Video Card trouble

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-15 05:54pm

Shogoki wrote:
LOL, who's the one going apeshit, again? I didn't even mention ATI, guess anybody who says anything about nVidia must be an ATI fanboy, right?

I hadn't seen this article, it's indeed interesting, and surprising too, I'm actually glad they are pulling their stuff together, as 2 friends of mine who spent a few hundred dollars on their new video cards waiting for HL2 were feeling very disappointed and ripped off. We still have to wait to find out, anyway.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to add quote.

I wasn't suggesting that YOU were an ATI fanboy, just that the info that you received was ATI fanboy garbage. As for HL2, if nVidia gained 65% in Halo (a game that according to the developer makes heavy use of PS 2.0 shaders) then they can quite probably make up the deficit. Notice that Carmack has shown that the GeForce FX is actually slightly FASTER in DOOM III.

The above is why I am a little ticked at Gabe and Valve. Their benchmarks didn't show squat; all they did was spread a great deal of misinformation. Even if HL2 had remained on schedule, Det. 50's would still be out to meet the game before its release. So the whole comparison became moot anyways.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-10-15 06:32pm

The Kernel wrote:It's still beta as long as it isn't in the hands of gamers. What you are saying makes sense, but there a several factors here, not the least of which that the original DX9 benchmark (DOOM III) showed nVidia AHEAD of ATI. My point is that although the HL2 benchmark is interesting, it doesn't really give us much of an indication of final performance.

Whoa, whoa, stop the presses. Doom 3 is not DX9 in terms of featureset (a rough comparison, I know D3 uses OpenGL). It's essentially a DX7 game with some DX8 thrown in. It's not suprising at all that the NV30 runs Doom 3 better.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-15 06:41pm

phongn wrote:
The Kernel wrote:It's still beta as long as it isn't in the hands of gamers. What you are saying makes sense, but there a several factors here, not the least of which that the original DX9 benchmark (DOOM III) showed nVidia AHEAD of ATI. My point is that although the HL2 benchmark is interesting, it doesn't really give us much of an indication of final performance.
Whoa, whoa, stop the presses. Doom 3 is not DX9 in terms of featureset (a rough comparison, I know D3 uses OpenGL). It's essentially a DX7 game with some DX8 thrown in. It's not suprising at all that the NV30 runs Doom 3 better.

Actually, DOOM III simply has a DX7 codepath for backwards compatibility, it is natively designed around DirectX 8 type effects. All those stencil shadows, per-pixel lighting and pixel shader driven bump maps require a DX8 hardware card to look good.

That said, I believe that Carmack and co. added several PS 2.0 and VS 2.0 effects to this game late last year. I'll search around for more on this, but since PS 2.0 is backwards compatible with PS 1.2/1.4, these type of effects aren't hard to add (see Halo for an example).

Now, I'm not sure that DOOM III performance will directly relate to HL2 performance, but its just another piece in the puzzle of next-gen games. I can assure you that HL2 wasn't built from the ground up for DX9 since the engine has been under contruction for about 5 years. It is tricky to add up to the minute effects, but pepole like Carmack and Gabe get a lot of incentives thrown at them to optomize their games for the latest hardware (these are the games that sell videocards after all) so I expect to see both games take advantage of a good deal of DX9 hardware, even if we haven't seen it specifically outlined in the presentations we have seen thusfar.

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-10-18 03:56pm

Jadeite wrote:Arg, my comp now goes into the Blue Screen whenever I play GTAIII now! Apparently this file is causing it: 3DFXVSM.DLL DAMN YOU 3DFX!! Im going to shop around for a new card this weekend, but what do I do to fix this for now?

Can someone at least tell me how to fix this problem by uninstalling the drivers I downloaded?

EDIT: That wasn't very clear. I think I can fix this problem for now by uninstalling the drivers that screwed everything up. I could run every game I had fine until I installed those, and now they won't run. How do I uninstall them?

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-18 07:19pm

Jadeite wrote:
Jadeite wrote:Arg, my comp now goes into the Blue Screen whenever I play GTAIII now! Apparently this file is causing it: 3DFXVSM.DLL DAMN YOU 3DFX!! Im going to shop around for a new card this weekend, but what do I do to fix this for now?
Can someone at least tell me how to fix this problem by uninstalling the drivers I downloaded?

EDIT: That wasn't very clear. I think I can fix this problem for now by uninstalling the drivers that screwed everything up. I could run every game I had fine until I installed those, and now they won't run. How do I uninstall them?

Check add/remove programs, the readme file that came with the drivers, and the website that you got the drivers from.

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2003-10-19 08:17pm

I went to Best Buy today and bought a Radeon 9200, 128 MB.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-10-19 11:40pm

You know, I'd be really happy if all the graphics people would kindly get their noses out of Microsoft's fat ass and get around to finishing OpenGL 2.0...

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-20 01:24am

Jadeite wrote:I went to Best Buy today and bought a Radeon 9200, 128 MB.

...take it back...you probably paid enough for a 9600 online which you can gives you DirectX 9 hardware functionality and about 60% more raw speed. Of course that's just a suggestion...

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-10-20 01:28am

If it's open he may be SOL.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-20 01:34am

phongn wrote:If it's open he may be SOL.

Nah, Best Buy takes open items with a receipt. Seriously though, take it back. Store bought video cards are the biggest rip off in the free world. Online purchasing is safe and you can save a TON of money if you check pricewatch.com

Hyperion · Post by **Hyperion** » 2003-10-20 02:16am

Ace Pace wrote:
The Kernel wrote:The Radeon 9600 is a good choice and can be had for around $105 (check pricewatch). If you want to spend a little more, the Radeon 9800 is around $170 and will give you about 40% better performance. I really wouldn't go any cheaper right now as you sacrifice performance on games coming out in the next few months.

I like nVidia just fine, but at this price point, they really don't have a decent competitor to the Radeon 9600/9800 so until the release the fx 5700, I would go ATI
I would reccomend staying away from Nvidia at all, with all their driver troubles

What driver troubles? I have never had a problem with Nvidia's drivers, now ATI's on the otherhand... 60 some meg install for a fucking driver and no way to uninstall it without breaking the comp...

Shogoki · Post by **Shogoki** » 2003-10-20 12:26pm

You're obviously not up to date.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-10-20 02:40pm

Crayz9000 wrote:You know, I'd be really happy if all the graphics people would kindly get their noses out of Microsoft's fat ass and get around to finishing OpenGL 2.0...

Fucking A, come on!

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-20 05:06pm

Shogoki wrote:You're obviously not up to date.

And neither of you obviously have read the thread.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-10-20 07:09pm

Hyperion wrote:What driver troubles? I have never had a problem with Nvidia's drivers, *snip*

There is the issue with TV-out functionality after the 40.72 drivers..... (ie: the lack of macrovision decoder resulting in the inability to play DVD movies with ANY decoder if your card has TV-out ability.)

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2003-11-01 01:29am

Hyperion wrote:
Ace Pace wrote:
I would reccomend staying away from Nvidia at all, with all their driver troubles

What driver troubles? I have never had a problem with Nvidia's drivers, now ATI's on the otherhand... 60 some meg install for a fucking driver and no way to uninstall it without breaking the comp...

ATI installs are smooth. only 1 restart, and you dont have to uninstall anything, Nvidia installs my place involve 3 restarts

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-11-01 02:19am

btw, with the release of the ForceWare drivers, they've finally fixed the TV-out problem. About damn time too!