What ATI should do.

[bboynitrous]

two words:
Nvidia SLI

One Acronym one word, CPU Limited

 

[DemonDiablo]

Ok im going to "consturctively" (honestly ill try to play nice this time as much as I dont want to cause theres nothing more infuriating them "EXTREMELY false" input) break this down...

you can call me silentdeath...but you might think thats a stupid name...but ive used it for 7 years so leave me alone

I actually think its a nice name (see im already playing nice )

I think my point about the 4 player multiplayer is valid. You think iD wouldn't want 16 or 24 player multiplayer if it was possible at this stage?

I can see where you are coming from with that but your perspective is a little flawed and tainted with the current generation of Unreal Tournament and Q3:A type fps games that are flooding the market. D3 is a single player fps game much in the way that Halo was a single player fps game. They (id) are trying to bring more focus to the single player aspect of fps games I mite imagine. Kind of like old school fps games once were like. Were you bought the game for the story not so you could jump straight to deathmatch and get into a 64 player fragfest.

To buy any video card, be it something that doesn't officially meet the minimum requirements for the highest setting of "Ultra" quality, for a SINGLE player game is rediculous. How was that $550 (assuming you can get the high end cards for $500...which you can't) 20-25 hour game? Was it worth it? I hope you will ask yourself these questions after you complete Doom 3 and are sitting twiddling your thumbs until Half Life 2 comes along and offers ENDLESS gameplay.

I think if Bungie and Microsoft were to see that comment that would roll over with laughter. But no seriously look at what Halo did for the XBOX. I myself had no intention of buying an XBOX until one day I walked into a local FYE store and saw Halo on demo. I picked up the sticks and couldnt stop playing. For the next two weeks I searched high and low to buy a sold out everywhere XBOX. I ended up getting at one of those early bird sales for Thanksgiving at a KB Toys store in a local mall. XBOX costed $320 and I know quit a few people who solely bought an XBOX just for that "one" game. And yes Id say it was definetly worth it (actually I just beat again today a few hrs ago...lol imagine that)

I'd say wait until the 512mb cards come around this fall->winter

As BurningGrave once said...show us some links that state that 512mb cards are going to ship this fall? Hell even winter? I dont think I even saw nVidia or ATI mutter a word about 512mb cards but I could be wrong. Thats why im asking for a link to this what seems to be very exciting info. if its true.

At least this is just my perspective, as it is many gamers, because multiplayer is where I think my money should be spent.

Nothing wrong with perspective and you should definetly spend YOUR money the way you see fit. Its you who is working hard to make that money every day and there arnt to many Bill Gates on these forums who got money coming out of their ass lol.

Unless you upgrade all of the time and money is no object there is no reason NOT to wait. Multiplayer is where all games are headed and the immersiveness of Doom 3 is great but aren't you gonna want better performance during your 10,000 hours in CS:S, DoD:S, CS2, TF2 (the list goes on...) rather than your 40 hours in Doom 3.

but at the VERY LEAST the x800 pro is a viable card and deserves no decrease in price from the MSRP of $400. If you can't aggree to that than you are blinding yourself to the glory that is Doom 3.

Couldnt agree with you anymore on that topic.

if its x800 vs. GT right now I'd choose the pro.

Funny why do you say that? Rough times with nVidia in the past?

As for the Half Life 2 benchmarks we can only wait and see but from what is available now it looks like ATI will come out on top. We can go on and on about that though so if you want to go get a 6800 for HL2 I can't really blame you because they are still great cards.

BurningGrave already beat me to that one

EDIT: By no means am I trying to be mean here (honestly...no seriously) im just trying to bring up some points b/c you seem very unenlightened in a few areas and when talking about 512mb cards, HL2 being better on ATI hardware, x800pro (guessing it was the pro you were talking about) being better than the GT, id be nice to see some linkage action going on...you know what I mean? Im sure you do

 

[mordeki]

As I sat here reading this thread I was picking out the points I was going to disagree with.
By the time I finished all the GT defenders had taken everything I wanted to type and left me with nothing!

 

[R1ckCa1n]

As I sat here reading this thread I was picking out the points I was going to disagree with.
By the time I finished all the GT defenders had taken everything I wanted to type and left me with nothing!

You need to be a little faster next time.

 

[burningrave101]

As I sat here reading this thread I was picking out the points I was going to disagree with.
By the time I finished all the GT defenders had taken everything I wanted to type and left me with nothing!

lol

 

[darktiger]

When I read the title, all I thought is "What ATI should do is give me a free card". Anyone else with that thought???

 

[0ldman]

Someone mentioned an average Joe telling a multi million dollar company how to run business...
keep in mind, that average Joe is exactly who they're marketing to.

It is far more complicated than that, but it average Joe doesn't buy their card due to Doom 3 performance, that is a lost sale. It cannot be caught again in this card generation. It is a lost sale for the x800 Pro.

This is a customer driven industry, as much as they lead, we decide where it goes. Matrox has brought a few bits of 3d tech to the table early, didn't make the slightest bit of difference to everyone else as the performance didn't match the feature set. Matrox lost sales due to that, they are not one of the big two (honestly it would have been the big 3 had their performance been up to snuff)

If we don't buy it, they can't lead.
Doom 3 has cost ATI sales. How many can be discussed and argued, however the fact remains. As this is a relatively high end card, we are exactly the market they shoot for. I'm not saying to drop the price to match the 6800GT, but ATI has to do something or the X800 Pro is not going to be a great seller simply due to the number of people playing and upgrading simply because of Doom 3. This is not a flash in the pan game, people have been waiting on this for quite awhile to upgrade their system. Just search the forum for "can my system play Doom 3" posts made in the last year. Its rediculous...

ATI needs to take some action in order to keep on top, they've been there for about 2 years, no reason to get lazy now...

 

[Mike Ryna]

The 512mb story that I read was on a site that I know you'll laugh at:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17324

I've seen it in a few roadmaps as well but, who knows, maybe those people based it off of the inquirer's completely speculative article. Of course ATi and nVidia will not tell you when they are coming out or if it will actually be on the R480 etc. It's only hope at this point but I'll still wait. You don't have to .

As for the HL2 benchmarks I am basing that on Gabe's demonstration as well as the deal between ATI and Valve around that same time. If the developers believe that ATI will be the best way to player their game I will stick with them. iD allowed nVidia to put a symbol on the 6800s that said it was the best for Doom 3. The developers turned out to be right in that case and I'll stick with Valve on their choice of ATI.

Of course driver revisions will bring new things as they always do but until numbers come out I still think it'll be ATI > nVidia in HL2. I know there are fanboys and I definitely lean towards ATI since 9700s so maybe its the ATI fan in me that wants them to pull it out in HL2.

Funny why do you say that? Rough times with nVidia in the past?

I've actually had 3dfx and nVidia since forever until my 9800 pro but I was converted with 9700s and the rave reviews and performance I saw that my friend's got. Creative Voodoo 2 Banshee -> Voodoo 3 -> Voodoo 5 -> ti200 -> 9800pro. When I was looking into a new video card last year I first checked out 9800pro vs. fx5800 and that decision was easy. I do agree that nVidia has reclaimed themselves this generation and its really a tossup but for me, HL2 is the more important game (as if you couldn't already tell from this thread ) and I'm gonna go with ATIs next offering. You could say I am making this decision blindly because there is no solid proof and no HL2 [H]ardware Guide (oohh that day will be great!) but from Valve and ATIs partnership as well as *intial* benchmarks (don't argue this lol I understand that they can be way off but coming from the developer...who spends more time with the game...and the video cards...) I will go with ATI.

Mike...Tom is not known for being especially good at benchmarking vid cards...so you'd be better off not using that to back up your posts...

As for this I'm sorry. I have always used tomshardware and then gone to different sites afterwards to check some other perspectives and its usually pretty consistent. Can you explain some kind of background information or some reason why THG sucks? I'd just like to know. From what I have gathered the GT is better in OGL (duh..) but the x800 pro beats it in the majority of DX9 games with high aa and ansio. Wouldn't those be the settings you would want to run games at if you bought a $400 video card? It beats the ultras sometimes in these "combined" modes. To me its still a toss up but everybody is entitled to their opinion so there is no point in arguing.


ATI vs. nVidia in this and future generations and games is a neverending argument, especially since the 6800 narrowed the gap and may have nullified it. But I think that from the people that have replied to this post in the last couple of hours we can all agree that the x800 pro doesn't really deserve a price decrease. It isn't a disaster like the fx5800 and will still deliver a great gaming experience. If people say wait till nVidia's new drivers to see better HL2 performance than I could easily say wait till ATI's new drivers for better Doom 3 performance...it just goes on and on!

Nothing wrong with perspective and you should definetly spend YOUR money the way you see fit. Its you who is working hard to make that money every day and there arnt to many Bill Gates on these forums who got money coming out of their ass lol.

Heh funny you said this. I am a little spoiled piece of shit...sorta. I'm only 16 but I work 1 job all year and a second during the summer...so I'm busy and money is always good. I don't *need* any of this money so it basically goes into my savings and/or spending money. I can practically buy whatever I want for my computer that isn't excessive and stupid (like paying for $2000 cases or $900 on ebay for an ultra or xt pe) but I obviously don't want to be wastefull cuz college is soon and I'm no dumbass. (although from my extensive lack of knowledge into this whole THG being horrid you may think so ) So yeah I guess I've got a nice money situation but I'm working two jobs at 16 so I might as well make use of it and save up so I'm not stupid or wastefull or anything.



Oh, and I never liked Halo.

 

[^eMpTy^]

The 512mb story that I read was on a site that I know you'll laugh at:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17324

The Inquirer is not always wrong...but all the info about 512 meg cards (which haven't shown up on roadmaps but have been talked about in various presentations and correspondence with both ATi and Nvidia) came out before the big GDDR3 shortage...that's why no one thinks they will get 512 meg cards out any time soon, unless they dump the 1.6ns stuff and go back to 2.0ns, it's just not possible...

As for the HL2 benchmarks I am basing that on Gabe's demonstration as well as the deal between ATI and Valve around that same time. If the developers believe that ATI will be the best way to player their game I will stick with them. iD allowed nVidia to put a symbol on the 6800s that said it was the best for Doom 3. The developers turned out to be right in that case and I'll stick with Valve on their choice of ATI.

This is all based on the last generation and is not applicable. There is absolutely no reason to believe the 6800 series will be any slower in HL2 than the x800 series. Every bit of information on the subject is grossly outdated.

I've actually had 3dfx and nVidia since forever until my 9800 pro but I was converted with 9700s and the rave reviews and performance I saw that my friend's got. Creative Voodoo 2 Banshee -> Voodoo 3 -> Voodoo 5 -> ti200 -> 9800pro. When I was looking into a new video card last year I first checked out 9800pro vs. fx5800 and that decision was easy. I do agree that nVidia has reclaimed themselves this generation and its really a tossup but for me, HL2 is the more important game (as if you couldn't already tell from this thread ) and I'm gonna go with ATIs next offering. You could say I am making this decision blindly because there is no solid proof and no HL2 [H]ardware Guide (oohh that day will be great!) but from Valve and ATIs partnership as well as *intial* benchmarks (don't argue this lol I understand that they can be way off but coming from the developer...who spends more time with the game...and the video cards...) I will go with ATI.

Again, all of this is based on last generation and doesn't apply anymore. They picked ATi because the 9800 was faster at ps2.0 than the 5900s, obviously as you can see from countless benchmarks, ps2.0 performance is no longer an issue for nvidia.

As for this I'm sorry. I have always used tomshardware and then gone to different sites afterwards to check some other perspectives and its usually pretty consistent. Can you explain some kind of background information or some reason why THG sucks? I'd just like to know. From what I have gathered the GT is better in OGL (duh..) but the x800 pro beats it in the majority of DX9 games with high aa and ansio. Wouldn't those be the settings you would want to run games at if you bought a $400 video card? It beats the ultras sometimes in these "combined" modes. To me its still a toss up but everybody is entitled to their opinion so there is no point in arguing.

Even with full aa and af, the GT is faster than the pro in most benchmarks.

ATI vs. nVidia in this and future generations and games is a neverending argument, especially since the 6800 narrowed the gap and may have nullified it. But I think that from the people that have replied to this post in the last couple of hours we can all agree that the x800 pro doesn't really deserve a price decrease. It isn't a disaster like the fx5800 and will still deliver a great gaming experience. If people say wait till nVidia's new drivers to see better HL2 performance than I could easily say wait till ATI's new drivers for better Doom 3 performance...it just goes on and on!

Nvidia didn't need new drivers to boost half-life performance, they needed new hardware, which they now have. No waiting necessary. You're a generation behind man, plain and simple. But no big deal, just do yourself a favor and don't buy anything till you see real HL2 benchmarks.

 

[0ldman]

(although from my extensive lack of knowledge into this whole THG being horrid you may think so )

I read THG in the past, but a few political statements and general bias in the tech industry lost me as a reader.

I got sick of checking THG against others and finding their benches to show different results than the majority.

On occasion, a bench between an Athlon XP 2000+ vs a Williamette 2.0 as a shot in the dark, THG will declare an obvious winner or "shutout" or some crap when the difference is less than 10% on benches won and the win/loss spread is 48/52 between the two systems.

I can't list specifics because its been quite awhile since I read. Most of the writers I liked have since left. The ones that haven't I truely feel bad for.

 

[KBC2k4]

Half-Life 2 is actually probably going to be out mid-late September as already stated by several people. HL2 is being sent away for the final touches right now. CS:S starts pre-loading on Steam Aug 5th and the beta starts on Aug 10th. Several companies are visiting Valve for play tests next week, and I've already seen screenshots of the box. www.halflife2.net forums have some good info. HL2 is going to be here soon enough and will be far better than doom3, at least for me cause I'm not much of a Doom fan.

 

[Blad3]

OM, look people Ultra High Quality on doom3, now apparently acheiveable is VERY important to somebody who pays thousand for top performance, if it wasn't I wouldn't want a new gfx.

Saying the performance difference in HL2 will be little doesn't matter, it just doesn't....

Performance difference in Doom 3 x800xt vs 6800u - 7.4 fps:

Differnece being: with the 6800u you can have UltraQ with the right cpu/RAM, and higher than 1600x1200!! That's BIG. So if the x800xt does the same for Half Life 2, somebody like me who spend's/spent > a thousand (£) wants to know which is best, especially as I'm more for HL2. Small fps difference with the x800xt? 7fps? UQ quality? Give me the x800xt, I'd prefer it. Hopefully Nvidia will beat ATI though tbh, so I can have UQ in doom3 and Half life 2. Either way I really want a clear; definite winner...

 

[^eMpTy^]

OM, look people Ultra High Quality on doom3, now apparently acheiveable is VERY important to somebody who pays thousand for top performance, if it wasn't I wouldn't want a new gfx.

Saying the performance difference in HL2 will be little doesn't matter, it just doesn't....

Performance difference in Doom 3 x800xt vs 6800u - 7.4 fps:

Differnece being: with the 6800u you can have UltraQ with the right cpu/RAM, and higher than 1600x1200!! That's BIG. So if the x800xt does the same for Half Life 2, somebody like me who spend's/spent > a thousand (£) wants to know which is best, especially as I'm more for HL2. Small fps difference with the x800xt? 7fps? UQ quality? Give me the x800xt, I'd prefer it. Hopefully Nvidia will beat ATI though tbh, so I can have UQ in doom3 and Half life 2. Either way I really want a clear; definite winner...

The big deal wasn't really the XT vs the Ultra, it was the GT vs the Pro...since those are the only 2 cards you can actually go out and buy right now...and the GT beat the pro by almost 20fps in every setting...now THAT'S A BIG DEAL...

 

[Blad3]

The big deal for me is HardOCP saying x800xt can't do UQ compared ot the 6800u can and at a higher res(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), that for me is important. That's all I care about, infact. I'm not in the market for a GT/Pro.

 

[^eMpTy^]

The big deal for me is HardOCP saying x800xt can't do UQ compared ot the 6800u can and at a higher res(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), that for me is important. That's all I care about, infact. I'm not in the market for a GT/Pro.

I wouldn't worry much about ultra quality...from what I hear you can barely tell the difference...

 

[Blad3]

Well, it will still look a litte better, I mean hardocp wouldn't say "this is as near to a CG film as we've been at UQ" and "id developers were amazed seeing doom3 on UQ at a higher than 1600x1200 res for the first time", would they?

I don't know about you, but that makes me want a 6800u...but HL2 is holding me back....

 

[Okatha]

The problem with Ultra quality is you'll need 2GB of system RAM to do it if you don't have a graphics card equipped with 512MB of RAM. And since it'll take up bandwidth you'll see pausing to load the textures. I think I'd rather play at High and have it be smooth versus Ultra with pauses. The immersion factor will be better with High I think, plus looking at the screen shots the difference betwen the two is so small I can barely tell where the differences even are. And that's not even moving images!

 

[Blad3]

I have 2Gb, question is wether my FX51 and 3200 ram will hold up for UltraQ with the 6800u...

 

[HeavenX]

Nvidia's 6800 cards render games much better in texture quality then ati's X800's.Textures are alot sharper, brighter and rather less dull and smudged/blurry like ati's video cards. Lets be realistic everyone about ati's cards, they cheat with their drivers under trilinear settings and that is the reason why they are keeping up with nvidia under dx. Objets in the distance also have much greater detail with nvidia cards and the geometry is alot more advanced on Nvidia cards.Soon or later ati will be forced to disable their bilinear cheat that is planted deep in catalyst drivers. Playing games on Nvidia's new hardware against ati's X800 is like night and day in motion and this cant be shown or demonstrated just by looking at the pics or just paying all the attention on fps...

 

[Blad3]

wow...now that's a statement...

 

[^eMpTy^]

Nvidia's 6800 cards render games much better in texture quality then ati's X800's.Textures are alot sharper, brighter and rather less dull and smudged/blurry like ati's video cards. Lets be realistic everyone about ati's cards, they cheat with their drivers under trilinear settings and that is the reason why they are keeping up with nvidia under dx. Objets in the distance also have much greater detail with nvidia cards and the geometry is alot more advanced on Nvidia cards.Soon or later ati will be forced to disable their bilinear cheat that is planted deep in catalyst drivers. Playing games on Nvidia's new hardware against ati's X800 is like night and day in motion and this cant be shown or demonstrated just by looking at the pics or just paying all the attention on fps...

No review I have read agree's with you. From all official accounts the "cheats" are practically not noticeable. Personally I just want ATi to put the check box in thier driver to disable it if the user wants to.

 

[HeavenX]

No review I have read agree's with you. From all official accounts the "cheats" are practically not noticeable. Personally I just want ATi to put the check box in thier driver to disable it if the user wants to.

Not noticable? I wonder what kind of monitor you got, or maybe you just need glasses or something. As for ati allowing players to disable the bilinear cheat under trilinear settings is something ati owners will have to dream of. Even with ati's new lineup of video cards they will still cheat with its corrupted catalyst drivers under Dx.

 

[^eMpTy^]

Not noticable? I wonder what kind of monitor you got, or maybe you just need glasses or something. As for ati allowing players to disable the bilinear cheat under trilinear settings is something ati owners will have to dream of. Even with ati's new lineup of video cards they will still cheat with its corrupted catalyst drivers under Dx.

I have perfect vision and dual Dell 2001FPs...(That's 2 x 20.1" LCDs)

I stand by what I said, show me a review that has said the "optimizations" are noticeable?

 

[burningrave101]

I stand by what I said, show me a review that has said the "optimizations" are noticeable?

The optimizations were noticeable in the D3 benchmarks.

The benchmarking was conducted on-site, and the hardware vendors did not have access to the demo before hand, so we are confident that there is no egregious cheating going on, but it should be noted that some of the ATI cards did show a performance drop when colored mip levels were enabled, implying some fudging of the texture filtering. This has been a chronic issue for years, and almost all vendors have been guilty of it at one time or another. I hate the idea of drivers analyzing texture data and changing parameters, but it doesn't visibly impact the quality of the game unless you know exactly what to look for on a specific texture.

There have been other cases as well where people have pointed out things in screenshots here on the forums. Reviewers rarely take the time to go through a game and truly look for instances. And X800 owners aren't going to point out things that are wrong with their cards lol.

Optimizations can be hidden but they are there and sooner or later they usually show up. Its just a matter of what game pushes the right buttons.

nVidia and ATI need to start making GPU's that are fast enough they dont need optimizations to perform well. Optimizations are just stealing from the consumers because they usually are not needed and nVidia and ATI are just having a benchmark war with one another at our expense.

 

[HeavenX]

The optimizations were noticeable in the D3 benchmarks.



There have been other cases as well where people have pointed out things in screenshots here on the forums. Reviewers rarely take the time to go through a game and truly look for instances. And X800 owners aren't going to point out things that are wrong with their cards lol.

Optimizations can be hidden but they are there and sooner or later they usually show up. Its just a matter of what game pushes the right buttons.

nVidia and ATI need to start making GPU's that are fast enough they dont need optimizations to perform well. Optimizations are just stealing from the consumers because they usually are not needed and nVidia and ATI are just having a benchmark war with one another at our expense.

Thanks for saving me some time burning. As for the comment you wrote about that both companies need to make GPU's to perform well without optimizations you must know this. ATI's gpu is made from scratch I mean from the blue print to do things it does right now and that is to not show any pretty things on screen and only to pump out as much as fps as possible. As for Nvidia's new gpu right now it is far greater in everything then X800 and fps are just perfect...

 

[@trapine]

Seriously one thing i have learnt on these forums lately, Is LET the Nvidia People have there fun in the sun They got Their asses handed to them for 2 years. And got hammered Badly for buying the FX series?
But No the pro Isnt a Bad card by a LONG SHOT and its not half as bad as some of the People on here will have you think
But i will AGREE That what ATI need to do is Drop the VanillaX800Pro down to match the 6800NU and they would without doubt whip Nvidias 12piped card Most times!The 6800GT is on its own for comparasin at the moment.And asking a 12piped card to compete with it is kinda like asking a 9600XT to perform against the 9700Pro=Just not gonna happen.
But me myself i will still stick with ATI products because i have had a faultless run with their cards and drivers.And i aint gonna change for A couple of FPS in a game and a so far over hyped tech called SmoothMarketing3?

 

[HeavenX]

Seriously one thing i have learnt on these forums lately, Is LET the Nvidia People have there fun in the sun They got Their asses handed to them for 2 years. And got hammered Badly for buying the FX series?
But No the pro Isnt a Bad card by a LONG SHOT and its not half as bad as some of the People on here will have you think
But i will AGREE That what ATI need to do is Drop the VanillaX800Pro down to match the 6800NU and they would without doubt whip Nvidias 12piped card Most times!The 6800GT is on its own for comparasin at the moment.And asking a 12piped card to compete with it is kinda like asking a 9600XT to perform against the 9700Pro=Just not gonna happen.
But me myself i will still stick with ATI products because i have had a faultless run with their cards and drivers.And i aint gonna change for A couple of FPS in a game and a so far over hyped tech called SmoothMarketing3?

In my opinion about what ATI should do to stay in the race is to come up with something fast, and I am talking about something new. You see nobody likes things that are old, and in my opinion X800 does not even belong in the same race with the 6800. To make you understand more read this, for instance how would you look at this if someone told you this: My Unreal Tournament1 runs just as smooth/sameFPS as your Unreal Tournament3 and therefore there is nothing different about it. Or is it?

 

[fallguy]

How can you say D3 showed image degration on ATi cards?. [H] said themselves the cards render everything virtually the same. Only in one pic is there a (tiny) difference, with the floor. And there is no way you could spot that while playing.

There are no major differences in image quality between NVIDIA and ATI video cards when playing DOOM 3 at the same settings. You can rest assured that whether you buy a NVIDIA video card or an ATI video card, all of the effects will look the same. Shadows, specular lighting, bump mapping, all visually look the same inside the DOOM 3 environment.

So again, where exactly is the degraded quality caused by "cheating" drivers?

HeavenX, you may want to read your comments again. Do you really believe what you are saying?

 

[Blad3]

Yet to play on ultra quality at a res higher than 1600x1200 you need a 6800ultra:

why would hardocp say (paraphrasing) " this is the closes we've been to CG quality gaming" "id developer's were amazed at the higher res/UQ acheived by the 6800ultra", if they didn't think the 6800u faired better?

They concluded that the 6800u performs better, with better IQ overall.

ATi i still in the game, but with HL2....we will see..

 

[^eMpTy^]

I agree with you burningrave, I don't like the hard-coded optimizations either...but I think that for most people they will never notice it...and I can't expect everyone to be as anal retentive as I am...

And @trapine, what ATi needs to do is build a new core with some more compelling features...Nvidia is using "smoothmarketing" because they actually have some features to talk about...whereas all ATi can basically say is "remember the 9700?"

 

[Badger_sly]

Seriously one thing i have learnt on these forums lately, Is LET the Nvidia People have there fun in the sun ...............But me myself i will still stick with ATI products because i have had a faultless run with their cards and drivers.And i aint gonna change for A couple of FPS in a game and a so far over hyped tech called SmoothMarketing3?

Don't worry, we won't taunt you too bad for having a sub par card.

 

[fastcoke11]

Boy has this argument been beaten to death...

NVidia won the benchmarks on Doom 3. They didn't win them on Farcry, but ATI didn't exactly sweep all those benchmarks either. I would like to say that HL2 is going to be designed more for ATI cards, but no one can predict the future. I'd also like to point out that since in most cases the ATI and the NVidia cards were at the same graphic level, a few fps doesn't matter, especially since Doom 3 is capped at 60 fps.

They're all good cards. Can we stop arguing about this now?

 

[Blad3]

Well it's all on HL2, I can't say that enough lol. If nvidia beat ATI...lol it really has done better this time...I mean it will be a total white wash, a definite win for Nvidia, despite what anyone says.

I can't say this enough either Nvidia is now doing better in Far Cry plus it has additional graphical qaulities, i.e. Ultra Shadow II. Nvidia is even beating ATI in UT2004 I believe. Want benchmarks? I'm sure burninggrave or Empty can post some for you. So Nvidia is ahead overall as far as I know, it definitely won in Doom3 and it has the potential to easily win in Half Life 2, which will be the final deciding factor.

 

[eastvillager]

It isn't just doom that is making people hot for the 6800 GT, it is that you can overclock the card into what is pretty much an ultra, with stock cooling, just by dumping in the coolbits reg key and tweaking your speeds.

How hard is it to mod your x800 into 16 pipes and to run at xt pe speeds?????

That is why people think the x800 pro needs to dip in price.

 

[Badger_sly]

It isn't just doom that is making people hot for the 6800 GT, it is that you can overclock the card into what is pretty much an ultra, with stock cooling, just by dumping in the coolbits reg key and tweaking your speeds.

How hard is it to mod your x800 into 16 pipes and to run at xt pe speeds?????

That is why people think the x800 pro needs to dip in price.

^^ Exactly.

 

[lilpoopypants]

btw guys its JUST to doom 3 which you are refering. The x800 pro is a great card and a hardware company isn't going to change its prices based on a single piece of software. If you look at tomshardware's review of the x800 series you will see that in some games the x800 pro even beats the 6800u and stays atop the 6800gt almost everytime. Just because it loses (and horribly..) in Doom 3 does not mean that it isn't a viable $400 card. Because of the rediculous non-availability of the XTs I may go out and buy a pro because I can still play 1280X1024 in doom 3 on high and it will be better in most other games that are out today and certainly Half Life 2 (unless you believe those stupid "beta" benchmarks that that idiot posted,,,I'll go with Gabe Newell thx!)

You are underestimating the importance of Doom 3 in the industry.
This game engine will be the defacto standard for probably years to come. Many great games will use it.
It has amazing graphics and incredibly low system requirements, considering. Its not just "one game" like the rest.

Now HL2, that is a game (engine) that has to prove itself. Sierra/Valve are not the same as they were in 1998, and if you dont know who Ken Williams is you can't understand what I'm even talking about.

id software are the same as they were in 1993, just even better.
This is THE game engine to perform on, and something that must be faced.