nVidia closing gap with GFFX 5900XT?

see colon said:
"I have to pay £164 for a pop up stopper?
Heh, why? I use Avant Browser...."
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and your point? not everyone uses "rebel" browsers, and some people get pretty annoyed by pop-ups. the fact is, for ie users, they are constantly being bobarted with pop-up ads advertising pop-up stoppers and "member" enlargers, and a free way to stop that (if you alreay own an nVidia card) is just an added bonus.
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I think alot of IE users are using the Google toolbar, which blocks popups, and is universal with any card/system.



see colon said:
"I know you were just saying, NVIDIA deserves the bad press because of the bad decisions it made regarding its PR, marketing and driver implementations in games."
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i was not saying that. i was saying they have been, imo, getting more bad press than they deserve. some people like to make it appear that ati is leading in every way, and the fact is they are not. for pure, single monitor shader intesive 3d gaming ati is currently king. nVidia tends to do very well in older games, and non-gaming applications and features compared to ati.
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It's not like the bad press they get from the "techy" community actually hurts them, or puts a dent in their profit margins....nVidia deserves more bad press then we've actually been able to deliver to the public eye...



" I also was pretty satisfied with my 9700 Pro and its 2D ability, Hydravision was cool and the TV out was second to none. Unfortunately I had to sell that card a while back and now I am missing it..."
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i too, am satisfied with the 2d quality of the 9700. but i'm impressed with the 2d quality of the fx series. it just seams sharper, with better color. tv out? try configuring tv-out as your primary display. also, in my experience, the fx cards do a better job of autodetacting when a ty is plugged into the card.
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Yea, nVidia's doing okay as far as 2D features and clarity go. Thats not why I drop $300 bucks on a card though.



"Like I said though, if NVIDIA release a good prosduct at a competitive price I would consider it."
+
" My opinion of NVIDIA is that they suck - but still make reasonable products which are now selling for a good price"
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so, you would buy nVidia cards if they were competitive for the price, and then you admit that the price is good, but nVidia suck.... ok you lost me in there somewhere.
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It's not hard to understand, nVidia sucks, but they have some good products that are worthwhile from a certain price point.




and so you know, i use opera as a web browser, my gaming rig has a r9700 in it, and i've been an ati user since the rage2c. all i'm trying to say is that although the fx series might be rubbish for shaders compared to the r300, it excels in other areas.
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In other area's, you mean 2D desktop/multi monitor stuff?....Matrox already has that market segment cornered ;)
 
see colon dude.. what CorwinB said.... x2
:p

Please I hate it when someone dissects a post line by line.. take it as a whole.
Oh and Firebird or anything non IE is rebellious? Wow cool must be to do with some l33t skillz i g0tz.
 
2nd hand, 20 day warranty... not comparable, I'm afraid.

A 9800 can be had for about £200 though (brand new).
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Well I have to dispute the 20 day warranty it quite clearly says 30 days :p

Not disputing what you said, sorry if im being dim, but why do you think its second hand?
 
Damn stupid typo of mine... heh

I say that only because of some info and general user feedback in an other forum. Some people got 'bad' cards as they would artifact etc. It could be these cards are RMA's that never were returned to their original purchasers after being originally tested.

The biggest giveaway to me though is that these cards have such a limited warranty with them. 30 days for a product that is at the end of the day £150 is a big risk.

However most people that have bought them have been happy with them.
For more info try forums.hexus.net and the Bargain Hunt page :D
 
I don't want to support Nvidia by buying any of their cards at the moment. I despise a lot of what they have been doing, especially the false claims for their cards, "driver optimizations," and "TWIMTBP" which I see as thinly disguised blackmail. Things like artificially limiting the resolution a competitor's card can use are simply beyond the pale.

However, they do have some cards, such as the 5900XT at $200 or so which provide very good performance for the price. Unfortunately their other tactics mean those cards are not something I wish to purchase.
 
I'm sure you will be kind enough to point us to benchmark showing that the current ATI line exhibits poor performance in "older games"...
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well, i never claimed that ati did poorly in older games, just that nVidia does very well. ati does well, too.



I think alot of IE users are using the Google toolbar, which blocks popups, and is universal with any card/system.
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and google toolbar is fine for what it does. look, i'm not trying to say nVidia is changing the world by making a pop-up stopper. i'm just saying it's a nice feature to have built in to a piece of software (in this case the drivers) that you need anyway. people are still free to use google toolbar if they want, they can turn off the nVidia pop-up stopper, they can use any other slew of 3rd part stopps they want. but it's nice to know that it's there if you want it, and you don't have to install extra software to use it.



In other area's, you mean 2D desktop/multi monitor stuff?....Matrox already has that market segment cornered
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matrox is the king of 2d/multi-display, but nVidia is still better than ati in this respect (imo). the fx line a a decent "middle of the road" between the gaming performance of an ati part and the 2d/multi-display capabilities of a matrox part.



Oh and Firebird or anything non IE is rebellious? Wow cool must be to do with some l33t skillz i g0tz.
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anything that is non-standard could be considered rebelious. i put quotes around it for a reason.




Please I hate it when someone dissects a post line by line.. take it as a whole.
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perhaps one day i will have the 1337 sk!lz to be able to take a whole post, but alas...

c:

-edited for content, running time and formated to fit your screen
 
see colon said:
"Please I hate it when someone dissects a post line by line.. take it as a whole."
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perhaps one day i will have the 1337 sk!lz to be able to take a whole post, but alas...
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May I suggest you master the tricky feature of the quote button before moving onto tackling whole posts? ;)
 
see colon said:
and google toolbar is fine for what it does. look, i'm not trying to say nVidia is changing the world by making a pop-up stopper. i'm just saying it's a nice feature to have built in to a piece of software (in this case the drivers) that you need anyway. people are still free to use google toolbar if they want, they can turn off the nVidia pop-up stopper, they can use any other slew of 3rd part stopps they want. but it's nice to know that it's there if you want it, and you don't have to install extra software to use it.
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So drivers become bloatware? Popup is a no no in drivers as far as I can see. It has nothing to do with graphics cards and only takes resources away.

Same like Winamp 3 being able to play videos but working slowly. I know that this is not yet the case with Forceware but adding really unnecessary features isnt a good thing for drivers.

Zvekan
 
Nvidia releasing a popup blocker is just fine, a little far from what we expect from a graphics IHV but there's nothing wrong with that. However, there's a big difference between them releasing one, and them bundling it into their driver package.

I know there are still plenty of people on dialup who hate the idea of anything that enlarges the download size of a driver package. Others use better browsers than IE and don't need another popup blocker.

Besides, I would much rather they devote their attention to fixing their driver cheats rather than adding other features that have nothing to do with graphics hardware to the drivers.
 
Rugor said:
Besides, I would much rather they devote their attention to fixing their driver cheats rather than adding other features that have nothing to do with graphics hardware to the drivers.
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And that's the bottom line...thanks for adding that Rugor. I guess that nVidia feel that they need to add as many 'perks' to their product line to make it seem more desireable.....looks like it's working on some ;)
 
I guess that nVidia feel that they need to add as many 'perks' to their product line to make it seem more desireable.....looks like it's working on some
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yeah, damn nVidia for having that stupid 2d quality, and that stupid multi-monitor support that supports monitor spanning, and that stupid driver package that has those stupid extra features.


I know there are still plenty of people on dialup who hate the idea of anything that enlarges the download size of a driver package. Others use better browsers than IE and don't need another popup blocker.
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nVidia drivers have actual gotten smaller with the last few releases.

Version: 30.82
File Size: 10.1 MB
Release Date: August 7, 2002
WHQL Certified

Version: 40.72
File Size: 12.3 MB
Release Date: November 11, 2002
WHQL Certified

Version: 52.16
Release Date: October 23, 2003
WHQL Certified
File Size: 8.7 MB

taken from the nVidia site
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html


ati's current driver package is larger (25MB for the whole thing), although they do alow you to download it in chunks...
drivers only:7.3MB
control panel only:12.5MB
capture:3.3MB

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/...c&prod=productsXPdriver&submit.x=3&submit.y=2

c:
 
see colon said:
yeah, damn nVidia for having that stupid 2d quality, and that stupid multi-monitor support that supports monitor spanning, and that stupid driver package that has those stupid extra features.
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Meh....they should concentrate on boosting their PS2.0 performance, which still isnt up to snuff, or maybe try getting their cards to run the ARB2 path, without all the partial precision NV_fragment_program BS.
 
Meh....they should concentrate on boosting their PS2.0 performance, which still isnt up to snuff, or maybe try getting their cards to run the ARB2 path, without all the partial precision NV_fragment_program BS.
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i don't think any amount of driver work could effectivly work around the limitations of the hardware in those cases. i don't foresee any magor speen gains for eithet ati or nVidia with their current generation of products. with that said, both of those companies appear to be adding features to thier drivers like the nVidia extras mentioned in earier posts, and smartshader effects and profiles from ati. bug fixes are also a priority, of course.
c:
 
Reverend said:
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FYI, this is what the TRAOD PC programmer (from Core Design) told me regarding the v49 patch on a general basis :

But no matter what anybody says about the benchmark, the better the scores it reports then the better the game plays.
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This directly contradicts what the Tech Report reviewer states, updated video card drivers excepted.

I am not satisfied with what the Tech Report reviewer stated about this game in his review. He should say if what he "reported" in his review about the benchmarking of this game is the result of undeniable fact based on his own investigation... or if it is directly what NVIDIA or Core/EIDOS told him. There's a huge difference between the two, and it is my impression that it is the latter, based on the way the words the Tech Report reviewer used. Which, of course, he shouldn't have used if this is the case.

I really wouldn't have any reason to post any of this if this Tech Report "review" was clearly labelled "Considering a NVIDIA video card? Read this!". If this was the case, then the reviewer have a right to say what he did, which was to provide comment (the way he did) about whether TRAOD was "GeForce FX-optimized" or not... anyone intending to buy a NVIDIA card and nothing else would love to read about any NVIDIA optimizations in any game. But this "review" is a shootout, with ATI cards present. Why would/should this Tech Report reviewer state what he did regarding the benchmarking of this game, without any apparent effort to prove the legitimacy of what he stated, nor provide any IQ investigations/comparisons among the various cards in a shootout when he mentions "GeForce FX-optimized" ?

This is exactly the sort of thing that can be labelled "spin". I'm not questioning the Tech Report reviewer's ethics... I'm just wondering why he felt any need to state what he did given that he provided no backing up for his statements, especially in a "review" that is a shootout.
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Well, I agree and think sometimes people write as they do because they are looking for (consciously or not) pats on the back from Brian Burke or somebody else in nVidia PR, instead of what they should be looking for, which is "pats on the back" from a grateful readership thankful for their digging beneath the marketing PR to expose the core of matters.

But talking about reviewers sometimes getting their loyalties confused among other things, I commented on the site in reference to that review and was most puzzled to see them still trying to slip by the "8-pixel-per-clock" misrepresentation (they called it "a pseudo 8 pixel pipe chip," I believe) nVidia's been trying to foist on everybody since nV30. I was surprised to see this crop up again, now that most folks clearly understand that "pixels per clock" and "ops per clock" are two entirely separate issues not to be confused with each other. But TR, after doing such a good job earlier in the year unconfusing people on this point, decided for some reason that now was a good time to start confusing them again...:) Beats me, it really does. I mean, there's nothing even "pseudo" here--nV30/5/8 are 4-pixel pipeline chips, period--4x2's. It's not good to get into the murky "ops per clock" comparisons as then R3x0 could be portrayed as doing ~3x more ops per clock than nV38, and I just think that's a silly comparison. Talking about the pixel pipelines should be constrained to pixels per clock and nothing else. Ops per clock can surely be discussed, but not in the same context and sentences as pixels per clock. At least, that's my point of view...

Other points that I found confusing, and said so in commenting on the review, was that TR posted an "estimated" street price of $200 for the product, but during the give and take concerning the comments I made, I was told that the EvGA "5900SE" and the EvGA "5900XT" were the identically same product despite EvGA's use of two (2) different model IDs, and I got links to a Newegg, in-stock, EvGA "5900SE" which can be had right now for $185. This prompted me to ask why EvGA was doing this, a question for which no one at TR had an answer (understandably, I think), and why, if the 5900SE and the 5900XT were identical in every respect, TR listed an "esitmated" price for the XT $15 higher than the actual Newegg price for the "identical" 5900SE that TR was telling me was absolutely the same product.

OK, TR didn't have an answer for me, but I have a guess: if there is indeed no difference whatever between the SE and XT versions of the 5900 sold by EvGA, then the change to the model number is superficial and designed simply for the mistake of confusing customers who might fixate on the "XT" moniker first used by ATi and buy the wrong card by mistake. I can certainly think of no other plausible reason. Now if there does turn out to be a tangible hardware difference between the SE and the XT as sold by EvGA, then I'll gladly change my mind on the issue. But I thought all of that was pretty darn confusing, actually.

As to the other things you mentioned, again, I agree and think that they result from reviewers sometimes getting their wires crossed as to where their loyalties should lie. The TR:AoD benchmark thing has always baffled me--there was collusion on the part of nVidia and Eidos in removing the benchmark from the software with the v52(?) patch, obviously. So, after removing it long enough to allow nVidia to "optimize" for it--have they restored the patch in a later version? My guess is that there, too, nVidia has been playing the old optimization game simply trying to score points on ATi relative to this benchmark (which last I saw nVidia had finagled Eidos into removing and publicly renouncing.) What's the latest on the TR game bench--has it been restored in a later patch or is it still MIA?
 
see colon said:
i don't think any amount of driver work could effectivly work around the limitations of the hardware in those cases. i don't foresee any magor speen gains for eithet ati or nVidia with their current generation of products. with that said, both of those companies appear to be adding features to thier drivers like the nVidia extras mentioned in earier posts, and smartshader effects and profiles from ati. bug fixes are also a priority, of course.
c:
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You're being disingenious. Smartshader effects are the first step to users being able to write and import their own shader effects as confirmed by Catalyst Maker. Profiles are a useful way of storing different settings (though ATI still need to make them more easily selected). Both are far more relevent to graphics cards than Nvidia providing popup-stoppers in their drivers. Popup stoppers will be especially useful to those people who are not on the internet, or use any of the main browers that already have one built in. :rolleyes:

What next, will Nvidia try to add value to their graphics cards by providing their own browsers? What about a MS Paint clone? How about some nice HTML authoring software or something that writes Word documents? How about they just give up and offer a set of steak knives or a hand held vacuum cleaner (the dustbuster of course) :rolleyes:

It smacks of desperation when a company is trying to add value to their graphic cards by trumpeting software "features" in their drivers that can be had for free and are completely unrelated to the product being sold. Next step is to give the cards away free in packets of cereal. :oops:
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
It smacks of desperation when a company is trying to add value to their graphic cards by trumpeting software "features" in their drivers that can be had for free and are completely unrelated to the product being sold.
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NVIDIA can hardly be accused of "trumpeting" the pop-up blocker though - it gets a single line within the ForceWare pdf release, along with all the other features in nView 3.

Edit: Having said that though, they do proclaim it as a "key feature" on the nView webpage.
 
But ATI's driver include localised packages, so comparing them against the english-only NVidia-release is a bit unfair.
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nVidia's current international language package is 13.2MB, nearly half the size of ati's still.

c:
 
Nvidia's driver may well be smaller than ATI's, but it would be smaller still without the popup blocker, and that's unrelated to the core function of a graphics driver.

It's not like ATI's new toys which love them, hate them, or ignore them, are all related to the core functions of graphics.
 
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