ATi Radeon 256 Previews

[Himself]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/radeon256preview/ http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporat...2000/4295.html http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/...radeon/001.htm http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...ati_radeon256/ http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?...17/ati_fl.html http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/ATIRadeon.htm http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1230

Looks like my next card.

[GT98]

Looks like an Impressive Video card but for the most part ATI's Drivers suck MAJOR ass. My old man had an ATI All-in-wonder Pro, which was a pretty nice card at the time and drivers weren't that bad either (this card was the reason I looked at Matrox, since I wanted a TV tuner card with AGP capabilty..enter the Marvel G200AGP). Then he was looking at getting a ATI Rage128 with his new P3-500 system last year, got the card and Nothing but problems with that POS shit. He replaced it with a TNT2 Ultra over last summer....

Scott


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Abit BH6 with a P3-450@558,128mb RAM,G400 MAX,SB Live!, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem, Win98 SE on Western Digital 30.7GB, Win2000 on a WD 13 GB HDD

[Himself]

Hmmm, not sure if NVIDIA drivers are any better than ATi. I want T&L but I don't want NVIDIA, so unless someone else comes along with a working T&L ATi looks like they are first up. Budget willing that is.

[GT98]

Well just to give you a hint of some of the problems he ran into where: very dark Gamma in D3D/openGL games, Srambled graphics in European Air War, and couple others that I can't recall at this time. Oh yeah he was so pissed with the problems he went out and got a SLI V2 setup so he could run these games! He has major overkill now with the TNT2U and V2 SLI setup. In Compairson to my G400MAX and the TNT2U, the only games that seem to run a little better on the TNT is Soldier Of Forturne and NFS:PU, but I want to double check the res he running that at since I have a hair faster CPU (558 vs 500).

Scott

[Corwin_Brute]

Himself : you bet NVidia's drivers are better than ATI's ! (after all, they have only improved the same driver set for 2 years now ).
Seriously, I've had a Rage128 before by beloved G400 and even more beloved G400Max, and I've only had problems with it, included but not limited to :
- severe Direct3D crashing
- numerous BSOD
- severe OpenGL crashing, for all it matters
- icons corruption
- black screen (unrecognized monitor) when installing new drivers
- painful driver installation

I could buy a Radeon, but not before I'm sure the drivers are correct.
My next card could be a Voodoo5 5500 : as I change my video card every 6 months or so, I don't need T&L for now, but FSAA sure looks pretty good (my favorite game for the time being is Darkstone, which runs only in 640x480 and sure looks crappy on my 22").
And of course, I'm pretty confident that the "next chip" (Matrox's reps don't want to call it the G800) will be a very good card.


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Corwin the Brute

[YoKoMo [1]]

I have to admit the technology behind the Radeon looks sweet, but the drivers...... I have seen what Matrox will be offering in the second half of the year, and I think i'll pass on that one. I really only play UT and since my Max died and I put in my Voodoo3 3000 again, i'm happy with the performance. Since the machine the voodoo is in is only a play computer and my real work station has a G400 SH 32MB I think i'll be fine til the end of the year. If the Radeon chip can actually deliver on what is spec'd it'll go in the play machine and the G800 will go into the workstation.

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PIII 650E at 805Mhz, G400Max, Asus P3B-F (ain't none better!), 384MB PC133 Memory, 2 Seagate 18GB Cheeeeetazzzz.

[Himself]

Dark games? Sounds exactly like NVIDIA to me, if games were any darker they monitor would be black. Gamma shamma, PITA.

3DFX has some nice support for their products (I own a V3), I just don't think I would find the V4/5 all that interesting for the price tag.

ATi's Radeon has antialiasing according to the specs, it will be nice to see if it's a real card or another S2000.

NVIDIA is just shit, I really can't imagine worse drivers, they just suck so badly.
NVIDIA is just full of shit, plain and simple. Shit. Shit. Shit. If ATI's new drivers are indeed worse than NVIDIA's the thing will burn out the motherboard before it even tries to boot.

S3/Via who?

BitBoys? A priest, a rabbi, and a cab driver walk into a bar..

GigaPixel? RIP.

Matrox ZZZZZzzzz....

[jackzod]

So Himself it leaves you with Trident for only option....

[Mace]

i have an ati xpert98...the drivers seem fine, especially the special purpose ones, also i've got the card running in a 112fsb system, agp2x = 148mhz. on the other hand, i've been having major problems with a marvel g200 running in a similiar setup, without overclocking - can't even get 2x without forcing it. as far as quality, the overall look of the g200 seems better than the rage pro.

[Himself]

Zod,

Until there are some answers to the uncertainties out there I don't plan on upgrading, no.

I do hear Trident is trying to get back into the video card business though.

One company we haven't heard from in a while is 3DLabs, you know the makers of the Permedia 3 Create! which hasn't been much of a success in the gaming market.