Trident: "XP4 T3 will achieve 70% of Radeon 9700 perf&q

[KimB]

In a value card?

Yeah right... That's the standard for the high end, no one is going to care whether an el-cheapo value card can run with FSAA and AF

But that's just it. Trident is apparently trying to make it sound like there's no reason to buy any high-end card, since theirs will be almost as good for a fraction of the cost.

If it doesn't support FSAA/aniso, and at good performance, it's just not worth it (particularly for me now that I have a GF4 Ti 4200...).

 

[Johnny Rotten]

The premise of the card sounds very exciting to me, not because its something I'm personally interested in (I'm not) but because it sounds like it would make an amazing baseline chip. Trident historically has had a strong foothold in the ultra cheap, ultra low end pc segment. And if this chip should quickly migrate to that segment it would do wonders....

... if marketing can be trusted.

 

[Ante P]

[quote="Chalnoth]
If it doesn't support FSAA/aniso, and at good performance, it's just not worth it (particularly for me now that I have a GF4 Ti 4200...).[/quote]

"We're" missing a vital point here.
Most consumer (I'd say 80-90%) would just stare at you with a retarded look upon their face if you mention FSAA or Aniso.
Most users (I'd say 60-70%) won't EVER go into their controlpanels or in game options for their videocard.
I mean many consumers won't even know what "resolution" or "colordepth" means. And there's still a whole lot of people who wouldn't know the difference between Software rendering or Open GL/Direct3D.

To put it short. If the card has the RAW performance equivelent to a "70% of a Radeon 9700" it will be THE bomb for MOST users.
Thus it will hurt nVidia and ATi where it counts, ie not cards aimed at geek enthusiast.

I mean if it really has 70% of the 9700's performance then Radeon 9000, Xabre 400 and especially GeForce 4 MX is in a hell of a lot of trouble.
And those are the cards that bring dinner to the table of the ATi and nVidia people.

 

[KimB]

Making excuses for stupid users?

The way you describe it, a TNT2 M64 would be just fine for most people, and most games, even today. After the release of UT2K3, Unreal 2, and DOOM3, then that may be upgraded to a GeForce2 MX.

If somebody really cares about performance, then they should most certainly learn about FSAA and anisotropic filtering. Otherwise, just let them run at 640x480x16, on a stable video card.

That is, stability is the #1 thing for somebody who knows next to nothing about those advanced visual quality options. Right now, that means nVidia. It is very likely that Trident will not be able to put out a card that even competes with ATI in stability, compatibility, and reliability.

 

[Randell]

Making excuses for stupid users?

oh such a lofty perch one sits on.

 

[borzwazie]

excuses

The opinion that users who don't know what kind of card that their computer has are somehow "stupid" is kind of arrogant.

Most people don't care at _all_ what video card their computer has until a game they want to play won't run at all.

Case in point: a co-worker of mine has been playing MS Combat Flight Sim, which apparently is a fairly graphically intensive game. He bought a Dell something or other that came with a GF2mx, which is not really a powerhouse of a card anymore. He's been running the game at 640x480, and loving the game. He didn't even know you could change the resolution the game ran at. I would call him a typical computer user.

The people on this board, and people who debate graphic card technologies are most definately _not_ typical users. It would be very presumptuous of us to call anyone else a "stupid" user just because they don't spend all their energy tweaking their computer. For typical users, if it works, that's all they want to know.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Re: excuses

The opinion that users who don't know what kind of card that their computer has are somehow "stupid" is kind of arrogant.

I agree, "stupid" is a poor choice of words. I think "ignorant" is more appropriate.

 

[Randell]

most 'average' PC gamers migrate from consoles. They have no conception of reso;ution diffences, filtering, texture settings, AA or driver conflicts. If it works fisrt time every time on a console, then why the hell doesn't it just work like that on my 5x more expensive PC.

And what is wrong with that attitude eh?

 

[KimB]

No, I think stupid is about right.

This is the reason.

If somebody wants a high-performing card, they owe it to themselves to do the research. If they want a card that just works, Trident is almost certainly not for them (We'll know for certain a little bit after the card ships, I think). Doing anything less results in a stupid mistake. I know I've made a few, which is the main reason I frequent these boards. I don't want to make such a stupid mistake again.

 

[pascal]

"stupid" is a strong word and no consumer deserve such adjective.

Nobody has any obligation to know everything about the latest hardware.

IIRC 80% of all gamers (from valve survey) dont have a DDR card. http://valve.speakeasy.net/
These people will probably be pressured to upgrade to play U2/Doom3 engine based games. Offer than a value DX9 card and they will be more than happy

OEM will love it. I hope Trident have done a good job.

edited: english correction.

 

[RiotSquad]

The way you describe it, a TNT2 M64 would be just fine for most people, and most games, even today. After the release of UT2K3, Unreal 2, and DOOM3, then that may be upgraded to a GeForce2 MX.

It is more or less true...I have friends who 'til about half a year ago was quite happy with their P2 450 ATi Rage Pro...and that's quite far from a powerhouse...
As long as it runs the games they want to play most aren't asking for more...and they don't really care if the framerate drops to 10 now and then in Q3A...(I wish I was like it too,it'd save me quite a bit of cash on HW... )

 

[TheMightyPuck]

these "stupid" people have what are referred to as "lives".

 

[KnightBreed]

IIRC 80% of all gamers (from valve survey) dont have a DDR card. http://valve.speakeasy.net/

Correction: 80% of all gamers that play Halife-Life and its mods don't have DDR-based video cards. It isn't an entirely accurate representation of all gamers. Many people still play that game simply because newer games don't run very well with their systems. I wouldn't be surprised if the real number was closer to 50-60% - which admittedly is still too high.

 

[RussSchultz]

Aaah, but stupid pathetic little lives without the latest gadgets to keep them warm at night!

 

[pascal]

IIRC 80% of all gamers (from valve survey) dont have a DDR card. http://valve.speakeasy.net/

Correction: 80% of all gamers that play Halife-Life and its mods don't have DDR-based video cards. It isn't an entirely accurate representation of all gamers. Many people still play that game simply because newer games don't run very well with their systems. I wouldn't be surprised if the real number was closer to 50-60% - which admittedly is still too high.

Correction partially accepted because I seriouslly doubt it is as high as 50%. And half life derivatives still are the most played in the net isnt? I think many people play it simply because it is good

GameSpy:
Live Stats
Game Players Game Players
Half Life 95116
Medal of Honor Allied Assault 8136
Unreal Tournament 6439
Quake 3: Arena 5186
Return to Castle Wolfenstein 4588
Soldier of Fortune 2 3272

edited: I believe the half life sample is large and representative enough to take some conclusions with minor error.

 

[demalion]

1024x768x32 with no aniso and no AA with pixel and vertex shader support in hardware is by no means ugly, and not at all "stupid". Keep in mind what games a TNT2 class card plays "well enough", and keep in mind how much of an upgrade any shader supporting card is to a TNT2 or GF 2 MX. It seems obvious to me that there are QUITE a few users who would be happy with such a card, and it seems to me that they WOULD be getting a rather amazing upgrade (as long as the quality isn't at the Xabre shortcut level), and that this has nothing to do with their intelligence, just their desire to bypass the barriers of 1) general computer familiarity, 2) comfort level in actually changing anything besides wallpaper, or things of a similar nature of easy to understand naming and immediate feedback, 3) negative conditioning to changing driver settings at all in their most familiar computer environment, most likely a business or casual home use 4) the first clue on what the terms mean (though Catylyst makes it very easy and simple to adjust settings, and I assume other drivers do as well), 5) dissatisfaction with their game appearance such that they don't adjust the game settings, but go find the driver settings pages.

I don't know about you, but when I had a Rage in my laptop, it looked pretty good to me playing half-life. If modern games look like approximately like half-life, a user doesn't have to have some mental deficiency to be satisfied, so please stop stating such an arrogant term and stick to something more accurate that has been provided..."ignorant". Look at the barriers of entry...do you expect only non-stupid people to allocate the time to getting through all those, or is it just that non-stupid people are born with the knowledge or are guaranteed to have been exposed to it. There are things about operating a naval nuclear reactor that are easier than setting the spectrum of driver settings for my video card...just because I found it fun and interesting to learn about it and knew where to look to learn rather quickly doesn't mean anyone who finds it tedious or who doesn't have the time is any less capable or intelligent...and for "fast" 1024x768x32 with shader support (my benchmark for the card being the hardware release of the year ), why would most people bother to start trying?

 

[790]

Now what does compliance mean again, IIRC it does mean more than just "compatibility", you need to have features in hardware in order to be compliant, right? Aww my head hurts...

Complaince means nothing, it's marketing speak
I don't know which 'DX9' features the card contains, but it's definitely not PS2/VS2, so I sure wouldn't call it a DX9 card.

 

[Basic]

Disclaimer: This post is of course based on my guesses of the perfromance of XP4 T3.


Will XP4 T3 be a great bang for the buck? - Yes
Will XP4 T3 be a significant upgrade for a lot of "low end" gamers? - Yes
Will this do a good job of raising the lowest common denominator that games are written for, and thus give a benefit for "high end" gamers? - Yes
Is there "low end" gamers that wouldn't see more difference between R9700 and XP4 T3 than the 30% slowdown? - Yes

Does that make Tridents claims of 70% of R9700 speed valid? - No (*)

If Trident claims 70% of R9700 speed, and silently thinks "because we know most of our buyers are too ignorant to realize how many features they could enable for free on a R9700". Then that claim should and will be ripped into shreads by reviews. Note: that claim. The card as a whole will hopefully get good reviews as a good bang for the buck card.


(*) I assume here that the 70% claim doesn't refer to high quality/res/FSAA/AF situations. If it actually does, then I'll be duöy impressed.

 

[Tahir2]

XP4 is not DX9.0 Compliant in tht it has any features like the fp pipeline.

The interviewee was quite clever wording that anyone with DX9 INSTALLED would be able to use the XP4 - not that the XP4 was DX9 anything...

You can play UT2k3 on a Voodoo3 but it sure aint a DX8 card ..

And again.. 70% of the 3DMarks the R9700 is forcasted to get isn't the defnitive benchmark.. and if someone doesnt know what FSAA and AF is it doesnt mean they are STUPID.

 

[Gollum]

Complaince means nothing, it's marketing speak
I don't know which 'DX9' features the card contains, but it's definitely not PS2/VS2, so I sure wouldn't call it a DX9 card.

Definitely? Please point me to a source that makes such a certain statement plausible and I'll happily accept it, until then your "definitely" is actually just a paraphrased "I don't think so". Compliance can actually mean many things, and that's the problem of the term I think. That's why I posed my comment as a question, because I am a bit unsure about the "common" meaning of the word within the industry (I remember a vivid discussion about the meaning of the word "comprehensive" in a similar context only recently, these marketing people sure stip up a lot of discussions with their favourite c-words).

Since I don't seem to remember DX7-class hardware like a GF4MX or R7500 ever claiming DX8 "compliance", I am simply curious as to how much substance is behind Trident's claim. Maybe they specifically wrote "DX8.1/9.0" to indicate their part is somewhere in between, who knows the minds of these people? I am not refering to the interview btw, AFAIK the PR representative in the interview never mentioned the word compliant or anything similar. I am refering to the Trident product website which specifically states DX8.1/9.0 compliance.

Also, Anand said XP4 has "a base level of DirectX 9 support" about the shaders, so I suspect it's Pixel- and Vertexshaders probably go beyond DX8.1 spec and might even meet minimal DX9.0 spec. It most likely misses features like the 128bit floating-point precision or displacement mapping though, among others. Anyway, its all speculation, more detailed reviews will answer the questions in the not-too-distant future...