ATI Repeating History

rdytorave

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 4, 2002
Messages
188
I remember long ago when ATI had about 20 different video cards to choose from. Every card had a similar name and the end-result was that ATI confused the crud out of it's customers. Driver compatibility became a big issue not long after. Is history repeating itself? What are your opinions of ATI's recent fragmentation of their product lineup? Are the new 850 series video cards going to be good or bad for the consumer? How diverse is ATI's product lineup?

In my opinion, with the recent GPU yield problems of the X800 XT PE, a more diverse video card lineup drives up the cost of production which transfers over to the consumer. ATI may be in more financial trouble than most people are aware. Despite the successes of the 9500 - 9800 series, ATI has been offering sizeable discounts on many of their graphics cards in an effort to push new products to an otherwise uninterested consumer. If Soyo is any indication, rebates and discounts galore do not bode well for ATI.

What is your opinion?
 
is ANYONE suprised that this post of crap comes from a nvidia guy? :rolleyes:
Because there arent 400,000 different nvidia cards :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
Davenow said:
is ANYONE suprised that this post of crap comes from a nvidia guy? :rolleyes:
Because there arent 400,000 different nvidia cards :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
How exactly is having a bunch of product based on the same GPU hurt for drivers?
Only thing they need to do is optimize for different cards, which shouldn't be hard at all.
 
Well, i dont know about everyone else, but this having 10 different cards for each card-name is pretty confusing. It annoys the hell out of me when i have to go to a refrence chart somewhere to compare the damn features of each card because the main product website does not list the specifications you want to know. Then everyone who gets their hands on it messes it up, or messes with it anyway so you dont have a clue whats going on in the end.

That was one reason i bought a 3dfx voodoo 5 5500. There was one card, not 12 different revisions of the same thing, repackaged with different components and software like what nvidia had at the time. You could buy two different Ti4200's that were supposed to be the same and end up with entirely different results in terms of preformance and visual quality.

Take the ATI Radeon 9500 for example.. how many different 9500's were there, like 6? And you had a hard time telling them apart on the shelf, if you were looking for retail. If you were not well it was kindof like gambling and hoping you got what you were wanting. Then ATI released the 9600, which for all intent and purpose wasnt any better than a 9500 in most cases, in fact it lost many benchmarks to the 9500..

ATI and Nvidia NEED to get down some sort of basic guideline that they do not change with every new card release and intermediate update that give their consumers a good general idea of what they are getting when they buy a certain model of card. Not to mention they need to flesh out their spec sheets and have detailed comparison charts.

An upgrade chart would be handy too. "You have a ________ and would like to (downgrade/upgrade/stay-about-the-same)" here are the cards you should consider."

Even something as simple as a 100 point rating system. But if they cant even get their models straight, i wouldnt be very willing to trust their ability to rank their cards against eachother. Im sure some moron would end up with the 9700 and the X800 against eachother in the extreme gaming enthusiast category.

Its a total pain in the ass for the mid-range to the enthusiast, and utter confusion and chaos for the uninformed, who usually end up buying either way too much, or no where near enough power for what they want to do. I often wonder if their market plan is to confuse the consumer into buying what they dont want, so when they realize they need something else, they have to go buy another one.

So ends my rant :)


Ratha
 
Davenow said:
is ANYONE suprised that this post of crap comes from a nvidia guy? :rolleyes:
Because there arent 400,000 different nvidia cards :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

My first PC had a Visiontek Ti 4200 Nvidia based card.
I've also had an Ati 9600 Pro and a 9800 Pro.
I recently made a minor upgrade to a BFG 6800 OC

I have been happy with each of these cards and am not biased one way or the other. I'm merely speculating as to WHY ATI would try to confuse the heck out of their customers, by creating so many slightly different products.
 
jeffoz said:
Yeah, fewer choices is better for consumers :rolleyes:

Riiiiiiight.

It might be simpler for you, but for Joe Sixpack 8 different X800 graphic cards does not make their choice easy.

The only reason I can see ATI diversifying their product lineup is that they've had a lot of problems producing GPU yields with the necessary clock speeds for say.. an X800 XT PE. By now they've probably got that fixed, but they don't want the same vaporware situation happening anytime soon, so they divy up the product line a little more.
 
Yeah, it's not like NV is releasing the 6600 line to further confuse the consumer. How many people rushed out to get a 6600 only to find out it's a 128bit memory card and not anything close to a 6800. It's only going to get worse, by both companies, in the near furture.
 
Graphics card companies continue to release graphics cards that are already surpassed by something they have previously released. Say the 9000 being a poorer preformer than one of the 8500 models.. Hell, the 8500 beats some of the 9500's and the 9600 being basically equal to the 9500.

Why do they bother making a newer version of the Radeon 9000 when its such a low end card that basically *every* card out there will do exactly what it does, and better, and is already out there?

The market is saturated with older low end cards, and still they are making more and slapping new names on them. 9000, 9000pro, 9100, 9200, 9200se, 9200 pro, 9250.. now we have the x300pro and x300se, and the x600pro and x600xt. And half of those are at the exact same performance levels. Granted the x600's *might* be an upgrade to something thats out there, and various cards in the X-series will be PCI-E only.

They are releasing low end cards on par with the same performace level as the low end cards they released last year, and the year before that.. how many times do we have to see the same repackaged videocards? Who is going to upgrade from their low end card to another low end card that does the same thing, no one with any ounce of clue. Seems thats the market plan... clueless is better. If you are just upgrading for the first time to one of those cards, what one are you going to get? Half of em cost exactly the same, and the ones that should cost more, dont, and half the time have a lower model number than their slower cousins.

Maybe they are getting better nowdays, but they keep turning out variations of old cards that have basically no variation at all.

Its not like we have enough models to worry about, lets add some more! I for one think that we need to make a 9590 and a 9750 for ATI, you know, just to be thorough and bridge the gap between the 9500 and 9800, again. Even though that the new x300, x600 and x700, are basically supposed to replace them. Dont you think it would be a good idea to have yet even more? X_X

I wonder if the chip yields for the cards in demand would increase if they didnt spend their time manufacturing replacements for the same cards that are already out there. Wonder if that wouldnt bring our costs down as development and production were focused on what was needed, instead of rehashing whats already out there.

http://www.techreport.com/etc/comparo/graphics/


Ratha
 
I don't really no what to say, other then I usually buy the top of the line card after I read some reviews. As an example I bought two vivo's knowing that I could with some certanty make some changes and move up to the next card without the added cost. If it works great, if it doesn't then I have to decide if the extra fps is worth the cost.

Joe sixpack doesnt know much about the card he's buying and niether does the salesman most of the time, secondly how many stores have you gone into that have every up to date card produced sitting on their shelf.They usually only carry a few of the lower to midrange end cards so Joe Sixpack doesn't have to worry to much about what to buy. You have allready answered your own question, Joe Sixpack is an uninformed consumer who's going to buy whats there. So does it really matter what cards are sitting on the shelves where Joe Sixpack shops.

I don't live near a large city to be able to shop arround. The biggest store for me is Staples or FutureShop in another city and guess what when I went there to buy the xp800, they never heard of it, I had to go online and order my cards out of Vancover.

Another example, I was coming back from camping with the Kids and stopped off at a store in this city that everyone said carried high end hardware, asked him about the xp800, and he said he doesn't carry them because his custermers havent a clue about the high end stuff and his cost would be too much since he can't buy in quantity, so the few custermers he gets in asking for the highend cards he gives then a webpage of another company to order from.
My 2 cents
 
x300
x600
x700
x700pro
x700xt
x800pro
x800xt

6200
6600
6600gt
6800gto
6800
6800gt
6800ultra

I think it's about even...and I don't think it's excessive at all, they make it really easy to understand what card is what by making the better ones more expensive...even joe-sixpack can understand that more $$$ = better card...
 
rdytorave said:
My first PC had a Visiontek Ti 4200 Nvidia based card.
I've also had an Ati 9600 Pro and a 9800 Pro.
I recently made a minor upgrade to a BFG 6800 OC

I have been happy with each of these cards and am not biased one way or the other. I'm merely speculating as to WHY ATI would try to confuse the heck out of their customers, by creating so many slightly different products.

what about all the nvidia cards? IF you aren't biased then how come you omitted the many variations of the 6800 core? It's about even. I just don't understand sometimes....

to above poster: you missed the LE
 
computerpro3 said:
what about all the nvidia cards? IF you aren't biased then how come you omitted the many variations of the 6800 core? It's about even. I just don't understand sometimes....

to above poster: you missed the LE

I also missed the x850s and the XTPE...if you weren't so biased maybe you'd have mentioned those too... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
^eMpTy^ said:
I also missed the x850s and the XTPE...if you weren't so biased maybe you'd have mentioned those too... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

And where's the ultra extreme (and can you even legally buy an x850xt yet?

Oh and btw as for your bias comment, care to hear the cards I own?

Geforce 5500OC (BG)
Radeon 9600 pro
Geforce 5200
Radeon 9700 AIW

and then these two


haha.jpg


And one of us has a reputation as one of the terrible three fan-boys, and it isn't me....
 
ATI tries correcting a big production problem and manages to sqeeze out a few frames per second in the process. Surpassing all single solution cards in performance and all this guy can say is he is confused. I'd love NVIDIA to do a revision so they can try confusing me, it's not going to happen though.
 
You guys are feeding the troll, here. :rolleyes:

It's only confusing if you're the kind of guy that has trouble microwaving a burrito. Besides, Joe Sixpack is still buying 9200's, 9600 XT's, and FX cards. He's also not really reading this forum, which is why he's buying the aforementioned cards.
 
they keep rebagging the low end cards because joe 6pack doesn't know the difference, but thinks, "this number is higher then mine, is should buy it."

I'd really like to see a decent preformer in the low end range but since nvidia and ATI make a lot of money in OEM market they'll keep making them just good enough to display the desktop.
 
You wanna talk about confusion?

I can't tell you HOW many people thought the Geforce 4 MX was better than their Geforce3 Ti300 or 500.

I have yet to see something top that in misleading consumers.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
x300
x600
x700
x700pro
x700xt
x800pro
x800xt

6200
6600
6600gt
6800gto
6800
6800gt
6800ultra

I think it's about even...and I don't think it's excessive at all, they make it really easy to understand what card is what by making the better ones more expensive...even joe-sixpack can understand that more $$$ = better card...

Don't you mean... (?)

x300
x600
x700
x700pro
x700xt
x800
x800pro
x800xt
x800xtpe
x850pro
x850xt
x850xtpe

6200
6600
6600gt
6800gto
6800
6800gt
6800ultra
6800ultra extreme

These are all the announced cards I can think of.
 
Your average "Joe" doesn't buy videocards for over $99, people who will shell out $500 just to make a game look better know their stuff.

And yeah, slapping The Geforce *4* (MX) name on a Geforce *2* is alot more confusing than anything ATI does. I mean X800 and X800 Pro, anyone with half a brain would come to the conclusion that the pro is better because it says "Pro" in the name. X800XT and X800XT PE, again, anyone with half a brain knows the XT PE is better because it says "PLATINUM EDITION". Nothing about this is confusing.
 
x300se
x300
x600pro
x600xt
x700
x700pro
x700xt
x800se
x800
x800pro
x800xt
x800xtpe
x850pro
x850xt
x850xtpe

6200
6600
6600gt
6800LE
6800
6800gto
6800gt
6800ultra
6800ultra extreme

Are there any more updates to this list that I missed?
 
:rolleyes: Just How is this gonna Affect Drivers? ATI doesnt seem to be hurting to much except in the narrow minds of certain individuals that constantly post Drama stories here and at the other forums :D take up script writing for days of our video cards :D Pathetic

Like Shaders Through The rendering Pipes so too are the days of our Video cards :p

And if you had cared to look ATI has a FEW extra cards out than nvidia because some are (PCI-E ONLY) Their as nvidia has Very little PCI-E cards out at present ?
But na its all a big conspiracy right?
 
By what your saying, it's like " I " the consumer shouldn't have the choice of what features I want in say my Toyota Matrix? ie. the normal version, the XR (one I own), and or the XRS version, and then furthermore pick out the specs I want when I pick out which version of the same model car I want. This can be applied to any car.

That's the samething as buy a video card buddy. Each of us want different things, and each of us has a budget to live on to buy stuff. Not all of us can afford say the top of the line video card every year when a new top dog arrives, and also not all of us are the same type of user, ie. occasional gamer to hardcore gamer.

That's like why does Logitech makes a hundred type of Mice? Same answer applies.
 
DandyBear said:
ATI tries correcting a big production problem and manages to sqeeze out a few frames per second in the process. Surpassing all single solution cards in performance and all this guy can say is he is confused. I'd love NVIDIA to do a revision so they can try confusing me, it's not going to happen though.

ATI has admittedly had yield problems concerning the X800 XT PE, with some people waiting weeks after ordering one to recieve their card. Now they have upped the ante, by increasing the clock speeds and creating a divided upper-segment of graphics card. Do you believe that ATI will be able to keep up with demand or are we looking at a vaporware launch? Personally, I think this is a vaporware launch. We won't see these new cards for months and when they do come out on the market they will be in very short supply.

Just my 2 cents.
 
You assume they'll be vaporware for no reason except that they've had troubles in the past?

That's like saying you think there will be low ram yields every year because they had trouble this last year. It's ignorant.

~Adam
 
^eMpTy^ said:
I also missed the x850s and the XTPE...if you weren't so biased maybe you'd have mentioned those too... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
As well as the 6800 UE?
 
CleanSlate said:
You assume they'll be vaporware for no reason except that they've had troubles in the past?

That's like saying you think there will be low ram yields every year because they had trouble this last year. It's ignorant.

~Adam

I'm speculating. Assuming I'm making assumptions is ignorant. This article is a good read, ATI appears to be touting it's new 850 series as a chip core designed to produce better yields.

http://www.penstarsys.com/previews/graphics/ati/x850/

The article also talks about the likelihood of cannibalization for the higher-end X700s
 
pirateface said:
By what your saying, it's like " I " the consumer shouldn't have the choice of what features I want in say my Toyota Matrix? ie. the normal version, the XR (one I own), and or the XRS version, and then furthermore pick out the specs I want when I pick out which version of the same model car I want. This can be applied to any car.

That's the samething as buy a video card buddy. Each of us want different things, and each of us has a budget to live on to buy stuff. Not all of us can afford say the top of the line video card every year when a new top dog arrives, and also not all of us are the same type of user, ie. occasional gamer to hardcore gamer.

That's like why does Logitech makes a hundred type of Mice? Same answer applies.

Here we go with another car analogy. No it is not the same. You know what your car is.

The way they are naming cards now days, it's hard to tell what is what. Is a X700-pro better than a 9800XT? How about is a x300 better than a 9600? Going by the names you would think yes. Same thing applies to the 9000 thru 9250 and whatever other version they had when compared to the 8500. Also, the GF4MX...what about that one. It was a GF2 in reality. Also, the FX5200...is that better than a 4600?

At least with the last generation, ATi would discontinue one product when a new one was released...the 9500/9700 took a shit when the 9600/9800 came out.

And nVidia, the only reason they aren't guilty this generation is because the FX series sucked so bad, anything they come out with now is alot better.
 
Well, Kee-RIST! Why don't we just string the entire specification page into the model number, then?

"Err, excuse me, Mr. Blue-shirt. Do you happen to have the ATI 'R450-five-hundred-megahertz-two-fifty-six-bit-GDDR3-five-hundred-megahertz-sixteen-pipeline-eight-gigapixel-Radeon' in stock? Can I get that in green in a to-go box, please? M'kay, thanks!"

Yeah, that's a LOT less confusing! At least we won't have to actually do any thinking before we make a decision...
 
rdytorave said:
I remember long ago when ATI had about 20 different video cards to choose from. Every card had a similar name and the end-result was that ATI confused the crud out of it's customers. Driver compatibility became a big issue not long after. Is history repeating itself? What are your opinions of ATI's recent fragmentation of their product lineup? Are the new 850 series video cards going to be good or bad for the consumer? How diverse is ATI's product lineup?

In my opinion, with the recent GPU yield problems of the X800 XT PE, a more diverse video card lineup drives up the cost of production which transfers over to the consumer. ATI may be in more financial trouble than most people are aware. Despite the successes of the 9500 - 9800 series, ATI has been offering sizeable discounts on many of their graphics cards in an effort to push new products to an otherwise uninterested consumer. If Soyo is any indication, rebates and discounts galore do not bode well for ATI.

What is your opinion?

well, the x800 -> x850 isnt any worse than last year's 5900 -> 5950 or 9800 -> 9800XT IMO
 
well, the x800 -> x850 isnt any worse than last year's 5900 -> 5950 or 9800 -> 9800XT

:eek: Ya metioned ATI in a good light ruined :eek: But above quote is true!
X850 would be good if PCI-E boards were available in mass But as we all know they currently aint?So ATI is gonna find a hell of a lot of these things just going to waste on shelfs?And they most certainly aint gonna slow 6800GT sales.
 
Since when are you supposed to know how things perform by the name anyway?

People do research, and the car anology is fine, for instance I need new CD player and speakers for my card, I have no idea if a Sony XLG12370-48 Stereo system is better than a Panosonic TRT360231-3 (made up numbers, I know). The way I know is by looking at price, specs, etc.

Somewhat knowing how a video card performs by the name is just a bonus, you're supposed to do research.
 
The amount of video cards has no bearing on how well the driver department is. You could have 1 video card or have 100 and still produce the same consistancy in the drivers. Having video cards that require different drivers to run is a different story. IMO the graphic designer cards take away from the gaming cards simply because time/resources need to be put into them. A company could take all that time and resources that their putting into the graphic designer cards and put that towards the gaming cards instead. Just my opinion though. Thought I'm sure they have seperate divisions for both.
 
jeffoz said:
Since when are you supposed to know how things perform by the name anyway?

People do research, and the car anology is fine, for instance I need new CD player and speakers for my card, I have no idea if a Sony XLG12370-48 Stereo system is better than a Panosonic TRT360231-3 (made up numbers, I know). The way I know is by looking at price, specs, etc.

Somewhat knowing how a video card performs by the name is just a bonus, you're supposed to do research.

You're right, but giving them intentional misleading names is wrong. My biggest gripe is the GF4MX and the 9000 thru 92xx Radeons. Those were cores based on older cores without the key funtions of the series they were named after. The GF4MX, while sound like it was releated to the GF4 DX8.1 cards in fact was a GF2 DX7 T&L card. The Radeon 9000 - 92xx while sounding like it was related to the Radeon 9xxx series was in fact a 8xxx core without the DX 9 functions.

I find that alot of people were taken in by the GF FX 5200 thinking that it was going to be a good card. Well, they should have looked into it more, but at least the FX 5200 had all the FX features minus the AA and memory controller.

This generation, nVidia is doing it well. But here ATi is at it again. Taking a 9600XT, adding PCI-E and calling it a X600 or whatever. Why not just call a spade a spade...9600XT PCI-E? Although many claim ATi should have acted like this generation was just an extension of the last one since they are almost identical in feature sets.

Like someone said in a previous post, it would be nice to have a repository of data for cards that are currently on the market. Mainly comparisons between cards of the same GPU manufacturer. Having some key benchmarks from some games in a chart. It would save alot of time hunting down reviews on cards.
 
Met-AL said:
Like someone said in a previous post, it would be nice to have a repository of data for cards that are currently on the market. Mainly comparisons between cards of the same GPU manufacturer. Having some key benchmarks from some games in a chart. It would save alot of time hunting down reviews on cards.

I agree with everything else you said but I wanted to address this.

http://rojakpot.com/

Search for "Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide"

I've found it to be very handy.
 
Met-AL said:
Here we go with another car analogy. No it is not the same. You know what your car is.

The way they are naming cards now days, it's hard to tell what is what. Is a X700-pro better than a 9800XT? How about is a x300 better than a 9600? Going by the names you would think yes. Same thing applies to the 9000 thru 9250 and whatever other version they had when compared to the 8500. Also, the GF4MX...what about that one. It was a GF2 in reality. Also, the FX5200...is that better than a 4600?

At least with the last generation, ATi would discontinue one product when a new one was released...the 9500/9700 took a shit when the 9600/9800 came out.

And nVidia, the only reason they aren't guilty this generation is because the FX series sucked so bad, anything they come out with now is alot better.


How is it not the same? When you buy a car, you should know exactly what you want, and so should you when buying a video card. I'd would expect anyone who posts here to know enough about video cards to pick out a video card based on it's specs and preformance as well as price/budget to get what you want. That means you compare everything out there by specs and preformance and how much each costs and see where each of those cards weighs in your budget, and you buy the best card based on all that research. NO BODY just goes out and buys a car without looking around first, and so should people who care about playing video games on their PC who want the best preformance and quality.

The Car model is like the Video Card Model. FERRARI -> ATI for example.
I want a RED HOT FERRARI Enzo. -> I want the ATI X850 series.
I want it to have the whole WEST COAST CUSTOMS works on it. -> I'm getting the X850XT PE.

Same thing.
 
pirateface said:
How is it not the same? .

Car analogies....they don't work for video card debates....they don't work for steam/HL2 debates....they don't work for Linux/Windows debates....
 
pirateface said:
I'd would expect anyone who posts here to know enough about video cards to pick out a video card based on it's specs and preformance as well as price/budget to get what you want.


Ahhh...yes ANYONE HERE...well we are not speaking of anyone here...Joe Sixpack does not read this board or any other board. My sister for instance bought a FX5200 since she felt it ws better than the older GF2 PRO that was in her system...I told her to take it back and I sold her one of my FX5900's. Now shes doesn't read this board or any other PC board. So your arguement is not helping those who are not PC literate.
 
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