Just bought a Radeon 9700 Pro

[Sazar]

Originally posted by wyrlwyn
i have heard(and still here) about compatability issues with ati hardware, i have witnessed it with the aiw, and have read aobut it with the updates to the 9700. i give props to ati for having fast silicon, but, nvidia hasn't had a problem with beating the compeditiors to the highest speeds... sure, they are about 20% slower then the 9700, but, the r9700 was release a few months later then the g4s. we all know how it works, the latest release is the fastest, then the next, which is faster... we all know that once we see the gf fx rip ati a new one, we(well, i already do) will all want one of them, casue no one is going to want a "seconf best".
all i can say is, we go for the best, and even if someone makes a slitly slower card, its better then any of us can do, unless some one here fabs 3d accelerator chips in there basements, but i'd like to see them pull off 300+ fps in quake 3.... i give ati and nvidia props for revolutionizing the industry, with the g4 ti 4600, r9700, the xbox, and the game cude.

there are always issues m8... what irks me and has always irked me is the pr that nvidia employs than goes around and counter-acts what it says... example... all nvidia people were up in arms about the extra power connector on the r300 cards... I have yet to hear a peep from nvidia PR groups about their very own extra connector or the massive fan they have... when the ati solution was criticized for its large HSF...

I'll take your post step by step... nvidia has always had some of the fastest cards in terms of frame rate... but ati always has the lead in terms of quality... in fact the best looking graphics are probably from Matrox... once you play performance settings on a gf 4ti card and then a radeon card such as the 8500 onwards... you will see what the difference in quality really is...

the radeon 8500 was released to compete with and best the g3... but that NEVER stopped anyone from going ahead and comparing it to the gf4 ti series in every single benchmark... therefore it is only fair for the gf4 ti series cards to be compared in tests 1-1 with the r300 based cores... its just the way the market works...

about the gf FX besting the r300... no doubt it should... after all it is using newer technology and will have been in development NOW for around 9 months more at the time it is released... in its initial form.. no it would not have been an r300 beater.. nvidia knew this as well... at the moment nvidia is one 6 month cycle behind ati... since by the time the nv30 comes out... the r350 should be ready for release and by the time the nv35 comes out the r400 will be ready per the product cycles in place now...

concerning hardware problems.. the one that everyone was talking about was agp8x problems... but this is nothing to do with ati cards... it is SiS chipsets that have the problem for the most part... driver reviosions and bios revisions have fixed most issues with stuttering et al that came about...

ati has had little to nothing to do with the gamecube btw just wanted to throw that out... it was develot by ART X or some such company... ati just bought the company and thats that... nvidia developed the gpu inside the xbox on the other hand...

 

[Jz1397-5]

oh yes, harder sazar harder.... way to like b*tch slap people, more power to you

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Jz1397-4
oh yes, harder sazar harder.... way to like b*tch slap people, more power to you

bleh I aim to please... and since you have such a big smile.. I take it satisfaction guaranteed was not an understatement lol...

 

[OTE]

I'd just like to add to Sazars comments that there will ALWAYS be a leap frogging of technology from both ATi and Nvidia (and other markets).

Starting from the 8500 release which really started to kick things off for ATi:

GF3 - new technology beats, everything in market

then ATi release
Radeon 8500 - beats GF3

Nvidia respond
GF4 Ti series - beats 8500

Ati develop 9700 - beats GF4

Nvidia will respond with GF FX, etc.

this is a basic representation of how the leap froggin effect will work. It generally happens over a 6 month period, however as Sazar has pointed out Nvidia is 1 6 month cycle behind ATi, giving them the advantage.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by OTE
I'd just like to add to Sazars comments that there will ALWAYS be a leap frogging of technology from both ATi and Nvidia (and other markets).

Starting from the 8500 release which really started to kick things off for ATi:

GF3 - new technology beats, everything in market

then ATi release
Radeon 8500 - beats GF3

Nvidia respond
GF4 Ti series - beats 8500

Ati develop 9700 - beats GF4

Nvidia will respond with GF FX, etc.

this is a basic representation of how the leap froggin effect will work. It generally happens over a 6 month period, however as Sazar has pointed out Nvidia is 1 6 month cycle behind ATi, giving them the advantage.

no doubt.. this is one thing that keeps things cutting edge... if the r300 had been a ho-hum product we would have seen a basic refresh of the gf4ti series cards before thje nv30 came out.. and now because of the potential of the nv30 ati has its new product line ready... its a good time for consumers with products in every power spectrum... and for low prices at many points...

would be really nice to see what price the nv31 and nv34 and the rv350 from ati come out @... as well as the r280...

good times for consumers

 

[Jz1397-5]

$300+ for the top of the line is good times for consumers?

 

[Pythro]

You can buy a 9700 pro for $322 if you know where to look; thats for a retail card. If you are willing to take a risk, you can buy an OEM 9700 pro for $290. If you really want to risk it, you can buy a refurbished 9700 pro for $266. If you don't believe me, just got to www.newegg.com and take a look around.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Jz1397-4
$300+ for the top of the line is good times for consumers?

a lot better than the $599 premium price commanded by the geforce 3 when it was launched would you not say? or the reported 500 dollar market price of the gf FX ULTRA... with the low end model shipping @ 400-ish...

the prices of the non-pro 9700/9500pro and non-pro 9500 are pretty low... as are the prices for the ti4200 cards from nvidia... that is good... plus the mid range market has the 9000pro/gf4 MX cards to round out the product line...

 

[wyrlwyn]

how would you judge image quality? do you mean the crispness or clarity, or just the settings within the application/game? you keep saying the radeons have better image quality, but, is this being tested with multiple cards(ati and nvidia) on the same system/monitor, or is it more of a personal feeling?

 

[wyrlwyn]

and what are these major hardware changes you talk about in the ati line of cards?

 

[OTE]

To answer your 1st question wyrlwyn when creating a graphics card originally one of two lines had to be taken, either go for performance in games or go with a better visual experience.

Generally the line taken by Nvidia has been performance and ATi has generally taken the Visual route. However with the NV30 and 9700Pro these two lines are merging.

Anyway, watch the same game being played on two identical machines except with an Nvidia GF4 card in one and Ati 8500 in the other and the image quality is noticeable. By this chrispness, clarity and colour saturation of textures is taken into account.

To your 2nd question, with Nvidia the cange from one series to another has been as follows

GF2 ---> GF3 Big change new architecture etc ---> GF4 (Ti) is basically an optimised GF3 with no ground breaking changes.

With ATi however each successive number (7xxx, 8xxx, 9xxx) has been a big change in arictecture 8500 ---> 9700 for example.

As I have not watched the ATi range as closely I cannot give you the particulars about each generation except for the 8500, which is a DX8.1 compliant card.

 

[wyrlwyn]

actually, i notice it myself now. i play antalus on my ati radeon 7500, and if you now the map(for unreal tournament 2003) were the reflective water is under the tree, you should see a clear sky and a nice dark shadow under the tree...
well, when i through in my g3, the shadows were washed out, and the reflection, well, looked like ****. the ati had the shadow, and the shadows(along with everything else) were crips and clear...
sorry for doubting everyone, just had to see it for myself. looks like nividia has been cheating us out of money as well as quality...

 

[Sazar]

looks like nividia has been cheating us out of money as well as quality...

not really... nvidia has made many developments in the world of video cards... hardware T&L processing anyone lol... oh sorry the SiS xabre still use software T&L going to hardware (ie moving T&L processing to the gpu instead of the cpu) makes rendering a lot faster than with software which utilizes the CPU...

things like this have made nvidia a known company for innovation...

image quality-wise you WILL see a difference in the jaggies on an ati system v/s an nvidia system... you can try comparing just screenshots of edges but you really need to play games on gf4ti cards and then an radeon 8500/9xxx card to see the difference...

that being said some of the BEST rendering in terms of quality is by matrox.. just that the slow clock speed does not make it much of a gaming option and the 300+ dollar tag for the parhelia just makes no sense unless you use it as somewhat of a professional card...

OTE describes changes pretty well for the nvidia lineup... ati basically does have more hardware changes from product range to product range than nvidia.. at least @ the moment and recent past... 7xxx series to 8xxx series went from dx7 to dx 8.1 suport and now to dx9 support for all the 9xxx series except the 9000 based cards... and the upcoming 9100 based cards... kinda quirky naming on the part of those should really be 8300/8500 and now possibly like 8700 or whatever...

also architecturally... the 8500 had 4x2 (pipelines x texture processing units or TU's)

basically :
radeon 8500 = 4x2
radeon 9000 = 4x1
radeon 9700 = 8x1
geforce 3 = 4x2
gefroce 4 = 4x2
geforce FX = 8x1

so you can see how the ARCHITECTURE of the cards has progressed... instead of basically refreshing a particular design... ati has done a nice job moving forward and expanding its lineup for all cost brackets...

hope this helps answer some of your questions wyrlwyn..

btw you will also notice that most of the gf4mx series and gf2 series are virtually identical