beyond 3d interview with Eric Demers on R600 Architecture

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
"The GTX beat 2 X1950s on launch day, if that's bad drivers than ATIs must be absolutely awful right now."
"Because Vista was not out yet."

1. ati's drivers are known to be better than nvidia's. if you don't believe this, you're obviously blind
2. Vista has been out for a while. and nvidia's drivers JUST started to clear up and show signs of games working properly

The G80 launched in November 8th of '06 correct? When did Vista launch? Jan 29th '07. So now what?

ATI needs drivers to allow all those shaders to work. Until that happens, I don't think there will be any drastic improvement in performance. Some? Sure.

And Louissssssssssssssssssss. I actually don't know who's drivers are better. I don't own an ATI card currently. I have in the past though. 9500pro, 2x9700np and 1x9700pro, and 1 X800XTPE. The 9700's were impressive when they worked. The reason I had 3 of them is from RMA's. The X800XTPE was "ok". While faster on paper, it felt to me that it did not play my games as smoothly as on my 6800GT. So I sold the X800XTPE. Drivers were "meh" hit or miss. Nowadays, I can't say who's drivers are better. Especially in Vista, which I will not own until SP1 or games come out that "only" run on Vista, which would be incredibly stupid on game devs part. But, it'll happen.

 

[dreddfunk]

The article was interesting--though I only skimmed it. The questions really weren't incisive enough for my tastes.

On the drivers debate, I really think that the endless comparisons between ATI and nVidia aren't really that interesting. They've both got their problems.

The interesting questions (to me) are: 1) where should driver development at launch be ideally, and, 2) is it reasonable to assume that it can get there, given the current speed of development.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

so they've had some 5 months to fix their drivers in vista... my cousin's sli setup has been having problems in vista 64-bit since day1.
my x1900xt HAS been working since day1 of vista 32-bit installation

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Good article but again the card is just too loud for me to consider. I'll be revisting the issue after a die-shrink.

+1 QFT, plus I don't want to have to upgrade my PSU -AGAIN- just because of a GPU upgrade. i can run an 8800GTS on it fine so I'll wager the die-shrink R600 that runs cooler also consumes less wattage and thus will run on my PSU without straining it.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: yacoub

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Good article but again the card is just too loud for me to consider. I'll be revisting the issue after a die-shrink.

+1 QFT, plus I don't want to have to upgrade my PSU -AGAIN- just because of a GPU upgrade. i can run an 8800GTS on it fine so I'll wager the die-shrink R600 that runs cooler also consumes less wattage and thus will run on my PSU without straining it.

I hope this is true.

I have a feeling that a die-shrink is only going to encourage them to ramp up the clocks and almost negate any power savings.

That goes for both companies. The truth of the matter is that when you have 700+ million transistors, it's going to be hard to keep the power consumption down.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
so they've had some 5 months to fix their drivers in vista... my cousin's sli setup has been having problems in vista 64-bit since day1.
my x1900xt HAS been working since day1 of vista 32-bit installation

You mean your crossfired X1950XT's? And your still drifting further and further away from my original quote of yours. If you can't keep a steady conversation, I'm out. I gotz no thyme for BS.