Radeon 256 release date??

[Bagheera]

It does have the "potential", but shouldn't Diamond realease it when they are sure there's no problem? I mean, T&L engine was one of the features boasted on the box and the Diamond web site! I thought Viper II looked very awesome based on what I saw at Diamond's site, and I was happy for the first few days after I got Viper II (With the excellent DVD image quality and all that), but my mood began to change when I noticed glitches in graphics here and there in almost every game with true 3D graphics that I have. Half-Life, StarWars EP1 Racer, even the old Star Wars Rogue Squadron has noticeable problems in graphics when playing on the Viper II. Originally I thought it was problems with my drivers, until I saw the report at SharkyExtreme.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/s2k_indepth/

Diamond used to have a very good reputation and I really think its products' quality dropped down a little after combining with S3, I don't know why. I mean I tried MX400 also, and frankly I was not satisfied at all. The driver and utilities was not as user-friendly as the MX300 and the sound quality is not better (in fact, its synthesizer sound quality is even WORSE than the MX300). Sure it's cheaper than MX300, but nowadays you can buy MX300 on OEM for a smackdown price of $27!

 

[HannibalX]

Yeah well thats what you get when S3 starts running the show. The Mx400 was crap, I agree. I just don't think the quality of the Mx400or past tutle beach cards are anything speacial.

Yeah they should have had the TnL engine rdy when the card shipped, but S3 didn't have the balls to say they messed up after they hyped the card so much. I mean they told us it would have a 700 megatexel fill rate - that would have been 220 points higher than a GF DDR for crying out loud! But after three bad cards b4 the S2k, they didn't want to mess up again I guess.

 

[Bagheera]

*LOL* I returned my MX400 in like... 3 days after I bought it, I think (Turtle Beach cards are not good, they look so cheap from the beginning). Switched back to the older but better MX300, it is still my favorite after all.

I think the biggest problem with Diamond/S3 right now is meeting their promises. I mean, nothing wrong with assuring your loyal customers (And Diamond had so many loyal customers ok...) that your next product will be great, but S3 really left me dissapointed. I certainly hope next time S3 can actually make something that actually work the way they said it would be.

 

[HannibalX]

Yeah I have loved S3 since the 80's when they built good video cards, but when the 3D market took over they went dow hill. They haven't had a sucessful card (performance wise, they all seem to outsell their compedators though) since 1994. The ViRGE - Failed, Savage 3D - Failed, Savage 4 - Failed, and sadly now Savage 2000 - Failed. I think they need a new name, "Savage" seems to be hexxed hehe

 

[Bagheera]

Well S3 still has its place in acceleration 2D graphics. Office operations and system applications are running fine on their cards. I guess S3 is just not for gamers addicted to 3D graphics but well...

BTW S3 outsells their competitors because their cards are so cheap. Savage 4, for example, may not have been a very fast card but they were like $100 cheaper than competitors' cards like the Voodoos. The biggest thing they should work on now is to actually raise the quality, not always making something crappy and stay in the low price range.

As for the name "Savage", I don't know! Do you like the name, actually? When I bought the card I actually thought it sounded good (It reminds me of an old Discovery Channel game, also titled "Savage". The game itself is nothing high-end but it was an interesting experience because in the game you play the role of a LION, not a human. And you are right now talking to a big cat lover here. ). Anyways, the name might be getting old, just like the ATI's Rage Fury series, altho I don't know exactly what the name "Radeon" has to do with anything (You know, Radeon doesn't sound like anything... fierce or furious, a quality of high-end graphic accelerators.)

 

[HannibalX]

Yeah your right, everyone isn't a gamer, and you can only run Excel "so" fast anyhow. S3 cards since the 3D world has come aobut (after the ViRGE) have been cheap, but I can remember when they were the most exspensive, only ATi cards were higher priced.

I always though "Savage" was sort of silly, I remember when I got my CL Savage4 I thought it was odd then

 

[KarlHungus]

Goi -

Sorry this response is so late.

I agree that the GeForce has those numbers, but the Mpix/s is a much better number to quote (if the card has it). Then again I've never liked the texel anyways, it's just pure marketing...

 

[OneEng]

nVidia has said that they are happy with a single chip solution since currently they can do what the competition does with 2 chips with one already.

I believe this is short sighted on their part. They are able to keep up with (and surpass) the V5 ONLY because the current encarnation of the 3dfx card uses SDR RAM to make it cost competitive with the GeForce GTS. Considering the current memory bandwidth limitations imposed on the 3D card market due to RAM component technology, multiple processors seems to be the only solution to bypass the fill rate limit. Should ATI emerge with a 2 chip solution on DDR with each chip having nearly GeForce GTS power in each chip, nVidia's speed crown would swiftly change hands.

For nVidia's sake, I hope they are working on a multi-chip design.

 

[Goi]

No problem Karl...its amazing how threads like this get filled up with replies
Anyway, you said Mpixels/s is the better number to quote. I would tend to disagree, since most games nowadays are multi-textured, so all the texturing units(usually 2) per pixel pipeline gets to be utilized, rather than just 1 unit per pipeline for a single-textured game. Of course, a 4 pixel pipeline chip with 1 texturing unit per pipeline would be more flexible than a 2 pixel pipeline chip with 2 texturing units, since all pipelines of the former will be used 100% of the time, regardless of application, but most of the time the latter chip would perform just as well, since it has the same texturing fillrate(in Mtexels/s) as the former if clocked similarly.

 

[ricochet72]

Radeons will start shipping to the initial lauch partners in the first week of August, customers should start seeing their cards by the second week. Some of the initial pricing and availability from online retailers is based on early guesses about the product - I expect we'll see 'price corrections' by the time they actually receive product - as memory prices have been increasing, and is indeed affecting the final launch price - which was just set on Monday 7/17.

Ryan Douthit
ComputerStop.com
an ATI RADEON launch partner
Click Here for your Radeon:
http://www.computerstop.com/CStop/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&Product_ID=1646&CATID=1

 

[ricochet72]

Hey, I thought it was useful information. <shrug>

 

[SSP]

well... all this doesnt matter anyway (isn't this an old thread?). The Radeon kick some major ass!