Radeon 8500 competes with GF4 in DOOM 3???

[RedShirt]

link

This was said by Carmack himself:

Based on the feature set, the Radeon 8500 should be a faster card for Doom than the GF4, because it can do the seven texture accesses that I need in a single pass, while it takes two or three passes (depending on details) on the GF4. However, in practice, the GF4 consistently runs faster due to a highly efficient implementation. For programmers, the 8500 has a much nicer fragment path than the GF4, with more general features and increased precision, but the driver quality is still quite a ways from Nvidia's, so I would be a little hesitant to use it as a primary research platform.

Geesh, you'd think if ATI could only write drivers, they could have the best preforming card in these next generation games, too bad it'll never happen...

 

[BFG10K]

To tell you the truth some websites have been reporting some rather amazing performance from the latest 6071s on the Radeon 8500. I really hope that the next Radeon board will allow anisotropic filtering together with trilinear filtering because that is a major put-off for me in terms of going with ATi for my next video card.

increased precision,

I think he's talking about the 32 bit Z + 8 bit stencil combo that the Radeon supports and its ability to mix and match the buffer sizes, which I think is a nice feature.

 

[Adul]

it can happen some day. never say never is what is ay.

 

[Pocatello]

It could still happen. I wonder how the new Radeon retail 8500 with 128MB of DDR RAM would do against a GF 4 Ti 4200 with 128MB DDR RAM. Both have similar prize, at Newegg, that is. The Radeon has the advantage in both the core clock speed and memory speed, I think, and all those advantages mentioned in the above post by GOD himself

 

[RedShirt]

Ever wonder what would happen if all of Nvidia's software engineers went to work for ATI for a month? I wonder what preformance the Radeon 8500 would have.

I think I can safely say that THIS would never happen

Who knows, maybe ATI will someday get their drivers tweaked as well as Nvidia, but something in my gut tells me that day is a long day off (and I wish it weren't as I am an owner of a Radeon 8500 myself).

 

[gregor7777]

I posted this once before, but with the 8500 you get the feeling after using it for a while that it still has a lot of untapped potiential. To be quite honest, I think it has turned out quite well for ATi. It's a card with a middle of the pack price point that gets compared to every card Nvidia puts out and in some cases surpasses them.

I'm hoping that the R300 will continue to use the same driver set as the R200, as I feel the 6071 set is pretty far along now.

 

[virusag11]

That sounds great to me as I have a Radeon 8500. I haven't downloaded the new driver set yet so I must do that and see if it increases the performance on jedi outcast. As for the fact that it outperform the GF4 on doom, that sounds great, but aren't the new GF5 coming out before doom III is?

 

[gregor7777]

Originally posted by: virusag11
That sounds great to me as I have a Radeon 8500. I haven't downloaded the new driver set yet so I must do that and see if it increases the performance on jedi outcast. As for the fact that it outperform the GF4 on doom, that sounds great, but aren't the new GF5 coming out before doom III is?

Should be, but the R300 should poke it's head out a bit before Nvidia's next generation card does. End of this year will be a fun time if you're looking to buy a new graphics card.

 

[Booster]

Why does everybody keep on saying how bad ATI drivers are? ATI cards are not the fastest, they were never meant to be, since they're not the most expensive. But they're feature-rich, and have more goodies than the Geforce series. And what puzzles me is that people think than nVidia single driver for all cards is the paragon. But I've come to hate nVidia single driver, b/c with every new release my GF2 was becoming slower and slower. I had to go back to an older driver to have at least some kind of performance with an older card. And when I tried my retired TNT2 card with the latest driver, it was literally twice slower than with the driver of its time. So much for nVidia optimization. Once you go ATI you never go back.

 

[NicColt]

According to this ATI press release we now know that they are using ATI but what ??? if they are using ATI's next gen chip scheduled to be released this fall, what exactly are they using ?? anyone have a link to this answer.

E3 2002, Los Angeles, CA - May 24, 2002 - Id Software? has chosen ATI's next generation graphics architecture as the platform for previewing their unbelievably realistic and much anticipated DOOM III? at this year's E3 Expo. ATI's chip was chosen because it offers the most advanced, high-performance graphics architecture to power the demonstration at E3 2002. DOOM III?, scheduled for release in 2003, has been highly anticipated both as an unbelievable game and as a true measure of today - and tomorrow's - graphics architectures. Also highly anticipated, ATI's next generation product, scheduled for release this fall, will cement ATI firmly as a leader in the ultra-high-end 3D and gaming graphics market.
"ATI's next generation hardware has an ideal feature set for the DOOM III? engine, and at the moment is the fastest platform to run the game on," said John Carmack, Chief Technical Officer & co-founder of Id Software, Inc.

E3 DOOM III poster

 

[virusag11]

Thanks for the news NicColt. That banner looks really cool! I bet it will draw a lot of attention from the anti-videogame critics.

 

[Pocatello]

That sounds great to me as I have a Radeon 8500. I haven't downloaded the new driver set yet so I must do that and see if it increases the performance on jedi outcast. As for the fact that it outperform the GF4 on doom, that sounds great, but aren't the new GF5 coming out before doom III is?

Did Carmack say that the Radeon 8500 outperform the GF4 in Doom III?
Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that Carmack said that the GF4 is consistently faster. But is pointless, because most people here usually buy videocards every six months, which mean they would have something better than the GF4 and the Radeon 8500. I wonder if ATi will continue to improve the Radeon 8500 drivers or working on the drivers for the R300.

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: Booster
Why does everybody keep on saying how bad ATI drivers are? ATI cards are not the fastest, they were never meant to be, since they're not the most expensive. But they're feature-rich, and have more goodies than the Geforce series. And what puzzles me is that people think than nVidia single driver for all cards is the paragon. But I've come to hate nVidia single driver, b/c with every new release my GF2 was becoming slower and slower. I had to go back to an older driver to have at least some kind of performance with an older card. And when I tried my retired TNT2 card with the latest driver, it was literally twice slower than with the driver of its time. So much for nVidia optimization. Once you go ATI you never go back.

No offense.. but if Carmack says the 8500 SHOULD be faster but its not because Nvidias drivers are better optimizied... Im gonna believe him. Sure some of the nvidia drivers were lower performance then previous ones... guess what thats because they were beta. I dont think people were saying ATIs drivers are bad feature or stability wise.... just their not optimized even close to the level of Nvidias... On paper the 8500 should stomp a GF3, and thats what Carmack was saying... hardware wise the 8500 should come out on top, but it doesnt because their drivers arent as optimized.

 

[richleader]

I made some comments on how ATI is spinning this in the thread over in Video.

 

[Pabster]

I do believe the 8500 could run all over GeForce 4, particularly in Doom III (assuming Carmack's references are fairly accurate). As it stands, nothing comes close -- price/performance -- to what the 8500 (64MB) offers right now. Nothing.

 

[ed21x]

Radeon 8500... the gift that keeps on giving =)

but I have this strange feeling that the Geforce 4 will run the game much faster simply because ati seems to only lead in written numbers and hardware specs, but that has rarely ever translated to real world performance.

 

[SteelCityFan]

I am not sure about the GeForce4, but I have seen some websites comparing image quality of the Radeon 8500 to the GeForce3, and the Radeon has a much better image quality. Not to mention the 2D problems NVidia consistantly has. I am one to not so much consider FPS as long as they are in the same ballpark... and most new cards are close to each other. I put more weight into image quality.

My first card was a Voodoo2 which I had coupled with a Matrox Millenium 2... best of both worlds at that point.
Then I bought a Hercules GeForce DDR. I wasn't impressed, so I sold that and bought a Voodoo5 5500 as soon as they came out.
Now, I have a Radeon 8500.

I'm just not a big fan of the NVidia cards. I do own the GeForce2Go as well. It seems that by the time they get into a price range that I would consider, something like the 8500 comes out that smokes their similarly priced card in image quality (GeForce3 ti200 vs R8500 at time of purchase.).

Oh, and ATI has been doing a much better job on drivers IMO. They have been "leaking" betas, and have been releasing official drivers at least once a month.