To get an up to date review and perspective on things sometimes
you have to go abroad to Euroupe.
3D Concept's Radeon SDR reviews shows
the Radeon SDR beating the MX in 3 of 4 game benchmarks (similar
results for Anandtech and Tom's Hardware). The SDR actually challenges
the GeForce 256 with twice as wide a memory path and in some cases beats it. All tests run with Detonator drivers.
If you re-read the reviews by
Anandtech and Tom's Hardware on
the Radeon SDR, they only complained about Win2K's lacklustre
performance under Win2K (which was retrofitted to support games
at the last minute by MS). Recent driver updates for Win2K have
made the performance under <a target=new href="http://
babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn?lp=fr_en&doit=done&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.puces3d.com%2Fati%2Farticles%2Faiw-radeon-10.shtm">Win2K equal and in some cases exceed</a> that under Win98.
The last thing is not too pay too much attention to Tom's review about
image quality which is based upon a new and rarely
used game called "Mercedes Benz
Trucking" in which the application itself has not been patched/tweaked yet
to run on Radeon chips.
My training as an engineer sees an inconsistency:
The SDR reviews at both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware show
many benchmarks indicating Radeon SDR performing better
(in one case 50% better) but accompanying statements and conclusions being
inconsistent. See Evolva
1600x1200@32...it should evoke some questions
from the reviewer regarding why?
The conclusions definitely show some bias with undue emphasis
on Win2K (addressed by other review sites with updated drivers),
price (quality issues of DVD and sharper 2D and 3D colour are not mentioned, simplistic and misleading statements about
image quality using a little know benchmark, and comments from
left field regarding comparisons to other more expensive siblings.
The reviewers should read their opening introductions and their
final conclusions to see how polarized some of their statements
appear. Just my editors hat.
Radeon has amongst the best image quality
(both 2D and 3D) seen on any modern chipset in the last two years
and this is not mentioned once. Go Figure....I think the SDR
version of Radeon is a sleeper