wtf puaaaa amd killed ati when they merged or bought it out.ati cant seem to get their act together even after year 8800 series came out we have yet to see ati compete in the hi end market evev the new radeons which will compete with the midrange card 8800gt still loses after seeing some reviews.endless waiting for drivers to make a card better are ati consumers.i read some where their not really going to compete in the hi end cards in the future that really suks for us if theres no real competition prices will never drop.just look at the 8800gtx still going for over 500 dollars for example.
Your right m8, and after i've seen the review for 3870&3850 seems like we're still living in the "Green Era", and that's about it! Now i don't think there's ever going to be a true high-end card from ATI very soon(or ever).
Well, I wouldn't say that ATI will never be ontop again. It's not likely that they will in 1-2 years, but time will see. I say the ATI 5000 Series will take first place in the competition. I think the problem with AMD/ATI now is that they cramming alot of crap into the card thats giving them hard time with drivers/performance. Like HD Audio on a graphics card.... but I don't know much about that anyway, just a thought. However ATI, from some reviews, has better quality graphics than nVidia.
The same thing happened with Nvidia cards...I bet there are many who bought a GTS or GTX or even an Ultra who feel ripped off because of the bang for the buck GT. That's just the way things go... I decided long time ago that I would purchase a new card once I can get GTX performance levels for much cheaper and the GT suits me then just fine. Some architectures are simply not worth buying, like Nvidias FX...and I felt instantly having seen the power consumption level, price and performance that the 2900xt is nothing for me. Ati adressed atleast two of thoses gripes, namely, price and powerconsumption while at the same time offering better performance. This is what R600 should've been from the beginning. It's not a 8800 killer, but it's not that bad, atleast not anymore. I expect a much better core from ATI/AMD next time... I have two concerns though with going back to Nvidia 1. Voice coil buzz (had with almost every Nvidia card) 2. Drivers suck for some old games such as Thief 2 (which I still play because of awesome fan missions), it's not rendered properly. I'll replace my 8800GT (which should arrive next week) with a 3870 if I have the buzz coil problem. Not as good performer..but I can live with it.
whats a buzz coil noise noise never heard of it.anyway thief 2 was so badly coded my cousin used to work for the company that made the game and he used to be a beta tester for it and told me the game was so buggy and not ready.even knowing that the company released it thats what crytek did with crysis i think they most likely had a deadline and budget problem but still released it hopeing to patch it on the fly.
Why so much bragging for an overly mobile market, why people think that intel/nvidia produced such a killing performance products? It's because they were being outperformed by the competition short time ago, so just wait a good time for ati/amd to recover (product wise) and stop living in a couple of months news at time!
Those reviews are full of ****. ATI has never had better image quality. Their IQ has always sucked even worse than nvidia's in just about every way. As for crysis not being able to perform well on current hardware, that's 100% FALSE. 8800gtx's and ultra's in sli have very high framerates, i'd imagine at least 60 fps in many cases, with hq 16x af, 8x msaa+trss, 1680x1050, and max in-game settings. Just because a game doesn't run at 120 fps on average on an entry-level video card, doesn't mean the game has low performance with everything currently available. Before anyone flames me about my 1st comment, read this post completely and you won't flame me. lets start with the rage 128 back in 1999. 16 bit color quality was awful, while competing products from 3dfx and the matrox g400 rendered 16 bit color @ 32 bit internally. the first radeon, i don't really know much about. the 8500 had so many issues, I shouldn't have to list them here. the 9700 and 9800 pro started the optimisations with filtering, and their msaa was inferior to 3dfx's set standard before them, which means it was inferior to the geforce fx's 2x aa mode, b/c it used RGSS for 2x like 3dfx did. The geforce fx could also do fp32 internal rendering, while ati only offered fp24. i know that the geforce fx was slow as hell, but i'm talking only about iq here. the 9700 pro couldn't do buffer shadows either. the x series didn't have the feature of sm 3.0, no fp16 frame buffer. still had ****ty af like it's competitor the 6800 series. the x1k series had unfiltered fp16 textures. also the max af quality was improved but it still sucked. it also couldn't do vertex textures. the hd 2k series still doesn't have good af. at least they have hw filtering for fp16 and fp32 textures, but they didn't fix much else. they also screwed up the one good thing they did have,which was running 16 bit color at 32 bit internally.
You are sadly mistaken, no hardware out can run Crysis maxed out at high resolutions with +30fps. The current generation of hardware is having a very hard time with Crysis set at very high even Ultras in SLI can't produce decent frames. http://www.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65687 http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=50620 http://www.gamearena.com.au/pc/forums/latest/thread.php/4489346 It's all over the internet, current gen hardware cant handle the game maxed out, it turns into a slide show and this is well known by now.
Oh right, all the reviews that gave the image quality up hand until nv8800 to ati were always paid by ati. "Their IQ has always sucked even worse than nvidia's in just about every way." c'mon, if you don't have a clue about what you're talking and be precise about what iq setting to compare between wich series of competing products you wan't to compare, better don't write a damn thing and maybe you won't look like a ignorant fanboy Be happy with your favorite product but don't be so lame biased
dude, do you really have an FX 5950 Ultra installed and running in your system? if you do..... you are the most hardcore mother f#ker since christian bale in american phsycho. hehe
You might have to be a silent pc nut to really hear it from some cards..I'm not talking about the cooling system making a racket but rather some of it's components. As for Thief 2 being buggy, well in some cases, they didn't have the time to fix a few problems here and there (they released a 33MB patch, which at that time was huge) but the game runs very well and even to this day has a soundengine that puts many modern games to shame. ___ And as for image quality, yes Ati has had at times superior image quality (just like Nvidia)...anyone who has seen pictures compared throughout the years should know this.
I've found out, most of the time when computer is having issues, cause of it... and thing that sucks most is sitting between chair and monitor Anyway, Ati has done something remarkable in new HD3800 series. Its cooler than 8800GT, it takes a lot less power than 8800-series. HD3850 whipes floor with 8600-series easily. HD3870 is very competitive against GTS and yes, looses to GT but depeding on game and hardware you have, the difference is not that remarkable. If you think performance wise, 8800-series is winner. But when you look other aspects ( like PCI.E. 2.0 support and DX10.1 support which they lack ) Ati is not that bad.
Don't be too radical to the thread opener, please. I fully feel regretful for him. Crysis really needed the next generation of DX10 cards to play at decent settings and framerates but the HD 2900 XT cannot make any excuses to defend its incompetence. Guys, you have read many reviews and you must know the HD 2900 XT uses more power than a GeForce 8800 Ultra but was screwed by the 8800 GTS 320MB and evaporated by the 8800 GT now. I would stop buying from ATI until they could amaze me. Note: They are misleading people to believe the HD 3870/3850 are of any good. The HD 3870 is BEATEN HARD by the 8800 GT.
"The HD 3870 is BEATEN HARD by the 8800 GT." That's depend on your budget, let prices roll, i like the idea of a value performance/price contender. And anyway, having a decent competition result in benefits for users, no matter nvidia or ati ones.
