for those of you waiting for trident xp4...look elsewhere

[vexingv]

i think extremetech's title sums up the card well: Trident XP4: Pathetic 3D Performance

and they claimed 90% of gf4 4600 and 70% of r9700...the card is three times slower than the r9000pro! lets hope the r9500pro is available soon

 

[spanky]

oh man... that TRULY blows... hahahahaa

thats a funny article.. check this out:

Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you. Today, the XP4 was bear sushi.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Now in all fairness, they did only test an engineering sample. I'm sure once they hit final core and final drivers things will be brighter.

EDIT: EW, I would have preferred they tested some actual games.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

I did wonder how a card with a mere (!) 30M transistors was going to compete with the more complex beasts that are R300 and NV25... I'm quite surprised at how low the core clock is, given that the chip is based on the .13 micron process. Why is it that PIIIs, with a similar transistor count, hit speeds of 1.3GHz, whereas the XP4 manages 250MHz?

(I realise that I'm oversimplifying, but hey...)

 

[oldfart]

for those of you waiting for trident xp4...look elsewhere

Wow. I bet those 2 people are really disappointed!

 

[gregor7777]

Originally posted by: oldfart

for those of you waiting for trident xp4...look elsewhere

Wow. I bet those 2 people are really disappointed!

I'm wondering how it's stacks up with Parhelia. To the winner go the spoils, the Toilet Bowl championship!!

 

[Rand]

Those results paint the XP4 is a MUCH worse picture then did Anand's earlier results which seems slightly odd to me. Personally, I'm inclined to put more fiaht in Anand's tests, however brief they were.

I can't say as I agree with ExtremeTech's decision to test in 1600x1200..... how many prospective users of the XP4 will even have a monitor capable of 1600x1200 let alone the desire to runs games at such a resolution.
This is a bargain basement graphics card here, it's hardly intended to perform at such resolutions and most users of the XP4 will likely be using average 15/17" CRT's.

Personally I'm placing my bets on something being wrong with ET's testing, which wouldnt surprise me in the least guven their..... unusual results for the R9000/GF4 Ti4200 in their last roundup.

I'm still expecting the T3 to perform a notch under the reg. R9000 which should be good enough to grab it a nice in the low end. At 250MHz, .13u and 4 pixel pipelines that seem to share resources the XP4 isnt at all a very complex card.
I wouldnt be at all surprised if we see T3's with small HeatSinks and no active cooling at all.

 

[oldfart]

I can't say as I agree with ExtremeTech's decision to test in 1600x1200.....

I looked at the article again

We normally test at two resolutions: 1024x768x32 with 4X FSAA (Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing) enabled, and 1600x1200x32 with no FSAA. But Trident informed us that the driver build they sent us for this preview didn't yet have AA implemented. We discovered this fact only when we went hunting for a 3D config panel for either Direct3D or OpenGL, since neither were anywhere to be found.

Because of the Trident driver's "beta-ness," we tested only at 1600x1200 with no FSAA, and compare the results to ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro, 9500 Pro and nVidia's GeForce 4 Ti 4200.

You are right. Very lame article. They used 3Dmark (ugh) and a resolution that no one buying this card will use. How about a average Joe 1024 x 768 test?

 

[Tab]

I really want some 'average joe' 1024x768 in UT2k3. Who is really going to use 1600x1200 on this kind of card? Not to mention 3DMark isnt my idea of a good benchmark. I want UT2k3 benches!

 

[holdencommodore]

It's way too early to tell, I'd wait untill the final card and drivers come out before ruling it out.

Cheers

 

[Rand]

One thing that I forgot to mention earlier.... anyone else notice their claiming the XP4 has 8TMU's/pipe?!
I'm sure Trident would greatly appreciate being informed about that, as their still under the evidently mistaken impression it's 4X2 with the pipelines having shared resources, and 8layer MT.
A FAR cry from ET's claims of a full 4X8 architecture.


Mildly irritating that ET still doesnt seem to understand what TileBasedRendering is, as they mistakenly claim the XP4 is a tiler. The XP4 uses heirarcical tiling and is an IMR. That's the third article I've read wherein they confuse heirarcical tiling with a full tiling renderer ala PowerVR.

I'm still wondering how they managed to get the Trident XP4 to regress so much in performance compared to Anand's much earlier tests with a slower board then ET had.

 

[nemesismk2]

I agree with most of the comments here, that review of the Trident XP4 was very poor. I think they botched the whole thing from start to finish, wait for the Anandtech review before judging the XP4.

 

[Jeff7]

An engineering sample with beta drivers. And they're giving a "conclusion" about the card? Geez. Lets just hope that Trident actually does improve on the card and drivers for the "final" version.

 

[Cerb]

Wow. I bet those 2 people are really disappointed!

That gave me the laugh I needed today!

On the other side...um...yeah...crappy, uninformed review in which the card has somehow slowed down as it is closer to release...huh?!

For one thing they try to make a direct comparison to the Ti 4200. Sorry, but I have a feeling 30m transistors and 3w max power ain't gonna do it. 3 watts...can you say Tablet three times fast?

Because of the Trident driver's "beta-ness," we tested only at 1600x1200 with no FSAA, and compare the results to ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro, 9500 Pro and nVidia's GeForce 4 Ti 4200.

Even at its most biased, tomshardware never even went that low! It should read "Because of the Trident driver's "beta-ness," we tested only at 1024x768 with no FSAA"
Whoever wrote that article should be uh..."let go of" by ET!

 

[Killrose]

When you look at his tests vs. Anands, you can't but wonder if maybe he has a broken XP4 board.

 

[Goose77]

whats really funnie is, that there wasnt the ability to turn off v-sync, this right here(@1600x1200) already limits the card to the 60hz of the monitor, only allowing for 60fps max. this just seems to be a bad bech to me...??? something aint right here???

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I really want some 'average joe' 1024x768 in UT2k3. Who is really going to use 1600x1200 on this kind of card? Not to mention 3DMark isnt my idea of a good benchmark. I want UT2k3 benches!

Did they update the article? I see Serious Sam and UT2k3 benches on page 6.

The results look like turdballz, but the benches are there.