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

[Hellbinder]

Actaully i am a little more than irritated now...

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

The above statement is complete and total BULL****. PERIOD.

I do not have stuttering, neither do most other people. I play UT 2003 Every Damn day as well as BF 1942 With max detail settiings and 4x FSAA+8xAniso.. Its flipping ROCK SOLID. neither is the Rage3d forums filled with people reporting stuttering. And most that do are turning the details in the game past what their system ram can handle and are getting thrashing.

Furthermore...

EVERYONE on this forum has participated in the Ut 2003 benchmark issue discussions, and the low FPS being reported are NOT indicative of what you are actually seeing. End of story. There are probobly at least 10 people here alone who upgraded from a Ti 4600 to a 9700 that will tell you you are flat out full of *insert expletive*.

To me it is Blatant dishonestly and Fanboism on your part for even going there.. when you can Freaking sit down at the computer and play the game for yourself.

Performance problems.. That just takes the damn Fanboi cake. I am sick and have to go Hurl some chunder now....

 

[Username]

Performance problems.. That just takes the damn Fanboi cake. I am sick and have to go Hurl some chunder now....

Wow.

 

[KimB]

Hellbinder, yes, it is true that the Radeon 9700 does perform higher than the GeForce4 Ti 4600. I never said this wasn't the case.

What I am trying to say is that the Radeon 9700's performance is far lower than it should be. The drivers just suck now.

Here's what I mean, in essence:

I found out that I could play games at 1024x768x32 with 6x FSAA and 16-degree anisotropic with the Radeon 9700 that I had previously played at 1024x768x32 with 2x FSAA and 8-degree anisotropic on a GeForce4 Ti 4200, but not all the time.

Neverwinter Nights, for example, was utterly unplayable at 1024x768x32 with 6x FSAA. Toning down the FSAA to 4x cleared up the stuttering for the most part, but I see no reason why this game should be harder on a Radeon 9700 than my GeForce4. I clearly see a driver issue here, related to performance. This doesn't mean it's slower, just that it's not as much faster as it should be, not by a long shot.

The Tenebrae mod for Quake was another situation in which I couldn't play at the same resolution, but with 6x FSAA on a Radeon 9700. There were also noticeable graphical glitches that didn't exist on my GeForce4 (Can't remember exactly what right now...and I currently am using the GF4).

As a side note, I did notice one interesting thing. In UT2k3, the Radeon 9700 did better in Direct3D mode (aside from a more erratic framerate) than in OpenGL mode. With the GeForce4, UT2k3 reported higher framerate scores in OpenGL.

And I have seen other driver issues as well. The Morrowind issue has been confirmed, and I can essentially guarantee that you will see it if you play the game. I've also noticed that turning on FSAA or anisotropic for Baldur's Gate 2 makes the game essentially unplayable (due to visual glitches). This isn't a huge deal, since this game doesn't gain any benefit from either, but it is a nuisance, meaning I have to turn those things off before starting the game.

I've also had more reboots and crashes with my Radeon 9700, but I'm not really ready to cry foul in this regard, as it is a rev 1.0 board, and I am running it on an nForce2 (A7N8X) motherboard.

 

[KimB]

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/

1. That's probably not a driver bug (because it's probably a hardware bug).
2. It's not really any different from ATI's anisotropic problems in many respects.

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

Which brings up another complaint. Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL. If a reviewer is going to use just one game here, he should definitely at least show comparisons in both OpenGL and Direct3D.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL.

Why is that? It's the same hardware in either case.

 

[Althornin]

Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL.

Why is that? It's the same hardware in either case.

Sounds like a DRIVER BUG to me!!!!
But, chalnoth...i thought nVidia HAD no driver bugs?
You have to understand chalnoth, that you are posting information that is contrary to almost everything i have read about ATI's 9700 and driver quality.
Not only that, but you are widely recognized as a huge nVidia fan.
Do you see why you dont have much credibility?
Also, you repeatedly claim "XXXX" is the problem, easy to fix, damn ATI drivers - when reputable sources tell me, no, chalnoth is wrong, and offer simple ways to check this.
All this added together severly impacts your cred. If you would stop trying to sensationalize stuff, and post FACTS only, not your specualtion on what the problem might be based on some quote by "a guy" at rage3d 2 years ago, then maybe i'll care what you think.
You also wont let anyone help you, and refuse to attempt things that people have suggested. Seems to me you dont really want to see what the cause of the problems is - you've already made up your mind.

 

[T2k]

Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL.

Why is that? It's the same hardware in either case.

You're blind, you misunderstood... Why do you mention that?
It's just another proof of the quality of their extreme quality, biblical error-free driver set...
Now you can see crisp clearly the difference - occasionally they prefer D3D, hehehe

 

[T2k]

Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL.

Why is that? It's the same hardware in either case.

Sounds like a DRIVER BUG to me!!!!
But, chalnoth...i thought nVidia HAD no driver bugs?

You don't understand this... it's a superior level TRUTH...

 

[Tahir2]

We really need a sarcasm smiley before someone gets hurt

 

[OpenGL guy]

Anisotropic performance of the GeForce4 is far better under OpenGL.

Why is that? It's the same hardware in either case.

Sounds like a DRIVER BUG to me!!!!

It may not be a bug at all, but it may show that nvidia handles anisotropic filtering differently under OpenGL and D3D. I'd love to see a thorough image quality analysis to see if there is any image quality difference between the two.

 

[KimB]

Sounds like a DRIVER BUG to me!!!!

It most certainly appears that way, but OpenGL Guy is right. It could possibly be due to a different implementation, but I've never seen anything suspect in the way OpenGL implements aniso.

But, chalnoth...i thought nVidia HAD no driver bugs?
You have to understand chalnoth, that you are posting information that is contrary to almost everything i have read about ATI's 9700 and driver quality.

I don't think I ever said that. There are always bugs. I'm primarily talking about rendering errors here. nVidia's cards generally just don't have 'em (usually...when it comes to things like things not working to spec and such...), and many things I've heard from developers in particular make me believe it's not just because of nVidia's installed-base, but is largely due to the fact that nVidia's drivers are good.

And, of course, different releases of nVidia's drivers tend to have varying levels of stability for many people, as well as performance. I remember one release in particular that gave UT some terrible texture thrashing a while back, texture thrashing that I had not seen in some time.

What I'm trying to say is that I haven't had this level of annoyance since around the time I first had my TNT 16MB.

 

[KimB]

Oh, and I figure I'll go ahead and list out the problems I've had a bit more fully:

When I was first trying Unreal Tournament with the 2.4 Cats (I think the problem was fixed upon moving to the DX9 beta drivers), I couldn't load the game more than once in a given session without changing the game resolution, as the game would crash.

With the 2.4 Cats (not with the DX9 beta drivers), the HUD in the Tenebrae mod for Quake would turn grey immediately after loading, essentially making the game unplayable. But with the DX9 beta drivers, there was some discoloration (I can't remember exactly what, I'd have to go back and check).

I also noticed some blurry text in Neverwinter Nights, and I'm not entirely sure why it occured. I'd need to go back and check, but I did notice that Morrowind's text would get blurry if I reduced the texture LOD slider in the drivers.

Serious Sam would crash my computer if I attempted to alt+tab out of the game, with a garbled screen. This never occured on my GeForce4 in Serious Sam, and I purposely went back through most of my games with my GeForce4 and didn't see this problem. I haven't yet checked if other games on the 9700 crash when I alt+tab out of them. (side note: The last game I remember giving fits from an alt+tab on an nVidia card was Everquest, but that would only refuse to restore, it didn't crash, and neither did my PC...I can't remember how long it's been since I've had really serious problems with alt+tab from a 3D game...it was probably before I even got my GeForce DDR)

I haven't yet been able to get the 9700 to work under Linux because the drivers utterly fail if they can't get any agpgart to work. I can't seem to find an agpgart that will work properly with my nForce2, and ATI's doesn't work (Though the agpgart that comes with nVidia's drivers works just fine). Though I can actually load X without loading ATI's drivers, it always runs at 60Hz refresh, which I just can't use. This is the main reason why I am using the GeForce4 right now.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Perhaps it would be useful for those trying to help you with your problems if you clarified that when you "go back to your GF4 and check" that means just that... literally.

And, perhaps it would also be useful if you mentioned that you don't do a clean install between card swapping.

 

[OpenGL guy]

I'd need to go back and check, but I did notice that Morrowind's text would get blurry if I reduced the texture LOD slider in the drivers.

Yes, I believe this is the intended behavior as you are tweaking the LOD bias. If the texture is mipmapped, then you will select a smaller mipmap in some cases, which will increase overall blurriness.

 

[Nagorak]

I'd like to address this to both ATi and Nvidia fanatics:

IF YOU DON'T EVEN OWN THE CARD THEN PLEASE STFU ABOUT SUPPOSED DRIVER PROBLEMS!!!!!

 

[cellarboy]

]The above statement is complete and total BULL****. PERIOD.

Breathe......

 

[Althornin]

I also noticed some blurry text in Neverwinter Nights, and I'm not entirely sure why it occured. I'd need to go back and check, but I did notice that Morrowind's text would get blurry if I reduced the texture LOD slider in the drivers.

Why on earth would you reduce the LOD?
and doesnt it seem obvious that this would affect quality of any texture that uses mipmaps?
So if the text is done that way..duh?

Let me sum up the problems that are "so terrible":
Tenebrae (developed on an nVidia platform) doesnt work perfectly (note - this is not even a retail game, iirc)
A UT crash bug (that i dont quite understand your description of)
and a alt-tab problem (i ahve heard of otehrs having this problem, at least on 8500's. )
and poor (as of yet) linux support.

honestly, i dont see what you are all upset about?
You have two or three real bugs you've found (aside from the linux stuff) and that is "terrible"? Come on. I have had worse from my GF3...

 

[Doomtrooper]

Tenebrae....I played with it on my 8500..had some graphical glitches here and there but ran quite well...checking the authors webpage FAQ:

Q: I'm using an ATI [something] and Tenebrae does [something bad].
A: ATI support was kind of nonexistent in the first version this should be fixed now, if you have problems (besides being slow) with an ATI card please let me know. (update 25/8/2002 - there are certainly radeon 8500 problems with 1.01 I have screenshots of these.)
If you have success with an ATI card please let me now it also!


25/09/2002 New version

Tenebrae version 1.02 is out! Go and download it at the downloads page.
This new version has the following features
Runs faster (25% on my system)
Radeon support (Thanks to Jarno Paananen) <--Author didn't support and relied on someone else
Reflections
Glares
Md3 support
Animation interpolation
Luminance textures (local light for texture)
"Modern" particle engine
Uses lights from the original maps (less dark)
Flashlight and flares
Bug fixes (see Readme)

Q: I have z-fighting.
A: Make sure you use the latest version of Tenebrae (older versions had problems), if you still have severe z-fighting it may be a problem with your 3d-card.
NOTE: There may be a problem with the implementation of scissoring on Geforce cards that causes minor z-fighting artefacts.



http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=faq.txt

This Mod has lots of issues...commendable to what he has done, but this is not even a official title and appears he is coding only on Nvidia hardware and relying on other people for Radeon support...

Chalnoth your opinion might hold water on Nvnews but here it is just the same old song and dance...ATI sucks and Nvidia rockzorz.

 

[KimB]

Yes, I believe this is the intended behavior as you are tweaking the LOD bias. If the texture is mipmapped, then you will select a smaller mipmap in some cases, which will increase overall blurriness.

Right. But I wasn't tweaking the mipmap bias in NWN.

And why would the text be mipmapped, anyway? Logic seems to dictate that there would be no mipmaps, and point sampling would be used (Unless the program wants to do some sort of text anti-aliasing using the 3D hardware...but even then unless you're using variable-size text, as neither NWN nor Morrowind use, you shouldn't need MIP mapping).

 

[KimB]

Why on earth would you reduce the LOD?

I noticed texture aliasing.

Let me sum up the problems that are "so terrible":
Tenebrae (developed on an nVidia platform) doesnt work perfectly (note - this is not even a retail game, iirc)

Right, but unfortunately there's another problem here. Both Tenebrae and NWN use the stencil buffer for shadows. Unless there's another game I can try that also uses the stencil buffer, two out of two with poor performance so far is quite bad...

A UT crash bug (that i dont quite understand your description of)
and a alt-tab problem (i ahve heard of otehrs having this problem, at least on 8500's. ) and poor (as of yet) linux support.

UT crash:
1. Open UT, then exit.
2. Open UT again. Game crashes.

If I change the resolution in the UnrealTournament.ini file, the game won't crash the second load. This does seem to be fixed in the beta DX9 drivers.

honestly, i dont see what you are all upset about?
You have two or three real bugs you've found (aside from the linux stuff) and that is "terrible"? Come on. I have had worse from my GF3...

I haven't. Keep in mind that I purchased three nVidia cards pretty much as soon as I could after launch (TNT, GeForce DDR, GeForce4 Ti 4200). Only the TNT gave me this many hassles (keep in mind that nVidia's drivers didn't get good until roughly around the release of the TNT2).