ATI Aurora: god please don't make me want this.

[The Rock]

www.sharkeyextreme.com

After finally giving up on ATI and throwing away my Xpert 128 and buying a G400, NOW ATI announces this. Arrrrrrrrgggggghhh!!! I can't win. Goddamn the stats are impressive: 1600x1200x32bit at 40+ FPS on a P3 600....WOW WOW WOW!!! And these numbers aren't hype either; they're from an actual preproduction board. Basically the card is TWIN Rage 128 Pro's with 32Meg RAM for each chip. 64 Megs, twin Rage128 Pro's, best DVD on the market. The GeForce may be obselete already. After all the ATI bashing I've done over the past 4 months, I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that's telling me to BUY THIS when it hits. ATI plays more headgames than a vindictive female. Here's a snippet:

"Even at the conservative 125MHz x 2 clock speed that the current Aurora test board runs at, we were seeing shocking game-benchmark scores in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, at 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp when using a P3-600 CPU. For example, at 1600 x 1200 x 32 in our D3D Expendable timedemo, we achieved a score of 40.5 fps with the Aurora test board, which is approximately 16 - 20 fps higher than we've recorded with our in-house TNT2 Ultra cards at the same resolution. That's nearly doubling the performance of an already strong graphics chip."

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The Rock
"Discourage incest - ban country music NOW!"

System:
P2 350 /w Asus P2B 1010 (PC equivalent of 3 inch penis)
128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
17.2Gig Maxtor DiamondMax HD
6.4Gig Fujitsu HD
Matrox G400 32Meg
SB PCI 128 Sound
Modem Blaster 56K Modem
Panasonic 2x/4x SCSI Toaster
32X CD-ROM


[This message has been edited by The Rock (edited 10-06-1999).]

[Jorden]

Nice, how the link points itself to the right address

Looks like another chapter in abbreviations has to be written, for what the heck does Multiple ASIC Technology stand for?? (MASICTec)

But nice card anyway... now we wait for the drivers...

Jorden.

[Nuno]

That´s just a kind of SLI revisited, and the worst part is that 64 Mb number really stands for 32 Mb. Just like the old SLI days, when 12+12 weren´t 24 at all.
ATI would do better developping a real next-gen chip than releasing hardware hacks like that.

[Himself]

The ATi card sounds neat, looks stupid with two fans on the thing, but neat. They can certainly sub for 3dfx until they get back into the race. Competition is great, ain't it?

$299 is rather steep though.

[Wombat]

Speaking of dual-processors, what ever happened to that TNT SLI rig?

[Mark F]

Alienware killed it. By the time they were ready (or would have been ready) it would not bave been a competative package.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[The Rock]

Nuno:

If you think about it, and I hate to admit this since I was getting used to hating ATI, but this SLI-type thing is actually better than a whole new chipset. Look at the GeForce; a new chipset that will NEVER realize its full potential because it'll take 6 months to a year before any titles come out that'll take advantage of it. And when these titles finally hit, every other chip maker will have something better out. Plus, due to the fact that it's a new chipset, you KNOW there's gonna be driver problems galore in the beginning. Now look at this Aurora: it has chips on it that ATI has been writing drivers for for almost a year now (they still suck , but it's a better start than a new chipset). So this pig will ship with much better drivers than most new video cards do. If it's gonna cost $300US though, they better have mortgage options on it though. I'm sticking with Matrox. I wonder what THEY have up their sleeve to compete with this Aurora/GeFarts/Napalm shit?


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The Rock
"Discourage incest - ban country music NOW!"

System:
P2 350 /w Asus P2B 1010 (PC equivalent of 3 inch penis)
128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
17.2Gig Maxtor DiamondMax HD
6.4Gig Fujitsu HD
Matrox G400 32Meg
SB PCI 128 Sound
Modem Blaster 56K Modem
Panasonic 2x/4x SCSI Toaster
32X CD-ROM

[General Veers]

I have vowed never to buy another ATI card again, no matter what their specs say on paper.

When I bought a computer for my parents, I had an ATI Rage Fury 16 MB card put into the computer. Mainly because it was inexpensive, and I heard it was passable in games.

The stupid $&#*$(&*#$ ATI card does not work at all with the K6-3 400 computer. Any OpenGL games and Apps just give garbled, multicolored screens, making them unplayable.
2-hours on the phone to ATI tech support, and all they could say is "we don't know".

I would never ever buy ATI again after this. The bugs I've experienced with every ATI card I've used make the Matrox G400 look like the model of compatibility and stability for games.

[Mark F]

"we don't know"
sounds better that the usual tech responce:
Go away, it's somebody elses fault
;0

Last ATI product I had was not that bad,
Oh yeah, that was BEFORE 3D,
and in a VL-Bus slot
BTW... it got replaced by a Mill II -PCI

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[The Rock]

General Veers:

I hear THAT. Apparently, the first Rage Furys had MAJOR problems that ATI has NEVER acknowledged. Considering the fact that most new Furys are reputedly trouble-free and have a NEWER BIOS (hmmmmm), it shows how dirty ATI are. You bet your momma's ass they knew about the Fury's problems and never bothered to let their customers know. Not to mention the fact that Rage 128 cards have been released at 3 or more different clock speeds (75/75, 90/90, 103/103, maybe more?). Speed binning bastards. This is PRECISLEY why I don't want to be desiring this card. I just pray Matrox has an ace up their sleeve to combat all this GeFarts/Aurora junk.


------------------
The Rock
"Discourage incest - ban country music NOW!"

System:
P2 350 /w Asus P2B 1010 (PC equivalent of 3 inch penis)
128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
17.2Gig Maxtor DiamondMax HD
6.4Gig Fujitsu HD
Matrox G400 32Meg
SB PCI 128 Sound
Modem Blaster 56K Modem
Panasonic 2x/4x SCSI Toaster
32X CD-ROM

[Nuno]

The Rock:

What I was trying to say is that using old technology they save in r&d, but they have to make two silicon chips and use 64 mb of memory to achieve the same results as 32. That´s a waste. And giving $300 for old technology - no bump-mapping, no digital panel output, no dual-head, no T&L, just isn´t cutting it.

[The Rock]

Nuno:

In a way, using old tech is good. If ATI tried to implement T&L and bump mapping on the same card, I can see the results now: some poor bastard puts the card in his machine. He then hits his power button; he hears a loud BANG as the video card explodes. The explosion causes the power supply to go flying across the room, through the wall, and into the neighbor's house, killing the neighboor instantly. The explosion also blows his case and motherboard apart, sending 2 DIMM chips flying up into the poor sucker's head, killing him too. And he didn't even GET to the point where he could install the (snicker) drivers. It COULD happen; ATI never gets it right the first time.

But seriously, I see your point.



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The Rock
"Discourage incest - ban country music NOW!"

System:
P2 350 /w Asus P2B /w 128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
17.2Gig Maxtor DiamondMax HD + 6.4Gig Fujitsu HD
Matrox G400 32Meg + SB PCI 128 Sound
Modem Blaster 56K Modem + Panasonic 2x/4x SCSI Toaster + 32X CD-ROM

[Mark F]

So that's how they get the box art...
BETA-TESTERS
I thought they had to use catle prods for that expression ;O0

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD