Ati´s IQ real strike

[Garra]

Have a question, which is the real harm of these "cheating" that ati has made?
Have this IQ change put ati´s at NVIDIA´s IQ level or ati got much worse than nv???

 

[richleader]

I'd say they're still similar. (I assume you're talking about in game 3d) Probably give a slight nod to Nvidia in texture detail and one to the Radeon in Luminance/Saturation (but this can be tweaked on either card). As long as you don't play Quake III or <grin> 3dmark 2k1, you probably won't notice much of a difference.

 

[boyRacer]

don't you miss 3dfx...

 

[Killrose]

Ati should have put an "Ultra Speed" tab or something in display properties with a note that using it would speed up QIII , but cause a slight degredation in rendering.

But instead they tried to hide it deep with-in their driver hoping that the little boys and girls who play QIII and buy expensive video cards would never, ever find out.

 

[Zarich]

Based on the screenshots Ive seen the geforce 3 and the radeon 8500 have the same IQ level. But the radeon dropped theirs noticably below the NV cards.

 

[Soccerman]

But instead they tried to hide it deep with-in their driver hoping that the little boys and girls who play QIII and buy expensive video cards would never, ever find out.

ok first of all, I wouldn't be surprised if after they got their drivers up to snuff in general performance, they removed this tweak to reduce chances of people finding out about this sacrifice in image quality for performance..

second of all, becuase nearly who ATi caters to with the 8500 everyone agrees that not giving the end user the options to change the settings (and have the settings stick) in the game is a BAD thing, I doubt ATi would have continued to do such tricks in their drivers for other apps anyway, even if we didn't find out about the quake issue.

 

[Sunner]

The IQ of the 8500 outright sucks when compared to the GF3 in Quake3, in Quack3 I'd say they're even based on the screenshots.

Sad thing, I was hoping for the 8500 to be the card to bring high end 3D, as well as high end 2D together, and all with good drivers.

Seems like Gainward's Ti200 will have to fill that gap instead, even if they do fix the drivers eventually, I'll definately skip this generation of Radeon's, simply cause Im PO'ed at ATi for this whole mess, optimizing for benches like 3DMark is one thing(and still not very honest IMO), but this is pure BS.

 

[Killrose]

I too am probably going to go G3 Ti200 on my next video card. If Ati does'nt get it together with the 8500 drivers with-in two weeks.

I would also consider a 7500 if they would get smart and release it with Truform and Smoothvision. I think leaving those features out of the 7500 was a mistake they will more than regret.

Kinda like leaving Smoothvision out of the 8500

 

[EMAN]

I do think ATI was wrong for screwing with IQ level without letting us know but their IQ level is so much superior to other chips.

Look at this article here

hardocp review of Radeon

Now look at page 3 and see the difference. If they lowered their IQ level to get performance and still look better than other chips IQ than I'm all for it. ATI should definitely put those setting in their drivers though.

 

[richleader]

Killrose, that doesn't make all that much sense--even if they did support those features in hardware, would it have the power to deliver decent framerates with them? Hell, if you want software truform, you can get it on the Radeon DDR that you have now. I mean, that's like enabling FSAA on a TNT2 Vanta. They could have built them into the chip, but I don't think it would have been cost effective (well, smoothvision might be with the advantages of multisampling) as it would raise the price while the features would go largely unused.

 

[Soccerman]

you know, I think smoothvision might come to all Radeon cards, not just the 8500.. why? it's already in the drivers.. truform on the other hand appears to REQUIRE a DX8 T&L engine (otherwise nVidia would most likely have enabled something similar to compete in their drivers)..

btw the above pictures look like one card (the Radeon) is using much more agressive LOD settings than the other, or something similar to that..