Anand's retail Radeon 9500 Pro review - much faster!!!....

[martrox]

As I have stated, I've had only very minor problems with the 9700Pro, and all were fixed pretty quickly. Right now, the only complaint I have is I can't run FSAA on DAoC.... which will be fixed in a couple of days with the release of the expansion(YEA!). While I also visit R3d and see the complaints, there are many there who post they have minium to no problems also. In fact, almost every review posted has had minium or no reported problems. Chalnoth, doesn't it seem a bit odd that you complain about "never seen anything quite like what I'm seeing in some games with the Radeon 9700" when compared with this? Just why is this? Well, without trying to flame you, here's some thoughts:

It's new technology, and the reality is it has some teething problems, but it's no worse - and many think much better than - the GF3 was at introduction. Also, it's different. Add in some often stated bias and here's where your statements and most of your problems come from.

 

[John Reynolds]

As I have stated, I've had only very minor problems with the 9700Pro, and all were fixed pretty quickly. Right now, the only complaint I have is I can't run FSAA on DAoC.... which will be fixed in a couple of days with the release of the expansion(YEA!).

OT: Which server are you playing DAoC on? I'm on Igraine with a 33 paladin. And, yea, can't wait till Wednesday for Shrouded Isles. 8)

 

[Tahir2]

... This has turned out correct almost all the time.

I'm sorry but I didn't translate that .plan to mean that NVIDIA's OpenGL drivers are bug free.

However I do see where you are coming from. I take back some of what I said.

 

[jb]

(Yes, I visited this forum to fix a few problems...and I actually got most of 'em fixed...but the Radeon 9700 has just given me more hassle than I've had since my TNT 16MB)

I told you about a week ago on the NVnews forums that unitl you reformat to remove all old GF drivers and other left over bits your going to have problems. Dont you find it a bit odd that while you have all sorts of issues other people dont? I am not saying that its your fault or that we are just lying to make one IHV look better. Again when video cards are reviewed the they are done on a fresh system for a reason. Now if you have done that then sorry, my bad. Good luck sir.

 

[T2k]

It's new technology, and the reality is it has some teething problems, but it's no worse - and many think much better than - the GF3 was at introduction. Also, it's different. Add in some often stated bias and here's where your statements and most of your problems come from.

Moreover when GF3 came out, it took at least 6 months to release a full performance driver... shame on NV: GF2 was faster...

 

[jandar]

(Yes, I visited this forum to fix a few problems...and I actually got most of 'em fixed...but the Radeon 9700 has just given me more hassle than I've had since my TNT 16MB)

I told you about a week ago on the NVnews forums that unitl you reformat to remove all old GF drivers and other left over bits your going to have problems. Dont you find it a bit odd that while you have all sorts of issues other people dont? I am not saying that its your fault or that we are just lying to make one IHV look better. Again when video cards are reviewed the they are done on a fresh system for a reason. Now if you have done that then sorry, my bad. Good luck sir.

makes you wonder exactly what goes on behind the scenes when you can find references to other IHVs in drivers.

 

[RussSchultz]

makes you wonder exactly what goes on behind the scenes when you can find references to other IHVs in drivers.

That's not what was suggested. There does not need to be references to other IHVs in drivers to cause these problems.

All drivers overwrite certain common windows systems files such as (opengl32.dll, d3d.dll,ddraw.dll, etc.), plus sometimes there are issues with device enumeration and all sorts of other strange problems if you don't completely clean out the registry and system folder of old stuff. An uninstaller may not delete everything it copied into the system folder, and sometimes there can be unintented conflicts between vendors' products, or even between different products from one vendor.

 

[Dio]

No driver should overwrite opengl32.dll, and d3d etc. should only ever be modified by the approved Microsoft DirectX redist pack.

 

[Hyp-X]

Actually I had a few problems with earlier R9700 drivers, and those were never solved by uninstalling the nVidia drivers.
It was always solved by newer drivers.

So I would be happy if fanATIcs stop act like conspirational theorists and blame nVidia for problems in ATI drivers.

The problem is that people compare current ATI drivers to current nVidia drivers and conclude on the driver teams capability.
The fair comparsion should be to compare current R9700 drivers to last summer's GF3 drivers.
I think it's a comparsion where ATI could likely come up on top.

As for the R8500/R9000 drivers, things doesn't look that bright...

And performance of the drivers is irrelevant when comparing driver quality...

 

[martrox]

Actually I had a few problems with earlier R9700 drivers, and those were never solved by uninstalling the nVidia drivers.
It was always solved by newer drivers.

So I would be happy if fanATIcs stop act like conspirational theorists and blame nVidia for problems in ATI drivers.

The problem is that people compare current ATI drivers to current nVidia drivers and conclude on the driver teams capability.
The fair comparsion should be to compare current R9700 drivers to last summer's GF3 drivers.
I think it's a comparsion where ATI could likely come up on top.

As for the R8500/R9000 drivers, things doesn't look that bright...

And performance of the drivers is irrelevant when comparing driver quality...

I had nothing but problems trying to uninstall nVidia drivers & then installing the ATI drivers. It was only after I did a full format that I solved almost all of the problems..... and almost all of the few remaining have been solved by either new new drivers or patches.....

 

[T2k]

Actually I had a few problems with earlier R9700 drivers, and those were never solved by uninstalling the nVidia drivers.
It was always solved by newer drivers.

But one thing is obvious: it could be, isn't it? (Edit: I mean if you leave it (NV) installed.)

So I would be happy if fanATIcs stop act like conspirational theorists and blame nVidia for problems in ATI drivers.

Nobody did it. Stop prejudging...

The problem is that people compare current ATI drivers to current nVidia drivers and conclude on the driver teams capability.
The fair comparsion should be to compare current R9700 drivers to last summer's GF3 drivers.
I think it's a comparsion where ATI could likely come up on top.

Exactly. :8

As for the R8500/R9000 drivers, things doesn't look that bright...

Yes, its true but everything starts somewhere...

And performance of the drivers is irrelevant when comparing driver quality...

Excuse me?
I wonder how do you call that if a card (GF3) shows 50-100% difference in terms of performance between two driver sets... (Edit: not adjacent sets)

 

[SirPauly]

Driver quality can be subjective depending on the individual and his/her system. I don't understand how one person can blanket driver quality in many respects based on their personal system. I can see sharing their personal view but not blanket the driver quality, imho.

The consensus seems to be ATI is improving their image when it comes to drivers and I am one that supports this.

Personally, I have had minor problems with their drivers and when I did see a problem, in most cases, it was addressed with a driver patch or new driver set. For example: Mafia suffered from a lock-up but quickly was addressed.

Stability has been solid for me over-all but my only nit-picks are:

1) Certain 32-bit colours titles; the AA doesn't enable and is a pain-in-the-ass. Many, I guess, can live with-out 16-bit AA( some can't and understandable) but not having AA for some 32-bit colour titles as well, sucks in a way, especially if one or more of these 32-bit colour titles is a favorite to play, and I sure hope this improves over time, hehe!

2) What looks like Z-buffer errors here and there.

Others may differ and why views are nice to share. I certainly don't understand how anyone can come up with words like HORRID so quickly when it would take so much testing to determine this.

A consumer buys card and quickly states Horrid.......well, their view is too quick in my mind and may be biased or ignorant, especially if they bring another company into it.

 

[Bambers]

So I would be happy if fanATIcs stop act like conspirational theorists and blame nVidia for problems in ATI drivers.

It happens both ways round though. Renemants of ati drivers can just as easily cause problems with nvidia ones as the other way around. Personally I haven't had either but then I set up my PC properly

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

The other problem with your analysis is...if it hurts ATI to sell such a product at this price point, it's going to hurt nVidia as much when it starts shipping a DX9 product with similar performance at that price point.

Ah, but ATI is still selling a 100+ million transistor product on the .15 micron process. Once the problems in the .13 micron process are ironed out, nVidia's mainstream and performance solutions will be much more cost-effective for them.

At the same time, I don't think that nVidia's going to be putting much emphasis on the Ti 4600. The design is, quite simply, more expensive to manufacture than the Ti 4200's design.

Ti4600 is not really a competitor because it lacks the DX9 hardware support the 9500Pro has--so in fact, Ti4600 will have to sell for less than 9500Pro in order to find its niche until nVidia can field a DX9 competitor. If vendors try and market the Ti4600 alonside the 9500Pro this Christmas at $199, the 9500Pro will murder it in sales--because, again, 4600 is not a DX9 part, and because 9.5KPro either outperforms (with AF/FSAA) the Ti4600, or else performs right alongside it, where Dx8.1 software is concerned. For a 3D-card buyer this Christmas who is even marginally in the know, but restrained to a $200 budget--the 9.5KPro is a real "no brainer," it seems to me.

Now that I have a 9700 here, I can't disagree more. While the card has promise, it's just far, far too buggy. One of the current major bugs deals with the z-buffer. Quite simply, there are some games that have blatant and obvious z-buffer errors (Morrowind is one, and I think I saw some in the Tenebrae mod of Quake, too). Apparently it has to do with a simple bug that's as stupid as just not reporting that the card supports 24/32-bit z-buffer.

Another huge problem is performance. If you visit the Rage3D forums, you'll notice a few threads dedicated solely to stuttering games. With some investigation on my own using UT2003 framerate graphs, I've come to the simple conclusion that ATI's current drivers have absolutely horrid performance compared to what they should be able to do. Put simply, the framerates of the Radeon 9700 appear to fluctuate wildly over time.

Based on this, I would take a GeForce4 Ti any day over a Radeon 9500.

Stuttering games? Not everyone has that problem and MOST of the time it is traced to some application running in the background.

Funny how I play UT2K3 on a AMD athlon XP at 1.8GHz with a Radeon 8500 64MB Retail card and it does not stutter at all. rames get choppy every once in a while due to heavy action but that is CPU related

My rig
AMD athlon XP at 150*12 (1.8Ghz)
1024MB ram
ECS K7S6A
Radeon 8500 64MB retail 290/290
WDC caviar 120GB 7200RMP drive
Toshiba DVD
Liton 40X writer

It runs smooth for me. A lot of stuttering problems are caused by networks, services, improper AGP settings (I prefer to use the smallest AGP size possible- effectively disabling it) so I am not so quick to blame ATi as there are many many factors.

 

[T2k]

Now that I have a 9700 here, I can't disagree more. While the card has promise, it's just far, far too buggy. One of the current major bugs deals with the z-buffer. Quite simply, there are some games that have blatant and obvious z-buffer errors (Morrowind is one, and I think I saw some in the Tenebrae mod of Quake, too). Apparently it has to do with a simple bug that's as stupid as just not reporting that the card supports 24/32-bit z-buffer.

So far, I have the same problems in two, maybe three games only: stuttering.
But!
To emphasize your (usually) blindfolded standpoint, let me show you a list: various configurations w/ stuttering problem during MS RalliSport Chall. - one of the main complaints over at R3D:

Win98/1700+/Ti4200
Win XpHUN -1900+ /4600 -on is
WinXPHUN/Win98/XP2000+/R8500
WinXPSP1/TuaCeli1000@1330/256SD/GF3Ti200/Det29.42
?/P3?/?
Winxppro(no SP1)/p4-1.6a@2.4/R9700Pro
WinXP/p4-2.52/GigabyteR9700Pro
?/?/Ti4600
WinXPProSP1/1900+/R9700Pro

On the other hand, lot of people play this game with no stuttering at all.

Hmmm...

 

[SvP]

haven't found a bug in nVidia's drivers in a very long time

While the 9700 has promise, it's just far, far too buggy.

I would take a GeForce4 Ti any day over a Radeon 9500.

The problem is - it seems you encouter just setup and installation problems. Maybe you encounter driver bugs that get fixed long before GeforceFX appears on the shelves. You probably have read one post nearly a year ago with one sentence about the quality of ATI drivers compared to NVidia ones. But you have never ever seen a major developer devote a 7-page article to a ATI driver/hardware bug. Funny - the only one I have encountered is devoted to NVidia bug.

http://udn.epicgames.com/pub/Content/TextureComparison/

Now - JC devoted one paragraph to ATI drivers in his plan update. Epic devoted pages and pages of information and screenshots to NVidia hardware bug in their Developer Network. So what? Really. Except for keeping your fingers busy.

If you have problems- simply report them, why the whining? Because of this?
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1756&p=9

GeForce4 Ti any day over a Radeon 9500. - indeed

 

[RussSchultz]

No driver should overwrite opengl32.dll, and d3d etc. should only ever be modified by the approved Microsoft DirectX redist pack.

I'll defer to your knowledge.

There certainly is other stuff that could get "crosslinked", or a control panel that sticks around, or a helper driver that stays installed, etc.

 

[OpenGL guy]

There certainly is other stuff that could get "crosslinked", or a control panel that sticks around, or a helper driver that stays installed, etc.

Some games keep track of what video card was installed when the game was first installed/ran, so some junk could be left over that way.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Hi,

Like everyone else I'll post my opinion on the driver situation:

In windows, ATI and nvidias drivers are close, with nvidia getting a slight edge. Some problems are application related, while others are program related. I had no major problems with nvidia's drivers, and slight problems with ATIs:

- On Windows

Morrowind:
the Radeon has slight issues with some surfaces disappearing behind others. Never noticed this with the ti200. Most likely morrowind's fault for having polygons at the same z depth. ATI's drivers are probably trying to hide the surface half the time.

Neverwinter Nights:
random crashes with AGP set to 4X, but fine with 2X. Didn't seem to manifest itself in other games which is a bit odd. Fastwrite doesn't seem to affect the problem. Possibly a problem with my motherboard's AGP implementation, possibly, the videocard, possibly the drivers. Shiny water didn't work until upgrading to the newest beta release.

3DMark:
Was crashing initially, but doesn't appear to be doing so anymore. Possibly related to the AGP problem above.

Otherwise no problems in other games tested.

- On Linux

Nvidia's binary drivers are very fast, and seemingly work well. Problems include compiling for certain kernel versions (problems with the binary core), and many people complained of crashing, though I personally never had any problems. Drivers took literally about 10 seconds to initialize X. (compared to less than a second for opensource drivers).

ATI's binary drivers currently have no good installation method. They only come packaged in rpm format and don't work with the current standard version of GCC. I haven't tried them yet, but current reports are that they are slow and have some problems switching between console and X. Xvideo is also buggy. These drivers are a lot less mature than the nvidia ones. They are only at the second release though, so hopefully this situation will improve.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Hellbinder]

To chalnoth and Hyp-x,,, 100 and 1 of <---- These...

I cant even beging to address all the Questionable content of your combined posts... an example....

Suffice it to say... Its pretty freaking rediculous that you talk about *all the issues your having blah blah bla* fill in the blank... And then post something About Morrowind that has been a known issue for months... and is most likely attributed to the way ATi's Hyper Z-III is dealing with the game (early Z test). Notice... yet again.. it is an *extremely* poorly coded game developed on Nvidia hardware.. I dont fault Ati even one bit for an issue like this. They will likely come up with a work around eventually.

While i did have a coupple minor issues at fist like everyone else with BF 1942 and missing helmets in madden 2003.. ALL and yes ALL of those issues are gone.

Its is *beyond* pretty damn fanboyish and petty for you guys to bring stuff like this up for a Brand new hardware that is allowing you to play 98% of all games on the market with FSAA+Aniso 2-6x faster than the nearest competitor....

This is what i want to see. I want you guys here whent he GFFX shows and has some compatability issues.. If you are actually to be taken seriously then you had better show with petty *** posts like this then to.