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Graphics Software Hardware

ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 324

Posted by michael from the purty-pictures dept.
ATi is bringing out their new card, the Radeon 9800 Pro, and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews. Here's a few: Hothardware.com, Hexus.net, HardOCP.com, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, Extremetech, PCWorld.
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ATi Radeon 9800 Pro More

ATi Radeon 9800 Pro

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  • Independent review sites? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JKR ( 198165 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:24AM (#5448324)
    So, are there any independent review sites out there? How do they get their hands on pre-release hardware? Just how close to payola is the whole thing, anyway?

    Enquiring minds want to know (before they blow ${WEEKS_WAGES} on new toys...)

    Jon.

    • Re:Independent review sites? (Score:5, Informative)

      by stroudie ( 173480 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:45AM (#5448414)
      For what its worth, the Register also has a review [theregister.co.uk].

      They may not be any more independent, but at least they're honest [theregister.co.uk]...

    • Re:Independent review sites? (Score:5, Informative)

      by UberLord ( 631313 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:21AM (#5448599) Homepage
      As an admin for DriverHeaven the only kinda freebies we get for reviewing products is the product itself - usually on loan.

      Payola? Damn - I really wish there was some!

      BTW, here's our ATI 9800 Pro review ;)
      http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r350/index.htm

    • Re:Independent review sites? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:44AM (#5448713) Homepage
      So, are there any independent review sites out there

      What do you mean by independant? They all take ad revenue now, and often that ad revenue is from either hardware companies or retailers. Most of the reputable ones (AnandTech, Tom's, Sharky's, etc) have guidelines on who they will and will not accept ads from - in the case of retailers they usually have to have a good rating [resellerratings.com].

      How do they get their hands on pre-release hardware

      The hardware companies aren't freaking stupid. It's called marketing, and the marketing departments make sure that the top reviewers get the hardware ahead of time. Sure, you could send them something the day it's out, but that hurts the marketing push. Especially since it can take a couple weeks to do some reviews. And you want to make sure that if the reviewer has a problem they can get help.

      At least it's better than the old print reviews, where they would get the hardware before release and then print a couple months after release -- since print cycles are so freaking long (especially for monthly magazines).

      Just how close to payola is the whole thing, anyway?

      Most reviewers have to return the hardware afterwards. Of course, there's always swag, and they get tons of it. From everyone. Occasionally they'll get to keep the hardware, and upon occasion the big sites will have charity auctions or giveaways for random stuff (although that's often just another marketing gimick - the site is donated hardware specifically for the purpose of giving it away).

      If you want a "truely" independant site that gets no stuff from anyone, then go look for the chintzy sites that review stuff weeks to years after it's out. You know... the sites that you think suck and are horribly outdated.

      If you want to know what you should buy then read the reviews from a couple of the top sites, and then go scan some forums. The forums are by average geeks and will give a wonderfully negative review of pretty much any product.
      • forget resellerrating, what we need is reviewrating..

        though websites have to be careful, one mistake and you're tainted(thg for example is considered crooky by many).
        • I remember reading a review of dual cpu motherboards on Tom's Hardware Guide. Everything scored within a few percent of the others, but he kept going on about how the Asus board was cleary faster than the others. There would be a graph of, for example, encoding mp3s, and all of the motherboard were withing in afew seconds of each other, and yet this guy is raving about one board and comdemning another. I stopped taking him seriously at that point.

          Of course, you also get things like the infamous NT vs Linux benchmark: Let's test a rollout of NT specially calibrated and tuned for us by the NT development team, versus some old Linux distro we found in a trashcan.

          Whenever you see one of these reviews, just ask yourself: where's the money to do this coming from? That'll tell you whether you should believe it or not.

          dave

    • Re:Independent review sites? There's a sweet spot. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Uninvited Guest ( 237316 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:52AM (#5448757)
      There must be a very interesting formula at work for early release reviews. The product suppliers want good press and a wide audience. The reviewers want a larger audience for their web site, and possibly fame or a chance to try out the next big thing --first! The readers want interesting, informative reviews they can believe, use for purchases, and quote with authority. These forces pull early release reviews to a common middle. The product suppliers won't provide their product to a site that reports credible, but consistently unfavorable reviews. Readers won't keep reading reviews that are favorable, but consistently boring, unhelpful, or not credible --then the product supplier drops the review site for lack of audience, anyway. So, the review sites that get the chance to review new products are the ones that produce consistently interesting, informative, and favorable (or at least, not UNfavorable) reviews.

      Of course, confounding this formula is PT Barnum's line "I don't care what they write about me as long as they spell my name right." Some suppliers may continue to release early products to unfavorable, but popular reviewers, just to increase the overall level of press coverage. Worse yet, since the early product is provided by the product supplier, it may have been specifically modified from the "retail" version to work better on benchmarks, just for the review. For that matter, the reviewer may be tempted to soften a review for the sake of a site advertiser's new product.

      Still, what's a consumer to do? I guess we have to take early reviews with a dose of skepticism. Before we make a purchasing decision, we have to wait for a reviewer to buy an off the shelf unit and test it. That's the best way we can be sure the review is more in our interests than the product supplier's.

  • Another Review (Score:5, Informative)

    by MjDascombe ( 549226 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:24AM (#5448326) Journal
    As if you didn't have enough - This one [driverheaven.net] is quite good.

  • Anandtech (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:25AM (#5448328)
    The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.

    • Re:Anandtech (Score:2, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )
      The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.

      The Anantech article is also unabashedly crammed with flash ads for ATI video cards. So polluted I'm finally motivated to remove the flash plug-in. I respect their reviews, but WTF is WRONG with these people?

      • Hit the "print this article" link and you get the full article on one page with no ads!

      • Re:Anandtech (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rushuru ( 135939 )
        if you use a Gecko browser (mozilla phoenix galeon), you can get rid of those annoying flash ads by using a special 'userContent.css'

        Put that file [abusenospam.free.fr] in the chrome subdirectory of you mozilla profile, and all the flash ads on anandtech & other sites should be gone, without breaking legitimate flash usage (stupid games, awkward menus, 900kB site intros, etc.)

  • What were you expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:27AM (#5448340) Journal
    ...and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews.

    Err, what were you expecting? If you give a kid a new toy that's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than his old one then he's going to be impressed and say that it's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than the old one.

    I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

    Do these cards represent good value for money? No, not unless you have money to burn. Are they interesting to gamers? Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.

    • Re:What were you expecting? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by simong_oz ( 321118 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:45AM (#5448413) Journal
      I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

      hmmm ... not so sure I agree with you. I'm confident they don't fake benchmark results because there are far too many sites out there running numbers on all the latest hardware - it would be too easy to spot this kind of blatant bad reviewing.

      But I'm not so sure that a bad product will get a negative review, particularly if the product manufacturer is a big player. Some of these review sites are big names (in the right circles; gaming for example) and their opinions count with consumers. But the sites themselves also depend on "breaking the news first" for their customers. A bad review might lead to a hardware company not being so willing to give out pre-production stuff in the future. I'm not saying that the reviewers are kissing manufacturer backsides, but I wouldn't be surprised if they temper their bad reviews.

      just a thought ...
      • Perhaps they will choose their words carefully when making comparisons, but they do criticize the weaker points. I mean, NVIDIA and ATI cards are compared to each other all the time on these sites. Michael's criticism on them for doing a favorable review of this card is completely ridiculous, for if they were indeed untruthful/untrustworthy/whatever in examining this ATI card, NVIDIA ould simply stop sending them hardware early, and the same principle applies the other way around.

        However, there does seem to be a tendency to focus on the positive aspects of the products, but still, those benchmarks are out there, and clear explanations with them what they mean, how they were obtained, and why they are the way they are...
    • Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.


      And what's in a $200 graphics card after a few months will be in a $50 graphics card in a few more months, at which point I'll buy one.

      • Well, in terms of gaming cards, new games expect you to have around the 200$ worth mark of current graphics power. By the time a card is 50$, it probably won't run new applications so well .. of course, if you dont mind lagging behind in the application market too, thats all well and good, but as online games increasingly rely on a large user community (online FPSes have been like this for years and years) to make them enjoyable, I think you'll find it'll be more and more useless to stay behind the curve when it comes to games.
        • Well, in terms of gaming cards, new games expect you to have around the 200$ worth mark of current graphics power.

          And when the games are released in white-box budget editions, I'll buy them too...

      • Re:What were you expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NerdSlayer ( 300907 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @11:43AM (#5449038) Homepage
        And what's in a $200 graphics card after a few months will be in a $50 graphics card in a few more months, at which point I'll buy one.

        Why does this get modded up? That's great that you don't have much interest in 3d gaming and/or you don't feel the need to buy the latest and greatest. Lots of people have different interests in different things. If the latest video card doesn't interest you, move on.

        However, just because you're not throwing down $400 for a new graphics card, you're no saint. You didn't save any whales, the world hasn't been made a better place. People need to buy the latest and greatest shit so that the technology can eventually filter down to you. That's how it works.

        Letting the world know you don't care to spend money on a top dollar video card is about as insightful as me saying how I'm not going to smoke crack and kill hookers all day today.

        • Re:What were you expecting? (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Damn.
          So I guess thats just me and Rob going out today?

          I'll bring home a dead hooker for you.

          Seeing as how you get those urges to crack open a cold one.
    • I find Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] to be one of the most honest with this. They never favour Nvidia or ATI, or Intel, or AMD, or Transmeta, or whatever. What they do do that's annoying is talk about the latest card as if everyone needs it. And everyone on Slashdot knows that this isn't true, but it seems to me to be kind of weird when they play up a 2% performance edge that Intel may have as if its a huge thing. INTEL RETAKES PERFORMANCE CROWN! Yay.

      I wish hardware sites would talk about more interesting things: serial ATA, 10Gbps ethernet (yes you heard me right... that's what's next...), giant LCD screens (or plasma), 7.1 channel sound, not a graphics card that gives me a 3% edge on directX 9.0 games of which there AREN'T ANY. Okay, rant over :)

    • I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?

      It seems like most of these hardware sites are pretty honest. Matrox threw all its eggs into its Parhelia basket, and probably threw around lots of swag in hopes the card would get Super Bitchen press from the Super Bitchen gaming hardware sites.

      Guess what? You can't put lipstick on a pig and say it's J-Lo. Parhelia stank on ice, and the hardware sites were more than happy to point it out. Now Matrox is in danger of going bust thanks to the Parhelia's failure.

      However, don't put much stock in Benchmarks. The video card companies seem to be able to game the benchmarks...can you say Quack Quack [tech-report.com]?

    • If you know where to shop, graphics cards haven't hit much more than $350 at most, a far cry from the $600 you cite.

  • Hey Michael... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:28AM (#5448343) Homepage Journal
    I'm an NVidia fan, too. However, we can do without your digs to the reviewers. So much for unbiased journalism.
    • I don't think it's really fair to hold a simple slashdot story submission up to the standards of professional journalistic integrity. It is fair, however, to question the bias of hardware reviewers who recieve free pre-releases to play with and depend on those pre-releases to provide the reviews which earn them a living.

      • Re:Hey Michael... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:12AM (#5448554) Homepage Journal
        I don't think it's really fair to hold a simple slashdot story submission up to the standards of professional journalistic integrity.

        I think it's extremely fair, especially since the submission came from an editor, not an anonymous source.

        It is fair, however, to question the bias of hardware reviewers who recieve free pre-releases to play with and depend on those pre-releases to provide the reviews which earn them a living.
        There's no evidence that these reviews were biased in any way. There is only supposition of guilt, which is preposterous, because these same reviewers have the same relationship with ATI's competition.

      • It is fair. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by juuri ( 7678 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:45AM (#5448720) Homepage
        Slashdot calls itself "News" that simple blip alone is enough to require the editors to keep their opinions constrained somewhat. Sure it is okay to have a slant when calling yourself news, but some editors here, Michael especially, place very strong opinions in almost every link they post. This isn't news, this is treating the site as a personal log.

        Thats all well and good if you aren't a paid employee with customers, but this site stopped being that years ago. Unfortunately, we, the slashdot readers let them get away with it time and time again while paying their salaries by adding content and viewing the ads.

    • Re:Hey Michael... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Surak ( 18578 ) <surakNO@SPAMmailblocks.com> on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:13AM (#5448556) Homepage Journal
      I agree. And I'm an nVidia fan as well. And I'll tell you -- healthy competition is NICE. It gives consumers choices. Neither nVidia nor ATI own the market ... and that's the point. Look how they each keep pushing the other, and look how quickly new products come out with more and more features and performance.

      Now look at the operating system market and the lack innovation there. Imagine what we COULD have if Microsoft DIDN'T own the market.

    • GeForce FX taught nVidia a good lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:49AM (#5448738)
      Well, nVidia fans (like myself too) may be severely disappointed that the GeForce FX turned out to be an almost total turkey because of noise, power consumption, and barely adequate basic performance, but it's actually pretty healthy that ATI is now back in the lead.

      Hopefully nVidia will recognize that it made a dreadful mistake way back at design and specification time on the FX, and learn from it. If it doesn't then it's commercially dead, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Within the company, this probably requires booting out some managers and pressing some engineers' noses onto red-hot heatsinks.

      I agree, there's no need to bash the reviewers. Everyone knows that they try to butter up the hardware suppliers, but they still deliver fairly objective reviews, so there's no real problem.
      • ...Was the fact they far underestimated the performance of the ATI R300 chipset.

        As originally intended, the GeForce FX chipset would have easily outpaced the Radeon 8500 series, but when ATI showed the Radeon 9700, it forced nVidia to do a crash program development to speed up the GeForce FX chipset as far as possible, which resulted in the card with its thermal cooling system akin to the Outside Thermal Exhaust System (OTES) pioneered by Abit for their overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 cards. Unfortunately, the card ended up being quite noisy from the cooling system and its performance was not quite the Radeon 9700 equalizer nVidia had hoped.

        Hopefully, nVidia has learned its lesson and the upcoming NV31 and NV34 chipsets will have higher performance without having to resort to a noisy oversized cooling system.

  • For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Models (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:30AM (#5448355)
    I hope to bring to the attention of ATI developers, if they are reading, that it would be nice to release official driver support for the R200 models (Radeon, Radeon 7500 etc) and only the latest 8000+ models.

    These cards are partly supported by the DRI project on dri.sourceforge.net since they lack important features as texture compression making them useless for games as DoomIII.

    Thanks.

    ps. Or at least, please help the DRI guys complete the great job.

    • Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model (Score:4, Informative)

      by Elendil ( 11919 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:49AM (#5448742)
      From XFree86 [free86.org] 4.3.0 release notes [xfree86.org]:

      2.1. Video Driver Enhancements

      * ATI Radeon 9x00 2D support added, and 3D support added for the Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, and M9. The 3D support for the Radeon now includes hardware TCL.

      Looks like pretty good support to me... I really prefer that to a binary-only driver such as NVidia's.
    • Please implement a VGA BIOS disable switch on your videocards. Some of us are working on computer platforms that can't work with your VGA BIOS, yet their exists graphics drivers that CAN use your proprietary graphics-acceleration architecture chipset on your related products.

      For example, disabling the VGA BIOS would allow users of Alpha/Sparc/MIPS/PPC/Power(3/4) platforms to use a wee-little standard VGA graphics card that we know works (like a S3, Permedia2, G200, or RagePro), then throw a hefty ATI Radeon 9800+ Pro XPERTONIA ++plutonia++ 256MB or nVidia GeForce FX 6000++BrownOut/cooker 256MB L24a adaptor into the AGP port or hopefully see a 64bit PCI model from ATI/nVidia and we could use your hardware!

      Sincerily,

      The Alpha Troll

  • Not again!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:30AM (#5448356) Homepage Journal
    *throws 500$ video card in garbage*

  • Hey michael (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:34AM (#5448368)
    Just because your a Nvidiot, doesn't mean you can go bash ATI for making a better card or the websites that review them.

    I know I speak for everyone here when I say "michael, JUST SHUT UP!!!!!"
    • Easily handled. Just go into your preferences and filter him out. Maybe if enough people filter him out the same thing will happen to Michael as what happened to Katz. He just ceased to exist.

  • Fairness in reviewing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zornorph ( 63846 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:38AM (#5448385) Homepage
    Just how biased are these reviews? From looking at the sites listed with reviews, they appear to be fairly popular/mainstream sites for this kind of stuff... why not be objective and give an honest review? Understandably, they are all worried about losing their early access to ATI's hardware, but if you end up looking like a PR shill for ATI, what value does your review carry?

    I've noticed this same trend with US motorcycle magazines when the clamor for they latest and greatest motorcycles. They rant and rave about the bike's strong points and minimise its shortcomings. The British bike mags (at least the ones that I can get here in Canada) don't seem to be as forgiving about problems with a bike, yet they all still seem to be able to get early access to the bikes.
    • I haven't read the other reviews, but I've always found Tomshardware.com to give the performance/quality crown to whoever really warrants it. They're not strictly fanboys of anyone that I've seen. You might want to check out they're reviews of the 9X00 series of cards.
    • I don't know how biased reviews are, but one can selectively choose settings that make one card look better than another. Such tests are verifiable, but the chosen settings can easily be on the questionable side.

      I do believe that biased reviewage might have made AMD's K6 look competitive with Intel's offerings of the time. I just bought an old PIII 500MHz that blows away all the several K6-3 450s and the K6-2 500s that I have built, in real office tasks, where there are only rarely an FP op, where AMD's offering was claimed to be faster at that task.
    • why not be objective and give an honest review?
      >>>>>>>
      But they do. Have you actually read the pointed-to review or did you just rely on the BS the original poster said? These benchmarks are totally open. You can download them and run them for yourself. As others have said, faking benchmarks would easily be caught when everything is so public.

      Slashdot's attitude really pisses me off sometimes. You've got a whole bunch of sanctimonious jerks who try to minimize hardware enthusiasts and their websites. What irks me the most is that the same people who bitch at others for getting excited over a $400 graphics card get all worked up over 20GB/sec Sun backplanes. Or $11,000 headphones or reference speakers or chrome car parts or whatever. We all have our little areas of interest. Just because you're a programmer or sysadmin and do "real work" doesn't make you a "better" nerd.

      PS> I'm not a gamer. I used to be, and I used to follow all these sites regularly. By and large, they all have higher journalistic standards than, say, Slashdot... I still get excited over these things because I do OpenGL programming, and unlimited length shader programs are just damn sexy!

  • ahem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:39AM (#5448386) Journal
    Why does Nvidia's demo with vid-card shows you this [tomshardware.com] and this [tomshardware.com], but ATI shows you this [tomshardware.com]? I think we should buy Nvidia based on their sense of ascthetics alone.

    seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

    • Why does Nvidia's demo with vid-card shows you this [tomshardware.com] and this [tomshardware.com], but ATI shows you this [tomshardware.com]?

      Because not all men think with their dicks, and ATI knows this? :-)

      Dinivin
    • seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

      The 9700 Pro has been available for about six months.
      • No it hasn't. The 9700 PRO was ANNOUNCED six months ago. You couldn't actually GET one until about six WEEKS ago.

        • Re:ahem (Score:3, Informative)

          by Zathrus ( 232140 )
          Maybe you couldn't get one if you were in Siberia at the long end of a dog run for post, but for the rest of the world you could get one without any issues back in September 2002 - as long as you were willing to pay $400.

          Or, of course, you could just assume that this [newegg.com] is all made up. Note the 3rd review, written in early September by some teenage fanboy.

          Hell, the ATI AIW 9700 Pro has been available since November.
        • I have owned a 9700 pro for over five months.
    • seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

      It's obviously not, since the new GeForce still isn't out yet, and it was supposed to ship before Christmas...



      Seriously, though, the 9700 was released about five months ago. nVidia hasn't gotten around to releasing their competition to it (in their defense, they're releasing it this week), so yes, ATI is ahead of the game.

      Given the number of nVidia fanatics running around, ATI needs to be doing it better and faster and more often, at least for a while. The best thing to happen for the video card industry is for ATI to kick nVidia's ass for a while, and then for nVidia to rise to ATI's new level. Competition is what we all should want to see.

      We've seen phase one, now it's time for nVidia to collectively say "yikes!" and start competing.

    • Re:ahem (Score:3, Funny)

      by Openadvocate ( 573093 )
      So, ATI gives you a virtual monkey you can spank while Nvidia gives you, hmm
    • It's ALWAYS Christmas in PC-Hardware land.... it's just that often Santa-Bill brings you lumps of coal.
    • seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

      As noted elsewhere, the 9700 Pro has been available for a number of months.

      However, I'd guess the real reason behind this "new" product is due to process improvements on the part of ATI's fab partners. A few tweaks and higher yields means they can squeeze a few percentage points performance out of their high-end cards for no increase in cost.

      What the submitter missed is that the higher-volume "mid" range card (9600) is on a new process (0.13-micron). Smaller process = less cost for comparable performance to its predecessor (the 9500). This benefits gamers as the cost of "pretty good" performance continues to fall.

      Comparing the two, it's obvious that the performance delta between them is substantially less than the cost difference ($400 vs $150).

    • Re:ahem (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Elladan ( 17598 )

      The monkey is harder to render :-)

  • Keep it up ATi. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:41AM (#5448396) Homepage Journal
    Keep it up, ATi. Competition is good. I'm really lovin' what I see in the 9X00 series. Keep hammering on improving those Linux drivers while you're at it, because nVidia still has the edge on non-Windows platforms. The day that you release Linux drivers that are on par with those under Windows (as PowerVR and nVidia have done) is the day that I fork out $400 for your car. Rest assured that I will, as long as you back the product.


    • Four hundred dollar car? When did ATI start reproducing the Pinto?

    • I also only buy Nvidia based on the fact that there are real drivers for linux. And currently am a source of advice for many many computer users and I only reccomend Nvidia because ATI refuses to release Linux drivers.

      if ATI wants to have me and others like me start to reccomend their hardware start providing drivers for OS's other than the legacy Microsoft products... Or print on the box "FOR WINDOWS ONLY - ALL OTHERS GO AWAY".

      I influence 50 video card purchases a year. i personally have bought 6 of them this year for my use or business use.. and they ALL have been Nvidia because of ATI's lack of linux support.
    • as PowerVR and nVidia have done

      I don't know where you're getting the PowerVR. I haven't been terribly impressed with their drivers. Until recently, they didn't even have AGP support, nor XVideo support. The XVideo support is still very buggy. Specifically, I've been experiencing the following on RH8:

      - No RH8 support (the last driver release was Oct. 2002)
      - Drivers built with GCC 2.95.x, so they won't load safely with stock kernels built with GCC 3.x
      - Complete system freezes when watching full-screen TV.
      - Horrible sound quality when watching TV and playing sound at the same time.
      - Disgusting flicker in 3D apps, including texture blockiness and artifacts.

    • Re:Keep it up ATi. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bfree ( 113420 )
      Personally I think that ATI are doing an OK job with their Linux drivers. I have an ATI M9/Mobility 9000 and I have been using the Ati X drivers. They aren't perfect, in fact they dissappoint me but I have high expectations of the hardware. The problem is that you are not going to see those drivers integrated into the distro or XFree86 and as such you are always an the mercy of your own configuration attempts. I want the chip/card which has the best performance under free drivers (X 4.3 is coming soon to my card so I can see how all the Radeon work has gone) and afaik the ATI chipsets have far, far, far better support under XFree86 native drivers than the NVidia chips (which I believe are entirely unsupported for 3d). Now why do I care about free drivers? Well I want my laptop to have a long life, and also I don't want to be dependent on a manufacturer who is brown nosing MS to the gills to try and supply the chipsets for the XBox2 (and that's both ATI and NVidia). Could MS hand the contract to whichever company agrees to stop discolsing any information on their chips for X or other Free efforts AND require them to stop releasing commercial drivers aswell (or cripple them). The only thing the really p*sses me off is that the S3 texture compression is required for various games and this is not in XFree86 and unlikely to appear (is it possible or will we have to wait for the patent to expire or XFree86 to start developing this outside of US patent controlled countries)!

  • Here is an inquire article about it too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:43AM (#5448403) Journal
    lookie here [theinquirer.org]

    Quoting: ATI will call the extended set of DX9 features the DX9++, although we suppose it could add just as many ++++++ as it wanted to. ... ... Nvidia should perhaps call its own DX9 extensions DX9## or DX9.NET.

    the sad thing is, though - I would not be surprised if Nvidia did release a DX9# or something stupid like that. I mean, look at Athlons naming themselves AthlonXP. ack

    • the sad thing is, though - I would not be surprised if Nvidia did release a DX9# or something stupid like that. I mean, look at Athlons naming themselves AthlonXP. ack

      Yeah, Microsoft is everywhere. Just the other day I realized my house had these things called "Windows".

  • More ati = more gooder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vodak ( 119225 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:50AM (#5448440)
    I'm glad to see Ati released another video card. the more ati competes the less likly NVidia will become a company likly Microsoft.

    • Re:More ati = more gooder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NerdSlayer ( 300907 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @11:26AM (#5448948) Homepage
      I'm glad to see Ati released another video card. the more ati competes the less likly NVidia will become a company likly Microsoft.

      Yay. And then in two years, ATI will be the big scary company, Nvidia will be the underdog, and we can all applaud Nvidia for providing ATI with some competition. The cycle will complete itself, ad nauseum.

      I'm starting to think that Slashdot readers are actually communists; nobody's allowed to root for the big guy (who presumably got bigger because of the better products).

  • And the good news is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @09:55AM (#5448464) Homepage Journal
    It should bring down the price of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, where a punter like me can afford it =)

    Tho I won't have the top of the line =(

    It beats having the bottom of the line =)

  • What? no ASC? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Destoo ( 530123 ) <destoo@gmailCOLA.com minus caffeine> on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:12AM (#5448551) Homepage Journal
    So no ascii [bbspot.com] version of this card yet? What are they waiting for?

    I'm browsing slashdot using Telix and the refresh rate is really bad with the 9500ASC.

  • Pixel shader horror (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The GeForce FX has some horrible Pixel shader performance using ShaderMark v1.7 as shown by HardOCP [hardocp.com]:

    "In ShaderMark the GeForceFX pretty much terrible when it comes to pixel shader 2.0 performance compared to the 9700Pro and 9800Pro. Performance of the GeForceFX is horrible compared to what these cards are showing us. The 9800 Pro improves up to 50 FPS in some cases compared to the 9700 Pro. There is no doubt that the 9700 Pro and 9800 Pro have very strong pixel shader speed.

    This benchmark also does give some credence to the 3DMark03 PS2.0 numbers.[my bold face] More PS2.0 coming next week that will really get you asking questions."

  • a nice change (Score:5, Funny)

    by archen ( 447353 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:26AM (#5448621)
    This is what a really wanted to hear:

    (from the Register)
    "Effectively a 0.13 micron version of the four-pipeline 9500 Pro, the new chip will run both faster and cooler than its predecessor"

    Yes cooler... COOLER.
    Not so freaking hot you need to strap a briggs&stratton lawn mower engine up to a card to power the fan to cool the f'ing thing. Are you listening Nvidia?!

  • More Coverage (Score:2, Funny)

    by briggsb ( 217215 )
    ...of the Radeon 9500 ASC [bbspot.com] which enhances ASCII gaming for serious nethackers.

  • I have two questions. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:34AM (#5448649) Journal
    1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
    2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?

    I understand this is the business practice of these times. To always wait about 6-8 months before hyping up the next release of something. Why so many changes to squeeze more fps? Is it like trying to add 10 more HP to your Honda? How many people on this place can actually look at a screen shot or video and name what type of graphics card is being used and what options are set like AA and such?
    • One of the great myths propogated by the motion picture industry is that your eye can't detect changes in framerates over X (30 is usually the number tossed around, or 24). It's hooey. The rods and cones in your retina all refresh at different rates, and not in synch with each other. Your eyeball is not a digital system, its an analog one.

      I, and most hardcore gamers, can not only tell the difference between 45 and 100 fps, but it makes a very real difference in my response times. I simply do better if I play at a high resolution, high contrast, with a high framerate. So much so that I will tweak the settings in any game to be able to run the max resolution at the highest framerate, even if I have to turn off the pretty stuff and kill my sound quality to do it.

      As for AA, no I can't tell you whether I am looking at 16XAA or 8XAA without seeing them side by side. I can however tell you instantly whether I have at least 4Xaa and I am in a flight sim (where it REALLY makes a difference)...
    • 1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?

      Absolutely! YOu should see Quake3 on my old Rage Pro vs my new 9700Pro! You can definately see the difference.. or get ahold of 3dbenchmark and run it.. see the differences as it tells you waht the actual framerates are.

      2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?

      Well, I think UT2K3 is pretty cutting edge.. it beats the heck out of my system as is, which is an Athlon XP 2200, and a radeon 9700pro and 512MB of ram. So the games are already here.. and the next big one will probably be Doom3 which, apparently, you will need godlike hardware to even touch.

      So yeah.. the games are there.. and will be there.. I just bought the top I could find because I was tired of having to step upgrade each time I found a new game I liked.. the 9700 pro should be sufficient for quite a while.

      Maeyrk

    • 1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps? Come on, you can't be serious. We go through this every single time a graphics article is posted. IT'S REDUNDANT!!! Not interesting or insightful.
    • 1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
      >>>>>>>>>>
      Yes. If the average rate is 100, you'll almost never see the game stutter when 10 people are on the screen and everything is exploding at the same time. If the average is 45, it'll become a slideshow when things get hot.

      2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?
      >>>>>>>>>>>>
      Many. Doom III and all its progeny should be out by then, along with stuff like splinter cell. It'll be a good long while before we have cards that will run Doom III at 1600x1200 at 100fps.

  • Cut the editorializing crap please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnadig ( 414126 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:36AM (#5448659)
    All of these sites do decent work, I read them daily, and they all PILE ON when something is released that is a POS. Whatever axe you have to grind, keep it to yourself or back it up please.

    I have BOTH bleeding edge cards right now, and unfortunately for NVDA, it's just plain "true" that the Radeon's are top dog at the moment. If you don't believe them, run your own benchmarks.

  • On the whole ATI vs nVidia thing... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer&centurytel,net> on Thursday March 06, 2003 @10:59AM (#5448797) Homepage Journal
    I'd like to point out what one of the developers said on Croteam's Website. [croteam.com] They developed the Serious Sam games, which use a remarkable engine.

    Here's the text I'm refering to below.

    ----

    Pipelines, pipelines... February 25, 2003

    Hello, world.

    Just wanted to write a word or two regarding the issue raised couple of days ago. Seems like the whole Internet community wants to crucify nVidia about the controversy of how many rendering pipelines GeForceFX realy has. Is it 8 pipelines with 1 texture unit, or 4 with 2, or ... uh... I don't know anymore. And it really DOESN'T matter that much!

    The only thing that matters is how fast and how good it can render pixels. And both GeForceFX and Radeon9700 are great products, the kind of hardware that developers long for. So, personally, I don't care much what's "under the hood".

    Don't get me wrong, I am into 3D-graphic hardware, but this pipeline thing really went out of proportion. Number of pipelines is a good hardware information, and that's all there's to it. It really doesn't need to reflect the speed of the hardware directly. Come to think of it... currently, there are no games that utilize even 1/3rd of nifty features these two boards have.

    Oh, before I forget... I'm not "nVidiot" (and I'm not "fanATIc", either). I'm just a game developer who wants good and fast technology for the future. And both ATI and nVidia have it now!

    Just my two cents.

    Dean "3D" Sekulic

    (Programmer)

    P.S. Yes, I snapped.

  • And you blast the reviewer sites? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wrayth ( 655663 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @11:25AM (#5448938)
    I can't believe the number of you who make comments here about the questionable accuracy of the review sites, when your own INaccuracy is so incredible.
    "But I'm not so sure that a bad product will get a negative review, particularly if the product manufacturer is a big player ... A bad review might lead to a hardware company not being so willing to give out pre-production stuff in the future."

    Okay if your not sure, then you should go back and look at Tom's Hardware revealing the massive flaws in Intels chips in years past, or for those who say they are AMD lovers at TH, then check the videos they made of athelons melting down. Yes they did get a cold shoulder from Intel, but that didn't stop them.
    "Just how biased are these reviews? From looking at the sites listed with reviews, they appear to be fairly popular/mainstream sites for this kind of stuff... why not be objective and give an honest review?"
    While I will be the first to say that the is nothing such as "unbiased" in the world. Most of these sites try very hard to be objective. The ones that don't loose credibilty very quickly. These sites have their writings out on display, go spend some time looking through back articles, Bias is very easy to spot over time.
    "seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing?"
    http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20020819/index .html [tomshardware.com]

    You can see from the above article that the 9700 was released more than 6 months ago.
    "Maybe ATI should work on finishing up the pile of crap drivers they have for the existing cards, hmmmm?
    While they have had serious driver issues in recent time (notably the 8500), the drivers for the 9700 are top notch and were at release.

    For the record my preferences are for ATI and AMD, but I can set aside bias and state that the K6-2 sucked and that the later version of the Athelon run way too hot considering AMD use to be know for a cool chip. And I can point out that ATI drivers have sucked bad in the past. But the fact is, that right now both companies are and have been, providing the best value for the dollar (and in ATI the scores). And that's why I like them. Hey I used to be 3dfx person, and I hated ATI at one time....

    Opinions change. Facts don't... use some next time.

  • Reviews In Themselves Are Opinions And Subjective (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @12:04PM (#5449168)
    Why do people carp on reviewers for editorializing? After all it is their opinion on the performance of the piece of hardware. Why can't they have an opinion? If anyone is reading these review sites for "the truth and only the truth" they clearly misunderstand what a review is. The only complaint I have with many reviews is that they don't spend enought time reviewing (due to deadlines?). Its all well and good that the latest and greatest card works with the latest and great UT/Quake/Doom but breaks on older games like Starcraft, Counter Strike, etc. I guess reviewing performance of Starcraft isn't as "sexy" but it will sure show how well the driver is written.

    As for the reviews themselves, I stopped getting a stiffy long ago for the "biggest and baddest" video card. These days I look at the price more than the polygons it can clear. I also consider the driver support since I've also outgrown the "tinker forever" phase. I buy a card that is priced well and just works.

    Why did this happen? The last ATI card I bought was at the time the biggest and the baddest and also a piece of junk since it never ever worked right nor did any game work with it correctly. So for all of the reviewers that said that ATI was super elite I found it a piece of crap. After that card I demanded that all cards work out of the box or else it goes back. No stellar glossy review will convince me otherwise.

    But my bad experience doesn't invalid the reviewers that said that the ATI was stellar. It is their opinion and its no more or less valid than my experiences. So take my "review" as is and take theirs the same way. You should not take my experiences as the way all Raedons perform nor should you take the pundits experiences either.
  • ATI can't upgrade these things much longer. They're running out of numbers. They can release the 9900 and then they're done, unless they want to go to some wonky 5-digit product name.

    ATI Radeon 10300 just doesn't sound right.

  • Hee hee! My roommate just bought a 9700 Pro, what a sucker! Now I can get the fastest, bestest card, ever!

    At least for 6 months or so...

    Then I'll need to get a new card, because of course I need to run the newest games at 1600x1200 and higher with all the options on.

    Except when I play multiplayer. Then I'll reduce resolution to 640x480 and turn all the effects off. Because having a 200+ framerate really does help, even though my monitor only refreshes at 85Hz.

  • RV300 Price Points? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lazaru5 ( 28995 ) on Thursday March 06, 2003 @08:03PM (#5454094)
    Is ATI going to continue to sell RV300 based boards? And if so at what price points? I _just_ (last weekend) bought a 9700 PRO at Circuit City on sale for $299. I realize now that it was to just get rid of it (Best Buy also is listing theirs for $299 presumably for the same reason.)

    The 9800 is only marginally better than the 9700, and the 9700 is far far better than the new 9600. The new 9600 is supposed to be $219 and the new 9800 replaces the 9700 at $399. That leaves a big gap.

    What I'm worried about is if ATI is going to continue producing 9700's, will they be under $300? Anything less than $299 and I'll feel ripped off. (Unless I can get a price adjustment from CC.)

    Still, I got a good deal I suppose. I never would have spent $399, and if they stop making 9700's then I paid a fair price for it too.

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