StarDestroyer.Net BBS

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDIx
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3 ... 356,00.asp
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1779
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/index.html

It appears to generally outperform the R300 (Radeon 9700).

phongn wrote: It appears to generally outperform the R300 (Radeon 9700).

And will have NVIDIA quality drivers

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: It appears to generally outperform the R300 (Radeon 9700).

And will have NVIDIA quality drivers

Yep. They should be good, unless nVidia somehow screws up horribly.

I'm now waiting to see how ATI's R350 does against nVidia's NV30 upon their releases.

I'm personally more excited about the 32-bit alpha channel support.

Durandal wrote:I'm personally more excited about the 32-bit alpha channel support.

About time people started moving away from 8-bit alpha...

.... Personaly I feel its not enough... I mean it is as they said.. 500mhtz Core and 500 mhtz DDR Memory?
WOOOHOO! I say, but it does not seem to relfect it in the benchmarks

Then agian... Look back at the Geforce 2, There is a 42% Performance jump if you compare release drivers to Modern Day Versions...

Don't get too excited it's going to cost a fortune, is loud as fuck, hot as hell and not that much faster than the 9700 pro. From what I've read so far on it I'm pretty underwhelmed by it.

It isn't that expensive for a high-end gaming card. $400 was around the release price for the R300 as well.

Yeah, I'll wait to see it's release performance, as nVidia is pretty good about tweaking their drivers. Presumably their RAMDACs are now up to snuff as well.

I still wouldn't have it to be honest, the sheer size of the thing combined with the horrific noise and heat levels put me well off. My PC is loud enough and hot enough already.

And $400 is too much for a graphics card period in my opinion. It just seems VERY excessive to me.

I can't tell if this is about computers or the latest heat-seeking ground-penetrating oil-and-slip-resistant ASROC

Crazy_Vasey wrote:I still wouldn't have it to be honest, the sheer size of the thing combined with the horrific noise and heat levels put me well off. My PC is loud enough and hot enough already.

And $400 is too much for a graphics card period in my opinion. It just seems VERY excessive to me.

$400 for a graphics card? I wouldn't pay over $200. A video card isn't on the top of my priority list to be honest.

Most I've ever paid was £130 for a Geforce2mx the week they came out. It was well worth it though, lasted yonks and has only recently started to struggle a little. Nvidia were well ahead of the rest of the pack back then.

The most I've ever paid is ~$90 for my R8500LE/128. I'm not going to buy anything top-of-the-line as I don't game that much.

And yes, that fan produces an enormous amount of noise. Tom's Hardware has recordings of it.

phongn wrote:The most I've ever paid is ~$90 for my R8500LE/128. I'm not going to buy anything top-of-the-line as I don't game that much.

And yes, that fan produces an enormous amount of noise. Tom's Hardware has recordings of it.

My biggest card purchase ever was just recently, an old 7500 for $40.

You could have bought an R8500LE/64 for not too much more.

I saw the video of the GF FX fan kicking into high gear... jesus christ, that's loud. How long can a little fan like that going so hard last anyway?

I've heard talk at the SA forums that the GF FX is basically already OCed out of the box and that some OCing of the 9700 pro would see it matching or besting the FX.

They may be running the NV30 near the bleeding edge. They'll get some more breathing room when they switch to 0.09 micron, but that's awhile off. It's ludicrious that it pumps out that much hear - there are R300s that have no active cooling!

Okay, I just looked at some of the benchmarks more carefully now.

The R300 is beating down the NV30 in "real world" tests. When antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering are enabled the R300 emerges as the clear winner.

The NV30 has a lot of promise, but it seems to be running on the bleeding edge even under a 0.13-micron process. The R300 has room to spare with a 0.15-micron process, and there should be a die shink to 0.13-micron for the R350.

If ATI can get on the ball with regard to driver releases, nVidia will be in serious trouble.

i paid $400 for a GeForce 3 when it came out. But when it came out it was freggin state of the art. GeForce FX can't even beat the 9700

phongn wrote: If ATI can get on the ball with regard to driver releases, nVidia will be in serious trouble.

HAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAA

Thanks for making my night, Phong!

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: If ATI can get on the ball with regard to driver releases, nVidia will be in serious trouble.

HAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAA HAAAAAA

Thanks for making my night, Phong!

You know Shep, once upon a time they said that about nVidia as well.

phongn wrote: You know Shep, once upon a time they said that about nVidia as well.

Except ATI has always been consistently shitty. Why, I remember
when they were just a big OEM supplier, not a l33t gaming company.

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: You know Shep, once upon a time they said that about nVidia as well.

Except ATI has always been consistently shitty. Why, I remember
when they were just a big OEM supplier, not a l33t gaming company.

Once again that was also much the case with nVida around the time that no one could touch 3dfx.

The current situation for Nvidia reminds me of the launch of the RADEON8500. The GeForce3 was at selling points for half a year, the RADEON8500 had worse drivers, and the GeForce3 ti-series was launched shortly afterwards, giving the performance crown back to Nvidia.

Now it´s vice versa. The RADEON9700PRO has been available since Octobre, it has mature drivers and is almost as fast as the GeForce FX 5800Ultra. The successor of the 9700, codename R350, is going to be released in March, and it´s expected to be faster than the FX.

But I wouldn´t buy any of the two now. There´s not one game out there that needs a DX9-generation card.

If I would buy a graphics card these days, I would buy a RADEON9500 128MB and turn it into a 9700PRO. These would bring me ~70-90% of the performance of the GF FX (depends on the luck) for a third of the money.
Now that kicks ass!

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: You know Shep, once upon a time they said that about nVidia as well.

Except ATI has always been consistently shitty. Why, I remember
when they were just a big OEM supplier, not a l33t gaming company.

So do I. I had a Mach64GX/4MB VRAM (true VRAM, not crappy DRAM) and it was good in those days. Another computer had a Matrox Millennium I, and that kicked the pants off anything else (I could actually play Troops (the fanmovie) without skipping frames(!))

nVidia, of course, has always been an OEM company. They don't make graphics cards, they make chips. ATI remains primarily an OEM company.