rec.autos.simulators

Thank you,

Sal

I don't know that I would agree with your analysis that the ATI would "run
circles" around the GF.....he specifically said a GF2 ULTRA....and while the
ATI might have a "performance edge" against the ULTRA....that would be about
it.

Also, "expensive" is a relative term, is it not?  Is an extra $100 really
expensive when you already have invested a couple thousand in a high-end
mobo, cpu *** platform.......not to mention the high-end peripherals that
are often attached to a *** system like this (surround sound speakers,
race controllers, large-screen monitors, etc.)?  I doubt it very much,
considering the substantial performance increase and graphic quality
improvement a GF3 TI card would provide this system.....for that extra $100.

Today, the video card (and drivers it uses) are at the core of the
performance spectrum for *** computers.  Cutting costs in either the
mobo, cpu or video card....is just foolish (IMHO).  That....is my idea of
being "expensive."

Also, one must consider system stability and performance of the drivers used
(mobo chipset drivers, DirectX, video card drivers and the operating system)
in the primary core hardware.  All of them must work well together and
manufacturers and game developers have their hands full at the moment, doing
that for current technology hardware.  They certainly don't have time to
backward compatiblize to older hardware (they will get around to that when
the current hardware is stable and operating smoothly).  So, putting an old
technology video card in a new technology processing platform......is very
counterproductive....at the moment, it seems to me.

Tom

From the benchmarks I've seen, the ATI 8500 beats all GF2's by a
reasonable way. The 7500 is about the equal of the GF2's.

An 8500 is comparable to a GF3 ti 200, maybe a GF3 original. The ti
500 is a reasonable whack faster.

The problem with the Radeon is that the drivers are holding back it's
performance by a lot. If you can get the 8500 at a good price, it's
performance should increase a fair bit over the next few months of
driver releases.

If it's not too much more than the GF2, go for the ATI board. Your
other choice is a GF3 ti 200 and o'clock it to ti 500 specs...:D

Rafe Mc

Did you hear about ATI shipping drivers that detect if you have Quake3A on
your system and then changes the texture options in Q3A so the frame rate
will be higher?
No? Well they did and it's a very underhanded and cheap trick to try and
make people think they are getting their bang for the buck.***ATI. A
GFTi 200 (overclocked you can get a card that performs slightly faster than
a standard GF3) or a GF3 Ti 500 (if you've got the bucks) are the only real
worthy cards to get today if you are looking for a fast *** card with
good drivers. I don't care how good the 8500 is, with ***drivers it's a
non-contender.

Corporations don't always behave nicely.  Business rules.  As someone
in here said recently, if there is a way to cheat, someone will.
Well, that goes even more for a company than it does a person.  In
Formula 1 they call it 'pushing the rules to their limits'  or 'racing
in a red car'  ;-)

--
Spadge Fromley
''collect your rubbsih
and in my belly it will go ...''

        IIRC, ATI's drivers specifically searched for the string 'quake3' in some
places and if found, would turn down the texture quality to improve
rendering performance.  It affected no other applications, and was
'proven' to exist by renaming bits and pieces of Quake3 to see a
performance drop.  In other words, they were intentionally bypassing the
OpenGL standards for just Quake3.  To their defense, the difference was
very small, and if Quake3 performance were still an important topic,
would have been appreciated by Q3ers.  But yes, they were cheating a
benchmark to get better scores - it wasn't the first and won't be the last.

        No.  nVidia's drivers are fully conforming to the OpenGL spec.  DirectX
is much more open, but all hardware providers must squeeze their
technologies through that standard.

        Dave

Agreed, that's a dodgy point from ATI, but as has been said, it's been
done by graphics card and CPU makers for a long time.

I wouldn't consider going by Q3a anymore anyway, it proves little. But
the other 8 or 9 games that I've seen benchmarked with it have shown
it to be around the GF3 ti 200 mark. This is WITH the under-performing
drivers. With good drivers, you could expect it to  be at GF3 ti 500
mark and even higher. It just needs better support to achieve this. So
I don't think you can say its a non-contender, it's just not
performing at its optimum.

Nvidia has had it's own driver problems (look at f1 2001 for instance)
and always seems to need different drivers for different games. So ATI
are not alone. A couple of years ago it was 3DFX users bagging Nvidia
stuff for shitty drivers, now it's a different story.

Rafe Mc

-Larry

I think I'll faint the day they actually release a card that has properly
working drivers, from the start!

-Larry

Not on shipping drivers to the consumer. Sure on drivers they give to
pre-release sites doing reviews, but never this low and underhanded. ***
ATI, I'll never buy their shit because of this.

Yea, and at that time I used 3DFX cards.

Me as well, but it goes to show that nVidia had a quality product with
blazing speed but poor driver support. People stuck with them, and now
they are the *** player in graphics cards. Maybe ATI has the same
future.

That said, 3DFX were very complacent as the market leader with Glide
support behind them and they contributed to their own downfall with
their design choices.

Rafe Mc

Oh, and I agree with you about shipping drivers which alter texture
choices, etc., not the best marketing decision there was it?

Go to Fring Squad and read the article on the state of video cards. It's
written by an ATI fanboy and he's even predicting ATI won't cut it because
of this latest fiasco with their drivers and Nvidia will be the only player
in town when it comes to 3D ***.