Originally posted by: coldpower27
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Originally posted by: Genx87
Does any of this surprise you? ATI has a history of rebranding old GPUs for their mid to lower end. How many generations did the 8500 hold down the low end for ATI?
Uh... that would be two (the 8500 was also the 9100). They moved to the X300 and then the X1300 after that, both of which had the same hardware capabilities as the other cards in the same generation.
NVIDIA has done the same thing too (although not on the last couple of generations). The Geforce "4" MX was the most atrocious example, containing hardware that was actually two full generations old at that point -- it didn't even have HWT&L, which the GF3 had, and prevented it from running newer games that other GF4 cards could handle.
It's stupid no matter who is doing it. If the card doesn't have the same hardware capabilities as the other hardware in the same 'generation', it needs to be differentiated more clearly than just having a different number or a suffix on the end. I've stated my dissatisfaction with both ATI and NVIDIA for this practice before, and I don't understand why ATI/AMD has done it again with their latest generation of hardware. If the underlying hardware is based on the X1300, call it an X1350 or something along those lines, not an X2300.
No some of the information provided is simply incorrect, Geforce 4 MX was an enhanced Geforce 2 MX with a Crossbar Memory Controller and better AA if I am not mistaken and since Geforce 2's all had HW T&L, then so did Geforce 4 MX's. It was fully complaint DX7.0 hardware. They were also much superior to the value cards they were replacing, a Geforce 4 MX 440 has equivalent performance to a full Geforce 2 GTS/Pro while a Geforce 2 MX is only 1/2 that or so.
From the Geforce FX Generation onward, Nvidia has had hardware from the same generation in practically all segments.
ATI has had more situations of branding hardware that was old as new. Radeon 8500 came back in 2 forms, low end cards of Radeon 9000/9200 and the 9100 which was effectively the 8500 renamed.
For the R4xx generation, Radeon X300, X550 and X600 was not based on the same technology as Radeon X700/X8x0 cards. They were still based on older RV3xx lines.
ATI has been behaving to my knowledge with the Radeon X1K Series, with all of them being Shader Model 3.0 capable.