Radeon 64 VS. GTS 64 In depth Review
- Thread starter Taz4158
- Start date
We have constructed this article to be your one-stop reference point for everything Radeon. We cover all the technology, all the boards, a typical retail package, bugs, over-clocking, and also detail all the applications and menus. Plus we benchmark the top performing Radeon board against a standard GeForce2 card covering issues such as texture compression, anti-aliasing and mutli-texturing and pit the cards head-to-head with equal clocking. Most of the links in this article point to pages that are hosted by us and are therefore guaranteed not to vanish into the electronic ether. Enjoy
How nice of a Radeon based site to compare their "Top Performing" card to a "standard" GF2 card.
Anything that starts off this blatantly biased going in, isn't worth the bandwidth or time to bother reading.
BTW, How on earth are they getting such low scores with the GF2 card? I don't know about the Radeons's numbers, but the GF2's are much lower than I'm getting with my 32meg GF2 GTS card.
How nice of a Radeon based site to compare their "Top Performing" card to a "standard" GF2 card.
Anything that starts off this blatantly biased going in, isn't worth the bandwidth or time to bother reading.
BTW, How on earth are they getting such low scores with the GF2 card? I don't know about the Radeons's numbers, but the GF2's are much lower than I'm getting with my 32meg GF2 GTS card.
It's 64 meg versus 64 meg. The standard version of EACH. No Ultra, no pro as there is no Radeon equivelant. The top performing Radeon they refer to is the retail rather than OEM. Again it makes for interesting reading regardless of which side of the fence you're on.
It all depends on who built the fence.
An article comparing US and Cuban economies would have totally different results it either side wrote it.
An article comparing US and Cuban economies would have totally different results it either side wrote it.
Wow, I'm surprised you posted a link to this review....
"The NVIDIA drivers are extremely polished in this regard, and it would be difficult for the less mature ATi drivers to match this quality straight off the bat. Although the Radeon performance is more than acceptable, it did seem to suffer more from dips in the frame-rate as the viewpoint changed. For example, when rounding a corner for the first time a new part of the scenery is revealed and this may require additional data to be uploaded to the graphics card. Almost all graphics cards will suffer from some type of dip in performance when this occurs, but it is the mark of a good driver to keep the data flow consistent and to keep such hiccups to a minimum."
"It's true to say that most modern graphics cards implement all the basic features and for this reason they all produce a very similar image quality. The Radeon is no exception, and it was virtually impossible to distinguish between Deus Ex being played on a GeForce2 card or on a Radeon card. This was especially true in 32-bit color where not only the image quality, but also the performance was identical."
Goes very strongly against everything the ATi advocates have been saying(although, anything negative about ATi is
), particularly the top part where they explicitly bring up that the Radeon was inferior in terms of maintaining a smooth framerate.....
IMHO my assumption is always that you have a configuration issue when you see erratic framerates, be it from ATi, nVidia or 3dfx.
"The NVIDIA drivers are extremely polished in this regard, and it would be difficult for the less mature ATi drivers to match this quality straight off the bat. Although the Radeon performance is more than acceptable, it did seem to suffer more from dips in the frame-rate as the viewpoint changed. For example, when rounding a corner for the first time a new part of the scenery is revealed and this may require additional data to be uploaded to the graphics card. Almost all graphics cards will suffer from some type of dip in performance when this occurs, but it is the mark of a good driver to keep the data flow consistent and to keep such hiccups to a minimum."
"It's true to say that most modern graphics cards implement all the basic features and for this reason they all produce a very similar image quality. The Radeon is no exception, and it was virtually impossible to distinguish between Deus Ex being played on a GeForce2 card or on a Radeon card. This was especially true in 32-bit color where not only the image quality, but also the performance was identical."
Goes very strongly against everything the ATi advocates have been saying(although, anything negative about ATi is
), particularly the top part where they explicitly bring up that the Radeon was inferior in terms of maintaining a smooth framerate.....IMHO my assumption is always that you have a configuration issue when you see erratic framerates, be it from ATi, nVidia or 3dfx.
Of course what you quoted was out of context. The whole review must be read. As for why I posted it, it doesn't matter which card wins or doesn't win, I may prefer ATI by a large margin but I certainly am open minded. If the article is read as a whole it certainly is not pro ATI and makes good points for both cards.
<< IMHO my assumption is always that you have a configuration issue when you see erratic framerates, be it from ATi, nVidia or 3dfx. >>
I would agree with you.
<< IMHO my assumption is always that you have a configuration issue when you see erratic framerates, be it from ATi, nVidia or 3dfx. >>
I would agree with you.
"Of course what you quoted was out of context."
Of course the whole review should be read, but add all you would like and the quotes I pulled still do not look any different at all. Not every card is perfect, but he directly brings up two points on his own that the Radeon is equal/lacking in that have been repeatedly claimed to be ATi strongpoints. Overall I thought the review was extremely fair, pointing out issues with both boards and conducting fair benchmarks(now maybe at least a few people will see that 3DMark2K isn't so bad after all when you run it in 32bit, the Radeon was besting the GF2 in some of those scores).
Of course the whole review should be read, but add all you would like and the quotes I pulled still do not look any different at all. Not every card is perfect, but he directly brings up two points on his own that the Radeon is equal/lacking in that have been repeatedly claimed to be ATi strongpoints. Overall I thought the review was extremely fair, pointing out issues with both boards and conducting fair benchmarks(now maybe at least a few people will see that 3DMark2K isn't so bad after all when you run it in 32bit, the Radeon was besting the GF2 in some of those scores).
<< Of course the whole review should be read, but add all you would like and the quotes I pulled still do not look any different at all. Not every card is perfect, but he directly brings up two points on his own that the Radeon is equal/lacking in that have been repeatedly claimed to be ATi strongpoints. Overall I thought the review was extremely fair, pointing out issues with both boards and conducting fair benchmarks(now maybe at least a few people will see that 3DMark2K isn't so bad after all when you run it in 32bit, the Radeon was besting the GF2 in some of those scores). >>
It probably is the most balanced review of the two I've seen yet. He does make good points on both cards strengths and weaknesses. Might go a long way to helping people make up their minds between the two cards. The pricing of the NV20 looks like it's going to keep it out of the running for a lot of people for the foreseeable future.
SonOfZeuz-
I know you are new around here(and I hope the other guys remember that), we don't put any faith at all into the mainstream press. I have read through the review you linked to(in magazine form) and have to say that it is extremely misleading at best.
They bring up one of the big plusses for the V5 as having FSAA and talking about its' benefits without mentioning the fact that every single one of the boards they tested also has FSAA(though 3dfx's is the best) and also didn't go into the enormous performance hit when it is enabled on any of the boards. That is just one example(I could list many more, one example being that they list image quality of nigh identical boards all over the place while if setup properly they should look nigh identical, just with that single article and it is common amongst any of the mainstream press's reviews, including gaming mags).
Taz-
You keep making statements about the prcing of the NV20 as if it is fact, are you absolutely positive on the numbers you have seen?
I know you are new around here(and I hope the other guys remember that), we don't put any faith at all into the mainstream press. I have read through the review you linked to(in magazine form) and have to say that it is extremely misleading at best.
They bring up one of the big plusses for the V5 as having FSAA and talking about its' benefits without mentioning the fact that every single one of the boards they tested also has FSAA(though 3dfx's is the best) and also didn't go into the enormous performance hit when it is enabled on any of the boards. That is just one example(I could list many more, one example being that they list image quality of nigh identical boards all over the place while if setup properly they should look nigh identical, just with that single article and it is common amongst any of the mainstream press's reviews, including gaming mags).
Taz-
You keep making statements about the prcing of the NV20 as if it is fact, are you absolutely positive on the numbers you have seen?
OH yeah, the best buy card is $500! The article also doesn't include a Radeon Vivo. With current price drops a Vivo can be had for under $200 - not as fast as an Ultra, but with better performance and features _per_ dollar.
BTW, PC world may be less biased (I don't know, maybe/maybe not), they're also a bit less savvy than the best hardware review sites (IMO).
You know, Taz made an pretty neutral post - all he said is that it was interesting reading, and the self appointed NVidia police come out and shoot him in the head (maybe that's why Cuba came to mind when you were posting Mr TV).
-AJ
BTW, PC world may be less biased (I don't know, maybe/maybe not), they're also a bit less savvy than the best hardware review sites (IMO).
You know, Taz made an pretty neutral post - all he said is that it was interesting reading, and the self appointed NVidia police come out and shoot him in the head (maybe that's why Cuba came to mind when you were posting Mr TV).
-AJ
<< You keep making statements about the prcing of the NV20 as if it is fact, are you absolutely positive on the numbers you have seen?
>>Everything I have seen and heard including pricing from our distributors indicate this. If you have anything contrary to this I'm certainly interested in hearing it and will retract what I've stated.
I've found computer magazines' expertise very thin on the ground. a magazine reviewed the Creative Geforce MX for example noting it as a DDR board. they never gave a hint of suspecting it was 64bit DDR. the article went out to over 100,000 readers. software articles are also clueless.
if you keep up with technology news on the net then you're likely to know better than 90% of the magazine hacks.
if you keep up with technology news on the net then you're likely to know better than 90% of the magazine hacks.
Just a couple of comments:
"If we want to compare equivalent image quality, then I feel fully justified in comparing the performance of the Radeon with texture compression enabled against that of the GeForce2 with it disabled. So how does the Radeon stack up then?"
No to compare equivalent image quality would be to turn off Texture compression on both cards. While the ATIs hack makes some textures look better there are still errors in the texture compression.
"With hardware T&L disabled CPU limiting occurs at a much lower frame-rate, but the relative performance of the two cards remains unchanged. Therefore we can conclude that it is definitely the memory speed which is responsible for the superior high-end performance of the Radeon card (as we would expect). Actually the benefits gained from hardware T&L are very similar for both cards, demonstrating that the T&L engine from ATi is every bit as good as the one from NVIDIA. The following graph compares the T&L performance of both cards separately."
Hmmm that is rash conculsion being that this isn't true at all. The ATIs T&L engine isn't even half as fast as the NVidia T&L engine. This is just another place where he doesn't relize that the 183Mhz clock speed for the memory compared to the 166Mhz for the GTS helps out.
"If we want to compare equivalent image quality, then I feel fully justified in comparing the performance of the Radeon with texture compression enabled against that of the GeForce2 with it disabled. So how does the Radeon stack up then?"
No to compare equivalent image quality would be to turn off Texture compression on both cards. While the ATIs hack makes some textures look better there are still errors in the texture compression.
"With hardware T&L disabled CPU limiting occurs at a much lower frame-rate, but the relative performance of the two cards remains unchanged. Therefore we can conclude that it is definitely the memory speed which is responsible for the superior high-end performance of the Radeon card (as we would expect). Actually the benefits gained from hardware T&L are very similar for both cards, demonstrating that the T&L engine from ATi is every bit as good as the one from NVIDIA. The following graph compares the T&L performance of both cards separately."
Hmmm that is rash conculsion being that this isn't true at all. The ATIs T&L engine isn't even half as fast as the NVidia T&L engine. This is just another place where he doesn't relize that the 183Mhz clock speed for the memory compared to the 166Mhz for the GTS helps out.
<< An unbiasd review can be found here Graphics Boards Review >>
I found it interesting how the gladiac ultra had excellent image quality, but the gladiac gts was only satisfactory.. funny how they are exacltly the same other than the memory speed... maybe faster memory looks better?
at any rate, I read the entire article originally posted on this board, and found it was one of the most objective comparisons I've read.
hi. I just replaced a geforce 2 gts with a Radeon 64mb... OMG image quality is much much crisper and solid. I loved my nvidia tnt2 ultra and gf2 (had nvidia cards for 2 yrs), but deng, ATI did a good job with the RADEON. Btw, I play Quake3, and i can see a big difference.
Dizway
p.s. i get 1 more fps with the radeon, which doesn't give me an fps hit for changing (104fps)
Dizway
p.s. i get 1 more fps with the radeon, which doesn't give me an fps hit for changing (104fps)
CaiNaM, though there may not be much difference between the chips on the boards, the components used can differ alot.
Most people agree that the biggest problem with GF's 2D quality isnt the GTS itself, but rather the RMI filters used, which is why some boards have better image quality than others.
So, if Elsa felt like using very high quality components on the Ultra, while using cheaper componnets on the GTS, there would be a difference.
Most people agree that the biggest problem with GF's 2D quality isnt the GTS itself, but rather the RMI filters used, which is why some boards have better image quality than others.
So, if Elsa felt like using very high quality components on the Ultra, while using cheaper componnets on the GTS, there would be a difference.
Actually Elsa/Visiontek is said to use high quality parts on all of the cards they produce. That is one of the reasons ppl recommend those cards over some of the other GTS cards. I always thought the image quality on my 32mb Elsa Gladiac GTS card looked pretty good, although I still did the rfi filter mod. The image quality looks good on both my Elsa Gladiac and my AIW Radeon card. Although, I do have to give a slight performance edge to my GTS over my AIW Radeon.
The image quality looks good on both my Elsa Gladiac and my AIW Radeon card. Although, I do have to give a slight performance edge to my GTS over my AIW Radeon."I know you are new around here(and I hope the other guys remember that), we don't put any faith at all into the mainstream press. I have read through the review you linked to(in magazine form) and have to say that it is extremely misleading at best."
Ah to be young again........
It's always fun to see the brave and mighty young rebels who go against the establishment, much as they stand against their parents and their teachers. It's even better when they make it so amusing. I remember those carefree days of youth where everybody was wrong except my small group of friends, and we were the only ones who Got It. Oh the memories....
Thank god we all grew up!
Yes, I guess that all the magazines and "Mainstream" sources are wrong. All the people who have been working with computers and technology before most webmasters even knew how to tie their shoes must be wrong. It is of course, the teenagers who write articles on "How to blow up your monitor real good" and "Last night I set my video card on fire" who are the real experts.
Blaming the "Establishment" or the "Mainstream" is the cheapest and easiest excuse for getting around the truth, or trying to discredit someone only because you disagree with them. It reminds me of those school days of years gone past when "Our way was the right way" simply because "We said so!"
Anandtech is one of the few websites that are worth their salt, and they deserve credit for that. The web as a whole is cluttered with garbage and self proclaimed gurus. The best part is, for just a $20-$30 domain name registration fee, you too can start a website and spread the truth, and correct those horrible and evil "Mainstream" bastards.
No disrespect to Bob Skywalker or anyone else.
I was just in a reflective mood after joining the forums and reading my first thread here, and thought I would say a few words on behalf of the people who do more than play video games. You must realize that every source; magazine, TV, radio, or web is imperfect and each has it's share of bias and poor journalism. To label all magazines as "Mainstream", and then to label all mainstream as bad, is just wrong.
Now let's all work hard and have a terrific day!
Oops, had to edit my post for a typo. Glad I didn't do that at work. My evil mainstream boss would have hurt me.
Ah to be young again........
It's always fun to see the brave and mighty young rebels who go against the establishment, much as they stand against their parents and their teachers. It's even better when they make it so amusing. I remember those carefree days of youth where everybody was wrong except my small group of friends, and we were the only ones who Got It. Oh the memories....
Thank god we all grew up!
Yes, I guess that all the magazines and "Mainstream" sources are wrong. All the people who have been working with computers and technology before most webmasters even knew how to tie their shoes must be wrong. It is of course, the teenagers who write articles on "How to blow up your monitor real good" and "Last night I set my video card on fire" who are the real experts.
Blaming the "Establishment" or the "Mainstream" is the cheapest and easiest excuse for getting around the truth, or trying to discredit someone only because you disagree with them. It reminds me of those school days of years gone past when "Our way was the right way" simply because "We said so!"
Anandtech is one of the few websites that are worth their salt, and they deserve credit for that. The web as a whole is cluttered with garbage and self proclaimed gurus. The best part is, for just a $20-$30 domain name registration fee, you too can start a website and spread the truth, and correct those horrible and evil "Mainstream" bastards.
No disrespect to Bob Skywalker or anyone else.
I was just in a reflective mood after joining the forums and reading my first thread here, and thought I would say a few words on behalf of the people who do more than play video games. You must realize that every source; magazine, TV, radio, or web is imperfect and each has it's share of bias and poor journalism. To label all magazines as "Mainstream", and then to label all mainstream as bad, is just wrong.
Now let's all work hard and have a terrific day!
Oops, had to edit my post for a typo. Glad I didn't do that at work. My evil mainstream boss would have hurt me.
Smack, although I see where you are coming from in your post, there is a bit more to it than going against "the establishment". Typically, the mainstream press is FAR less saavy than what you'll see online. They make errors all over the place. They simply aren't "gaming oriented", they're office-oriented, so they miss quite a bit of stuff.
So, in essence, Bob Skywalker was correct
So, in essence, Bob Skywalker was correct
BFG10K
Lifer
- Aug 14, 2000
- 22,709
- 3,002
- 126
Ah to be young again........
SmackDaddy I can tell you're new here, because otherwise you would have never posted something like this about BenSkywalker.
RoboTECH:
Typically, the mainstream press is FAR less saavy than what you'll see online. They make errors all over the place.
Yeah, and also remember a lot of online places don't know what they're on about as well. There are a lot of techie wannabes out there.
SmackDaddy I can tell you're new here, because otherwise you would have never posted something like this about BenSkywalker.
RoboTECH:
Typically, the mainstream press is FAR less saavy than what you'll see online. They make errors all over the place.
Yeah, and also remember a lot of online places don't know what they're on about as well. There are a lot of techie wannabes out there.
SmackDaddy-
Where to start? First off, you are very much mistaken if you anyway take my comments as anything leaning towards any anti-establishment feelings, quite the contrary. I'm a very happy MS owner/user(tried Linux, was far from impressed), get my print news from the Times and Journal with USA Today taking care of my sports fix, and watch MSNBC more then any other TV station. I've been a registered voter since I turned eighteen and have voted, in an orderly fashion no less, in many elections throughout the years. Anti-establishment? I assure you that isn't close to being anywhere near one of my personality traits. I'd rather give "the man" a pat on the back then anything else
If your assumption is that I'm too yong to have been involved with PC technology for very long you are mistaken yet again. My first "PC" was Apple hardware that booted to a Microsoft OS, maybe not quite Altair vintage but I've been an active user/enthusiast since before the GUI was in anything close to a mainstream machine.
Now on to the real points. The mainstream press is extremely poor in nearly every aspect save writing. Their facts are on a regular basis suspect if not flat out wrong, they fail in a grand fashion to give anything the amount of focus it deserves and often times give extremely misleading summaries.
The review linked to above was a good example. They failed in any way to give a proper breakdown of the boards features. Seventeen "pages", closer to about five pages worth of text, for fourteen cards? Laughable at best, disgustingly inadequate is probably closer. I'm firmly of the mindset that seventeen full pages isn't enough for one board, let alone fourteen. What were the system specs for the machine they were using(BIOS revision, exact driver revisions, HD, CD/DVD, sound card)? What were the particular benchmarks they used for each in game test and why on Earth did they use a ~two year old version of tS to bench with? Was it an active effort to ignore hardware T&L and make the 3dfx boards fair better in 3D visualization? Or was it ignorance to the fact that it is a long outdated test? Either ignorance or dishonesty are the only two choices I can see for why something like that would happen.
Another problem with the mainstream PC press is their predictability. Pre built comparison in a ZD publication? Dell placed first, followed by Gateway with the other companies who happen to spend less on advertising filling out the low end of the charts.
"AMD is going to die"... how many times was the FUD heard over and over again by the mainstream PC press? Was that complete ignorance about the PC industry, or were there advertisement influences involved? It is hard to understand how anyone could spend more then six months looking at the very basics of CPU technology and the PC industry as a whole, particularly the rather harsh strong arm tactics of Intel towards OEMs, and not have realized that the Athlon was going to be a huge boost for AMD. Instead, we heard over and over again how they were going to die.
Then there was the nVidia issues. After 3dfx's acquisition of STB, a move that was clearly moronic to anyone with any understanding of their market position, a great deal of the mainstream press was questioning whether or not nVidia would be able to survive without their largest OEM and how could they possibly compete with the "new and improved"(clearly paraphrasing) 3dfx. This was foolish. I wish the archives on this board went back a bit further then they do as I could point to the time this was going on that the majority of people on this board, 3dfx, nVidia or ATi biased, all saw it as a tremendous blunder. The mainstream PC press hailed this as 3dfx's move that would put them into contention with ATi for the market crown while likely hurting severely if not flat out destroying nVidia.
And then there was Linux. The hype over Linux last year that the mainstream fueled was hurtful for the platform in the long run. How many people took the plunge only to format their harddrive in frustration over the not even close to ready for prime time OS? This left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of users, memories that will linger long after the problems are gone. The mainstream is too hungry to jump on the next bandwagon to be properly critical IMHO, exhibiting time and time again that they rush to make proclamations without anything resembling proper analytical thinking. Of all the mainstream PC journalists the only one I can think of that I can respect is Dvorak, and that is mainly because of his great sense of humor.
Teenage journalists, as you brought up, at small websites. I will say that there is a teenage member on this forum who has his own site whom I would put up against anyone at any of the mainstream publications for knowledge on video cards and 3D technology, any day. Some of these people you wish to dismiss as kids are engineers for some of the large technology companies, writing white papers and helping to design the products that give the mainstream press something to write about.
As far as people who do more then play video games, the review in particular that I quoted was of games cards that ran as high as $500. If you are buying one of these and you don't play games then you are quite frankly a moron. This discussion was about gaming cards, so the fact that we are discussing gaming cards makes sense. If you comment about a TV for watching a movie are we supposed to deduce that all you do is sit on your but all day watching movies? Seems like a simpleton point of view if you ask me. If the discussion here was about 3D CAD or visualzation workstations/graphics cards the only difference would be that you wouldn't have very many, if any, people on this board disagreeing with me
Why can we so label mainstream press as sub par in one broad generalization? It is simple, the level of technical expertise required to so much as understand a proper review or discussion on the subject matter relegates you to a niche audience. I don't want to know about the pretty box, though I am interested in the sampling pattern utilized for any type of anti-aliasing implementation and also the specifics of the texture filtering used to accompany said AA if the implementation is one based on L&E or MS instead of the SS based AA we currently have. I'm also interested in hearing about the specifics on feature implementation that is not yet utilized by any software applications or games. Does the average mainstream PC publication consumer? No, definately not. Because of all these factors I will continue to think of the mainstream PC press as the AOL of PC information.
Where to start? First off, you are very much mistaken if you anyway take my comments as anything leaning towards any anti-establishment feelings, quite the contrary. I'm a very happy MS owner/user(tried Linux, was far from impressed), get my print news from the Times and Journal with USA Today taking care of my sports fix, and watch MSNBC more then any other TV station. I've been a registered voter since I turned eighteen and have voted, in an orderly fashion no less, in many elections throughout the years. Anti-establishment? I assure you that isn't close to being anywhere near one of my personality traits. I'd rather give "the man" a pat on the back then anything else
If your assumption is that I'm too yong to have been involved with PC technology for very long you are mistaken yet again. My first "PC" was Apple hardware that booted to a Microsoft OS, maybe not quite Altair vintage but I've been an active user/enthusiast since before the GUI was in anything close to a mainstream machine.
Now on to the real points. The mainstream press is extremely poor in nearly every aspect save writing. Their facts are on a regular basis suspect if not flat out wrong, they fail in a grand fashion to give anything the amount of focus it deserves and often times give extremely misleading summaries.
The review linked to above was a good example. They failed in any way to give a proper breakdown of the boards features. Seventeen "pages", closer to about five pages worth of text, for fourteen cards? Laughable at best, disgustingly inadequate is probably closer. I'm firmly of the mindset that seventeen full pages isn't enough for one board, let alone fourteen. What were the system specs for the machine they were using(BIOS revision, exact driver revisions, HD, CD/DVD, sound card)? What were the particular benchmarks they used for each in game test and why on Earth did they use a ~two year old version of tS to bench with? Was it an active effort to ignore hardware T&L and make the 3dfx boards fair better in 3D visualization? Or was it ignorance to the fact that it is a long outdated test? Either ignorance or dishonesty are the only two choices I can see for why something like that would happen.
Another problem with the mainstream PC press is their predictability. Pre built comparison in a ZD publication? Dell placed first, followed by Gateway with the other companies who happen to spend less on advertising filling out the low end of the charts.
"AMD is going to die"... how many times was the FUD heard over and over again by the mainstream PC press? Was that complete ignorance about the PC industry, or were there advertisement influences involved? It is hard to understand how anyone could spend more then six months looking at the very basics of CPU technology and the PC industry as a whole, particularly the rather harsh strong arm tactics of Intel towards OEMs, and not have realized that the Athlon was going to be a huge boost for AMD. Instead, we heard over and over again how they were going to die.
Then there was the nVidia issues. After 3dfx's acquisition of STB, a move that was clearly moronic to anyone with any understanding of their market position, a great deal of the mainstream press was questioning whether or not nVidia would be able to survive without their largest OEM and how could they possibly compete with the "new and improved"(clearly paraphrasing) 3dfx. This was foolish. I wish the archives on this board went back a bit further then they do as I could point to the time this was going on that the majority of people on this board, 3dfx, nVidia or ATi biased, all saw it as a tremendous blunder. The mainstream PC press hailed this as 3dfx's move that would put them into contention with ATi for the market crown while likely hurting severely if not flat out destroying nVidia.
And then there was Linux. The hype over Linux last year that the mainstream fueled was hurtful for the platform in the long run. How many people took the plunge only to format their harddrive in frustration over the not even close to ready for prime time OS? This left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of users, memories that will linger long after the problems are gone. The mainstream is too hungry to jump on the next bandwagon to be properly critical IMHO, exhibiting time and time again that they rush to make proclamations without anything resembling proper analytical thinking. Of all the mainstream PC journalists the only one I can think of that I can respect is Dvorak, and that is mainly because of his great sense of humor.
Teenage journalists, as you brought up, at small websites. I will say that there is a teenage member on this forum who has his own site whom I would put up against anyone at any of the mainstream publications for knowledge on video cards and 3D technology, any day. Some of these people you wish to dismiss as kids are engineers for some of the large technology companies, writing white papers and helping to design the products that give the mainstream press something to write about.
As far as people who do more then play video games, the review in particular that I quoted was of games cards that ran as high as $500. If you are buying one of these and you don't play games then you are quite frankly a moron. This discussion was about gaming cards, so the fact that we are discussing gaming cards makes sense. If you comment about a TV for watching a movie are we supposed to deduce that all you do is sit on your but all day watching movies? Seems like a simpleton point of view if you ask me. If the discussion here was about 3D CAD or visualzation workstations/graphics cards the only difference would be that you wouldn't have very many, if any, people on this board disagreeing with me
Why can we so label mainstream press as sub par in one broad generalization? It is simple, the level of technical expertise required to so much as understand a proper review or discussion on the subject matter relegates you to a niche audience. I don't want to know about the pretty box, though I am interested in the sampling pattern utilized for any type of anti-aliasing implementation and also the specifics of the texture filtering used to accompany said AA if the implementation is one based on L&E or MS instead of the SS based AA we currently have. I'm also interested in hearing about the specifics on feature implementation that is not yet utilized by any software applications or games. Does the average mainstream PC publication consumer? No, definately not. Because of all these factors I will continue to think of the mainstream PC press as the AOL of PC information.
Is Anandtech biased?
Or, if you think so, is Anandtech more biased than a site devoted to a specific card?
If you answered no to either of these, than check out his up-to-date comparison review of the Radeon 64 Vs. GTS 64, in both Win'98 and W2K. Best comparison done in months, that was from a site not based around any specific card.
ATI vs NVIDIA: Driver performance under Win98 & Win2K
Or, if you think so, is Anandtech more biased than a site devoted to a specific card?
If you answered no to either of these, than check out his up-to-date comparison review of the Radeon 64 Vs. GTS 64, in both Win'98 and W2K. Best comparison done in months, that was from a site not based around any specific card.
ATI vs NVIDIA: Driver performance under Win98 & Win2K
Judging by the results it's my suspicion that he didn't enable all three parts of HyperZ. Those results don't seem to coincide with having HyperZ active.
"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"DisableHierarchicalZ is disabled by default.
"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"DisableHierarchicalZ is disabled by default.
Skywalker, reply to what you had to say is two part.
Part 1- It's easy to call others ugly when you live in a house with no mirrors.
Part 2- Most of it was absurd, and you implied things I never said. I was not even talking about any particular review, and you will not find mention of any particular review in my post. Often times when you react before understanding what a person actually said you can wind up going overboard, much like you did with this new post. I simply made a few comments regarding what you said about "Mainstream" sources. I was not talking about a particular source or a particular article. Your initial comment that I responded to was very vague and very nonspecific. That was my whole point.
Perhaps if you took some of this free time and misplaced passion you have, and applied it to the gaming website you work for, it might improve. As it stands, it's cute, but not what you like to refer to as "Tech Savvy".
I'm sorry you seem to have taken things personally and therefor literally invented statements & views that were never made by me. Now, back to the original subject, and the only subject that I was commenting on to begin with. Sheesh!
It is difficult to know what to address since Skywalker turned a subject about one vague and incorrect comment he made into many new (mostly vague) subjects. hehe
I am personally familiar with and know many people who work for some of the big nasty mainstream companies, and the well known websites too. Unlike *most* websites who have no standard to meet, and no qualifications to pass, those big companies have very strict guidelines and qualifications that their employees must meet and exceed. People who work at those nasty mainstream companies (on average) have far far far far more knowledge, experience and expertise than *most* people who work for independent websites. Notice I did say *most*. There are a few exceptions.
As far as advertising in magazines? Since you seem to be unaware, let me point out that those shiny flashing little squares on Anand's (and most other websites) main page are not some new kind of game. They are indeed advertisements.
Now, if you want to pick apart a particular magazine or article that's fine with me. There is not one review or article posted by any website that can't be picked apart too. I actually find the suggestion that mainstream magazines make lots of mistakes and errors interesting. Consider this; most articles written by websites produce forums full of people complaining that the article was "Wrong about this" or "Wrong about that" etc etc. The very places you claim as evidence to the fact that mainstream is wrong, are the same places that completely blow your argument out of the water.
I could go on, but I have a job at one of the nasty and mean mainstream companies I must go to. I'm sorry that Skywalker took my comments so personal and decided to invent comments and claims that I never made. My original post was something I made without any malice. The reason I assumed he was a young kid was because I have never heard any adults make such absurd statements about "all" the mainstream. His comment sounded like something a young kid would say while he was revolting against society, teachers or parents. It still does. For someone who says that bias is wrong, he seems to have a lot of bias doesn't he? Assuming that all mainstream sources are bad? It speaks for itself.
Have a good day guys, and do something nice for someone today!
Part 1- It's easy to call others ugly when you live in a house with no mirrors.
Part 2- Most of it was absurd, and you implied things I never said. I was not even talking about any particular review, and you will not find mention of any particular review in my post. Often times when you react before understanding what a person actually said you can wind up going overboard, much like you did with this new post. I simply made a few comments regarding what you said about "Mainstream" sources. I was not talking about a particular source or a particular article. Your initial comment that I responded to was very vague and very nonspecific. That was my whole point.
Perhaps if you took some of this free time and misplaced passion you have, and applied it to the gaming website you work for, it might improve. As it stands, it's cute, but not what you like to refer to as "Tech Savvy".
I'm sorry you seem to have taken things personally and therefor literally invented statements & views that were never made by me. Now, back to the original subject, and the only subject that I was commenting on to begin with. Sheesh!
It is difficult to know what to address since Skywalker turned a subject about one vague and incorrect comment he made into many new (mostly vague) subjects. hehe
I am personally familiar with and know many people who work for some of the big nasty mainstream companies, and the well known websites too. Unlike *most* websites who have no standard to meet, and no qualifications to pass, those big companies have very strict guidelines and qualifications that their employees must meet and exceed. People who work at those nasty mainstream companies (on average) have far far far far more knowledge, experience and expertise than *most* people who work for independent websites. Notice I did say *most*. There are a few exceptions.
As far as advertising in magazines? Since you seem to be unaware, let me point out that those shiny flashing little squares on Anand's (and most other websites) main page are not some new kind of game. They are indeed advertisements.
Now, if you want to pick apart a particular magazine or article that's fine with me. There is not one review or article posted by any website that can't be picked apart too. I actually find the suggestion that mainstream magazines make lots of mistakes and errors interesting. Consider this; most articles written by websites produce forums full of people complaining that the article was "Wrong about this" or "Wrong about that" etc etc. The very places you claim as evidence to the fact that mainstream is wrong, are the same places that completely blow your argument out of the water.
I could go on, but I have a job at one of the nasty and mean mainstream companies I must go to.
I'm sorry that Skywalker took my comments so personal and decided to invent comments and claims that I never made. My original post was something I made without any malice. The reason I assumed he was a young kid was because I have never heard any adults make such absurd statements about "all" the mainstream. His comment sounded like something a young kid would say while he was revolting against society, teachers or parents. It still does. For someone who says that bias is wrong, he seems to have a lot of bias doesn't he? Assuming that all mainstream sources are bad? It speaks for itself.Have a good day guys, and do something nice for someone today!
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