ATI Comeback?

[Megalomaniac]

And it took them 4 years to do "just" this.

yeah, scary..

dont forget economies of scale.
nvidia in taiwan (or where ever it is)
ati is in canada.
the cost to run an office and to hire competent people is worlds apart.
nvidia can get away with much cheaper labor.

that said.
if we dont support ati now.. who will step in to stop the nvidia behemoth from becoming the slow M$ of video cards

competition breeds innovation, just like intel CEO has orders to "crush" AMD, so does nvidia want to dominate the market. but how many here remember the stagnate nature of CPUs when intel was the undisputed top dog (think P1 days)?

who will step in in AMD/Ati are out? IBM? Sony? name a big chip manufacturer.
I wish Ati would come out with something worth while, but if it has to go, them AMD will also

oh well, thats business

now heres some irony: Apple uses intel chips and AMD(ati) graphics cards....
what's good for apple is good for intel, but for amd also.

 

[Dan_D]

And it took them 4 years to do "just" this.

Maybe, but NVIDIA was very competitive with their 6-series on up. The FX series was really the only failure and NVIDIA was only behind for about 2 years.

 

[number69]

People seem to have short term memories. Allow me to take everyone down to memory lane again.

NVIDIA since almost the start has been kicking everyone's ass. In most cases badly. ATI actually being competitive was the fluke. Until the Radeon 8500 they weren't even a real consideration for any gamer who knew what they were doing when it came to hardware. Even then their drivers sucked. It wasn't until they bought ArtX and brought out the mighty ATI Radeon 9700Pro that things changed. They milked that architecture until they couldn't milk it anymore. NVIDIA was just caught off guard by ATI. Since the introduction of the Geforce 6 series that hasn't happened again. Sure ATI has been competitive here and there since that time but they are always late to market and the next greatest thing from NVIDIA is usually just around the corner once ATI does release something. This has no doubt hurt ATI's sales a great deal. Even when they do good like they did with the 3870X2 they still were only right about on par with the 8800Ultra and the 9800GX2 wasn't that far behind. Many people including myself who considered the 3870X2 did the smart thing and waited a few weeks or so to see what NVIDIA was going to release. I think the bulk of potential 3870X2 buyers did just that.

NVIDIA just put things back the way they were before the 9700Pro was released. That's all.

I agree 100%. Problem is when people agree with a statement such as your they get labled fanboys by the ATI diehards. But Nvidia has been pretty much on top since the start and it's a fact. The FX series was a rough spot but the GF256, GF2, GF3, GF4, GF6, GF7, GF8 and GF9 were and are all very good.

Have to tip my hat to Dan, he tells it like it is.

 

[number69]

And it took them 4 years to do "just" this.

What? GF6 did "just" this when it launched in April 2004, 4 years ago.

 

[brucedeluxe169]

And it took them 4 years to do "just" this.

agreed, ATI had a better competitive run than ppl give them credit for....

and you have to remember, the current ATI architecture is surely no Nvidia 5xxx series... its fairly decent....

just because it isnt the best anymore doesnt mean it is trash... ATI are certainly competing better even today than they did in the pre 8500 days...

 

[Deleted member 174368]

What? GF6 did "just" this when it launched in April 2004, 4 years ago.

Err, no it didn't? A quick search shows even [H] considered the X800 series better than the 6800's with initial reviews. And during the 7800/X1800 generation there were barely any noticeable performance differences, until the X1900 refresh which brought the crown back to ATI.

 

[rennyf77]

Err, no it didn't? A quick search shows even [H] considered the X800 series better than the 6800's with initial reviews. And during the 7800/X1800 generation there were barely any noticeable performance differences, until the X1900 refresh which brought the crown back to ATI.

just a few clearifications. x800xt's did out perform 6800 ultras but the nvidia's were more readily available. the pe was even harder to find, nearly non existent really. the x850xt pretty much fixed the scarcity issue of the x800xt, but lacked sm3 which was actually employed by a number of aaa titles (far cry 1.3, splinter cell chaos theory, hl2: lost coast). the x1800xt 512 was neck and neck with the 7800gtx 256 but came out 6 months behind the nvidia card and lasted only 2 months before it was supplanted by the x1900xt/xtx. the 7900gtx and the x1900xt/xtx were good at doing different things. the ati's produced better aniso by virtue of the hq aniso feature but the nvidia's were better at producing transparency aa. unfortunately, the nvidia's weren't able to do aa and hdr at the same time. the x1950xtx was far and away a better product than the nvidia 7950gx2. no contest.

 

[Obi_Kwiet]

It's kind of sad. They've been neck in neck since this generation, and now with out any real competition, we've been stuck with this generation for two years. It's stupid.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

It's kind of sad. They've been neck in neck since this generation, and now with out any real competition, we've been stuck with this generation for two years. It's stupid.

Then hopefully ATi's next-gen is a smash like the rumors say. Then again, R600 was purported to be the shit (a GeForce 8800 killer), and fell short of its expectations.

 

[Nahu1337]

Woah. Two lines of text yesterday, and I come back to 3 pages of stuff! I just really hope ATI can catch up with the next generation.. Gotta upgrade this X1900 sometime!

 

[evolucion8]

Not really. It depends on what you're comparing it with. It beat out the GF3 (sometimes), but the GF4 ate it alive.

The hardware was superior, it has a better feature set, higher precision, better quality anti aliasing, it also had inferior AF compared to the GeForce 3 and 4, the GeForce 4 Ti is just a sligh massaged GeForce 3 with more performance, both had almost identical feature set.

 

[Megalomaniac]

just a few clearifications. x800xt's did out perform 6800 ultras but the nvidia's were more readily available. the pe was even harder to find, nearly non existent really. the x850xt pretty much fixed the scarcity issue of the x800xt, but lacked sm3 which was actually employed by a number of aaa titles (far cry 1.3, splinter cell chaos theory, hl2: lost coast). the x1800xt 512 was neck and neck with the 7800gtx 256 but came out 6 months behind the nvidia card and lasted only 2 months before it was supplanted by the x1900xt/xtx. the 7900gtx and the x1900xt/xtx were good at doing different things. the ati's produced better aniso by virtue of the hq aniso feature but the nvidia's were better at producing transparency aa. unfortunately, the nvidia's weren't able to do aa and hdr at the same time. the x1950xtx was far and away a better product than the nvidia 7950gx2. no contest.

i also remember a card that labeled as a "lawn mower" yes, thats right... a card so hot, that it needed an an godly heat sink with a truly super loud fan to cool it...
now which nvidia card was that......?

 

[evolucion8]

just a few clearifications. x800xt's did out perform 6800 ultras but the nvidia's were more readily available. the pe was even harder to find, nearly non existent really. the x850xt pretty much fixed the scarcity issue of the x800xt, but lacked sm3 which was actually employed by a number of aaa titles (far cry 1.3, splinter cell chaos theory, hl2: lost coast). the x1800xt 512 was neck and neck with the 7800gtx 256 but came out 6 months behind the nvidia card and lasted only 2 months before it was supplanted by the x1900xt/xtx. the 7900gtx and the x1900xt/xtx were good at doing different things. the ati's produced better aniso by virtue of the hq aniso feature but the nvidia's were better at producing transparency aa. unfortunately, the nvidia's weren't able to do aa and hdr at the same time. the x1950xtx was far and away a better product than the nvidia 7950gx2. no contest.

The scarcity issue happened more with the first batch of the X800XT PE, the X800XT was slighly more easier to find, the differences between Shader Model 3.0 and Shader Model 2.0B used on the R4X0 is that SM3.0 has dynamic branching which can boost the performance using shaders of unlimited lenght, there's nothing that SM3.0 can do that SM 2.0b can't (HDR is not a Shader Model thing) even there are brand new games currently released that are optimized for 2.0b like Gears of War, Timeshift, Crysis, Bioshock etc, also we all know that the GeForce 6/7 terrible sluggish dynamic branching performance which practically impaired the usage of Shader Model 3.0 as a performance booster in their architecture. The X1900 debuted three months later after the debut of the R520 architecture, and there's little difference between the X1900XTX series and the X1950XTX series in terms of performance (The R5X0 architecture is not bandwidth starved so it didn't show huge gains in performance using faster memory technologies in the X1950 series), the X19X0 series simply gained ground in performance because their design was more futureproof and had more shader power and more efficient architecture in general.

 

[{NG}Fidel]

the gddr5 thing i've only heard in passing with reference to r700, but i wouldn't be surprised. as for having to run huge amounts of raw clock, huge clocks mean huge heat, huge clocks also mean huge inefficiencies. ati may beat nvidia to a smaller manufacturing process, but the fact that nvidia continues to use older manufacturing processes while keeping clock speeds and heat in check, and all the while producing faster and faster gpus, says a lot about nvidia's engineering prowess. it also says a lot about ati's engineering prowess.

The 2900/38x0 vs 8800 doesnt match what your talking about. Fact is the 2900 output massive amounts of heat and took huge amounts of power. It was a failure all around and there was no possible pro to buying one. Clock wise this gen is hard to nail down. Nvidia has very high shader clocks with a low core clock and ATi has one clock speed for both those things. ATi has had faster memory but that doesnt mean ineffciencies it just means faster memory. The 38x0 has a much lower power draw and heat output than its competitors in the same price range. So I dont know what your heat and clock speed talk is about other than in refrance to the 2900.

My Views
WARNING MY VIEWS
X800 vs 6800 = X800 wins The 6800 couldnt use the only advantage it had to any real affect and SM3.0 is quickly changing to SM4.0

7800 vs X1800 = Tie 7800 came out first but had terrible image Quality and only equal performance. The x1800 came out late and so its a tie.

7900 vs X1900 = X1900 wins better performance better IQ more future proof.

8800 vs 2900/3800 = 8800 destroys the competion and for the first time in a long time the performance king is 100% obvious with no objections.

Really I didnt see any good Nvidia products other than the 8800 and 6800 both of which I thought were great cards. The X1800 and X1900 I feel were the superior products and the current ATI lineup is lackluster at best.

This ATi doom and despair thought that fills peoples mind is quite frankly, rubbish.
I am going to bet this next Gen ati card takes the performance crown back to ATi.

 

[Dan_D]

.
My Views
WARNING MY VIEWS
X800 vs 6800 = X800 wins The 6800 couldnt use the only advantage it had to any real affect and SM3.0 is quickly changing to SM4.0

The reality of it all is that it wasn't that simple. The Geforce 6-series supported SLI and as a result the fastest systems were Athlon 64's with nForce 4 motherboards combined with dual 6800GT's or Ultra's in SLI. The Radeon was faster than a single 6800Ultra, but not two of them by any means. SLI scaling seemed better back then even if it was a bit more quirky than it is today. Lets also not forget that the Geforce 6 series could be had for less money or offered more performance for your money at almost every price point offered in the day. Let's also not forget that ATI's availability was a fucking joke. Even if you wanted to buy an X800XT-PE you were shit out of luck most of the time.

Lets also not forget their shitty Crossfire implementation of the day. Those cards were limited to 60Hz and 1600x1200 MAX resolution at the time. That's pretty sad. Don't even get me started on the whole master card BS either. Crossfire was a hack job plain and simple. And it was a year late.

.7800 vs X1800 = Tie 7800 came out first but had terrible image Quality and only equal performance. The x1800 came out late and so its a tie.

I wouldn't say the image quality was terrible. Certainly ATI had some advantages there, but again the X1800 was late to the party and the availability of them was poor though better than X800 series availability.

.7900 vs X1900 = X1900 wins better performance better IQ more future proof.

Granted. The X1900 was a better card but again the 7900GTX had been around for some time before the X1900XT came out. Even then the 7950GX2 was faster than the X1950XTX although more expensive. Quad-SLI sucked and the driver support for the card in Vista sucked as well. But again, it isn't that simple.

.8800 vs 2900/3800 = 8800 destroys the competion and for the first time in a long time the performance king is 100% obvious with no objections.

For the first time there is no difference in image quality but it isn't the first time NVIDIA has decimated the competition. Lets not forget that until Vista came around (image quality not withstanding) ATI drivers were pretty bad. I've owned a number of both cards and I always had more game compatibility problems with ATI cards than NVIDIA cards. The Catalyst Control Center sucks balls and the fact that it is a .NET application is apalling.

.Really I didnt see any good Nvidia products other than the 8800 and 6800 both of which I thought were great cards. The X1800 and X1900 I feel were the superior products and the current ATI lineup is lackluster at best.

I disagree. Again it isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be. The Geforce 6 series had SLI and superior drivers. The 7800GTX 256MB beat the X1800 to market by a long shot. The 7800GTX 512MB was faster and the 7900GTX beat the X1900 to market and wasn't that far behind it. The X1950XTX was a great card but the 7950GX2 was faster. However the tables turned and its' drivers blew goats.

.This ATi doom and despair thought that fills peoples mind is quite frankly, rubbish.
I am going to bet this next Gen ati card takes the performance crown back to ATi.

Don't count on it. I don't think it is going to happen anytime soon.

I bought video cards in every single generation mentioned above. I had an X800Pro, 6800GT AGP, dual 6800GT's in SLI, dual 78000GTX's in SLI, dual 7900GTX's in SLI and dual X1950XTX's in Crossfire. I've also owned dual X1950Pro's in Crossfire and I had a number of X1800XT and X1900XT cards on my test bench for review purposes while doing motherboard testing.

During that time I made many buying decisions and as I recall ATI being late to the party was the reason I went with NVIDIA most of the time. Even if the ATI products were better they were late and as such weren't worth the money over their NVIDIA counterparts as I had already purchased the NVIDIA products. They offered product when I needed to buy it. The one time I went with ATI was with the X1950XTX's. I was given my 30" monitor as a present by my girlfriend and my 7900GTX's weren't up to the task of running games at 2560x1600. So I went with the X1950XTX's because the 7950GX2's were so poor in Quad-SLI and the driver issues with the 7950GX2's abounded without Quad-SLI. Also a single 7950GX2 wasn't powerful enough to handle 2560x1600 in most of the newer games at the time. The X1950XTX's did a decent job in that the games were playable. Even so I had a few oddball titles that didn't run on the ATI hardware at all, but for the most part I felt they were the superior choice. That and I was able to use a i975x board instead of the nForce 4 Intel Edition motherboards that were available at the time which were far from impressive. It wasn't until the 680i SLI and 8800GTX came out that I switched back to NVIDIA's SLI.

 

[pxc]

This ATi doom and despair thought that fills peoples mind is quite frankly, rubbish.

Since AMD took over, ATI sales dropped by about 1/2 and still haven't recovered. Nvidia is eating ATI's lunch on the discrete mobile and desktop markets. Projects are slipping on the roadmap because the owner is doing horribly financially. A "doom and despair" description could easily fit the situation.

The big projected performance increase for R700 needs to be taken in context with the current performance deficit, as pointed out in another post above. If nvidia did nothing, of course ATI would take the performance crown. I wouldn't count on that. nvidia could drop the ball as it has rarely done, or ATI could drop the ball again as it more often does. Arguably since the chief of ATI resigned a few months ago, I'd bet on the latter.

Things are not going well on an AMD managed ATI. The foolish focus on "market share at any cost" (read: very little gain and billions in losses) and something cut down and delayed (Fusion) are just public symptoms of the mismanagement.

My opinion is that at best ATI may get closer to performance parity, but it would take at least another cycle (18 months) to come back with something capable of taking the lead if both companies execute without major errors this coming cycle.

 

[Dan_D]

Since AMD took over, ATI sales dropped by about 1/2 and still haven't recovered. Nvidia is eating ATI's lunch on the discrete mobile and desktop markets. Projects are slipping on the roadmap because the owner is doing horribly financially. A "doom and despair" description could easily fit the situation.

The big projected performance increase for R700 needs to be taken in context with the current performance deficit, as pointed out in another post above. If nvidia did nothing, of course ATI would take the performance crown. I wouldn't count on that. nvidia could drop the ball as it has rarely done, or ATI could drop the ball again as it more often does. Arguably since the chief of ATI resigned a few months ago, I'd bet on the latter.

Things are not going well on an AMD managed ATI. The foolish focus on "market share at any cost" (read: very little gain and billions in losses) and something cut down and delayed (Fusion) are just public symptoms of the mismanagement.

AMD hasn't had the best financial track record by any means at any point in its' history. That goes without saying. Anyone I don't know why anyone ever would have thought that AMD would manage them better than they managed themselves.

 

[NEVERLIFT]

The Catalyst Control Center sucks balls and the fact that it is a .NET application is apalling.

QFT

sig material

 

[rennyf77]

i also remember a card that labeled as a "lawn mower" yes, thats right... a card so hot, that it needed an an godly heat sink with a truly super loud fan to cool it...
now which nvidia card was that......?

maybe you should have read the post i was responding to.
thanx.

 

[Dan_D]

i also remember a card that labeled as a "lawn mower" yes, thats right... a card so hot, that it needed an an godly heat sink with a truly super loud fan to cool it...
now which nvidia card was that......?

That's probably the 5900Ultra dust buster you are referring to. In any case ATI has done the same thing. The X850XT-PE fan was pretty bad and the X1800XT's were horrid as was the X1900XT. The X1950XTX was much better though.

 

[Dan_D]

QFT

sig material

I'd also like to point out that while I don't particularly care for the ATI CCC it isn't as bad as it used to be. I'm not a fan of .NET and the main reason that bothered me is because under XP it used to take forever for the CCC to pop up after you tried to bring it up. Sometimes even 1 or 2 minutes after you clicked on it. That was horrid to experience. ATI claimed that things would improve once Vista came out and they were right. Their Vista drivers are FAR and away better than what they had under XP and this still remains the case. Though I still prefer NVIDIA's drivers myself.

Though the NVIDIA Control Panel loses features and gets more bloated all the time. It is getting pretty bad as well.

 

[Niceone]

That's probably the 5900Ultra dust buster you are referring to. In any case ATI has done the same thing. The X850XT-PE fan was pretty bad and the X1800XT's were horrid as was the X1900XT. The X1950XTX was much better though.

..or 5800 ultra?

 

[NEVERLIFT]

I'd also like to point out that while I don't particularly care for the ATI CCC it isn't as bad as it used to be. I'm not a fan of .NET and the main reason that bothered me is because under XP it used to take forever for the CCC to pop up after you tried to bring it up. Sometimes even 1 or 2 minutes after you clicked on it. That was horrid to experience. ATI claimed that things would improve once Vista came out and they were right. Their Vista drivers are FAR and away better than what they had under XP and this still remains the case. Though I still prefer NVIDIA's drivers myself.

Though the NVIDIA Control Panel loses features and gets more bloated all the time. It is getting pretty bad as well.

I agree man.

And the CCC has came along way... just wish they would give proper support now for the HD 3850 AGP cards with their drivers.

 

[Silus]

agreed, ATI had a better competitive run than ppl give them credit for....

and you have to remember, the current ATI architecture is surely no Nvidia 5xxx series... its fairly decent....

just because it isnt the best anymore doesnt mean it is trash... ATI are certainly competing better even today than they did in the pre 8500 days...

How is it "fairly decent", when it was 6 months late and could only compete with NVIDIA's third and fourth in line, the 8800 GTS 320 and 640 ?

And it's not remotely "fairly decent" when you consider that a $450 card (at launch), couldn't handle AA properly, while consuming more power and generating more heat, than the competition.

That's a flop, a failure or whatever you want to call it. If AMD/ATI wants to stay in the high-end market, they need to compete with NVIDIA's high-end offerings. Honestly and as I've said in other AMD related threads, I think they should focus on mid-low end stuff, until they are back on their feet. This is the market that generates more money and the HD 3800 series cover that part very well. When they are better financially, they can come back to the high-end GPUs.

 

[Silus]

Granted. The X1900 was a better card but again the 7900GTX had been around for some time before the X1900XT came out. Even then the 7950GX2 was faster than the X1950XTX although more expensive. Quad-SLI sucked and the driver support for the card in Vista sucked as well. But again, it isn't that simple.

You mean the 7800 GTX 256/512 was around for some time before the X1900 XT/XTX ?

The 7900 GT/GTX were launched after the X1900 series from ATI and the GX2 launched before the X1950 XTX.

 

[evolucion8]

[QUOTE=Dan_D;"The reality of it all is that it wasn't that simple. The Geforce 6-series supported SLI and as a result the fastest systems were Athlon 64's with nForce 4 motherboards combined with dual 6800GT's or Ultra's in SLI. The Radeon was faster than a single 6800Ultra, but not two of them by any means. SLI scaling seemed better back then even if it was a bit more quirky than it is today. Lets also not forget that the Geforce 6 series could be had for less money or offered more performance for your money at almost every price point offered in the day. Let's also not forget that ATI's availability was a fucking joke. Even if you wanted to buy an X800XT-PE you were shit out of luck most of the time."

GeForce 6 costed the same as the X800 at that time, since the performance in that time between those cards wasn't that much, nVidia dind't need to drop prices to remain competitive.

"Lets also not forget their shitty Crossfire implementation of the day. Those cards were limited to 60Hz and 1600x1200 MAX resolution at the time. That's pretty sad. Don't even get me started on the whole master card BS either. Crossfire was a hack job plain and simple. And it was a year late."

Their Crossfire implementation was a joke, and was able to beat the GeForce 6 at 1600x1200 with all filters on.

"I wouldn't say the image quality was terrible. Certainly ATI had some advantages there, but again the X1800 was late to the party and the availability of them was poor though better than X800 series availability. "

The image quality was terrible, it's texture shimmering is patthetic, the X1800 debuted late, but not as late as the HD 2900XT

"Granted. The X1900 was a better card but again the 7900GTX had been around for some time before the X1900XT came out. Even then the 7950GX2 was faster than the X1950XTX although more expensive. Quad-SLI sucked and the driver support for the card in Vista sucked as well. But again, it isn't that simple. "

Plain wrong, the X1900 debuted three months later after the debut of the X1800, in other words, the X1900 debuted in january 24 2006 and the 7900GTX debuted in march 9 2006, the 7950GX2 in some games was faster, but generally it was lackluster due to driver issues, and never took off, that card was litteraly a flop.

"For the first time there is no difference in image quality but it isn't the first time NVIDIA has decimated the competition. Lets not forget that until Vista came around (image quality not withstanding) ATI drivers were pretty bad. I've owned a number of both cards and I always had more game compatibility problems with ATI cards than NVIDIA cards. The Catalyst Control Center sucks balls and the fact that it is a .NET application is apalling. "

ATi drivers has been competitive with nVidia drivers since the debut of the Radeon 9700PRO, both companies have good drivers (Both have weak and strong points) CCC sucks, but nVidia control panel sucks even more, slow, sluggish and counterintituive.

"I disagree. Again it isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be. The Geforce 6 series had SLI and superior drivers. The 7800GTX 256MB beat the X1800 to market by a long shot. The 7800GTX 512MB was faster and the 7900GTX beat the X1900 to market and wasn't that far behind it. The X1950XTX was a great card but the 7950GX2 was faster. However the tables turned and its' drivers blew goats."

The geForce 6 drivers were as good as the X800 drivers, a X19X0XTX card was able to outperform the 7800GT/GTX 256MB in SLI due to their lack of shader power, specially in newer games. The X1800 card didn't took off much, the 7800GTX 512 was a phantom edition created to steal the thunder of the "faster than the 7800GTX 256" Radeon X1800XT, that GeForcce was hard to find as the X800XT PE. The X1900XTX debuted 2 months before the 7900GTX, and was a great success to ATi. 7950GX2 was a flop.

Talking without even investigating and being biased toward a makes you look bad.

 

[Silus]

Talking without even investigating and being biased toward a makes you look bad.

No bias there, since it's mostly correct (apart from a mistake I had lready corrected). The initial Crossfire launch was a mess. Not only was it not as good as SLI, except for one game or two:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8826/1

But it was also vaporware:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/8846

Remember that Crossfire was done with a master card and those cards were almost impossible to get. Also remember that ATI "laughed" at NVIDIA, with their idea of SLI, but quickly created their own tech to support multi-cards, when they saw how successful SLI was. Stick with facts.

 

[number69]

ATi drivers has been competitive with nVidia drivers since the debut of the Radeon 9700PRO

ATI's drivers got better since the debut of the 9700Pro but Nvidia still has better drivers IMO, and that's always been the case. Yes I have installed many cards from both brands in many different machines.

 

[Megalomaniac]

this topic is still going? oh well....

crossfire was a misfire when it first appeared. Ati does have long and painful driver development cycles, or so it seems. to many cards get good support too late, by that time nvidia has something out that can compete or dominate

both manufacturers have had lawn mower cards, thats just sad.

i like the new initiatives now to make them cooler (at least it seems like they are doing that)

it looks like the manufacturers are going more and more into small multicore designs.
if this trend keeps up, sli and crossfire will become the norm.

they just might come out with a card with 4 cores on it, following the cpu market.
maybe not in this year, but it sort of looks like it will be cheaper and better to make a single card out of 2 cheap chips, (cheap as in cost of manufacturing) then to make a single massive GPU which is the king.

Mass production plays into the hands of the X2 and X3 style cards.
you make a single chip. entry level is 1 chip card, advanced level is 2 gpus, GTX ULTRA XTX whatever is 3 of them.
SLI or Crossfire as needed

 

[Dan_D]

You mean the 7800 GTX 256/512 was around for some time before the X1900 XT/XTX ?

The 7900 GT/GTX were launched after the X1900 series from ATI and the GX2 launched before the X1950 XTX.

Were they? I don't recall that being the case, but you could be correct. In that case I probably stuck with SLI for no other reason than the expensive dual socket Opteron board I was running at the time supported SLI. I could have sworn the X1900XT's came out after the 7900GTX. Oh well. I can't be right all the time.

 

[vict0r]

sorry for all the AMD/ATI fans .. I am one myself
am still runing my s939 Toledo x2 4200+ .. i love this pc to death..

but i think that AMD and ATI deserve to go to hell , who do they think they are? They come up with bullshit hardware and think that we will accept these things?

F*ck you AMD , only good thing you have now is that 5000+ BE @ $80+ bucks lol !!

I could build a pc based on that for my mom or as a spare pc but for the rest, i doubt ill buy an AMD , they really have to come up with something new...

 

[lucky777]

Gee, the next generation of video cards beat out the previous generation....Nobody saw that coming...

Well you do realize the 8500 was competing with the GeForce 3 series for a period of time, right? In fact, it was still its main competition after the release of the GeForce 4 because it couldn't keep up. The 8500 was released near the end of the GF3 lifecycle and near the release of the GF4, but it couldn't compete with the higher end GF 4 Ti series, so the GF3 was its main competition (Nvidia delayed the GF4 Ti 4200 to sell off GF3 TI stock). Even then I was being quite generous to the 8500, the GF3 still beat it in most benchmarks and games.

 

[Silus]

sorry for all the AMD/ATI fans .. I am one myself
am still runing my s939 Toledo x2 4200+ .. i love this pc to death..

but i think that AMD and ATI deserve to go to hell , who do they think they are? They come up with bullshit hardware and think that we will accept these things?

F*ck you AMD , only good thing you have now is that 5000+ BE @ $80+ bucks lol !!

I could build a pc based on that for my mom or as a spare pc but for the rest, i doubt ill buy an AMD , they really have to come up with something new...

I don't think that's fair really. Even though not having the best products on the market (far from it), they are still forcing Intel and NVIDIA to lower their prices, which basically means they are receiving less profits from their products, even though they are having financial problems. Obviously they know that no one will buy their products if they were at the same price as the competition's faster offerings, but still, they are doing their best to stay alive, while actually providing some competition in the low-mid end range.

 

[lucky777]

The hardware was superior, it has a better feature set, higher precision, better quality anti aliasing, it also had inferior AF compared to the GeForce 3 and 4, the GeForce 4 Ti is just a sligh massaged GeForce 3 with more performance, both had almost identical feature set.

Yes, ATI has always had better image quality than Nvidia, they probably still do today, but I think the GF 3/4 hardware was better.

GF3 was a 240Core@ 1:4:8:8
GF4 was a 300Core@ 2:4:8:8
8500 was a 275Core@ 2:4:8:4

I guess you could argue that it was better than GF3 (I wouldn't), but not the GF4.

 

[Megalomaniac]

Yes, ATI has always had better image quality than Nvidia, they probably still do today, but I think the GF 3/4 hardware was better.

GF3 was a 240Core@ 1:4:8:8
GF4 was a 300Core@ 2:4:8:8
8500 was a 275Core@ 2:4:8:4

I guess you could argue that it was better than GF3 (I wouldn't), but not the GF4.

those numbers look so small now....

 

[Silus]

Yes, ATI has always had better image quality than Nvidia, they probably still do today, but I think the GF 3/4 hardware was better.

GF3 was a 240Core@ 1:4:8:8
GF4 was a 300Core@ 2:4:8:8
8500 was a 275Core@ 2:4:8:4

I guess you could argue that it was better than GF3 (I wouldn't), but not the GF4.

They don't, ever since NVIDIA launched G80.

 

[Pilot53]

ATI's drivers got better since the debut of the 9700Pro but Nvidia still has better drivers IMO, and that's always been the case. Yes I have installed many cards from both brands in many different machines.

No way man, the one thing ati has is stable quality drivers, at least more so than nvidia. Thats the whole reason i bought a 3870x2, because nvidia drivers constantly crash FSX.

 

[Un4given]

No way man, the one thing ati has is stable quality drivers, at least more so than nvidia. Thats the whole reason i bought a 3870x2, because nvidia drivers constantly crash FSX.

I tend to agree. I've had more driver issues with my 8800GT than I did with my X800XT AIW and X1950XTX.

 

[number69]

No way man, the one thing ati has is stable quality drivers, at least more so than nvidia. Thats the whole reason i bought a 3870x2, because nvidia drivers constantly crash FSX.

Wow, you don't see people saying that frequently...I don't agree at all. ATI has been famous for years for buggy drivers, granted the user can be at fault many times but from my experiences Nvidia has superior drivers. General opinion over the years has been the same. But I don't want to get into a battle over this topic so if you like ATI's drivers better then that's all that counts for you.

 

[bfellow]

One thing I found consistently about ATI is the buggy drivers. Most of these have been fixed only recently: aspect ratio, powerplay bug, 3dmark numbers lowered, crossfireX missing, white square, terrible AA performance, DirectX 10.1 support, and 7.12 giving me BSOD's. Other than that my ATI cards are running great.