drivers suck..
Ati Windows drivers suck..
No they don't....
Benchmarks mean nothing...
Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah
Stop wasting your time...everyone buys their graphics cards based on what features are important to them. Whether it is raw performance, quality, driver stability, support, supported OS's, cost, availability etc... it is most likely a comprised mix of all of the above.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
nvidia practically destroyed 3dfx. They bought 3dfx and refused to update any drivers (e.g. nvidia refused to update the windows xp 3dfx-driver when microsoft contacted nvidia). Thus many people had to buy a new geforce card.
i fear we all (we who had to buy geforce cards to get windows xp working/or people that heard about this story) have established a real HATE relationship against nvidia.
go go ati. best wishes!
Looks to me like nVidia provided the test material.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I guess I too follow these stories closely, as I'm a fairly avid gamer. However, all this tugging between which graphics chipset company is better is likely to go on for some time. People say that NVidia is now the clear cut loser. Well, I wouldn't be so fast to judge that. I believe that like many other industries, there are two or more powerful companies that have good years and bad years when compaired against their competitor.
It seems that NVidia is having a bad year or two right now. But they're a big and resoucre rich company, hopefully know what they are doing, and were just caught off guard by ATi pushing the technology in the 9700 of last year to market so soon. I think they are operating in a "catch up" mode, desperately trying to caputre back the coveted crown of the graphics wars. And it is that preoccupation that is deriding them from true technolgical innovation.
Once NVidia resumes its roll as a technology innovator, much like ATi is now, the race once again will be on for the true champion of the graphics wars.
And when that happens, I think that is a definate signal that graphics will again become sort of the arms race of the cold war, each side battling to be "best". But better, because when you have two free market companies battling it out, it usually comes down to as much blistering performance avalible for the dollar.
And that is excellent for all gamers, and the general computing public at large.
But maybe that's mumbo jumbo, it sounds good 5 hours past my bedtime. nighty night.
I can't speak for their FreeBSD drivers, but ATI's 3D linux drivers for the Radeon 8500 and up work incredibly well. I get better framerates with UT2003 under linux than I do under Windows with the OpenGL renderer.
Dinivin
ATI vs. NVIDIA: ATI Steals the Show
I dunno if you guys heard about this one but nVIDIA actually had a e3 party then went pretty wild(some topless pics). Not only did they have Smashmouth perform at their E3 party but they also had some porn star make an appearance to(she was eventually kicked out for dancing topless on a table). Check google its all fact
I wonder when a graphics card company will have the GUTS to release a demo that can run on ALL hardware and not just their own. Of course the company in question would need to have hardware greatly advanced from whatever else was available. Perhaps ATI could have done this when the R9700 was launched???
Cheers,
_GP_
Yeah No kidding .. Windows is Dead, ATI should know by now that Linux is where the Big time Gameing market is.
Although its engineers need to learn to ignore their marketing dept. the management of nVidia is pretty good
expect them to regain the crown at the NV40 marker, ATI has indicated they'd be slowing their innovation cycles, whereas nVidia has made no such statement.
Yes, yet another reason. The other reasons I can think of are:
Any other reasons to have them on our side?
Why the Sam Hill should I buy ANOTHER new card when there's simply no compelling reason to upgrade?
Ah ha!
Here in lies the challenges of Sales and Marketing departments all across the land.
Unfortunately, they will find a way to convince you that you MUST get the new Happy Graphics 10,700 GF5x Twin-Turbo Platnium card.
I think it is the extra LEDs or the fancy new second generation heat spreader that is there to cool the PCB.. because umm, that's uncooled so far!
But really, if you want to make a conspearacy or something, it is the old Wintel routine. Build faster graphics cards, so you can design fancier games, which require faster graphics cards, which push the development of games, which..... allow you to sell these things for mucho dinero (much money).
Well, you see how it works I'm sure.
Your Ti 4600 won't seem so adequate in 3 years I'm afraid.
And then Sam Hell will convince you to upgrade to that Happy Twin-Turbo!
Good move at the time, and a good move now as it will allow them to bridge the poor comparative performance of their graphics unit vs. ATI.
direct link
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If anyone wants it, I've mirrored the OpenGL wrapper here (78k).
You can get the dawn demo from here
How about these.
You want the file glx1_linux_X4.3.zip.
Dinivin
I think that you should dig a little deeper before making posts like the one above. The fact is that you can get ATI binary drivers for xfree 4.3.0 today right now. Check out the following URL for a download (GLX1_LINUX_X4.3.ZIP):
t i. html
2 f1 8f2e7271a06ab6fca8005df0028&threadid=33685530
http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_a
If you need more information on the driver - check out (may be slow due to slashdotting taking place):
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=87
Now that having been said I hope you'll feel the need to retract your statement regarding the lack of an ATI provided binary driver for xfree 4.3 systems. I also hope that anybody who modded up your statement here gets tagged in meta moderation as there isn't even the slightest grain of truth in your statement.
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
You'll have to pay 20% more for it: Pricewatch currently shows GeForce FX 5800 running for $326 and up, while you won't find the Radeon 9800 for less than $394. So either way you're basically just getting what you pay for.
Again, this proves the superiority of Direct3D over OpenGL and the 'schism' between ATI and NVIDIA. Programming for OpenGL is not compatible, unless you handle all render path for all targets (take time). Such things wouldn't happens if the Dawn demo was Direct3D.This also proves that ATI could write drivers which can handle all the Nvidia OpenGL proprietary extensions (not what they doing actually). They are supporting a couple of extensions , but for example GL_NV_occlusion_query for example, is supported on my Radeon 8500. But I like to see GL_NV_point_sprites for examples (actually you can't do point sprites on ATI (ie particles) under OpenGL, except in Direct3D).Theses students should contact ATI and give the source code of their modifications for the next ATI driver.That, would be really nice and legal. These extensions are approved by OSI anyway. Sadely, for 'policy' reasons, it won't be accepted by ATI (I've already tried that in fact).
----------------
I need a Sino-Logic 16. Sogo-7 data-gloves, a GPL stealth module...
The John had a .plan update before which pointed out that NVidia's card is actually cranking out more precision by default compared to ATI. That could explain why ATI runs faster by default. When he used an NVidia-specific rendering path (where the precision is more or less the same as ATI's), the NVidia card actually ran faster.
Is this somehow related to the discrepancies in this fairy demo?
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
On some other forum (here) they talk about renaming some file to get rid of her erm.. cloths/leaves.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
From what I understand, the FX5800 is a crap card. A review at tom's hardware, however, shows the FX5900 pretty much beats the crap out of anything ATI has right now. I'm sure this will change with the next iteration of hardware, but hey - it always does.
;-)
Either way, we should stop talking smack about nVidia when the best card on the market pretty much depends on when you're looking for it
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
3D graphics are still very much a niche on the PC. This may change with Microsoft's plans to do something like Apple's "Quartz Extreme" in a future version of Windows, but at the moment there are still only a relative handful of games that even require a hardware transformation pipeline (available since 2000), and there are even fewer that do anything at all with programmable shaders (available since 2002). At the same time, the slide in the PC game market continues. A lot of people, including myself, expected it to turn around a bit by now, but no dice. What the PC does have is a couple of games that will be hig with hardcore gamers: Doom 3 and Half Life 2. In a lot of ways, nVidia and ATI are designing cards specifically for those games, and not the perceived 3D market in general.
In short, the race for the high-end video card market is increasingly meaningless, especially with the growing shift away from desktop PCs and the ridiculous power consumption and level of cooling required for high-end cards. If GeForce 2 class chipsets start shipping in an all-in-one, cool running, silent PC, then the real goal has been achieved. Gamers and CG people who want or need to blow $400 on a new video card + 10lb heat sink combo every few months can still do so. That's not a mass market industry any more, though.
It's your own damn fault, really. I recently bought an ATI AllInWonder 8500, which has kickass fully Open Source Linux drivers. I bought this card because some quick research revealed two things: 1. Its 3d performance is more than enough for my needs and 2. Quality drivers are available. Quality drivers will be available for your 9700 Pro, but maybe not for some time.
Personally, I'm not a bit upset with the way ATI handles their Linux users. I much prefer it to NVidia's binary only crap. While the full programming specs may not always be available for the latest and greatest ATI cards, they are available for stuff that's not far behind (http://dri.sourceforge.net/ indicates that Radeon cards up to the 9200 are supported.) Not only are the drivers available, but because the specs are there, the drivers can be ported to any platform, not just those that some commercial interest feels is worth its money. NVidia won't release PowerPC Linux drivers, so I'm stuck doing software OpenGL on my G4. If the G4 had a Radeon I would not have this issue.
ATI really should be commended for making the necessary info available to the DRI and XFree86 developers to write quality open source drivers.
noah
If anybody wants to do something actually useful they can get rid of those frigging fig leaves!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I do not think the NV40 will be out any time soon as they are marketting the NV35 as the card built for Doom III.
ATI on the other hand has the R400 coming down the this holiday season. I've been wowed by the R300/350 based cores and can't wait until laptops start getting Mobility 9600's. ATI could drop the ball of course, just like Nvidia did with the NV30, that would be an interesting race at that point. ATI would have to hope their R450 could beat out the unreleased NV40.
Either way, we can only benefit.
-- taking over the world, we are.
...posting links to a sit with high-res pics of a hot virtual babe, and the server got slashdotted? I'm a-fucking-stounded. Didn't see that coming.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I wouldn't say pitiful (...) You probably lose out somewhat for gaming, but for desktop use it's entirely acceptable.
:-) So any driver that gives a similar performance for a "real" (non-integrated) 3D chipset is indeed pitiful...
even my integrated Mini-ITX video chipset is "entirely acceptable" for desktop. And the whole motherboard is cheaper than one of those 3D cards.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Idiocy would be to rush out and buy an ATI All in Wonder card after reading your post. The only features you might be able to get working are 2D and 3D acceleration, if you're lucky.
BTW, did you browse to the links you copied into your reply? There was never a mention of the 9800 series cards. So what makes you think ATI supports Linux with binary drivers? The fact that they at one time released a binary driver that's compatible with XFree86 4.3.x?
I bought like 5 ATI 7x00 cards and got maybe one of them to work. The rest are worthless POSs until XFree86 improves their drivers. I don't trust that ATI cares about this market and I will never buy one of their cards again.
Don't reply unless you can find a driver that enables the same features as the Win2k/XP drivers. If not then just accept that ATI doesn't support Linux yet.
I can't believe you got modded up. Stupid moderators.
Check out the hair on this NVIDIA shot
and compare with the hair in this shot off the ATI.
The zoom on the NV example isn't quite as close-up, but you can still see how the hair feathers away at the tips, while the hair on the ATI is all jaggy and uniform thickness right out to the tips. Like some kind of Raggedy Anne yarn hair.
So does the ATI not support alpha-to-coverage? Or did these guys making the wrapper just not translate it properly? The hair looks pretty bad without it.
I seem to remember when I saw the NV guys give the demo that they made a point of how expensive the hair was to render. Each hair is a separate GL_LINE_STRIP, there are thousands of them, and if you turn off the complicated blending and smoothing on each one of those little hairs, that could maybe add up to a large savings. I don't know, but I wonder if that would account for most of the speed-up they see running it on ATI.
Still a neat hack. It would really rock to have complete NV<->ATI compatibility dlls that would work for all apps and not just this demo.
While they may have made some slight improvement to one aspect of image quality by improving normalization, which I guess makes the lighting a little more accurate, I really doubt the improvement is all that noticeable. Maybe I could tell given a side-by-side comparison, but I doubt I would notice if only shown a version normalized one way or the other. On the other hand, that ugly hair is pretty obvious. To me that makes the NVIDIA sreen shots look better.
UT(1999) runs faster and better under the NVidia Binary Driver and Linux than it does on the same hardware with Windows. I kid you not, it's true. Since I really don't play any other games on a serious level, I'm a very happy gamer. (I would say "happy camper" but j00 kn0w th4t t3h c4mp3rz r l4m3rz ^_^)
Anyway, compare this to ATI on Linux. UT (again, the original 1999 edition, GOTY version) will not run with hardware acceleration and the DRI drivers with a Rage128 32MB. However, boot the machine with Windows and it is perfectly fine. It won't do the kind of resolution and the kind of framerates I get on my Athlon with a Ti4200 128MB, but it's evolution, baby, as the song goes. The DRI drivers for Rage128 are very, very sad. They also lock up on occasion for no good reason.
This isn't FUD, it's reality. I have no vested interest in NVidia. I don't own any stock, much less NVidia stock. I'm not a zealot. I'm on the pragmatist side. Whatever works.
The NVidia binary drivers work so well under my chosen distro of Linux that I am going to yank this Rage128 card very soon and replace it with a GeForce 4MX 64MB. (lower power consumption and better bang/buck ratio than the rest of the NVidia line) Once I do that, I will be able to run UT as it should run...under full hardware acceleration.
The DRI driver guys have had enough time to make a solid driver for Rage128. I mean, my G3 Blue-and-white came stock with a Rage128 16MB PCI vid card, with ATI Cinema hardware accelerator daughter card. That was bought in 1999. It's 2003. Four years to come up with a decent open-source driver for Rage128, guys! Four years! You would think that they'd get it right by now. And ATI is not supporting such an old card with their binary drivers.
I used to really, really like ATI kit. It's still mega-solid under Windows 2000, and it's pretty much the only game in town for Macs. But in the x86/Linux world, NVidia still just works.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I was excited to try this out last night, and it runs beautifully, but after readon the comment about the hair (how its not shaded to kind of fade out), i also noticed that Sawn has no eyelashes, and aparently does on the nvidia cards. Having seen the demo on boh cards, i cant say technically why the ati does in fact seem to have a nicer overall image (is it the gamma, is it actually what rage 3d mentions?), but nonetheless, this is still a really, really cool hack. Now if we get the hairs back, can have an even match up~
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs