Goodbye Nvidia, Hello ATI

[BigJosh359]

Click here for the story, incase you didnt see it on the frontpage

Good thing or Bad thing?

[Chaotic]

I was just going to make this thread


This IMO is an awesome thing. I have always been a huge Nvidia fan and have loved everything they released prior to their problems. I then switched over to the Radeon 9700 pro and now the 9800 pro 256 meg. I can say it is by far the best video card i have ever owned and i will never go back to Nvidia, even if they claim to have the fastest card on the market. Until they prove they can out-perform ATI which they claim all their new 5900 ultra cards can do and it has been proven they can't, i will consider giving Nvidia another chance in another PC but will still have an ATI video card in my main pc I can't wait to see what ATI has instore for xbox 2. If it's going to be far superior to the 9800 pro 256 meg this is going to be one amazing system.

[RudedogX]

I liked NVidia after E3. Oh wait, maybe that was just the female fairies at the NVidia booth.

[RadRider]

This is definitely a good thing. With Nvidia products costing more than ATi products (check my blog: http://planetwarrior.blogspot.com - I show some price comparisons) and Nvidia struggling to keep up with ATi for their premiere line of cards, this can only mean good things for the consumer.

I'll point out what I said on my site.
Nvidia Ultra cards basically flip-flop with ATi Pro cards in a given series of benchmarks, so the cards can be considered to be evenly matched. However, Nvidia has admitted to "optimising" their cards for specific tests and games. For instance, in UT2003, you cannot perform trilinear filtering, no matter what you select for rendering options in the control panel or game interface. In Splinter Cell GeForce FX cards would not render shadows, and a PR said that they have had optimisations which detect if a benchmark style program is being run, and then it tweaks the card settings for that particular program so it will run better.
So anytime an Nvidia card beats an ATi card, it could just be due to unfair optimisations.
Not only that, but Nvidia cards cost quite a bit more than ATi cards. Dangeo.com (an excellent site for pricing computer hardware) shows the GeForce FX 5600 non-ultra 128MB card costing more than the ATi Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB.

[BigJosh359]

I am going to wait till the next release of GPUs to decide who i side with. Right now i went from a Geforce 4 4600 to a 9700 Pro, and i have to say, i am a little disappointed in ATI. I may be because i am used to Nvidia's look. 3DFX has their voodoo look and i really miss Voodoos. I just havent seen what the big fuss is about ATI at the moment, besides the price difference.

Next GPUs to come out will tell the real story.

[RadRider]

The only downside to choosing ATi is that it's going to be virtually impossible to make the next Xbox backwards compatible.
And Josh, your whole theory of each card having it's own "style"? I'm afraid that's just a manifestation of your own opinions about the videocard companies. Go look at www.hardocp.com and do the image quality comparisons in several of the reviews. The only difference is that sometimes a texture or two might appear slightly distorted in any given frame.
Of course Nvidia cards due give an ever so slightly blurrier image with Anti Aliasing on, so I suppose that could be part of what you're talking about.
And on my old GeForce 2 MX water never rendered right where it met the shoreline, whereas my 8500 does that right. :P

[blonks]

this a cool.....my graphics card sucks....i thinks its an nvidia Vanta or somethin....sucks

off topic: did you know dears dont have uncles? they just have antlers...dadadadada ding

[Motoko]

With nVidia's recent flop, I'd say this is a good thing. I've always respected both companies, so I don't mind either way.

[RudedogX]

Originally posted by Motoko
With nVidia's recent flop, I'd say this is a good thing. I've always respected both companies, so I don't mind either way.

WHOA?!?

Welcome back man!

[Casper]

Originally posted by Motoko
With nVidia's recent flop, I'd say this is a good thing. I've always respected both companies, so I don't mind either way.

[blonks]

is this the return on the banned people?!?!?!

[Casper]

Originally posted by blinx
is this the return on the banned people?!?!?!

Don't make a big deal out of it...it's all good...some deserve to come back while others like Cityson may rot

[MerimacHamwich]

Couldn't agree with my brother more. Go ATI.

[JediMasterChief]

I don't really care. I prefer nVidia more, but ATI will do just as fine.

No we have to see whether MS will dump Intel and go with the Athlons.

[LynxFX]

I'm dissappointed and excited at the same time for very different reasons.

I've never really been a fan of ATI mostly because of their lackluster performance combined with driver issues. Their latest generation though (9800 series only) have really shined though. But that is one gen so they have much to prove. One thing they have always excelled at has been video quality or image quality which could be a good plus for xbox 2 and HD games. Even their $30 Radeon VE supports HD resolutions 1920x1080 and that is the card I use to power my projector, dual display even.

I became a fan of Nvidia with the TNT 1 and was impressed with them from that point on. That took a lot to give up my voodoo cards for them but it was worth it as the Voodoo 3 was utter crap and downhill for 3dfx after that.

No one disagress that Nvidias first round of FX cards were very lackluster and basically a failure. But there is more to that which I hope ATI has been taking very careful notes on. The developement and fabrication of those chips came at the same time as Nvidia was having to produce high yields of chips for Microsoft and the Xbox. This cut into their R&D of the .13 micron developement process which ultimately delayed the FX and by the time it was released was already matched by ATI.

Now ATI is going to face the exact same problem. The winner will probably be the X2 but for those wanting the next gen ATI pc card will probably be waiting as production for the X2 chips increases. ATI isn't nearly as big as Nvidia and look how thin it spread the resources of Nvidia. ATI is going to have to play this very carefully.

Luckily since they are both PC graphics card developers using the same Direct X standards backwards compatibility for X2 and the Xbox should be pretty easy to incorporate. It would be a HUGE mistake if they didn't.

[BigJosh359]

Originally posted by RadRider
The only downside to choosing ATi is that it's going to be virtually impossible to make the next Xbox backwards compatible.
And Josh, your whole theory of each card having it's own "style"? I'm afraid that's just a manifestation of your own opinions about the videocard companies. Go look at www.hardocp.com and do the image quality comparisons in several of the reviews. The only difference is that sometimes a texture or two might appear slightly distorted in any given frame.
Of course Nvidia cards due give an ever so slightly blurrier image with Anti Aliasing on, so I suppose that could be part of what you're talking about.
And on my old GeForce 2 MX water never rendered right where it met the shoreline, whereas my 8500 does that right. :P

Dude, I have been playing games since the TRS-80 days. Its not a theory, it's true. Play on a voodoo 3 for a while and then go to a geforce 2 card. Im talking about a month or two of game play. You will notice that the voodoo look is a lot better looking when you make the switch. Its just the look, not the quality or the FPS. Its just the colors look better and look voodoo.

I miss my Voodoos.

And now that i have been on Geforces for a long ass time and switched to ATI, Nvidia had that look to it too. Not a voodoo look, a Geforce look to it.

I guess you either notice it, or you dont. I think you would have tto be a hardcore PC gamer to really know what im talking about. Maybe some people just dont notice. I dont know.

[# 1 Stunner]

i take it since jeremy left motoko is back... loose one win one..

[yeszir]

I dont care, so long as my xbox 2 has killer graphics

[BigJosh359]

Originally posted by yeszir
I dont care, so long as my xbox 2 has killer graphics

Killer graphics with no slowdowns.

[Papke]

My computer packs a 9800 pro, so I'm all for ATI!!