Radeon 9700 or wait?

[Ailuros]

Yes I will get it, if <insert infinite conditionals here>, and that's as clear as I can be

 

[noko]

Radeon 9700 is a go, GF3 Ti200 just doesn't cut it no more. Now how about the rest of my computer

 

[sancheuz]

I feel that is a biased way to ask the questions in this poll. The wording moves a user to a certain answer.
I will wait for nv30 then decide or
r300 kicks ass.
That is insunating therefore this is a corrupted poll............ (my opinion) He should of used,
Wait for nv30
Get a radeon 9700

 

[Reverend]

I feel that is a biased way to ask the questions in this poll. The wording moves a user to a certain answer.
I will wait for nv30 then decide or
r300 kicks ass.
That is insunating therefore this is a corrupted poll............ (my opinion) He should of used,
Wait for nv30
Get a radeon 9700

Then you either haven't been reading the various threads here or...



[edit]BTW, "biased" as in "for 9700" or "NV30"? I honestly dunno coz I think I gave the reasons that the NV30 is vapourware and that the 9700 is available now but due to the various insane threads here recently that the word (not product) "NV30" may just make folks re-consider.

 

[Tatchan]

Great! I'm the 100th.

To me, 9700 really rocks, but since I don't need a new card now, I prefer to wait for NV30..

 

[davefb]

Well since i'm still waiting for rampage ;-).

But in the meantime i'll have to swap my v5 and kryo2 for a 9700 . Well once the UK actually gets them :-/

Though I do agree with the other posters , the poll should have had a "I'd never pay $400 for a video card" and a "cant buy but would like to " option.

-dave-

 

[Tahir2]

If I can get hold of it in the UK for less than £250 Im buying it.

If not... er then I will use my uber- fast Savage4 for longer

 

[demalion]

Just got back from my week away...wow, nice info on the site to greet me!

I'm waiting until I can put together a Hammer system. I thought I'd have been putting a consumer (performance tweaked) VPxx card in it, due to expected Linux driver support, with the Parhelia and then R300 as contendors (Parhelia ahead because of expected better Linux drivers) but the clock speed and Linux driver situations among the solutions have changed and resulted me in not having a clue of what things will look like once it is possible to build a Hammer system . I think there are other high-end system builders who will be making the same decision once that time comes around.

This assumes that Matrox has the capital to address their clockspeed failings with the Parhelia by that time, or else I guess I've atleast eliminated one choice.

The world doesn't just revolve around ATi and nVidia!

Now to dig around and see if any more info has surfaced about Trident XP performance...

 

[KimB]

I'm waiting until I can put together a Hammer system. I thought I'd have been putting a consumer (performance tweaked) VPxx card in it, due to expected Linux driver support, with the Parhelia and then R300 as contendors (Parhelia ahead because of expected better Linux drivers) but the clock speed and Linux driver situations among the solutions have changed and resulted me in not having a clue of what things will look like once it is possible to build a Hammer system .

First of all, increasing the clock speed of the Parhelia is never going to let it truly compete with the GeForce4 Ti cards, especially not in a price/performance ratio, let alone compete agains the NV30 or R300.

And as for Linux support, nVidia has had pretty good Linux drivers for quite some time now...

 

[Saem]

And ATI let loose their own Linux drivers.

 

[demalion]

I'm waiting until I can put together a Hammer system. I thought I'd have been putting a consumer (performance tweaked) VPxx card in it, due to expected Linux driver support, with the Parhelia and then R300 as contendors (Parhelia ahead because of expected better Linux drivers) but the clock speed and Linux driver situations among the solutions have changed and resulted me in not having a clue of what things will look like once it is possible to build a Hammer system .

First of all, increasing the clock speed of the Parhelia is never going to let it truly compete with the GeForce4 Ti cards, especially not in a price/performance ratio, let alone compete agains the NV30 or R300.

First, that seems a silly "never" comment to make, atleast regarding the GF 4.

Second, that was my outlook, as is pretty clear in the sentence structure, and made clearer by the part where I say "but the clock speed and Linux driver situation..". To be clearer, it was my outlook before the Parhelia clock speed problems were confirmed, when I was first considering the components of my Hammer system.

Third, if you re-read you might find it clear that my uncertainty is based on having no idea on what the "consumer" VP xx and "corrected" Matrox parts will be looking like at the time of Hammer release, in either price or performance. While we could have a dialog about the likelihoods, your wording doesn't seem to recognize anything but absolutes so I guess we won't be.

Fourth, you are constantly stuck on your own criteria for graphics card selection, and continuously make no allowances for their being other valid criteria for evaluation. In combination with the above, I think you could consider how many of your alternatives and mine are not produced yet and realize that "never" is pretty silly, as I mentioned at the beginning.

EDIT: laf, Fifth, you snipped a convenient sentence that made all of this even clearer, and I almost let you get away with it:

This assumes that Matrox has the capital to address their clockspeed failings with the Parhelia by that time, or else I guess I've atleast eliminated one choice.

Hmm...this really makes your comment seem even sillier, atleast IMO. I'll leave it up to each reader to evaluate how important your not quoting that bit of text was as far as distorting my point, and offer my own evaluation that your phrasing wouldn't have flown at all with it included.

And as for Linux support, nVidia has had pretty good Linux drivers for quite some time now...

? There is an NV30 Linux driver?

I did say I have no idea what the situation would look like when I build my Hammer system, and it is the lack of existence of things like this for my selections that I referred to...

----

This bit is completely off topic, purely opinion, not presented to defend or attack differing viewpoints on this issue at this time, but I feel I had to state because not stating it seems to leave some dishonest implications in my text above in regards to what Chalnoth is perhaps implying.

For the sake of sharing relevant information, I don't consider nVidia cards an option for my personal purchase (though under competitive pressures I think they might end up there, depending on how they react). The only company that I (knowingly) do not apply a standard of not purchasing from because of my personal evaulation of the "ethics" of the leadership is Microsoft (because I flat out have no choice for the applications I wish to run), and they are (again, in my estimation) so far and away the leader in disappointing me in this regard that it is a testament how much I disapprove of the principle of software piracy that this is the case.

Nvidia is about the bottom (i.e., higher is worse) of my personal list of companies I choose not to buy from, and I really do believe that if consumer education, market perception, and competitive pressures coincide as I hope they will, by this time next year they might be off my list.

Having said that, and I hope it isn't a secret because I've stated this before, this has absolutely nothing to do with how I view the actual quality of their products, or even the recommendations I make to purchasers, while it has quite a lot to do with how I view their initiatives and PR. I won't argue to support my viewpoint in this thread, but you can quote this text to attack or otherwise address and illustrate my viewpoint at some point in a discussion in the future, and in fact that is the whole point for this bit of spam here. To facilitate this, I intend to ignore any replies to this text in this thread and would urge any criticism to some other thread that can be locked or moderated separately since this seems a purely vendor preference type of discussion.
----

 

[KimB]

Third, if you re-read you might find it clear that my uncertainty is based on having no idea on what the "consumer" VP xx and "corrected" Matrox parts will be looking like at the time of Hammer release, in either price or performance. While we could have a dialog about the likelihoods, your wording doesn't seem to recognize anything but absolutes so I guess we won't be.

As for the "corrected" Matrox parts, I don't believe for a moment that even doubling the core clock speed would allow the Parhelia to outperform the GeForce4 Ti 4600, at least not without a similar improvement in driver quality.

My reasoning is quite simple. The Parhelia just doesn't make good use of its memory bandwidth. Without any kind of memory bandwidth savings technology, the Parhelia is at a serious disadvantage.

Most importantly, even if the Parhelia manages to improve performance enough to outclass the GeForce4, its 256-bit memory interface will make it more expensive.

Fourth, you are constantly stuck on your own criteria for graphics card selection, and continuously make no allowances for their being other valid criteria for evaluation. In combination with the above, I think you could consider how many of your alternatives and mine are not produced yet and realize that "never" is pretty silly, as I mentioned at the beginning.

Well, to be fair, if you're looking for the best high-end gaming card, the Parhelia is not for you. If you want superb 2D, or want to splurge on 3 monitors, then it would be a good buy.

? There is an NV30 Linux driver?

What? Of course there will be. The NV30 isn't released yet, hence no NV30 Linux driver yet. Besides, nVidia's unified driver architecture pretty much assures that the NV30 will work with even current Linux drivers, though it won't be able to make use of its advanced features until NV30 Linux drivers are released (which I would expect pretty much immediately upon the release of the card).

 

[demalion]

Address the "Fifth" I added please.

Third, if you re-read you might find it clear that my uncertainty is based on having no idea on what the "consumer" VP xx and "corrected" Matrox parts will be looking like at the time of Hammer release, in either price or performance. While we could have a dialog about the likelihoods, your wording doesn't seem to recognize anything but absolutes so I guess we won't be.

As for the "corrected" Matrox parts, I don't believe for a moment that even doubling the core clock speed would allow the Parhelia to outperform the GeForce4 Ti 4600, at least not without a similar improvement in driver quality.

That's fine, I wasn't trying to convince you to buy a Parhelia. I was stating that the situation is uncertain, since the products haven't been release yet but are planned. In the face of that uncertainty, phrases like "never" seem silly. In short, everything I stated already.

My reasoning is quite simple. The Parhelia just doesn't make good use of its memory bandwidth. Without any kind of memory bandwidth savings technology, the Parhelia is at a serious disadvantage.

Didn't I say "corrected" Parhelia, which neither you or I have any certainty of what it will offer in terms of core clock speed or memory speed, or any tweaks or other problems in the current card? I'm sure I did, but your argument to my uncertainty is your opinion in an attempt to refute it. I hope you understand why I still find it silly that you throw "never" around first, and then respond to my differing opinion, which did not try to convince you come around to my view but to recognize that there are alternatives to yours, by focusing on the one choice I recognized might be discarded as an option. To quote it again here:

This assumes that Matrox has the capital to address their clockspeed failings with the Parhelia by that time, or else I guess I've atleast eliminated one choice.

...

Most importantly, even if the Parhelia manages to improve performance enough to outclass the GeForce4, its 256-bit memory interface will make it more expensive.

And I'll just let your quote of my text address that....

Fourth, you are constantly stuck on your own criteria for graphics card selection, and continuously make no allowances for their being other valid criteria for evaluation. In combination with the above, I think you could consider how many of your alternatives and mine are not produced yet and realize that "never" is pretty silly, as I mentioned at the beginning.

Well, to be fair, if you're looking for the best high-end gaming card, the Parhelia is not for you. If you want superb 2D, or want to splurge on 3 monitors, then it would be a good buy.

That seems an awful lot of wasted text to come around full circle to the general geography of where I started from.

? There is an NV30 Linux driver?

What? Of course there will be.

And there won't be for the other cards? Also, do you understand the difference between "is" and "will be"?

There is now, and there will be the future. Things that are out now are certain, things in the future are not. So using your personal certainty about the NV30 and nvidia Linux drivers for it that are in fact not out to address my comments about uncertainty and Linux drivers seems silly to me, hence the eye roll.

The NV30 isn't released yet, hence no NV30 Linux driver yet.

Are you misunderstanding the word uncertainty as I've been using it? Did a poor phrasing choice on my part miscommunicate something?

Besides, nVidia's unified driver architecture pretty much assures that the NV30 will work with even current Linux drivers, though it won't be able to make use of its advanced features until NV30 Linux drivers are released (which I would expect pretty much immediately upon the release of the card).

"pretty much assures" "I would expect pretty much immediately". Start at my post you responded to, then follow the chain up to here in your replies and my comments. Does it seem perhaps a bit silly to you?

 

[KimB]

Didn't I say "corrected" Parhelia, which neither you or I have any certainty of what it will offer in terms of core clock speed or memory speed, or any tweaks or other problems in the current card?

A "corrected" Parhelia would, in order to compete with the GeForce4 Ti 4600 in normal gaming situations, need to make much better use of its available bandwidth. That pretty much means bandwidth-savings technology and/or a better memory controller. We haven't seen either one in a "refresh" part. In other words, I don't believe for a moment that the Parhelia architecture can possibly outperform the GeForce4 Ti architecture. I don't think Matrox stands a chance until their next architecture release, at least, not in 3D games.

And there won't be for the other cards? Also, do you understand the difference between "is" and "will be"?

Sure, nVidia is currently putting out fairly high-quality Linux drivers. I don't believe that is the case for Matrox or ATI, and nVidia currently does have drivers that will, almost certainly, work just fine on the NV30, based on the fact that their Linux drivers for their current cards are, to the best of my knowledge, the best Linux 3D drivers available.

See, the way I see it, with nVidia, we don't have promises. We have history. Their Linux drivers have been functional and stable for a long time now. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the NV30 won't have functional and stable drivers.

 

[Tahir2]

The Parhelia GPU needs to be clocked higher as well. Something like 300MHz minimum.

 

[demalion]

Chalnoth,

I look at what you quoted and replied to, and my actual points, and I realize that our discussion is a pretty big waste of text. I think this is so obvious that I leave it at that and point upwards at the page for illustration, as I think it will take minimal effort from any reader to understand what I mean. See you next discussion and I hope it is a bit more productive.