2005 Bricks & Bouquets

[Geo]

The end of the year rapidly approaching, I thot it would be fun. . .feel free to give yours, and add catagories.

1). Viddy Card of the Year: Yes, I'm going to cop-out --a tie between X1800XT and G7800GTX512. Depends on where your priorities are. If it was "card I'd most like to own" I would have said X1800XT, as for my priorities I like the potential of Avivo and HDR AA, and the reality of low-hit HQ AF.

2). Disappointment of the Year: Gotta be something ATI, right? Alas, alas. While the R520 delay must have had greater impact, for me the greatest disappointment was CrossFire, which commercially in my book is still pretty much a no-show.

3). Innovation of the Year: Transparency AA. Right on, NV. Honorable Mention: Super AA. It says alot about the year ATI had when they got beat to market on their own innovation.

4). Most promising trend of the year: Real IQ improvements in several areas. Transparency AA, Adaptive AA, Super AA, low-hit HQ AF from ATI. HDR AA from ATI.

5). Most discouraging trend of the year: Price explosion at the top. Not much more than a year ago the top-end video "solution" was $400. At the moment it is $1,500. Yowza.

6). Dan Rather "Courage" Award: Kyle Bennett, [H], for sticking to his guns with the Phantom blowhards, putting his money where his convictions were. Right on, Kyle.

7). Person in the Industry/Community I most wanted to stick a sock in their mouth: Kyle Bennett, [H], for several other incidents over the year. Yeah, kinda conflicted with Frgmstr.

8). Inaugural Sander Sassen Professional Suicide award --Duh. (Okay, just felt like kicking him one more time).

9). Interview of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, Jen-Hsun Huang

10). Article of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, ATI XBOX 360 Graphics Demystified

11). Specialty niche reporting: Firing Squad just knocked my socks off with PC video stuff. I mean really --I had to make up this catagory just to make sure I acknowledged it.

12). Other articles I just felt like giving some love to: Wavey's X1k architecture overview, Rys' Power Supplies, Neeyik & Richard's FM interview. I'm sure I'm missing many other good ones that when others mention them on this thread I'm going to do that "Oh, I could have had a V8!" thing.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Nicely done.

I mostly agree with you, but I'd have to go with the abandonment of agp as the biggest disappointment.

 

[Deathlike2]

3). Innovation of the Year: Transparency AA. Right on, NV. Honorable Mention: Super AA. It says alot about the year ATI had when they got beat to market on their own innovation.

I don't particularly think transparancy AA was the "most innovative", but it was a step in the right direction (addressing AA is always a good thing). The honorable mention should really go to Adaptive AA for making the R3xx and above become a little more useful. SuperAA and Crossfire isn't as nifty when you consider that you said yourself Crossfire was the most disappointing.

 

[Putas]

I would like to have video cathegory with cards people are actually buying. Call it bang for buck or similar, with candidates like new 6600 and X800GTO.
Innovation of the year- SM3.0 by ATI is worth to mention IMO.

 

[BrynS]

Agreed on most counts, but number 11 stood out on first reading.

Alan Dang really seems to know his stuff and since he is advising/working on the successor to the industry-standard HQV benchmark, his grillings of Cheng and Vouri carry much weight -- his other HTPC articles are also always very informative -- an excellent contibutor to Firingsquad.

 

[Deathlike2]

I would like to have video cathegory with cards people are actually buying. Call it bang for buck or similar, with candidates like new 6600 and X800GTO.
Innovation of the year- SM3.0 by ATI is worth to mention IMO.

I don't think SM3.0 by ATI is that "great" (it wasn't out first).. but if you were to say SM3 performance (specifically dynamic branching) was done better.. then perhaps you might have something there.

 

[Arun]

Well if it was such a great implementation, I'm sure they have a kickass phoney justification for not including FP16 Filtering, besides transistor count *GRUMBLES*. And yeah, I'm still a bit annoyed about that. It sucks for programmers, and it's responsible for the subpar HDR performance in *some* games. Bleh. (and yes, I know that isn't srictly PS3.0.-related, but I feel it's sufficiently linked to put it in the same bag).

Uttar

 

[wireframe]

Innovation of the year- SM3.0 by ATI is worth to mention IMO.

It would be a bit insulting to those who had that on their list, under the name Nvidia, last year.

 

[Putas]

Well I am not developers insider but I fought ATI was right that they will rather do their own filters. With R5xx shader power ATI may simulate the capability anyway, granted it is slower but future-wise hardwired FP 16 filter is not a must. Anyway I was not talking about HDR stuff but X1K shader capabilieties in general. It impress me more then transparency AA.

 

[Rys]

Just the ones I don't agree with, or have something else to say about

1). Viddy Card of the Year: 7800 GT
2). Disappointment of the Year: X1800 XT's cooler, Crossfire, ATI's sampling policy
5). Most discouraging trend of the year: ATI's sampling policy
6). Dan Rather "Courage" Award: Scott 'Damage' Wasson for making the leap to doing TR full-time
7). Person in the Industry/Community I most wanted to stick a sock in their mouth: techpowerup
8). Inaugural Sander Sassen Professional Suicide award: x infinity
9). Interview of the Year: Sander Sassen, by the B3D community
10). Article of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, ATI Xenos: Xbox 360 Graphics Demystified <-- yes, by quite some margin
11). Specialty niche reporting: 3DCenter's continuing investigations into IQ quality
12). Other articles I just felt like giving some love to: Everything Tridam writes for hardware.fr

 

[Arun]

Well I am not developers insider but I fought ATI was right that they will rather do their own filters. With R5xx shader power ATI may simulate the capability anyway, granted it is slower but future-wise hardwired FP 16 filter is not a must. Anyway I was not talking about HDR stuff but X1K shader capabilieties in general. It impress me more then transparency AA.

I would be very surprised if SM4.0. didn't force you to have FP16 filtering, but then again I don't know for sure.

EDIT: Just thought I'd mention I couldn't agree more with Rys when it comes to article - Tridam's stuff tends to be amazing, I just wish he was aiming a little bit higher technically-speaking. I know the hardware.fr community might not be the most technically inclined one in the world, but hey, STOP WASTING YOUR POTENTIAL! And the 3DCenter stuff is great at times, too.

Uttar

 

[Geo]

Just the ones I don't agree with, or have something else to say about

1). Viddy Card of the Year: 7800 GT
2). Disappointment of the Year: X1800 XT's cooler, Crossfire, ATI's sampling policy
5). Most discouraging trend of the year: ATI's sampling policy
6). Dan Rather "Courage" Award: Scott 'Damage' Wasson for making the leap to doing TR full-time
7). Person in the Industry/Community I most wanted to stick a sock in their mouth: techpowerup
8). Inaugural Sander Sassen Professional Suicide award: x infinity
9). Interview of the Year: Sander Sassen, by the B3D community
10). Article of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, ATI Xenos: Xbox 360 Graphics Demystified <-- yes, by quite some margin
11). Specialty niche reporting: 3DCenter's continuing investigations into IQ quality
12). Other articles I just felt like giving some love to: Everything Tridam writes for hardware.fr

Nice! I liked many of those choices.

The one that stood out as a "Hmm, you need to use more words, Rys" is #1. A price/performance point or something?

 

[Geo]

Tho it also occurred to me as I was closing my eyes last night that if I'd had a "gpu of the year" award, to go with "viddy card", it would have been Xenos. I'm not a big console guy, so that's prolly why it didn't --tho sprinkling Wavey's (deserving) article on it with rose petals should have twigged me.

And it was ATI's no-two-ways-about-it biggest success of the year, so deserves a tip o'-the-cap.

So, 1A, GPU of the Year: Xenos. Edit: Duh, "Why is that, Geo?" --Because aside from the technical virtuosity and ground-breaking innovation of the unified shaders and e-dram, I rather think it is going to be the best-selling high-end GPU of the year --by far, even starting this late in the year.

 

[Rys]

The one that stood out as a "Hmm, you need to use more words, Rys" is #1. A price/performance point or something?

Yeah. £200 or so buys you something very fast and very available, which does it for me. If I was spending my own money right now, a GT is what I'd buy. That's how I came to the conclusion.

 

[Rys]

1A) Yeah, it's hard not to like Xenos right now. I'd have to say that too, although only because it points to future PC hardware. And I think that's why Wavey did what he did. If it were a console-only, closed book, nothing to see here as far as PC parts go, I'd be a lot less interested.

 

[Geo]

A little help from someone, please. Am I right that Xenos, at roughly 3M (the number I heard) will be biggest seller high-end GPU? How many G70 have NV sold this year, roughly? Also, I was trying to remember what I'd heard on selling price of high-end gpus, and I thot that somewhere earlier this year we saw an indication it was in the neighborhood of $150 --anyone else remember that?

 

[Geo]

I don't particularly think transparancy AA was the "most innovative", but it was a step in the right direction (addressing AA is always a good thing). The honorable mention should really go to Adaptive AA for making the R3xx and above become a little more useful. SuperAA and Crossfire isn't as nifty when you consider that you said yourself Crossfire was the most disappointing.

Well, I didn't say "most". Tho obviously the point of this thread is both to allow me to throw my bricks and bouquets, and to invite others to do the same.

One of the reasons I tapped TrAA is because it is a "turn it on and immediate 'yowza!' " benefit across a wide variety of titles. I would agree (I think) that Adaptive AA, in being able to go back to earlier generations, therefore has a wider footprint. And that's a beautiful thing. But NV got there first, so they get the "innovation" palm in my book.

 

[Deathlike2]

One of the reasons I tapped TrAA is because it is a "turn it on and immediate 'yowza!' " benefit across a wide variety of titles. I would agree (I think) that Adaptive AA, in being able to go back to earlier generations, therefore has a wider footprint. And that's a beautiful thing. But NV got there first, so they get the "innovation" palm in my book.

I was saying the Adaptive AA should be the honorable mention (I may just need to bold what I wrote earlier ). I definately think Super AA doesn't deserve the honorable mention.. since part of the problem is that I doubt many people have gotten Crossfire systems (and we have yet to see X1800 Crossfire versions yet) and NVidia did a similar thing to Super AA like what ATI did with respect to transparency AA.

It's hard to find anything real innovative this year though IMO.

 

[Sxotty]

I hate to say this terrible thing, but the reviews I read of the 6600 ddr2 really impressed me for a <$100.00 part. I dunno maybe I am dumb, but it really seemed a good buy in that category.

 

[Deathlike2]

1). Video Card of the Year: I'm going for the X1800 series just simply because it has a bit more to offer in terms of IQ.. though I will give credit for the 512MB 7800 for competition sake. At the very least, they are more available than the number of NV30 and Voodoo 5 6000 that were sold in their respective eras.

2). Disappointment of the Year: It's Crossfire.. it's practically non-existant just because the X800 wasn't an SM3 product, but worse that there doesn't seem to be any X1800 Crossfire at all yet.

3). Innovation of the Year: Nothing that I can think of, maybe that will change soon.

4). Most promising trend of the year: IQ improvements, no need to repeat them.. they've already been mentioned by geo

5). Most discouraging trend of the year: Drivers that continue to suck. I have yet to experience a "bad ATI driver experience".. but NVidia introducing Direct Access and not-polished/QA tested enough 80.xx series drivers (which are required for the 512MB Geforce 7800) make me angry at NVidia.

6). Dan Rather "Courage" Award: [H] on Phantom aka "what console?"

7). Person in the Industry/Community I most wanted to stick a sock in their mouth: Most of what Anandtech spews...

9). Interview of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, Jen-Hsun Huang (once in a while, there's nothing wrong with interviewing the CEO)

10). Article of the Year: Dave Baumann, B3D, ATI Xenos: Xbox 360 Graphics Demystified (and I'm still lost as to how it would benefit 3D in the longrun, but hey, there's something to read)

11). Specialty niche reporting: Firing Squad.. I think they had that interesting image quality reviews on the types of video connections and the console... then there's the quality testing of the DVD decoding schemes (weren't they helping in some app that benched this stuff?).. and then there's comparing different LCDs in a certain price niche... (they've done a lot of stuff that is very helpful)