System Requirements? - Page 2

Navaron · 2002-12-30, 09:46 AM

"(and Fire, he was implying that nVidia has a monopoly on the video card industry, not that they made stuff alike). "

Yep

"nVidia sells good cards, for not that expensive"

Not true, their cards have consistantly been the most expensive for a couple years now.

"The GF FX will be the same amount as the 9700 is now"

I don't think this is a likely chance, nVIdia cards come out at much higher prices, and it is pretty well assumed that Radeon will lower their price of the 9700 when the FX comes out.

The FX will have more muscle than the Radeon, but I have read several articles saying it is too little too late, and that at that high performance you don't really gain any noticible improvements. I own a nVIdia card now and am very happy with it. I just don't feel like waiting months for a card that has little to offer me at such a price. I'm sure it's a good card though.

powdahound · 2002-12-30, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by Stalefish Their 9700's are WAY better than the new Geforce FX's, benchmarks prove it too.

I'd like to see the results you saw that in.

ATI Radeon is actually the card of choice now for Doom 3.

Ya, especially after they leaked that alpha build...

I don't think id is too happy with them, at all.

GeForce FX will be the top of the line for graphics cards when it comes out. I doubt they'd even release it if it wasn't better than the 9700.

And a few other points:
1. nVidia's driver team OWNS. Radeon has crap drivers.

2. Benchmarks aren't everything. Radeons are known for underperforming in game compared to their benchmarks.

nVidia for life. Radeon falls in to the same category as macs for me. I don't hate them, but I don't feel like they're the best.

Dragoon412 · 2002-12-30, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by FireFrenzy
The card is your run of the mill built by ATI, ATI box radeon 8500.

What? You're comparing a Radeon 8500; a card that's already over a year old, to an FX series card? Ha!

And if you screwed up and meant 9700 Pro, there's one more thing to keep in mind: ATi, for some reason I don't understand, underclocks their OEM cards. Seriously, right out of the box, a retail 9700 Pro will smoke an OEM 9700 Pro (nVidia does the same thing, actually), so there's probably a good chance that the test is loaded.

I'm going to side with ATi on this debate. Yes, their drivers need some serious work (but I always find myself using the omega/plutonium 3rd party drivers, anyway), and nVidia <I>does</I> have excellent driver support.

But, nVidia also markets themselves for the drooling fanbois. I think that Microsoft analogy is a lot better than people gave it credit for, 'cause nVidia's the one relying on marketing hype to sell their product. And drooling, idiot fanbois who need to tell everyone about their 1337 benchmark scores seem to be nVidia's primary customers.

Didnt Nvidia buy out voodoo ?

Not quite... nVidia bought out part of Voodoo's remaining IP, but as far as the company, like employees and production/design facilities, no, those weren't part of what nVidia got.

...you may be talking about the geforce ti 4600 benchmarks compared to the radeon 9700 which weren't all that different except at higher resolutions in which the ati blows away the geforce.

...and you fail to point out what this indicates: that the 9700 is so much faster than existing cards, that the processor was the bottleneck. Most video cards give a 15-30% performance boost over the previous generation when they're released. Yet, the 9700 absolutely embarassed the GF4 line, and we're *still* not seeing games that push the 9700 Pro. Right now, the 9700 Pro's like an olympic sprinter at a middle school track meet.

I can't say much in terms of the FX's performance, but I know two things:

1. It will be incredibly overpriced
2. It'll for the price down on the 9700 Pro

Buy ATi if you want a ton of performance for your money, buy nVidia if you want to throw away your money on a label and a bunch of features that'll probably never be implimented

Zatrais · 2002-12-30, 02:15 PM

The Radeon 9700 was never intented to compete whit the Geforce FX... the 9700 is a competitor to G4..

the R350 chip that ATI is making will compete whit the Geforce FX.

BLuE_ZeRO · 2002-12-30, 02:22 PM

I really don't think they're going to price the new FX much higher if at all higher than the 9700. They aren't going to charge people $500 + for cards. If they do they're retarded but I really doubt they will. As for not mentioning the other cards, why would I? The ti4600 is the only that even comes close to competing with the 9700 but even that falls short. Radeon is superior to the cards that are currently out right now but once FX comes out that will most likely change.

Vimp · 2002-12-30, 09:01 PM

Camping Carl -

Hey voodoo made decent cards, a voodoo 5 was better than a geforce2 any day. But yeah, I think they're dead now, though some people still have them.

Voodoo5 was old technology by the time Geforce2 came out. Theres not much comparison because the Geforce2 64mb Pro is easily able to perform double that of the best Voodoo card. My Geforce2 can run every game out there currently with very descent frame rates. UT2003 set to max settings runs at 25-30 fps for me and my processor is only a 700mhz with 256mb ram. No voodoo card would be able to come close to that I'm sure.

Hamma -

Didnt Nvidia buy out voodoo ?

I don't think so. However the name Geforce FX is taken from Geforce/3dFX according to Nvidia. The Geforce FX has 3dFX, (voodoo), technology built on.

BLuE_ZeRO · 2002-12-30, 09:17 PM

Just read in my PC World magazine that ATI is going to come out with another chipset soon after the Geforce FX is released. Looks like graphics hardware superiority will be switching hands for awhile.

BigHairyJohn · 2002-12-31, 02:08 AM

UT2003 set to max settings runs at 25-30 fps for me and my processor is only a 700mhz with 256mb ram

that's a big ghey lie, my friend has a GF3ti500, 1.5ghz and 512mb and gets the same fps as you. My friend pc rapes your 3 fold so your either using a really crappy res or your not tell the truth .I get a 30-50fps with a 2.5ghz 512mb ddr sdram, Radeaon 7500.

Vimp · 2002-12-31, 03:37 AM

LOL, sucks to be you.

Actually I've always bragged about my performance to people because I admit that my computer runs things that most others won't, even though they have higher specs. I honestly don't know why. I built my PC though. Maybe others buy prepackaged computers from dealers which in my opinion is a huge rip off and the reason their computers run so slow.

However the res was only at 800x640 32bit color for me. All other settings were maxed out. I never max the res out cause other then the color depth, which I have at max, I never see much difference in resolutions above 800x640 in games. I play all games at that res except for games like age of empires and simcity where you actually see alot more with the higher res.

At 1024x768 I average about 5-10 fps less. Which since I don't see much difference in my view, isn't worth it to me.

In fact I've put off buying a new computer for the very reason that my computer runs better then alot of peoples computers that I hear about that are twice what mine is. In Tribes2 for example I get as low as 40 fps outside at the worst and up to 90 fps at the best. Usually about 60fps on average. And this again is with all settings to max with the exception of the res which is 800x640. From what I hear on tribes2 forums most with much better specs then mine don't get half that frame rate.

Stalefish · 2002-12-31, 03:44 AM

Originally posted by BLuE_ZeRO
I really don't think they're going to price the new FX much higher if at all higher than the 9700. They aren't going to charge people $500 + for cards. If they do they're retarded but I really doubt they will. As for not mentioning the other cards, why would I? The ti4600 is the only that even comes close to competing with the 9700 but even that falls short. Radeon is superior to the cards that are currently out right now but once FX comes out that will most likely change.

Until ATI comes out with an even better card.

ATI's been keeping up real close, and even if they release a new card, they'll stick with DDR2 just like nVidia, and they'll go with 256MB just like nVidia. They aren't incompetant, and they know what the hell they're doing.

As for powdahound, their original Radeon 32mb cards drivers were crap, but I doubt you've even test driven one of their newer cards. Their driver team is on the ball.

sPooT · 2002-12-31, 12:08 PM

I really don't see why people get all defensive when we're talking about videocards

Really, I currently have a nVidia GF4 ti-4200 128 MB, which was a brilliant card for it's price when I bought it. I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling from hearing the word Nvidia now though... No idea acout current prices. But when the time comes to buy a new one I'll just look at some recent benchmarks and prices and draw a conclusion then.

orogogus · 2002-12-31, 01:30 PM

actually, the estimated retail prices for the FX are $400 for the regular part and $500 for the ultra part, so they are going to charge people $500 (at least initially) for graphics cards... silly really, they seem to go up ~$100 (for the fastest cards) every other cycle.

Stalefish · 2002-12-31, 01:40 PM

Radeon 9700's are around $425 if you buy them straight from ATI, but if you get them from anywhere else they're $312, and I'm guessing they'll go down even farther, like Navaron said, when the FX is released.

Vimp · 2002-12-31, 02:01 PM

I think you guys are forgetting the first Geforce when it came out. The Anniallator Pro was over $600 canadian at Futureshop when it first came out. I payed $375 for it and i was getting a very awsome deal at the time. So $400 - $500 is hardly unussual for a new videocard.

Dragoon412 · 2002-12-31, 04:36 PM

The TI 4600 was going for $500 USD when it was first released. Even now, the retail price on the TI 4600 is $300, where retail on the Radeon 9700 Pro is $400. This isn't even remotely competitive from a price vs. performance standpoint. As simply as I can put it, the Radeon 9700 Pro offers FAR more than a 33% increase in performance, but only carries a 33% higher price tag than the TI 4600.

The GF3 was $600 for a couple weeks after its initial release, and settled in at $400 after that, and stayed at that price point as ATi proceeded to release the Radeon 8500, which outperformed the GF3 for LESS money.

It wasn't the MX line of cards that killed off the GF3's popularity, it was nVidia's MSRP. The GF3 was a great card for its day (and still kicks the crap out of anything in the GF4 MX line), but it was hideously expensive.

I won't bash nVidia - I think that overall their product is every bit as good as ATi's, it's just that ATi offers a solid product at a good price, while nVidia offers a solid product with a lot of hype at too high a cost. If nVidia was competitive with ATi on the price front, I'd probably use them for their superior drivers, but as things stand, nVidia is just plain overpriced for what you get.

My prediction for the FX: typical nVidia -- they'll release their competitor to a card ATi's already had on the market for months. It will offer marginally (like 5%) better performance, and will cost 50% more than ATi's offering. Yet people will still buy it.