Video Card Upgraders...IMHO I Found the Best Bang for the Buck!!

[paulcs]

Wow. I thought everyone was being relatively level-headed. The big-time ATI haters, myself included, pretty much stayed out of it.

So how's the W2K support? Whistler's coming.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Humus]

Originally posted by Himself:
How is the bump mapping support on the Radeon? I read it supports EMBM, but you never know with video card companies.

EMBM looks just as good or even better than G400. Radeon also has three texturing unit and can thus do EMBM in a single pass unlike G400 which needs two passes, so Radeon won't take the huge performance hit.

[Skimmer]

I said I was going to stop posting...can't help myself on clearing up a few points.

First, Paulcs, while only a few people in this forum took some minor jabs at my post, I forgot to mention the bit of e:mail I received about the subject. It got out of hand...maybe I should have wrote it in a different manner.

Also, my post was moved to General Hardware which is fine. Maybe it should have went there in the first place but when I searched the site I found many more references and discussions on the Radeon in Matrox hardware than any other forum.....so I figured it would be best to go there.

Finally, the moderator said this is a ATI sales pitch trying to justify my purchase. While I feel there is some truth to this with ANY purchase, I did this also to raise some awareness. In a number posts the Radeon was getting a bad rap and I feel it shouldn't.

I would have also done this with the G800 which would have been much more appropriate to this forum. Unfortunately it wasn't available when I decided to upgrade.


Regards,

Jeff

[Alec]

What´s wrong in saying that the ATi Radeon is a fine board? Skimmer´s first post seemed genuine to me and was just to express his joy of acquiring an excellent graphics card.
I think there´s no problem in listening to other people´s experiences, in spite of this being a Matrox forum (which I´ve always considered a democratic, open, and most of all, COOL).

So let´s be cool about things.

[Greebe]

Paul, I would have but since a few others have been whining about me doing just that, I stayed out of it.

Once I've been thrashed by a manufacture the golden rule applies. The only way to get through to them is to simply stop buying their products. Appearently this person has never owned ATI before. Thus doesn't have the burn effect eating at their soul and pocket! I'll be damned if I bought a product thats developement cost was entirely based on the abuse of it's customers.

Skimmer, your post has many holes riddled throughout it and as such proves your just a kiddy gamer. I'm glad your happy with it. Now go find another forum to hype that sales pitch to. We not buying into it, regardless of cost or proformance.

[Himself]

Cool, I was under the impression that the G400 did 3 things at once as well, guess not.

As for the grumpy old men, lighten up, it's just a video card, nobody is going to take your G400 from you.

"When in doubt, run around in circles, scream and shout!"

[DentyCracker]

It is interesting to know that ATi has written good drivers for this card. I will never buy it but I could recommend it to someone. When ATi makes downloading software upgrades from its website a littleeasier than pulling teeth, and makes timely drivers available for all MS OSes then I may consider buying an ATi product again. This has nothing to do with my G400, just once bitten twice shy.

[LAMFDTK]

"I did not want this thread to start trashing video cards!!"

they never learn....I bet you never listen to your dad either. What does HE know...:0

[Greebe]

Cheers Frank!

[Gurm]

ATI = Fine hardware, shit drivers.

If they have magically managed to pull these drivers out of their asses, that's great. But, then again, last week they announced yet another delay on Win2k drivers for the RAGE PRO, a card which they introduced YEARS AGO.

So if you're thinking that the Radeon is great (which it may be), beware - as soon as ATI has built a better card, support for your Radeon will disappear in a heartbeat.

Not to say it isn't a good card now. But, you'd better be happy with the drivers available for it RIGHT NOW TODAY, because there aren't likely to be any more.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Humus]

Gurm:
The current drivers are great, and new drivers have been released many times already.
And dont say Matrox driver support have been especially great. Damn, it took a whole year before we got the stencil buffer support in OpenGL! I mean ... stencil buffering, pure basic stuff, WTF? I was shocked when I got that news from the Matrox developer relations team when I contacted them about what I thought was a driver bug ... they just hadn't implemented it yet ...
And for a couple of months ago I needed some OpenGL extensions for multitexturing. They weren't supported by the driver, so I asked Matrox if it was planned to implement them anytime soon. They said one of them was already coded and they were looking into the other one and said they expected a driver release within 2 weeks. Those extensions are still not supported ...
The same thing with stencil support, they said one month and after two months it still wasn't released any drivers with it. After requenting one they sent me a pre-release driver and it took over a month before that driver was release to public ...

So, think twice about bitching about ATi driver support.
I dropped my G400 since I was always held back in my development progress by the drivers.

[Alec]

Hey Humus, isn´t the multitexturing extension already present in the latest drivers (6.04)?
I think it is.

[SteveC]

Compaq/HP/Siemens don't care about Multitexturing or Stencil Buffers in OpenGL. They care about a stable office system.

Need I say more?

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Himself]

Exactly.

[Humus]

Originally posted by Alec:
Hey Humus, isn´t the multitexturing extension already present in the latest drivers (6.04)?
I think it is.

Yes, the GL_EXT_multitexture is available, but it only supports modulating (for lightmapping and stuff). I want the GL_EXT_texture_env and GL_EXT_texture_add extensions for some more flexibility.