Originally posted by: nRollo
I thought it would because I don't think he has any reason to lie, and his description of the current situation clearly shows both methods have pros and cons.
What, so because I don't agree with someone?s opinion that means I'm calling them a liar? :roll:
Nice try, but please take your sensationalist PR elsewhere.
If they tested less games more frequently they might miss issues on the games not tested.
Who? nVidia you mean? Given their drivers are inferior to ATi?s in terms of robustness it?s obvious they need to adopt more of ATi?s tactics.
Back when NVIDIA was trying to get it's Vista drivers in order you were telling me they need to be fixing Red Faction and Serious Sam 1 and making that their priority. Those games were both well over 5 years old at the time. There's just not many people playing them anymore, but all the computers were beginning to be sold with Vista.
No, what I was saying was that I fully accepted the priority must be for Vista drivers but backwards compatibility shouldn?t be forgotten along with XP drivers. ATi had Vista drivers, XP drivers and backwards compatibility.
What was nVidia?s excuse? A PR statement ?we underestimated Vista? along with a promise deliver monthly WHQL drivers which never happened. That?s simply not good enough, not when ATi deliver monthly WHQLs for XP, XP-64, Vista 32 and Vista 64.
It's the equivalent being one of the last few guys with a black and white tv telling the tv stations that their shows don't look right on his black and white tv, and they better fix them. In business, you have to make decisions to cater to 99% of your market, not the 1%, because there is a cost/benefit associated with the time spent.
I?m not sure you fully understand the magnitude of the demand for backwards compatibility, even after the backlash against nVidia. There are a lot of people out there that enjoy playing old games on new hardware. Witness the new petitions against nVidia that have sprung up in just the last six months. People are getting tired of it.
Unless I'm misunderstanding Derek, they're testing 24 games at a time, not 90 or 200. You may be testing 90, but I don't think they are based on what Derek said.
Yep, and that?s my point. If ATi is testing less games than nVidia how is it they have less issues in legacy games? The only possible answer to that is that their drivers are more robust and conformant to standards than nVidia?s are.
Also I remember an interview a while back (maybe it was Richard Huddy) and it mentioned Terry Makedon (Catalyst maker) had a library of 500 games for testing.
I honestly don't think you're testing 90 games a month, and if you are, not thoroughly. Most people have to earn a living, have family, friends, other hobbies. (not too mention how incredibly monotonous it would be to maintain a one man vigil on the driver state of multiple companies) Testing 3 games a day thoroughly would be quite the investment of time, especially for unpaid work. Of course, beyond this, even your selection of games is a tiny fraction of the games available, so it's possible you're just missing the games ATi has issues with.
No, you misunderstand me. I don?t test 90 games a month because as you say that would be too time consuming. What I do is test all of my games whenever I buy a new GPU and then I note any problems. I then keep checking for a resolution for said problems each time a new driver arrives and I also check against the other vendor to rule out application issues. Also when I change video cards I generally benchmark 30-40 games which gives me a baseline figure for future comparisons.
While all of this is happening, I keep my entire gaming library under heavy play rotation which means at any time I could decide to play X-Wing, GLQuake, Crysis, or anything in between. When I?m sitting down and playing games start to finish I don?t want to run into issues and waste time troubleshooting so I need the drivers to be as robust as possible. I also need drivers that work beyond just delivering flashy benchmark figures.
In light of all of this, since the 9700 Pro days I have consistently found ATi?s drivers to be more robust for my needs than nVidia?s. Every time I move back to nVidia the number of issues I have swells in comparison to ATi?s and I spend more time fighting the card to get it to play the games I want to play.
And then there's that whole issue of "How much does it really matter if Red Faction has an issue, it's eight years old, most gamers have long since moved on."
Yes, they have moved on; those that want to play the game have moved on to ATi. Your own forum is riddled with examples of people jumping ship and until nVidia takes them seriously they will continue to lose customers.
Sure- for those two ancient games very few people care about anymore. I had to Google Project IGI, didn't even know what it was.
Had nVidia?s drivers worked as well as ATi?s you wouldn?t have to google the game and we wouldn?t be having this conversation.
Does ATi "support" them, or do they just happen to work with ATis drivers?
Do such semantics really make a difference if the game works?
If ATi is supporting them, are there more pressing issues they should be addressing, like the current games you need to rename the executable on to get AA?
I would agree that they need to get AA into more modern games but then you?re making the assumption that nVidia?s drivers work properly in all modern games. Quake 4 is a 2005 title and since Nov 06 it has been flickering on nVidia DX10 hardware so it was current at the time the problem started. I don?t get any such flickering on my 4850.
) so it comes down to deciding at which point you want to be at. ATi and nV have picked differing points. In the games I play, nV is certainly more robust and hasn't had issues like no proper scaling support for years. In the games you are playing- ATi has proven more robust and hasn't had issues with the particular games you have tested that nV did have. Which one is right? From your perspective, ATi's would make sense, for me, I'd tend to go with nV.
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