ATI's Radeon X1900GT On Test

An anonymous reader writes "ATI's Radeon X1800XT reached end of life last month and the company announced its replacement on May 5th: Radeon X1900GT. Bit-Tech has put a pair of retail Radeon X1900GT cards from Connect3D and Sapphire to the test in a range of real-world benchmarks to find out how it matches up to NVIIDA's 7900 GT."

Comments

Need more competitors

[BadAnalogyGuy]

What the video card industry needs is more competitors. Not low end stuff like what TI and Intel offer, but beefy video cards with lots of horsepower. The complaint is that there aren't any good, open drivers for Linux for these things, and a lot of that is simply because there are only two companies out there and they don't have to cater to anyone but the Windows gamers.

I'm sure the benchmarks are very impressive, after all, they were pretty impressive last time the tests were run. But now that we've got the "quantity" in these cards, it's high time we got some of that Open Source "quality" along with it.

nVidia

[everphilski]

nVidia's linux drivers are very solid. They aren't open - get over it - but a given nVidia card in a Linux box has the capability to do everything that a nVidia card in a windows box can do. The linux drivers and windows drivers share the same codebase, sans kernel hooks, etc. using their unified driver architecture.

Unfortunately the same cannot be same for ATI. ATI drivers are flaky and as a developer features are missing under Linux that exist in Windows.

Re:nVidia

[Kjella]

So goddamn what? Here's a cluestick for you - Linux can do a helluva lot more then windows.

No, it can't. Perhaps it could, but that's like saying GIMP could do a helluva lot more than Photoshop. if only someone programmed and released it. nVidia chose not to release their code, and wheather they should or shouldn't out of business reasons is another question but what should oblige them to do it? Nothing. So without them, you wouldn't have anything of nVidias code at all. Same goes for the specs. Would you prefered it if there was no driver at all? Because thst is the alternative.

A new and better graphics card is coming out...

[digitaldc]

...in about 5...4...3...2...1 seconds...NOW!

And it blows away every other one out there, so do I just wait for the next one or buy???
I never know what to do. I think I'll stick with my Voodoo 3.

Pay the bills, get the support.

[Shivetya]

First your not going to get open source driver availability just by having more competitors. Your going to get that when the market is sufficiently appealing enough to warrant the attention of the makers of the video cards.

Nothing is wrong in accepting drivers from the companies even if they do not provide the source. If you don't like the terms then by all means go write them yourself or use ones written by others. What irks me the most is how so many now suddenly feel entitled to having code provided to them when it used to be they would have rather written the support themselves or from someone else in the community.

These companies cater to Windows gamers because they are the market. They pay the bills so they get supported.

Re:How often do you upgrade?

[amliebsch]

I'm pretty hard-core; I buy many PC games and play them often. I'm still milking a 9800 Pro. For almost everything, it works Good Enough.

Why? Because We Like You...

[Beefslaya]

Video card benchmarks are like the cock measuring contests of the Geek world.

I suppose if my entire life revolved around the PC, and games were my main form of entertainment (besides shooting the neighbors dog with a pellet gun for crapping on my lawn), then I guess 300-700 dollars for a video card would be great.

I got a Nvidia 6800OC from Woot for 59 bucks...plays all todays games great. Sure...not at 100000x6800000 resolution, or on the side of a skyscraper, but good enough to whip some 12 year old punks ass on your local WAN server. So what if I miss a couple of particles. My lazy eyes can't even dicipher them.

But if it's your bag, then go for it. Just be ready for the next card from Nvidia in the next 10 minutes.

Re:Who fired marketing?

[Xichekolas]

Sweet, now that I understand the sneaky Roman Numeral system that ATI has going... I can predict even further into the future...

I could upgrade from my vanilla GeForce3, but I'm holding out for the GSpot XXX6900... which will be released right after ATI and Nvidia merge in an orgy of Wall Street investment banking...