nVidia vs ATi Driver Roundup At Anandtech.

[BFG10K]

Link.

All I can say is that ATi have a lot of work to do in their Windows 2000 drivers. Also I'd have liked to have seen DMZG tests to see if ATi have fixed the sky problems.

 

[WetWilly]

Hmmm ... this thread is surprisingly quiet.

 

[bluemax]

It was enough to give me a few doubts.... ATI is getting better all the time but there's still a bit of "issue" here. I'm considering making the switch to Win2000, so it kinda' concerns me.

Then I found an ad for a very cheap voodoo5. I don't like registry tweaking, so I think the V5 would be better for me.

 

[RoboTECH]

WetWilly, I've found that my own results don't always jive with anand's results for their video card reviews. I'll take their mobo reviews as gospel, however.

 

[TravisBickle]

the review's a good idea. people are tempted to believe the hearsay around here that suggests because ATi release drivers more frequently now things are OK.
they aren't.

 

[Compellor]

<< Hmmm ... this thread is surprisingly quiet >>



Gee, I wonder why?

 

[Kelvrick]

Um.... BFG10K, isn't the sky problem in the geforce cards?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Kelvrick-

No, he is talking about DMZG, not Quake3. Fog Table Emulation is currently broken in the ATi drivers so the sky gets screwed up in DMZG.

 

[ElFenix]

3 months until radeon 2 comes out? isn't that like a year since radeon? what happened to ATi saying they were going to keep up with nvidia's planned obsolesence cycle? although... its almost been a year since gf2 came out... like 10 months... wow

 

[WetWilly]

What I found surprising was that a day after the article was posted, BFG10K's post was the only one in General Hardware or the Video forums. I expected Taz, Oldfart and the rest of the ATI crew to at least weigh in with an opinion on the article.

That said, and even without having absolute faith in Anand's tests, I'm not sure that the results are that much of a surprise. It's a fact that the Radeon's Win2K support has been lagging behind Win98 support, and if ATI is going to catch up, I'd logically expect them to optimize for the Quake3 engine/OpenGL first. The D3D benches are in line with the original drivers' Win2K shortcomings. The real problem comes if Radeon II is released and the drivers are in the same state.

 

[KevinH]

I tested No One Lives Forever at Fox Interactive and trust me when I say that the Radeon is a headache and a half. It's amazing how so many people preach that the Radeon has better image quality then the Nvidia cards. Bah, get a better monitor, that's total and complete bs. Ask ANYONE in the industry and they'll tell you the same thing. I love it when people fabricate subjective qualities of their card when the numbers don't prove that &quot;their&quot; card is the best. Don't miss the point however, the Radeon is a great card for the price. All I'm saying is that it has some serious issues (such as not being able to do ANY of the fog affects in the game, text overlay issues in Direct 3d (and before you say it's just our title, try Diablo 2 in Direct 3d instead of Direct draw). Am I saying this will occur in ALL games, hell no. But it is a cause for concern. It's a damned shame too because most of these issues can be addressed with driver updates. Oh yeah, screw you Nvidia...700 bucks for a damned video card? A big middle finger all around to these bunch of momos. Sorry for the rant but I'm tired of hardware company's charging and arm and a leg for MARGINAL improvements at the user end.