Controversial this: ATI & retail

[DegustatoR]

I said "driver support", not drivers.

The monthly release schedule of ATi's kicks the bejeebus out of nVidia's non-existant policy.....you agree? :|

I've yet to see a reason for such often driver updates. Why do they release driver every month if the previous version is working flawlessly? For us to remember of their existance? I don't get it. I think today's NV's way of releasing a new driver once a quarter is much more in line with market needs.

On the other hand if you want to experiment and try every NV driver version that's out there -- leaks are for you. They happen once a week in general. That's four times more often than ATI's

 

[trinibwoy]

The monthly release schedule of ATi's kicks the bejeebus out of nVidia's non-existant policy.....you agree? :|

I agree. Notwithstanding all the joys of messing around with betas, it would be nice if Nvidia stuck to some sort of schedule. The drivers themselves are of good quality from both parties though, so unless you're some sort of control freak the randomness of Nvidia's releases shouldn't be that big a deal.

 

[Sandwich]

The monthly release schedule of ATi's kicks the bejeebus out of nVidia's non-existant policy.....you agree? :|

Are you saying that ATI crapping out drivers every month is a huge selling point for you? And here's silly me thinking that in an ideal world you'd need only one driver that worked perfectly.
Yes it is annoying if you have to wait for a new driver to fix issues in a game, but nvidia are confident enough thinking they don't need to.

 

[Moloch]

The monthly release schedule of ATi's kicks the bejeebus out of nVidia's non-existant policy.....you agree? :|

Are you saying that ATI crapping out drivers every month is a huge selling point for you? And here's silly me thinking that in an ideal world you'd need only one driver that worked perfectly.
Yes it is annoying if you have to wait for a new driver to fix issues in a game, but nvidia are confident enough thinking they don't need to.

You realize nvidia kicks out an insane ammount of betas right?
Videocard drivers aren't like a mouse driver or something.
With new games coming out every month, it's a good thing to have up to date drivers, nvidia still hasn't fixed their refreshrate bug IIRC, try playing HL2 with a forced refeshrate
Some people will never be happy, either not realizing drivers enough, or realizing them TOO much.
I think you're clearly the fanatic here.
Given ati's superior D3D performance, and most games are D3D, and it's not like you can't play doom 3 or riddick on ati cards, it's just slower, like HL2 on a GF6- slower but still playable.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Games are released every month, that's why ATi releases drivers every month.

 

[Tim Murray]

Yeah. I read the first post in the thread and thought

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yeah. I read the first post in the thread and thought

OMG, I know that picture!

Serial Experiment Lain, episode 1's opening...right? :|

 

[Moloch]

Games are released every month, that's why ATi releases drivers every month.

stfu dig
Driver bugs exist, in one way or another, why shouldn't ati release updates every month to improve performance and fix bugs
That better?
New games= update drivers to improve performance, for example doom 3 ROE is out(or should be soon) so I'm sure ati will do some driver magic to improve performance in that game, even though it's just an expansion, they'res likely some new stuff introduced into the game graphics wise that can be optimized.

 

[IbaneZ]

I'm surprised that no one from Team ATI hasn't mentioned NV3x yet in this thread...for 2 pages!! Must be a new record.

 

[Tahir2]

Just to go back a bit, I have a 6600GT and I must say my old 9700 Pro had better AA image quality.

I found this a tad disappointing but the offset is that I can turn AA on in more games than I could before (but this is also down to the fact I have a more powerful system all round too).

 

[Tweaker]

While the current ATI line-up consists of very good cards, the cards are even less appealing than nvidia cards were in their FX days.

Only for your information, this is from ATI's 2nd quarter 2005 conference call

PC segment 90% of consolidated revenue (Can that be right? That’s what I heard) –particularly at top-end. Ultra high-end 20% of PC revenue, and quadrupled. Supply constraints “lifted somewhatâ€￾.

 

[Pete]

Yes it is annoying if you have to wait for a new driver to fix issues in a game, but nvidia are confident enough thinking they don't need to.

New games are released monthly, and if drivers are updated to disable AA for certain titles, or to include certain game-specific optimizations (Doom 3), you'll need to release a new driver set. General driver performance is probably improved in a continuous process, like all other software development. So why denigrate a monthly release?

Your ideal world exists only in your head. In the real world, nV integrates Doom 3's NV30 path into their drivers, moving the responsiblity for framerate optimizations from iD to nV's driver team. You think regular releases might be nice to reap the benefits of those speedups?

 

[_xxx_]

nvidia still hasn't fixed their refreshrate bug IIRC, try playing HL2 with a forced refeshrate

What's the problem? There are like 50+ tools which do it for you in every possible way you'd like to have it.

 

[_xxx_]

Both sides optimize their drivers for whatnot specific games/apps. That's normal.

 

[Sandwich]

While the current ATI line-up consists of very good cards, the cards are even less appealing than nvidia cards were in their FX days.

Only for your information, this is from ATI's 2nd quarter 2005 conference call

PC segment 90% of consolidated revenue (Can that be right? That's what I heard) -particularly at top-end. Ultra high-end 20% of PC revenue, and quadrupled. Supply constraints "lifted somewhat".

Do you also know how much of that is OEM? I'm mostly interested in retail.

I remember this Steam survey from januari. Maybe the most extensive and reliable hardware survey:
http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html

There's a large number of 9800 cards, which makes sense, but what's suprising enough is the large amount of fx5200 owners.
Infact, there's more nvidia owners than ati owners in the survey. Helped by the fact there's so many people holding on to very ancient GFs, but still, there it is.

In fact the most sold "dx9" card today is still the crappy fx5200.

And that's the point I'm trying to make. Even with FX cards, nvidia managed to sell many, through dirty marketing and sharp pricing.
This time round nvidia have excellent hardware and they're selling cheaper than ATI.

With most videocard reviews today you're lucky if you see a paragraph about IQ.
I don't want to argue whether ATI's IQ is better or not, instead consider just a moment all these FX5200 owners out there. How many buyers do you seriously think are concearned with the imagine quality of the GF6 series?

Nvidia is conquering the retail market right now. I wonder what ATI is going to do about it.

 

[PaulS]

I said "driver support", not drivers.

The monthly release schedule of ATi's kicks the bejeebus out of nVidia's non-existant policy.....you agree? :|

Sure, but the quality of ATi's drivers themselves seem to have dropped considerably over the last few months. There are a LOT of us who've been completely unable to move beyond 4.12, due to the high number of bugs in the 5.x series

 

[ANova]

And that's the point I'm trying to make. Even with FX cards, nvidia managed to sell many, through dirty marketing and sharp pricing.
This time round nvidia have excellent hardware and they're selling cheaper than ATI.

With most videocard reviews today you're lucky if you see a paragraph about IQ.
I don't want to argue whether ATI's IQ is better or not, instead consider just a moment all these FX5200 owners out there. How many buyers do you seriously think are concearned with the imagine quality of the GF6 series?

What does this have to do with anything? Nvidia sold a bunch of FX5200s for multiple reasons. One, prior to the R300 nvidia dominated the industry with pretty much no competition, in that time everyone had nvidia and everyone thought nvidia was the best. People have a tendency to blindly believe and stick with a company that they have bought decent products from in the past. Two, most people can't afford expensive video cards. At the time the two newest cards at the lowest price points were the FX5200 and the R9200. Nvidia touted support for DX9 on the FX5200 knowing full well that it couldn't run it, and of course everyone except for a select few believed them. That coupled with the people who would rather choose a "reputable" company over ATI, a somewhat new player in the game, is what accounts for how well the FX5200 did.

The people who aren't concerned with image quality are those who haven't been enlightened on the differences.

Nvidia is conquering the retail market right now. I wonder what ATI is going to do about it.

Nvidia is currently doing better in the retail market because they created fast and cheap solutions in the low and mid range before ATI with their 6600 GT and 6800 GT. What is ATI going to do about it? They already have, in the form of the vanilla X800 and X800 XL. ATI, however, also has and still is dominating the OEM market and well as the high end market (except for the small percentage with SLi).

I would also argue that nvidia doesn't have lower prices. The only area where this is not so is with the 6800 Ultra which goes for as little as $400 whereas the X850s are typically around $500+. The vanilla X800 is slightly more expensive then the 6600 GT but much more powerful and less then the comparible vanilla 6800. The same applies with the X800 XL versus the 6800 GT. Yes the Geforce 6 supports SM3 and FP blending but ATI's lineup is generally faster all around and has arguably better AA.

I don't see what the big deal is here. Some people would like to be future proof by having an SM3 capable card, still others don't believe SM3 is very practical or useful and would rather have better performance and/or AA (this is where I stand myself). I don't think either particular company is really much better then the other in this generation, they each have tradeoffs. Ultimately the consumer has to make a decision based on the various advantages and disadvantages.

 

[_xxx_]

ANova, you're serious in describing the 6800GT as mid-range? And ATI is dominating high-end? Jeez...

 

[ANova]

ANova, you're serious in describing the 6800GT as mid-range? And ATI is dominating high-end? Jeez...

No, the 6800 GT does qualify as high end, but so does the X800 XL which is still cheaper in most cases or at the very least equal. In which case the tradeoffs still apply. I guess nvidia is doing well in this catagory too since the XLs are fairly new, but in the high end in general ATI is doing better since demand for their X800/X850 XTs is quite high and nothing can match them in performance.

 

[_xxx_]

Well if you consider all games, I'd say the performance of 6800U vs. X850XT and 6800GT vs. X800XL is in sum about equal, 1-2 fps this or that way. For people who are not sure what they want, it's still a tough choice (seeing all these threads "Which card should I buy?").

EDIT:
And let's not forget that you had to pay +$100 for an ATI card a few months ago IF you found one anywhere...so I guess it was a good time for nVidia selling all those AGP nV40 for six months with practically no competition.