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Well I understand they are using the shaders to do the AA resolve. I'm not sure if they did that or not with the last round of cards.
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2900XT is making a big comeback!
- Thread starter POPEGOLD
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Well I understand they are using the shaders to do the AA resolve. I'm not sure if they did that or not with the last round of cards.
evilcartman
[H]ard|Gawd
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Think about dot pitch. Most larger LCDs essentially draw the same number of pixels per square inch. When you increase the size of the flat panel, all you're really doing is adding rows and columns of pixels -- you aren't increasing the density of the pixels.
Take a native 1680x1050 panel, DP of .258mm, and run a game at 1680x1050 without AA. Obviously, you get jaggies. Play the same game on a native 1920x1200 panel, same dot pitch, at 1920x1200 without AA. Have you decreased aliasing, or made aliased edges less evident? Nope. You're still sitting about 24 inches from the screen, and aliasing is just as present and discernible as it is on the smaller screen, because the dot pitch of both screens is the same. If you compare two identical screen captures from both resolutions, the only difference will be that the 1920x1200 image is larger, which means edges are larger, which may mean that you may find aliasing more pronounced!
Now, you could sit further from the screen, and negate the real advantage of a larger, more immersive screen, or you could turn on anti-aliasing. It's important at any resolution.
Not sure if they were able to run the AA algorithms through the shaders on the X1900's, but I seriously doubt they did anyways, seeing as running AA through shader access is a DX10 introduced ability, its almost as if ATI had to fall back on it when they found something wrong.
evolucion8
Gawd
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Wrong, the Radeon 9700PRO was faster than any FX 5800 Ultra with higher image quality and better performance, the same thing happen with the FX 5900/Ultra and 9800PRO/XT. Then the 6800 Ultra offered a nice bump in image quality, but trailed behind the X8x0 series in image quality and performance, today I was able to play Stalker with static lightning and everything else on high and my friend's 6800 Ultra cannot. The 7800GTX debuted being a very powerful card an then the X1800XT came with higher image quality and better performance outperforming it, then the 7800GTX 512 aka Emergency Edition came and took off the crown of performance until Radeon X1900 series debuted being the fastest and most advanced DX9 single card in the market. Is not until nVidia did an excellent work with the GeForce 8 and now have the top spot in image quality and performance.
evolucion8
Gawd
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Yeah, ATI should just close shop and never make another video card again. Hell we should start an online petition (we all know how those go) to make this happens....Better yet, let's grab our pitch forks and torches and head over to ATi and burn it down. Sheesh, wasn't Ati on top since the 9700Pros until now?
Quite stupid comment, if there's no competition, there's no innovation. Thanks to ATi for besting nVidia since the 9700PRO all the way up to the X1950XT in image quality and performance that now nVidia offers a very good videocard. If isn't because of AMD, intel probably would still selling us Pentium 4 CPU's, we need competition so they lower the prices and offers much better performance and features. Could you imagine Intel being the only one offering CPU's? or nVidia being the only one selling GPU's? Then we would have Pentium 4's and GeForce FX in our systems, terrible!
Godmachine
[H]F Junkie
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I second that , without competition we would still be waiting for Nvidia to figure out how important high quality IQ is to us. Back in the day all Nvidia cared about was FPS ..and more FPS. Ati set a standard of high quality IQ and it basicly became a must so Nvidia began to focus on it as well and in time meet ATI in terms of picture quality. Saying that Ati should pack there bags and stop making cards is infintile and moronic to say the least.
if there was no AMD, then the whole megaherts race between the P3 and the athlon wouldnt have happened, and Intel wouldnt have gone on their mad MHz run with the P4, we would be running some type of cpu evolved from the P3 architecture... oh wait...
similarly, the whole FX fiasco mostly happened because of the feature race between nvidia and Ati, nvidia ended up pulling the short end of the stick to put out a Dx9 card before knowing the specs, if there wasnt any competition, nvidia wouldnt have had to rush out the Fx line, and might have actually pulled off a good first gen Dx9 card
i get your point though, but saying that without competition we would only be getting the worst each company has to offer is ridiculous
This is actually a very good point that I had never really considered before, thanks for bringing this up. It brings back memories of my old CRT, I've been using a widescreen 22" LCD for a while now which despite its size is only 1680x1050, I was used to using 2048x1536 on my old 19" CRT (18" viewable) That dot pitch was tiny and most games simply didnt need AA if you could run them in that resolution, I remember playing GTA3 like that
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the 9700 Pro was definately ahead of the FX range at the time, from what I remember about the 6xxx and 7xxx Nvidia range is that they came to the market first with the top end cards and were unbeaten for ages until ATI finally released much later into the cycle. The 7950GX2 was the single fastest DX9 card on the market and beat all other cards hands down.
ATI might have held some kind of IQ crown for the last few cycles but I wouldn't say they'd outclassed Nvidia with performance, the only time that happens is when Nvidia releases and ATI trail by 6-8 months, in which case you expect greater performance
Yup, some of you guys need bit more sarcasm in your lifes
edit:
About the previous generations, its true that ATI and Nvidia have been neck to neck in performance for a long time, but the ATI IQ superiority made my choice very easy with X800 and X1900 cards. Now that Nvidia has superior performance and better IQ with 8800 the choice is easy again, too bad I lack the money to upgrade
edit:
About the previous generations, its true that ATI and Nvidia have been neck to neck in performance for a long time, but the ATI IQ superiority made my choice very easy with X800 and X1900 cards. Now that Nvidia has superior performance and better IQ with 8800 the choice is easy again, too bad I lack the money to upgrade
evolucion8
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If you forgot something, the P4 architecture took 5 years to be created, that means that even before of the debut of the P3 and AMD Athlon they created that architecture, if Intel took the MHz race thinking that they can win is because they feel like they wanted to. AMD didn't put a gun on their head. It was a decision taken to beat the competition. The P3 architecture was abandoned quite long time ago until their frustration to get the performance made the evolution of it, the Intel Core 2 Duo. The FX also took exactly 5 years, even before the debut of the GeForce 4 Ti launch, ATi launched the R300 6 months earlier than the DX9 launch and worked closely with Microsoft to assimilate the DX9 specs with their card, FX fiasco happened cause like always, nVidia tried to impose a different kind of programming besides DX9 with their line of card called Cg Language, abusing of their empire in that time, and they even failed in the design creating a programmable chip with such low register count. Also bear in mind that the companies have different design teams so while the team A launches an architecture in the market, the other team is creating another one, otherwise it would take quite a long time between cicles. So is not stupid, and the decisions made by a company is by their own, be competitive or step aside.
C2D is a product of the isreali design team who was also responsible for the core duo and both generations of pentium M, which are all P6 derived
while one team was busy trying to save netburst from utter humiliation at the hand of AMDs K8, those guys in Isreal took the P6 architecture (penitum pro evolved to p2 and p3) and made the pentium M, then scaled that into core duo, and made bigtime with the C2D
poor guys who were forced to work on the pentium D
Caffeinated
[H]ard|Gawd
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LMAO This is the post of the year.
(Truthfully, I'm extremely sad to see AMD having issues).
I hope they get it together. Read that article about Intel's effort at DX10, and think about how horrible it would be if all we had to choose from was NVidia costing a fortune and Intel's ... lackluster 3D performance/features (and I was extremely kind when I used the word lackluster!)
The 2900XT isn't completely horrible - it is just flawed. Time to start looking toward the future, and hope for something better. The G80 has been with us now for nearly 8 months...it's getting kind of boring to even discuss it. At least debating whether the 2900XT will improve or not was something different to discuss, but honestly, unless we see some magical drivers that somehow fix the AA/AF problems with it, it is time to move on to something new.
Kind of sad, really. For so long we had "Well, just wait until R600 comes along, and then....!!!" Bummer.
also, as a last note in this thread (unless more of the R600 debate comes about) the current state of C2D had little to do with the original P3 and Pm, those two had an "insite
sorta to the state they came into, but don't play major roles into current status, pretty much cores that is.
edit: with a working AA engine the R600 would probably not be able to best the GTS in current AA level's in certain games, how ever it would be close while providing higher end shadowing levels, which leads me to beleive the core has an unfucntion AA algorithm proporotion of the core, as in it can't prossess its own AA algorithms through supported hardware but through software suppport and then later through the AA it supports through the shaders
but that could be the coors light speeking
sorta to the state they came into, but don't play major roles into current status, pretty much cores that is.
edit: with a working AA engine the R600 would probably not be able to best the GTS in current AA level's in certain games, how ever it would be close while providing higher end shadowing levels, which leads me to beleive the core has an unfucntion AA algorithm proporotion of the core, as in it can't prossess its own AA algorithms through supported hardware but through software suppport and then later through the AA it supports through the shaders
but that could be the coors light speeking
Ugh... no. The NV40 did NOT have horrible initial drivers. I used to own a 6800GT aka free Ultra and while AF was not as good as ATI's x850 PE, it was way cheaper (and available). The ATI 9000 series had the worst initial drivers.
we aren't even talking about the R300's, although i don't seem to remember them staying bad past that initial month of the launch.
ok so you say it didn't have horrible drivers at launch? how about when [H] tested the X800pro/XT vs the Ultra? you know the Pro was set up to go against the 6800GT? Well.... I'll let their results show you just how bad their drivers were.
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjExLDQsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
oh yea, I love the part where they did the apples to apples in the end where even in one test (although unplayable) the 9800XT BEATS the 6800ultra.
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjExLDgsLDEyMA==
Yea I know this series of launches pretty well, after the R300 domination, I went out a week after launch and was able to buy the X800XT for $50 over MSRP (alot of people did... not with the XTPE), sold it in favor of the Pro to unlock it and have fun with it, fried it when my PSU failed, then bought a 6800GT later on and got above Ultra speeds.
ok so you say it didn't have horrible drivers at launch? how about when [H] tested the X800pro/XT vs the Ultra? you know the Pro was set up to go against the 6800GT? Well.... I'll let their results show you just how bad their drivers were.
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjExLDQsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
oh yea, I love the part where they did the apples to apples in the end where even in one test (although unplayable) the 9800XT BEATS the 6800ultra.
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjExLDgsLDEyMA==
Yea I know this series of launches pretty well, after the R300 domination, I went out a week after launch and was able to buy the X800XT for $50 over MSRP (alot of people did... not with the XTPE), sold it in favor of the Pro to unlock it and have fun with it, fried it when my PSU failed, then bought a 6800GT later on and got above Ultra speeds.