Nvidia & ATI Question

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 2:05 am

klinky wrote: It's not standard. Companies can leave it out if they feel like cutting costs. If you want VIVO, then you make sure it states VIVO in the specs.
~klinky

(nod nod). I suggest a Gainward card if you want that. I have S-video in/out and standard video-in/out.

Fook dat, be cheap like me and use a DVD ROM with Domestic DVDs ^_^

Ditto

. I guess I might use it if I need to capture game footage or something really obscure.

Dannywilson · Post by **Dannywilson** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 6:04 am

Well. You learn something new every fucking day. Personally, I couldnt find the hardware specs down that far to realize that it wasnt standard. The sad thing is though, any of the 4200's, 4600's, and 4800's worth buying has one of those on it, and along with my original point, it works well for the price, nothing like the ATI's, which have always suffered from hardware difficultys.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 10:59 am

Dannywilson wrote:nothing like the ATI's, which have always suffered from hardware difficultys.

Well I think the hardware is alright, it's the drivers. With nVidia, you basically get a hardware upgrade every few months with their Detonator Drivers being upgraded (some times it's a 15% increase). As for ATI, my friend worked for Volition (makers of Summoner and Red Faction) and while programming Red Faction, he said that ATI drivers are some of the worst. They are not optimized and badly designed. Perhaps they've gotten better, but I still read about them having issues.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 6:47 pm

Well the ATI Catalyst drivers are ALOT better then their old ones.

ATI currently holds the performance crown with the Radeon 9700 Pro and the soon to be released 9800.

Usually with ATI the hardware has been ok, it's just the software is suck, like dwchang said. I had a Xpert98(Rage Pro Turbo). Crappiest card ever! 2D was ok, but 3D just stank. It didn't even support Alpha Blending properly x_X.

Now though, I am looking into getting a Radeon 9100 card to replace my aging GF2

. Since it's cheaper then a GF4 and has near or equal GF4 performance.

Oh and there was also the great Radeon 9500 > 9700 hack that was going around just a few weeks ago. That would have been cool, but I had no money. But it was basically a hack that let you turn a Radeon 9500(which has only 4 working pipelines) into a Radeon 9700(which has 8 working pipelines) which costs 2x the amount of a Radeon 9500 and is about 2x as fast.

ATI isn't half bad now adays.

~klinky

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 8:37 pm

klinky wrote:Well the ATI Catalyst drivers are ALOT better then their old ones.

ATI currently holds the performance crown with the Radeon 9700 Pro and the soon to be released 9800.

Usually with ATI the hardware has been ok, it's just the software is suck, like dwchang said. I had a Xpert98(Rage Pro Turbo). Crappiest card ever! 2D was ok, but 3D just stank. It didn't even support Alpha Blending properly x_X.

ATI isn't half bad now adays.

~klinky

IC interesting. I did know ATI had the performance crown, but never knew their drivers got better (since I'm an nVidia guy). Good to see that they are getting better b/c when there is competition, prices go up and more innovations come. Then again, nVidia is one of our partners, so perhaps not

.

Dannywilson · Post by **Dannywilson** » Fri Mar 21, 2003 1:54 pm

With Nvidia, The ti 4200 is the king. I know you're thinking "Hey! What about the 4600 and the 4800?". My 4200 can outperform one of them and come near to the second. "How?" you ask? A little thing called CoolBits nvidia has built into all it's drivers, but only allows it's developers to use. Well, seems that around 2 years ago, someone leaked it, and how to use it. It is a severely well programmed overclocking option list hidden in the driver software itself. If anyone is interested in how to get 3d mark scores of over 11500 with one of these cards, just tell me and I'll post a guide for y'all.

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Sat Mar 22, 2003 6:17 am

I don't even have a graphics card (onbaord video is what I've got.) and I want to know...

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Sun Mar 23, 2003 8:59 pm

oh, and what you can do with a 4200 isn't nearly as cool as what some people have done with their saphire ATI 9500's. You can get those things going faster than the 9700 pro.

CoolMatty · Post by **CoolMatty** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 1:58 pm

klinky wrote:
Usually with ATI the hardware has been ok, it's just the software is suck, like dwchang said. I had a Xpert98(Rage Pro Turbo). Crappiest card ever! 2D was ok, but 3D just stank. It didn't even support Alpha Blending properly x_X.

~klinky

I had that EXACT same card. 3D acceleration was non-existant. I was immensly happy when I got my Voodoo 3 3000 a year later. (Although now I have a GF3 ti500, oc'ed to GF4 ti4400 right now

)

I use a ATI TV Wonder VE. It's cheap, but it works. It doesn't do very high res, but at the res it runs at, it is quite nice. It also doesn't fight my video card either. (It is funny, though, if my computer crashes while watching TV on it, it will still keep playing. It's pretty freaky)
I wouldn't recommend the card for anything high-quality or any serious project though.