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Good Radeon Review

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<< The *only* cards that have looked good in 16bit mode are the Voodoo cards. 16bit on the Radeon does suck....but who needs it. >>



Some people still like to play older games that were only designed for 16 bit color. Also, I never play Quake 3 [online] in 32 bit color because of the performance hit. This may not apply to users of 64 MB cards, but certainly applies to 32 MB users. When you're fragging with 20+ other people, it does make a difference.

 


<< That's because the positive GTS reviews don't have incorrect Radeon results. And why should I give it a rest? If I found a similar benchmark with low Radeon scores would you give it a rest? >>


That's seems to be the standard nVidia answer. If nVidia loses the benches HAVE to be wrong. As I stated I get higher with my Radeon as well. So if the benches are off they're probably off an equal amount on both sides. Could be he used 1.27 or an anomaly in the test machine setup.

<< And? In what way does that affect my comments about low GTS scores and 16 bit image quality/performance on a Radeon? >>


As I'm fond of saying, until you've owned and used the Radeon yout comments have no validity as they're formed from some reading you've done here and there. I HAVE owned a 32 and 64 meg GTS and of course I own a Radeon currently.


<< So, an obviously fraudulent set of GTS benchmarks has been revealed and somehow the ATi users expect me to &quot;give it a rest&quot;. Not only that, but then they accuse me of being an nVidiot for simply commenting on this fact and for commenting about the 16 bit issue with ATi's cards. >>


But of course they MUST be fraudulent mustn't they? 😉 😉
And I have certainly never called you an nVidiot, I don't believe I've ever used that term. I'm not surprised the nVidia owners are upset, I expected it. As I said I get far higher results but you don't see me accusing HardOCP of a perpetrating fraud. You think ATI paid them off?
 


<< I think you tend to let your emotions get the best of you to much. You attack to many people who do not agree with you about the quality of the ATI Radeon or who prefer their Voodoo or Geforce cards over the Radeon. >>


You may want to reconsider your use of the word attack. I take a more direct approach than your carefully placed &quot;ohs&quot; and your what you perceive to be &quot;nice&quot; attacks that you do. I believe attack to far too strong a word and you may want to reconsider that. I ONLY respond to blatant crapping like your use of &quot;oh&quot; in many Radeon threads. As a matter of fact I tend to not even read a thread with only nVidia in the title. So I could hardly be accused of attacking or crapping on nVidia threads. I haven't had a GTS in over 6 months so why would I read about what for me would be yesterday's technology? 😀
 


<< I still say that &quot;a lot&quot; can apply but I do think the regular ATI bashers are people who have never owned a Radeon. But in long threads, you always see different people saying that they weren't happy with the Radeon because of this or that and that they switched to Voodoo 5 5500 or Geforce 2 and they are happy now. >>


And there are multitudinal posts by people who swithced to the Radeon from nVidia or 3DFX and how THEY can't believe the difference in speed, playability, image quality and DVD. What's your point? Different strokes my friend. It's a lousy argument because both sides can drudge up posts like that. Just because the Radeon didn't work out for you doesn't mean you have post that point in every Radeon thread. I don't do that about the GTS in every nVidia thread. I don't see why you feel the need.
 


<< Because the MX doesn't have have abysmal performance >>


No it doesn't. For a low end card it's a good 16 bit, low resolution performer.
 


<< That's why HOCP benchmarks is waaaay low. I remeber their V5 review, where they lowered GTS scores....I see a pattern there... >>


Me too, the Radeon scores are lower than I get as well. Perhaps our machines and Q3 are tweaked a little better than the reviewer's.
 


<< Based on reviews from owners of both boards the Radeon is a card that is better overall. Might not be the best in all areas but certainly seems so in most....great 3d performance....great video quality....great DVD ability...etc. >>


Of course I agree but there are certainly people for which the GTS is better and preferrable and more power to them. I'm pleased they enjoy their cards.


<< As to the OCP review the guy states that hes an NVIDIA user (geforce2 ultra in his machine) so I hardly think there is a Radeon bias there. >>


I think a lot of people missed or chose to ignore this.
 
Taz, I don't mean to sound rude, but is there any reason why you're generating a new post for each quote you make?

That's seems to be the standard nVidia answer. If nVidia loses the benches HAVE to be wrong

Not at all. If nVidia is scoring lower than at least 10 benchmarking sites I have seen and is getting beaten by a Radeon, that's when there's a problem.

As I'm fond of saying, until you've owned and used the Radeon yout comments have no validity as they're formed from some reading you've done here and there

You're dead wrong. It's an excuse on your part which doesn't hold up very well.

You deny the Radeon's 16 bit colour looks appaling?
You deny that there's no performance boost when switching to 16 bit colour on a Radeon?

FYI I've used a Rage IIc, Rage Pro, Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro and a Rage Fury MAXX.

But of course they MUST be fraudulent mustn't they? 😉 😉

Not necesarrily fraudulent. They could just be stupid.

And I have certainly never called you an nVidiot, I don't believe I've ever used that term.

I wasn't refering to you directly. I was referring to the overall tone of this thread. Since 3dfx died it's almost like it's a crime to speak about ATi's known problems.

I'm not surprised the nVidia owners are upset, I expected it. As I said I get far higher results but you don't see me accusing HardOCP of a perpetrating fraud.

Either both results should be too low or both results should be normal. In this case the Radeon is scrong exactly what it should be, but the GTS is too low.
 


<< Not at all. If nVidia is scoring lower than at least 10 benchmarking sites I have seen and is getting beaten by a Radeon, that's when there's a problem. >>


There are newer drivers being used here. Again I score higher than they do with the Radeon as well.


<< You deny the Radeon's 16 bit colour looks appaling? >>


The RARE time I use it, don't need to as I have a Radeon and DON'T play too many older games, there was a problem with older drivers. Certainly the 70** series have MARKEDY improved the 16 Bit look and performance.


<< Not necesarrily fraudulent. They could just be stupid. >>


This isn't even worthy of comment.


<< I wasn't refering to you directly. I was referring to the overall tone of this thread. Since 3dfx died it's almost like it's a crime to speak about ATi's known problems. >>


Thank you. In my opinion it's the other way around, now that 3DFX is no more the nVidia fans have started looking for a new target.

<< Either both results should be too low or both results should be normal. In this case the Radeon is scrong exactly what it should be, but the GTS is too low. >>


You're wrong. The Radeon as I stated before is scoring lower than I get. But I have a highly tuned machine and have Quake tweaked as well as I'm sure you do. For control reasons one would assume Quake is not tweaked on this reviewers system. And I fail to see what the reviewer would have to gain by posting &quot;stupid&quot;, to quote you, nVidia results BUT completely accurate, in your opinion, Radeon results. And again I respectfully submit to you that you don't have nor have you EVER had the Radeon.
 


<< Since 3dfx died it's almost like it's a crime to speak about ATi's known problems. >>



Didn't you hear? The ATi Radeon doesn't have any problems. No, you see, it's the person who can't get it to work flawlessly right out of the box who has the problem. Apparently, this video card requires massive tweaking to the registry (not to mention the right drivers) to get it to work correctly, and, if you're an idiot who has no idea what the hell you're doing, you're screwed.

Oh, and it is a crime. Be VERY careful with what you say and how you say it. The ATi police are watching your every move. 😉
 
I've installed Radeon's on 4 different PC's. Install the card, put the drivers in. Done. No harder or easier than any other card I've ever installed.

I wish people would stop posting all that registry crap. It makes it look like all that stuff is needed to get it to run. Its not. The cheap Radeon LE cards have a software feature (HyperZ) crippled to make them a low cost card. 3 registry entries are needed to turn them back on. Non LE cards don't need them at all. There was a guy on Rage3D who edited the dlls and posted all of these unneeded registry keys. He had no idea what they did. Many people started using them and fvcked up their system. What I and Taz and post is a set that is there normally to fix the incorrect entries. Those entries are made via the normal display options. Of all of those registry tweaks you see, there is a grand total of 1 that you need to add for a couple game compatibility issues.

So there is no massive registry entries at all needed. Just thought I'd clear that up.

As far as the 16 bit image quality goes, I only have 2 games that are 16 bit. Quake 2 and Half-Life. Both look great and run very smooth. Everything else I have runs in 32 bit. Don't really care about 16 bit.

 


<< I wish people would stop posting all that registry crap. It makes it look like all that stuff is needed to get it to run. Its not. >>



Yeah, it seemed a bit overkill to me. Thanks for clearing that up.



<< As far as the 16 bit image quality goes, I only have 2 games that are 16 bit. Quake 2 and Half-Life. Both look great and run very smooth. Everything else I have runs in 32 bit. Don't really care about 16 bit. >>



Quake 2 and Half-Life have 32 bit color support. In fact, all Quake 2 engine games have it. Kingpin had it right in the in-game menu.

Question: Is the 16 bit color issue with current ATi cards hardware or driver related?
 
Compellor-

I have no doubt that some people need 16bit for certain games. That has nothing to do with the fact that the only cards that look good in 16bit are the Voodoo cards 😉

As for 16bit on the Radeon my experience has been limited to one game: NOLF. It looked like crap but that was an older driver set. Played the game in 32bit with a newer driver set and it worked fine. Never bothered to check the 16bit quality afterwards. Would be interested to know if its a driver issue or hardware however the ATI people interviewed so far have seemed to say they're not gonna concentrate on 16bit mode.

As to installation for me it was as easy as what oldfart said. When I got the board I installed the drivers and the card worked fine and it whomped ass all over my v3-2k so i was happy. Only registry change I *had* to make was to turn HyperZ on for D3D games (have one of those LE boards). Yes there are people having problems but there will be people out there who have issues with any piece of hardware. I have an MSI Pro2A motherboard and have seen people having tons of issues with it. I didnt have any problems and have seen just as many posts of people with the board who have had good luck.

Its really a shame that people have to get so damn stupid about their hardware.
 
Thank you pidge, I try. =)

I think the attack on ATI's crappy 16-bit performance is ridiculous. Playing Quake 3 in 16 bit because of a performance hit in 32 bit? There's no hit with a Radeon (well, really small), even on the 32 MB. Besides, just lower your resolution...I cannot believe that a Geforce GTS is incapable of running Q3A in 32 bit at 1024 though.

Back to the 16 bit attacks--wasn't nvidia the company saying 32 bit was the future (a couple of years ago's future would probably be today), and that voodoos sucked because there's no 32 bit? Now they are saying their 16 bit color is better than ATI's...gee, does that make sense?

Anyway, Taz, just give it up, any posts by you will be flamed by Nvidia vs. ATI posts...😉
 
Oh, and ChannelX: Yeah, ATI isn't concentrating on 16 bit because they figured, if there's neglible performance hit between 16-bit and 32-bit, everyone will just use 32 bit (like you =P).

And Oldfart: Yeah, I've installed the Radeon on let's see, a BX based P3 system, 2 VIA based P3 system, and an Athlon system and haven't had problems. I know my friend Hans007 there had a problem with Win2k/Radeon/dual monitor, but he took the second video card out and it has worked flawlessly now, with the Beta Drivers.
 


<< . Playing Quake 3 in 16 bit because of a performance hit in 32 bit? There's no hit with a Radeon (well, really small), even on the 32 MB. Besides, just lower your resolution...I cannot believe that a Geforce GTS is incapable of running Q3A in 32 bit at 1024 though. >>



All the benchmarks I've seen show a hit when playing Q3A in 32 bit color. I notice it myself, especially when playing online. I may be CPU limited. Granted, it's less of a hit on the Radeon, but the GeForce 2 GTS margin is much larger. If there's a 15+ FPS drop (on the GTS for example) using 32 bit color, you certainly can't argue the point of someone wanting to switch to 16 bit color. My best configuration for playing online is 1024 x 768, with 16 color and 32 bit textures, with S3TC enabled.
 
Wait, so how many frames per second do you get with that configuration? You must get more than the &quot;crappy&quot; benchmarks these &quot;stupid&quot; guys did, and their high quality 32 bit benchmarks were 75 fps and 55 fps for 1024, and since yours is faster, meaning more than 55, shouldn't that be enough for you to play at 1024 32 bit? Unless you have super human eyes and can see 90 fps or something.

True, 65 fps could get a little choppy, but that could be due to the fact that the Geforce is a little jumpier with max and min frame rates.
 
Taz:

There are newer drivers being used here.

There are newer drivers for nVidia as well. They are uneeded in this case because it's been proven that the old 6.16 drivers deliver higher performance than was shown.

Certainly the 70** series have MARKEDY improved the 16 Bit look and performance.

That's funny, given the 16 bit image quality issue is a result of poor filtering and is hardware related.

This isn't even worthy of comment.

Why not? If the numbers are too low either they've done it on purpose or they've made a mistake. Both reasons constitute stupidity.

The Radeon as I stated before is scoring lower than I get.

Who cares what you get? What you or I get is only important if we use the same settings as the websites used.

What's important is what the other sites are getting. Compared to the other sites with the same settings the GTS scores are TOO LOW.

Why can't you understand such a simple concept?

Hawk:

Unless you have super human eyes and can see 90 fps or something.

🙄
 
Is that all you have to say? Nothing to counter what I pointed out about the 16-bit issue? Or that higher than 55 fps at 32 bit is very playable? Go ahead, please, I really would like to see what you have to say about those two points.
 
And btw, if the drivers for Nvidia (6.16) are so fast and awesome and stable and perfect, I wonder why Nvidia is releasing more drivers? Cause lots of people are having problems? There's something left to be desired?
 
There are newer drivers for nVidia as well. They are uneeded in this case because it's been proven that the old 6.16 drivers deliver higher performance than was shown
Not on this gentleman's machine. And to reiterate Hawk's point if these were perfect drivers there'd
be no need to release new ones. And you might be surprised that MANY nVidia owners prefer the 6.31 or 6.49s so I guess your's is certainly not the majority opinion. And obviously because you did agree that there was no fraud or misrepresentation in play here that is what the reviewer scored. Now the 70* ATI drivers are quite a bit faster than the 3056s he used. Would have made for some VERY interesting numbers if he'd used them.
Who cares what you get? What you or I get is only important if we use the same settings as the websites used.What's important is what the other sites are getting. Compared to the other sites with the same settings the GTS scores are TOO LOW.

Well you just argued against yourself here. Other websites are obviously NOT using the same settings or they'd have scored lower I guess.😉. According to your findings. Those were the results, there's no ATI payoff here, he got those scores, you and I get higher, it's ridiculous to cry foul and argue against the reviewers scores because we don't own the machine he tested on. And don't forget it's very possible he was using Quake 1.27 and it's attendant lower FPS when benching.
 
I'm with BFG10K on this one though I find that a book on psychoanalysis would be a better key to this thread than a book on video cards.
Radeon has some good points and has come down to a superb price (from being overpriced on release). but Radeon ownership is several times smaller than Geforce2 ownership. look at Madonion.com for example despite this Radeon questions and whinges have been several times more numerous than Geforce2 questions.
folks the Radeon is a good card dogged by the bad attitude of their company. instead of kicking each other, kick ATi
 


<< questions and whinges are several times more numerous than Geforce2 questions.get the point?

>>


No. I don't have a clue what whinges is.
 
Travis...


Agreed that ATI has been doing a crappy job and should be the ones kicked. However I see just as many good posts as bad posts in the various forums I visit for Radeon or nvidia. It amazes me that people can feel so threatened that someones benchmark might be better than their own.
 


<< True, 65 fps could get a little choppy, but that could be due to the fact that the Geforce is a little jumpier with max and min frame rates. >>



I'm getting at least 85+ FPS at 1024 x 768 in 32 bit color; this is with seta r_swapInterval set to &quot;1&quot; and the graphic settings maxed. My monitor's refresh rate is capped at 85 Hz at that resolution, so, I won't get higher results. My point with the 16 bit color issue is that when you're playing online, with many other players, the frame rate drops quite a bit using 32 bit color. That's why I choose to play online in 16 bit color. The game is smoother in 16 bit color on my system.
 
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