More important than value for money

F

Frank

Certified not a majority
Veteran
It's more important for a brand to have the fastest card on the market and offering good developer support than having the cards that offer the best value for the money and the best specifications.

Since the GeForce 8800 appeared, just about every new AA game I try to play on my X1950 Pro requires me to jump through hoops to get it to work. Browsing the forums for a solution almost always show many issues with Ati boards, and few, if any, with nVidia boards. And I'm pretty sure that's because the devs use 8800s and support from nVidia to make their game.

Just now, I started playing Mass Effect, and immediately notice the extremely pixelated lights and LOD textures, and the lack of AA. So, I upgrade to the most recent driver and get a black screen and VPU recovery error. And things like this happen awfully often with most new games.


So, while Ati/AMD sell cards that offer great value for money, they need to work at making it convenient for game developers to use their cards and support to make games for them to succeed. Because my next card is definitely going to be an nVidia one.


So, what has the above to do with 3D architecture and chips? It's about drivers and consumer satisfaction. But without those, the former are moot.
 
Why the hell must you start every thread with a completely wrong assumption? You even word the sentence like a question but end it with a period. What are you even trying to do here? I don't understand at all, it's like you want to ask a question to start a conversation on the topic but you end it with periods and then sum it up like what you said is the truth (which it hardly ever is) and it's the final statement.
 
Well the pixelated lights your talking about is a ME issue, the shadows on the characters in cut scenes will look horrible regardless of what card your using. You can do some ini hacks to make them look a little better.

Anyways I haven't had many problems with any of my ATI cards. My 1900XT was totally fine, I didn't run into any compatibility or stability issues with any apps. Is your 1950 pro AGP? I herd that the AGP versions (3850 AGP has similar issues) are sorta iffy.
 
Skrying said:
Why the hell must you start every thread with a completely wrong assumption? You even word the sentence like a question but end it with a period. What are you even trying to do here? I don't understand at all, it's like you want to ask a question to start a conversation on the topic but you end it with periods and then sum it up like what you said is the truth (which it hardly ever is) and it's the final statement.
Click to expand...
Wow. I'm sorry I exist.

Could you tell me where I go wrong, instead of roasting me emotionally?
 
Freak'n Big Panda said:
Well the pixelated lights your talking about is a ME issue, the shadows on the characters in cut scenes will look horrible regardless of what card your using. You can do some ini hacks to make them look a little better.

Anyways I haven't had many problems with any of my ATI cards. My 1900XT was totally fine, I didn't run into any compatibility or stability issues with any apps. Is your 1950 pro AGP? I herd that the AGP versions (3850 AGP has similar issues) are sorta iffy.
Click to expand...
No, it's PCIe. But it was only an example, I really hoped to set up a discussion about why it would be important to have the speed king and a great support program, like the nVidia TWIMTP program.
 
ChronoReverse said:
Your argument is flawed from its premise. During the time of the X1950 and the 7950, ATI had the fastest single GPU card.
Click to expand...
Well, I did say: "since the GeForce 8800 appeared".

Before that, it was nVidia that had the same problems (from the R300 onwards).
 
Frank said:
Wow. I'm sorry I exist.

Could you tell me where I go wrong, instead of roasting me emotionally?
Click to expand...

Don't come into the thread with assumptions. You claimed right off that these issues were more common on ATi cards which your example doesn't back up.

You wanted to start a discussion but you ended it in your first sentence. You've already concluded that being the speed king (which Nvidia now isn't really) and their games program provides less issues for Nvidia programs. Where can the discussion go from there?

The ME issues you described are part of ME and not your card. The other issues you have sound like they could come from something else software wise on your computer. Likely not your video card though.
 
Frank said:
No, it's PCIe. But it was only an example, I really hoped to set up a discussion about why it would be important to have the speed king and a great support program, like the nVidia TWIMTP program.
Click to expand...

Well It's obviously very important. NV benefits tremendously from their dev rel investments. I think what it comes down to is that ATI just doesn't have the resources to be doing that, ATI does what it can but can't invest on the same level as Nvidia. However I would argue that this has minimal impact on the customer. Move of a marketing move.
 
Freak'n Big Panda said:
Well It's obviously very important. NV benefits tremendously from their dev rel investments. I think what it comes down to is that ATI just doesn't have the resources to be doing that, ATI does what it can but can't invest on the same level as Nvidia. However I would argue that this has minimal impact on the customer. Move of a marketing move.
Click to expand...
I don't agree about it being only a marketing move.

If you buy some product and it works well, you're more likely to buy the next one from the same brand. And if it doesn't work as expected, you try the other one.

Now, I'm tech-savvy enough to figure it out and fix it, as long as there is a way to fix it, but most people either think that their GPU is bad, or have to wait for the producers of the game and/or GPU to come up with a fix that works.


Or, in other words: whenever the GPU doesn't show the nice visuals you expect after installing a game, you lose confidence. And when it isn't fixable by installing new drivers (which isn't as simple for many people as it is for us), it's broken.

So, the drivers and development support have a large impact on the consumer satisfaction, which determines their next buy.
 
Frank said:
How many game developers use a 4870 as their GPU? And where can they go for support?
Click to expand...

All of them will likely test their games on the hardware. They can go to AMD for support. TWIMTBP is a marketing program more or less with Nvidia maybe providing more up front support. I have extremely big doubts AMD tells developers to go screw off if they ask for support or help.
 
Frank said:
It's more important for a brand to have the fastest card on the market and offering good developer support than having the cards that offer the best value for the money and the best specifications.

Since the GeForce 8800 appeared, just about every new AA game I try to play on my X1950 Pro requires me to jump through hoops to get it to work. Browsing the forums for a solution almost always show many issues with Ati boards, and few, if any, with nVidia boards. And I'm pretty sure that's because the devs use 8800s and support from nVidia to make their game.

Just now, I started playing Mass Effect, and immediately notice the extremely pixelated lights and LOD textures, and the lack of AA. So, I upgrade to the most recent driver and get a black screen and VPU recovery error. And things like this happen awfully often with most new games.


So, while Ati/AMD sell cards that offer great value for money, they need to work at making it convenient for game developers to use their cards and support to make games for them to succeed. Because my next card is definitely going to be an nVidia one.

Also Ive owned ATi cards since the legendary r300 and Ive never encountered a game I couldnt play well because it was designed as a TWIMTBP game.


So, what has the above to do with 3D architecture and chips? It's about drivers and consumer satisfaction. But without those, the former are moot.
Click to expand...


Have you been to Nvnews lately. Go to the threads there and do some reading. There are tons of issues with NV drivers and TWIMTBP games and thats one category...also look for Xp, Vista32, Vista64 issues, and then there are hardware compatibiltiy issues as well so even though NV might have an advantage with their TWIMTBP program over ATI, it really doesnt show that much in the real world because the botom line is what Davros has stated and I quote, "game issues d3d commands, driver tells card to execute them".
 
Also Ive been gamming on ATI harware since r300 and although some games ran better on NV hardware, others ran better on ATI stuff, but even for the former case, I was still able to play those games and very well . TWIMTBP is more of a marketing tool than anything else even if it does help tweak those game a bit more, but not so much so that Ati hardware is lagging way behind.
 
I am just left to wonder, how am I ever able to run all my games on my laptop with X1600? it's like my whole machine became WORTHLESS as soon as the 8800 appeared..

oh no. .wait.. it didn't

what i DID experience was I had a crap system with my 2900 installed it was a machine that went throught various upgrade cycles depending hardware(disks/cpu/memory) and software(xp to vista)

and you know what? I had issues VPU recovers and the like .. it was as though my continues installations of things like ATT hacks tweaks beta drivers etc. made my system unstable.

So guess what happens when you start from a blank page? reinstall windows and do things by the book.

it works.. it works brilliantly. things that crapped out on me before (DiRT, Settlers to name a few) now work flawlessly.
Same goes for my notebook with a fresh XP install on it.

ASSUMPTION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCK-UPS. don't point at other parties when the problem maybe be a lot closer to home.

To put things in a different light. how the F*** is ATI able to beat the crap out of Geforce cards while providing SO LITTLE SUPPORT? FRANKly. .you make it sound like a developer needs to work with nVidia for five years to bring acceptable performance to a card that ATI provides out of the box, with hardly any dev-rel at all.
 
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