Opinions Please... nV30

WyreTheWolf · Oct 31, 2002, 05:10 AM

Check out this opinion piece here and give your opinion.

And try to keep in mind that the Radeon 9700 is going to be produced with DDRII!

UberLord · Oct 31, 2002, 12:54 PM

If ATI produced a steaming dog turd, HellBinder would still fawn all over it. He's one of the biggest fanboi's I know......

skastel · Oct 31, 2002, 03:18 PM

Frankly I think all the speculation needs to stop, who cares what the Radeon 9700 is doing. It's an amazing card, and any company, including Nvidia and ATI would be hard pressed to beat its performance. We should wait and see what the NV30 is bringing to the table before we take any more specualtion as fact. The NV30 could possibly beat the 9700, but we won't know for another two weeks. Lets just sit tight people, why bother to speculate on information thats not even official!

reno · Nov 1, 2002, 04:01 PM

What is still not remembered by everyone is that NV30 is a completely new core architecture. Even if the Radeon 9700 gets DDR2 it won't do much for a chipset that I've decided is severly limited by clockspeed.

The NV30 is NOT going to be like the Geforce4...here's why.

TNT comes out, TNT2 is just faster
Geforce 256 comes out, Geforce2 is *slightly* faster than the DDR 256 version
Geforce 3 comes out, Geforce 4 is faster with some debugging done to the shaders.

Nvidia likes to skip over core generations, TNT, Geforce 256, and Geforce 3 were their "innovative" cores (Twin Texels, T&L Acceleration, and Shaders, respectively), and that's what NV30 is going to be.

I don't know quite how innovative the R300 was over the R200, I mean really, if they are clocked at equal speeds the advantage goes to R300 by just a little bit. The R300 can basically do AA better and support higher clockspeeds and a few more shaders, almost exactly what the Geforce4 was to the Geforce3....see where I'm going with this?

Necrosis · Nov 1, 2002, 04:36 PM

Just please don't call it a Geforce 5; enough already!!

Pentium needs to away too.

Furious · Nov 9, 2002, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by reno
I don't know quite how innovative the R300 was over the R200, I mean really, if they are clocked at equal speeds the advantage goes to R300 by just a little bit. The R300 can basically do AA better and support higher clockspeeds and a few more shaders, almost exactly what the Geforce4 was to the Geforce3....see where I'm going with this?

Yeah other than it's got twice as many pixel pipelines, 256 bit memory bus, DX9 support, etc, etc it was basically the same as the R200.

RIV@NVX · Nov 9, 2002, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Furious
Yeah other than it's got twice as many pixel pipelines, 256 bit memory bus, DX9 support, etc, etc it was basically the same as the R200.

LOL. R300 was real improvement over R200 (as you can see in Doom III how much it overpreforms R200).

I agree that NV30 will be new technology and reno's theory is well known (it is actually NV's strategy). But we will need to see if what Bitboys say is right: "We need more bandwidth!"

reno · Nov 10, 2002, 03:45 PM

The R300 is to the R200 as the NV25 is to the NV20.

tparker · Nov 13, 2002, 09:32 PM

Gedntlemen ;The NV30 is going to be a ATI killer the memory is going to be 1000megs where the 9700 Radeon has 640 The reason Nvidia waited so long was to get a smaller core which equals less heat and less heat means the Gpu can be clocked higher.it took longer to tape out the New NV30 but there isn't any game out there that the Geforce Four TI4200-4600 won't play .The only game that will run the Radeon and The G4 to the max is DoomIII they are running it at 800X600 on the 9700 Radeon I don't think that people with the 9700 will be happy with those results granted the game is not a finished product yet .So the game will not be out till June that gives us time to let the new Nvidia card get out and the 1% that buys the top of the line cards will have their's and we will have the oppurtunity to buy a lesser version say one clocked at 900megs for 2/3 of the price if they do as they always do when they release a new version of Videocards.I have the Geforce four TI-4200 with 128 megs and paid 169 dollars for it where the ones that bought the 4600 paid close to 400 dollars for it .The old saying good things come to those that wait will continue to apply I believe.Everyone that buys one of these state of the art Videocards needs a Pc that will run the card at full force there will be little need for people with a 1ghz Pentium 3 and below to buy the new Geforce card I also hear from Reviewing friends it will not be called a Geforce Five and Benchmarks will run over 20,000 on madonion benches.I have no concrete proof of any of this but i believe most of it to be accurate time will tell so start saving the money for the new Nvidia card it is going to be a great Card and i don't see Radeon beating it because they chose a bigger micron chipset they are probalby working on a smaller core as i speak ATI has come a long way and the competition is good for us consumers we win when we have choices look at the Intel vs AMD battle I don't believe we would have a 3ghz Processor available if it wasn't for the CPU Processor Speed war.I would buy a Radeon if they will ever get their driver team to make drivers anywhere near as good as Nvidia .
Disclaimer:This is all just opinion and preference to a certain product and i in no way advocate that Nvidia is better than ATI I just choose to use the Nvidia Videocards instead of the Radeon I am sure that there are others who Love the Radeon and not the Nvidia .

sporkpimp · Nov 15, 2002, 12:59 AM

(blink)
You know, I normally try not to comment on grammar or spelling or anything in a post, but dude... use the Enter key.

That off my chest, wtf is with this stuff about Nvidia making great drivers compared to ATI?

It's been a year or two since that was true. Since WELL before the "Catalyst" rename.

No, seriously, everyone spits this out as canon. WHEN is it true? Give me a specific issue.

The fact that Nvidia rained Detonators like they were going out of style doesn't make them better drivers. In general, you got an unnoticable speed boost and a single bug fix in each driver package.

The first 7x00 and 8500 drivers were, admittedly, terrible. So were my first GF2 drivers. So, ATI was a little behind. ATI shaped up, and now CATALYSTs are released nearly as often as Detonators, and bugs with ATI cards (excluding the VIVOs and AIWs) are rare and performance is up.

Take an 8500 and a GeForce3, latest Detonators. IQ is superb on either. Speed is high on both, and significantly higher than the first release. There are few major bugs, and the vast majority of them apply to only one or two pieces of software.

And then, after looking this over, you think a second and go, "Wow, ATI has come a long way, but NVidia still has better drivers."

!#@*&????

-Sporky

reno · Nov 15, 2002, 05:16 AM

ATI just has a record for being lax with it's customers in regards to driver updates. More drivers quicker has always been preferable to ATI's previous methods of "two drivers per year." They still don't release with near the frequency of Nvidia either.

And before you go off on "more aint betta!" yeah it is. If I have 4 revisions of drivers to play with I can find the one that performs best with my config, for what I want to do. Some people might use the 41.03 for their optimum, whereas mine happens to be with the 40.72s.

Choice is better than none.

sporkpimp · Nov 16, 2002, 08:44 PM

You're going off of a reputation that they have ditched for going on 2 years now.

They aren't quite as often as Nvidia, but to say they release "two per year" is total BS.

I got a GeForce2 the month they were released, and kept it until I got my 8500 (about 8 months ago).

Nvidia did not release drivers as often as you guys claim. They LEAKED drivers like clockwork...

But then, so does ATI. Take a look at the driver forums. Can you honestly say that the ATI driver forums are "inactive?"

No. Of course not. I've installed five driver sets this month, and each one has been an improvement over the last.

To say that ATI has terrible drivers is like saying that 3DFX has the best video cards... silly and behind the times.

Edit: "Choice?" I call it sloppy testing. I know people who are still using the 29.42s because they feel they are faster.

Either they're being silly, or Nvidia's driver team just cranks out drivers without testing them. There should NEVER be a situation where someone prefers 6 or 12 month old drivers to the current ones. I've only once had to use an old set of ATI drivers, and they fixed the problem in the next driver release... hence the term "update."

-SporkPimp

PS: Love the new Avatar, Reno!

reno · Nov 17, 2002, 01:51 AM

in case you didn't notice, nvidia drivers (the detonators) support ALL nvidia chipsets...which, if you're trying to test 40 different platforms for two different processor types, with 5 different chipsets each....would get rather tiring. Newer drivers work better with newer video cards, how much faster can the latest detonators make your crippled TNT Vanta run? Some older drivers work better with older video cards because they were coded with more weight added to that chipset, support-wise.

BTW, it was only with the 8500...which was released less than a year ago...that ATI changed it's driver policy, not the "more than 2 years" you say. The catalysts are WAAAY overdue compared to nVidia's detonators, WAAY overdue.

BTW, 3dfx always had better cards than anyone else, up until the GeForce 2 Ultra was released...and the Voodoo5 6000 wasn't. You obviously don't remember the days when a V5 5500 could
trounce a Geforce 2, man those bitches were fast.

sporkpimp · Nov 17, 2002, 09:04 PM

(

Quote:

You obviously don't remember the days when a V5 5500 could

You're damned right I don't, heh... I was too busy goggling at the size and power requirement of the things to notice many benchmarks... heh heh...)

8500 was released October 2001. I personally say their drivers started improving with the 7x00 line... a little less than a year and a half ago. I said "going on 2 years," which means I exaggerated by a coupla months.
*bows humbly*

And I'm gonna throw the Vanta comment out the window... it's irrelevant. The Vanta doesn't have the same hardware instruction set as a GeForce, obviously, so the lines of code that deal with the Vanta are probably exactly the same in every Detonator version. Having a "choice" between identical things is not a choice... it's rather like having a choice between ham, ham, ham, and ham for dinner.

Just because new drivers SUPPORT old cards doesn't mean that they IMPROVE them... there's probably a TNT2 section in the INF file that hasn't been looked at in years.

So, back ON topic... when we're talking about cards whose performance/quality/stability is actually affected by new driver releases, there should very rarely be cases of people getting better results from old drivers. Driver updates are meant to be installed by all users, so they should help the vast majority.

Release 20 drivers a year, only 5 of them help perf/qual/stability... you've had 5 driver releases.

And yes, I'll admit that Nvidia's drivers trounced ATI until the new chipsets. But we're talking about new chipsets, so bringing up old crap from 1999 doesn't count.

-Sporky

PS: As for 3DFX... I had a V1 and a V3. You know what? They were practically the same card (obviously excluding speed). They often had the same bugs!

V5 was way too little, way too late... although I hope NVidia or ATI make a multichip card sooner or later!

Zardon · Nov 17, 2002, 09:26 PM

alot of what you say sporkpimp makes sense

reno · Nov 18, 2002, 01:18 AM

V3 had way more texturing units, more effective memory handling, different production process, way more transistors, 2d support, AGP support....there was a lot of stuff that was different.

Anyway, a lot of the nvidia releases have compromises to make, for the people that want speed there are certain drivers for that, for those that want ultra sharp textures there are certain drivers... I'm not saying all drivers are great, but most new drivers are great.

Contrary to your belief, the code for the TNT2, TNT, Geforce 1, 2, 3, and 4 all share SOME things in common and make the same hardware reference calls...thus writing drivers differently for an openGL flag like nv_dxtcompress or some crap will affect ALL nvidia cards. If the Geforce 256 is DirectX 7 compliant, it makes the same calls as any card after it in DirectX applications, so any change to that portion of the drivers will affect even old and busted vidcards.

BTW, I thought the 7xxx series came AFTER the 8xxx series videocards?

sporkpimp · Nov 18, 2002, 06:42 AM

Not sure... I remember seeing reviews for the 7x00s before I saw reviews for the 8500, and I bought a 7200 well before I bought my 8500... if I recall, they had a few probs getting the 8500 out on time.

Or else maybe it's just my exhaustion at work.

That said, I'd rather prefer a little Texture Quality slider to a jukebox approach with drivers... although one could always use NVMax, I'd like to see it be official...

Anyway, I just realized how utterly meaningless this argument is.

To summarize:
Reno:
"ATIs drivers have come a long way but still sucks. (Off topic tangents.)"
SporkPimp:
"ATIs drivers have come a long way and no longer suck. (Even more off topic tangents.)"

I guess we'll just have to wait for the NV30 to come out to prove ATIs pwnage.

-Sporky
-Sporky
-Sporky
-Spoooooorky
-Woo-hoo I'm tired
-I'm laughing madly as I do this, really.
-oOOOoooOOoOooOoO I NEED SLEEPZ0RZ

(fin)

reno · Nov 18, 2002, 04:17 PM

No no no, I'm not saying that the drivers suck, it's just I'm saying they have a worse history than nvidia for driver support.

To clear one thing up, the 7500 was a cut down 8500 (no shaders)...and it was released after the 8500 (which was released a little after the Geforce3 Ti500).

I just worry about getting a shiny new 9700 and not being able to play certain games without driver updates, such as NHL2k3 and the like. When I picked up my Ti500 I had no problems at all with anything, and still don't...that's where I'm coming from. I personally don't have a newer ATI card, so I don't know how great they are, stability wise. Most likely they are great, but I just don't really know...and when it comes to not knowing about computer components, it scares me away.

Anyway, yeah, lets stop arguing, you're right. It's pretty self-explanitory already

sporkpimp · Nov 19, 2002, 03:16 PM

(HUGHUGHUGHUGHUG) I wubb j00 too, Re-Re. (And my 9700 runs perfectly... it was a little slow in GTA3, but latest drivers fix it, and excluding an exploded (!) power supply, it's damned stable.)

digitalwanderer · Nov 19, 2002, 03:16 PM

I WANT!!!!!!!

UberLord · Nov 19, 2002, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
I WANT!!!!!!!

You can keep it!

No way I'm letting something with a fan that noisy in my quiet rig

digitalwanderer · Nov 19, 2002, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by UberLord
You can keep it!

No way I'm letting something with a fan that noisy in my quiet rig

You know you're talking to a man who just spent the morning modifying an old 10" box fan into a blowhole fan for the side of his case?

reno · Nov 20, 2002, 01:35 AM

From all I've read, the cooler supposedly isn't that noisy, and anyway...that's just a reference board, so who knows what MSI, Asus and the like will do to it.

Sweet bejeebus, did you guys see some of those Pixie screenshots...my GOD! It looked better than the final fantasy movie...500mhz core speeds (verified at some site while talking to an nvidia guy in an interview) and 16.1 GB of bandwidth! While those may not seem like amazing numbers compared to the R300...the FX doesn't use the same architecture as the R300...and estimates of THREE TIMES the framerate/3dmark score from a Ti 4600! WOWOW!

Time to wait patiently by my aging rig, accumulating money...muhahaha.

sporkpimp · Nov 21, 2002, 03:19 AM

(waits behind Reno's door with blackjack, antistatic envelope) Soon... soon... soon.

reno · Nov 21, 2002, 03:43 PM

Hahaha, you're going to be waiting behind that door for a pretty long time

Nov 23, 2002, 05:29 PM

i can't wait for the Radoen 10000

WyreTheWolf · Nov 24, 2002, 12:09 AM

There is a little bit of mis-information here that I would like to clear up.

The 7500 was not really a cut down version of the 8500, but rather a hopped up version of the Radeon 64 DDR.

The core was the same as the original Radeon... However it was using the memory interface from the 8500... This allowed for asynchronous memory/core speeds.

-----

Both the 8500, and 7500 were released at the same time. There may have been about a weeks worth of difference... But it wasn't much.

-----

Radeon 9700 Pro (using DDR II) may be a very real possibility!

Don't forget that! And it will be using a 256 bit interface! :P

reno · Nov 24, 2002, 06:13 AM

I thought ATI announced that the R300 could never fully utilize DDR2 and that it would only be with the R350 that they would...if ever...use it?

The Radeon 9900 Pro, the February product for ATI (competitor to the NV30) will still be based on a .15 process...which sucks.

Louie6666 · Nov 24, 2002, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by reno
I thought ATI announced that the R300 could never fully utilize DDR2 and that it would only be with the R350 that they would...if ever...use it?

The Radeon 9900 Pro, the February product for ATI (competitor to the NV30) will still be based on a .15 process...which sucks.

Hey why does it suck more on the 0.15 process surely just means they have more to play with when they next die shrink to 0.13 comes along....

Me Myself still coping with GF2 mx modded to Quadro lol, even a 4200 would be nice!

The Quake 3 thing, remember this years UT Betas & alphas all over net that ran really slow, because it wasn't optimised code, probably same will happen with doom3, they ain't going to release a game thats unplayable on most of there target audiences machines..

To be honest I think its going to be really close between Nvidia & ATI for a while, which is better for us! More comptetion between companies = better products & better prices

& if anyone with more money than sense whats to get rid of there old ATI 9xxx or Nvidia 4xxx, let me know & I'll send me addy...lol

Oct 31, 2002, 05:10 AM	#1
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	Opinions Please... nV30 Check out this opinion piece here and give your opinion. And try to keep in mind that the Radeon 9700 is going to be produced with DDRII!

Oct 31, 2002, 12:54 PM	#2
UberLord A Legend in Underwear Join Date: May 2002 Location: Unknown Posts: 5,255 Rep Power: 0	If ATI produced a steaming dog turd, HellBinder would still fawn all over it. He's one of the biggest fanboi's I know...... __________________ Gentoo Linux - Developer (baselayout) Read my blog "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Stephen Roberts

Oct 31, 2002, 03:18 PM	#3
skastel Massive Happiness Join Date: May 2002 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 238 Rep Power: 0	Frankly I think all the speculation needs to stop, who cares what the Radeon 9700 is doing. It's an amazing card, and any company, including Nvidia and ATI would be hard pressed to beat its performance. We should wait and see what the NV30 is bringing to the table before we take any more specualtion as fact. The NV30 could possibly beat the 9700, but we won't know for another two weeks. Lets just sit tight people, why bother to speculate on information thats not even official! __________________ Barton 2800+ @ 1998Mhz (12x166) Radeon 9700 Pro ASUS A7N 1 GB Corsair Low Latency PC3200 (2-2-2-5) SBLive! 5.1 WD 80GB JB Samsung DVD 16x+/12x-/2.4x Dual Layer Lite-On CD-R/RW 48x12x48x

Nov 1, 2002, 04:01 PM	#4
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	dfg What is still not remembered by everyone is that NV30 is a completely new core architecture. Even if the Radeon 9700 gets DDR2 it won't do much for a chipset that I've decided is severly limited by clockspeed. The NV30 is NOT going to be like the Geforce4...here's why. TNT comes out, TNT2 is just faster Geforce 256 comes out, Geforce2 is slightly faster than the DDR 256 version Geforce 3 comes out, Geforce 4 is faster with some debugging done to the shaders. Nvidia likes to skip over core generations, TNT, Geforce 256, and Geforce 3 were their "innovative" cores (Twin Texels, T&L Acceleration, and Shaders, respectively), and that's what NV30 is going to be. I don't know quite how innovative the R300 was over the R200, I mean really, if they are clocked at equal speeds the advantage goes to R300 by just a little bit. The R300 can basically do AA better and support higher clockspeeds and a few more shaders, almost exactly what the Geforce4 was to the Geforce3....see where I'm going with this?

Nov 10, 2002, 03:45 PM	#8
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	rewgw The R300 is to the R200 as the NV25 is to the NV20.

Nov 1, 2002, 04:36 PM	#5
Necrosis HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 8,838 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	Just please don't call it a Geforce 5; enough already!! Pentium needs to away too.

Nov 13, 2002, 09:32 PM	#9
tparker DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Winston Salem N.C. Posts: 42 Rep Power: 0	Here's what i know about NV30 Gedntlemen ;The NV30 is going to be a ATI killer the memory is going to be 1000megs where the 9700 Radeon has 640 The reason Nvidia waited so long was to get a smaller core which equals less heat and less heat means the Gpu can be clocked higher.it took longer to tape out the New NV30 but there isn't any game out there that the Geforce Four TI4200-4600 won't play .The only game that will run the Radeon and The G4 to the max is DoomIII they are running it at 800X600 on the 9700 Radeon I don't think that people with the 9700 will be happy with those results granted the game is not a finished product yet .So the game will not be out till June that gives us time to let the new Nvidia card get out and the 1% that buys the top of the line cards will have their's and we will have the oppurtunity to buy a lesser version say one clocked at 900megs for 2/3 of the price if they do as they always do when they release a new version of Videocards.I have the Geforce four TI-4200 with 128 megs and paid 169 dollars for it where the ones that bought the 4600 paid close to 400 dollars for it .The old saying good things come to those that wait will continue to apply I believe.Everyone that buys one of these state of the art Videocards needs a Pc that will run the card at full force there will be little need for people with a 1ghz Pentium 3 and below to buy the new Geforce card I also hear from Reviewing friends it will not be called a Geforce Five and Benchmarks will run over 20,000 on madonion benches.I have no concrete proof of any of this but i believe most of it to be accurate time will tell so start saving the money for the new Nvidia card it is going to be a great Card and i don't see Radeon beating it because they chose a bigger micron chipset they are probalby working on a smaller core as i speak ATI has come a long way and the competition is good for us consumers we win when we have choices look at the Intel vs AMD battle I don't believe we would have a 3ghz Processor available if it wasn't for the CPU Processor Speed war.I would buy a Radeon if they will ever get their driver team to make drivers anywhere near as good as Nvidia . Disclaimer:This is all just opinion and preference to a certain product and i in no way advocate that Nvidia is better than ATI I just choose to use the Nvidia Videocards instead of the Radeon I am sure that there are others who Love the Radeon and not the Nvidia .

Nov 15, 2002, 12:59 AM	#10
sporkpimp DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: CA, USA Posts: 90 Rep Power: 0	...wow (blink) You know, I normally try not to comment on grammar or spelling or anything in a post, but dude... use the Enter key. That off my chest, wtf is with this stuff about Nvidia making great drivers compared to ATI? It's been a year or two since that was true. Since WELL before the "Catalyst" rename. No, seriously, everyone spits this out as canon. WHEN is it true? Give me a specific issue. The fact that Nvidia rained Detonators like they were going out of style doesn't make them better drivers. In general, you got an unnoticable speed boost and a single bug fix in each driver package. The first 7x00 and 8500 drivers were, admittedly, terrible. So were my first GF2 drivers. So, ATI was a little behind. ATI shaped up, and now CATALYSTs are released nearly as often as Detonators, and bugs with ATI cards (excluding the VIVOs and AIWs) are rare and performance is up. Take an 8500 and a GeForce3, latest Detonators. IQ is superb on either. Speed is high on both, and significantly higher than the first release. There are few major bugs, and the vast majority of them apply to only one or two pieces of software. And then, after looking this over, you think a second and go, "Wow, ATI has come a long way, but NVidia still has better drivers." !#@*&???? -Sporky

Nov 15, 2002, 05:16 AM	#11
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	gfdhd ATI just has a record for being lax with it's customers in regards to driver updates. More drivers quicker has always been preferable to ATI's previous methods of "two drivers per year." They still don't release with near the frequency of Nvidia either. And before you go off on "more aint betta!" yeah it is. If I have 4 revisions of drivers to play with I can find the one that performs best with my config, for what I want to do. Some people might use the 41.03 for their optimum, whereas mine happens to be with the 40.72s. Choice is better than none.

Nov 16, 2002, 08:44 PM	#12
sporkpimp DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: CA, USA Posts: 90 Rep Power: 0	Past tense verbs. You're going off of a reputation that they have ditched for going on 2 years now. They aren't quite as often as Nvidia, but to say they release "two per year" is total BS. I got a GeForce2 the month they were released, and kept it until I got my 8500 (about 8 months ago). Nvidia did not release drivers as often as you guys claim. They LEAKED drivers like clockwork... But then, so does ATI. Take a look at the driver forums. Can you honestly say that the ATI driver forums are "inactive?" No. Of course not. I've installed five driver sets this month, and each one has been an improvement over the last. To say that ATI has terrible drivers is like saying that 3DFX has the best video cards... silly and behind the times. Edit: "Choice?" I call it sloppy testing. I know people who are still using the 29.42s because they feel they are faster. Either they're being silly, or Nvidia's driver team just cranks out drivers without testing them. There should NEVER be a situation where someone prefers 6 or 12 month old drivers to the current ones. I've only once had to use an old set of ATI drivers, and they fixed the problem in the next driver release... hence the term "update." -SporkPimp PS: Love the new Avatar, Reno! Last edited by sporkpimp; Nov 16, 2002 at 08:50 PM.

Nov 17, 2002, 01:51 AM	#13
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	d in case you didn't notice, nvidia drivers (the detonators) support ALL nvidia chipsets...which, if you're trying to test 40 different platforms for two different processor types, with 5 different chipsets each....would get rather tiring. Newer drivers work better with newer video cards, how much faster can the latest detonators make your crippled TNT Vanta run? Some older drivers work better with older video cards because they were coded with more weight added to that chipset, support-wise. BTW, it was only with the 8500...which was released less than a year ago...that ATI changed it's driver policy, not the "more than 2 years" you say. The catalysts are WAAAY overdue compared to nVidia's detonators, WAAY overdue. BTW, 3dfx always had better cards than anyone else, up until the GeForce 2 Ultra was released...and the Voodoo5 6000 wasn't. You obviously don't remember the days when a V5 5500 could trounce a Geforce 2, man those bitches were fast.

Nov 17, 2002, 09:26 PM	#15
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	alot of what you say sporkpimp makes sense

Nov 18, 2002, 01:18 AM	#16
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	ghdf V3 had way more texturing units, more effective memory handling, different production process, way more transistors, 2d support, AGP support....there was a lot of stuff that was different. Anyway, a lot of the nvidia releases have compromises to make, for the people that want speed there are certain drivers for that, for those that want ultra sharp textures there are certain drivers... I'm not saying all drivers are great, but most new drivers are great. Contrary to your belief, the code for the TNT2, TNT, Geforce 1, 2, 3, and 4 all share SOME things in common and make the same hardware reference calls...thus writing drivers differently for an openGL flag like nv_dxtcompress or some crap will affect ALL nvidia cards. If the Geforce 256 is DirectX 7 compliant, it makes the same calls as any card after it in DirectX applications, so any change to that portion of the drivers will affect even old and busted vidcards. BTW, I thought the 7xxx series came AFTER the 8xxx series videocards?

Nov 18, 2002, 06:42 AM	#17
sporkpimp DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: CA, USA Posts: 90 Rep Power: 0	Not sure... I remember seeing reviews for the 7x00s before I saw reviews for the 8500, and I bought a 7200 well before I bought my 8500... if I recall, they had a few probs getting the 8500 out on time. Or else maybe it's just my exhaustion at work. That said, I'd rather prefer a little Texture Quality slider to a jukebox approach with drivers... although one could always use NVMax, I'd like to see it be official... Anyway, I just realized how utterly meaningless this argument is. To summarize: Reno: "ATIs drivers have come a long way but still sucks. (Off topic tangents.)" SporkPimp: "ATIs drivers have come a long way and no longer suck. (Even more off topic tangents.)" I guess we'll just have to wait for the NV30 to come out to prove ATIs pwnage. -Sporky -Sporky -Sporky -Spoooooorky -Woo-hoo I'm tired -I'm laughing madly as I do this, really. -oOOOoooOOoOooOoO I NEED SLEEPZ0RZ (fin)

Nov 18, 2002, 04:17 PM	#18
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	ghf No no no, I'm not saying that the drivers suck, it's just I'm saying they have a worse history than nvidia for driver support. To clear one thing up, the 7500 was a cut down 8500 (no shaders)...and it was released after the 8500 (which was released a little after the Geforce3 Ti500). I just worry about getting a shiny new 9700 and not being able to play certain games without driver updates, such as NHL2k3 and the like. When I picked up my Ti500 I had no problems at all with anything, and still don't...that's where I'm coming from. I personally don't have a newer ATI card, so I don't know how great they are, stability wise. Most likely they are great, but I just don't really know...and when it comes to not knowing about computer components, it scares me away. Anyway, yeah, lets stop arguing, you're right. It's pretty self-explanitory already

Nov 19, 2002, 03:16 PM	#19
sporkpimp DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: CA, USA Posts: 90 Rep Power: 0	Awwwww (HUGHUGHUGHUGHUG) I wubb j00 too, Re-Re. (And my 9700 runs perfectly... it was a little slow in GTA3, but latest drivers fix it, and excluding an exploded (!) power supply, it's damned stable.)

Nov 19, 2002, 03:16 PM	#20
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	Opinion on NV30 I WANT!!!!!!! __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Nov 20, 2002, 01:35 AM	#23
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	ghrf From all I've read, the cooler supposedly isn't that noisy, and anyway...that's just a reference board, so who knows what MSI, Asus and the like will do to it. Sweet bejeebus, did you guys see some of those Pixie screenshots...my GOD! It looked better than the final fantasy movie...500mhz core speeds (verified at some site while talking to an nvidia guy in an interview) and 16.1 GB of bandwidth! While those may not seem like amazing numbers compared to the R300...the FX doesn't use the same architecture as the R300...and estimates of THREE TIMES the framerate/3dmark score from a Ti 4600! WOWOW! Time to wait patiently by my aging rig, accumulating money...muhahaha.

Nov 21, 2002, 03:19 AM	#24
sporkpimp DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: CA, USA Posts: 90 Rep Power: 0	In that case... (waits behind Reno's door with blackjack, antistatic envelope) Soon... soon... soon.

Nov 21, 2002, 03:43 PM	#25
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	gh Hahaha, you're going to be waiting behind that door for a pretty long time

Nov 23, 2002, 05:29 PM	#26
generalstupid Guest Posts: n/a	i can't wait for the Radoen 10000

Nov 24, 2002, 12:09 AM	Thread Starter #27
WyreTheWolf Wolfish Bastard Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cave; Ozark Mountains Posts: 2,110 Rep Power: 0	There is a little bit of mis-information here that I would like to clear up. The 7500 was not really a cut down version of the 8500, but rather a hopped up version of the Radeon 64 DDR. The core was the same as the original Radeon... However it was using the memory interface from the 8500... This allowed for asynchronous memory/core speeds. ----- Both the 8500, and 7500 were released at the same time. There may have been about a weeks worth of difference... But it wasn't much. ----- Radeon 9700 Pro (using DDR II) may be a very real possibility! Don't forget that! And it will be using a 256 bit interface! :P

Nov 24, 2002, 06:13 AM	#28
reno Painlord of Ichor Join Date: May 2002 Location: bloinkin! Posts: 1,610 Rep Power: 0	dfg I thought ATI announced that the R300 could never fully utilize DDR2 and that it would only be with the R350 that they would...if ever...use it? The Radeon 9900 Pro, the February product for ATI (competitor to the NV30) will still be based on a .15 process...which sucks.