What is ATI's next gen card they say will be coming in 2010?

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Phil1977

Senior member
Dec 8, 2009
228
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I just moved from a 9600GT to 5750...

- AA support is definitely better for Nvidia. They do bother and create profiles for games that don't support AA (Like many games that use defered lightning)

- ATI has to overhaul game profiles. I use ATI Tray tools. It is so much better and I prefer it even over Nvidias profiles. But out of the box Nvidias game profiles are much better.

- You will find specific game issues with both brands. E.g. Nvidia has a AA issue with BF2142 and a XP stuttering issue with Bioshock. ATI I haven't found an issue with the current games I am playing yet.

- ATIs display scaling (1:! or pixel mapping) for 4:3 games just works. In XP and W7. Had lots of issues with Nvidia. Under XP it never worked.

- Games that are not popular tend to run better on Nvidia cards. Brand new games usually also run a bit better on Nvidia cards.

So by going from a 9600GT to a 5750 I have adressed a few issues (1:1 display scaling and AA fix in BF2142) but gained a few new ones (No hope for AA in many games that use defered lightning / potentially less performance with new titles and non mainstream games and of course no Physx)...

So whatever card you end up buying, there will be some issues with either option. Its a luck of draw if the game you are playing is affected or not.

I bought the 5750 because of its price / performance and also because it uses very little power and I expect good driver support because it is ATIs latest card series...

I don't think the 9600GT will get a lot of attention regarding drivers anymore. And the (years old) issues with BF2142 and Bioshock are still around.

Having said that, if Nvidia had a similar 40nm card at a similar price / performance I would have likely bought a Nvidia card... So maybe next year...
 
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solofly

solofly

Banned
May 25, 2003
1,421
0
0
tweakboy said:
Just beware of the red PCB

Also note: ATI Catalyst drivers are buggy and slow.

After my x800 experience and catalyst Im proud to say I will never ever go ATIhell again in my life. nVidia 4 life fellaz. Soo Im gonna get Fermi , Does anyone wanna trade their Fermi when it comes out for a Furbi ,, that toy from 15 years ago it talks and what not... its collectors item.. lolol
Click to expand...

You sound like me, two years ago...lol
 
Nemesis 1

Nemesis 1

Lifer
Dec 30, 2006
11,366
2
0
Well I just hate being right again , But I will put this one in favorits and will see if its a minor refresh . I bet it won't be.

I have had ATI cards Since I dumped the 4800/4600 NVs. Haven't ever had a problem . Some people just don't do proper installs its that simple
 
Arkaign

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
20,736
1,379
126
Nemesis 1 said:
Well I just hate being right again , But I will put this one in favorits and will see if its a minor refresh . I bet it won't be.

I have had ATI cards Since I dumped the 4800/4600 NVs. Haven't ever had a problem . Some people just don't do proper installs its that simple
Click to expand...

Nvidia 4800?

That was a pretty rare beast, IIRC it was just a 4800 w/AGP 8X.

ATI's drivers were kinda wonky until the X1800 series IMHO. Of course, when Nvidia went to the 100.x gen, the first few tries were similarly sluggish. I remember the driver size suddenly going from ~40mb to ~80mb and being like WTF lol.

Now with either Nvidia or ATI, the control panel / options come up really quickly.
 
evolucion8

evolucion8

Platinum Member
Jun 17, 2005
2,867
3
81
Phil1977 said:
I just moved from a 9600GT to 5750...

- AA support is definitely better for Nvidia. They do bother and create profiles for games that don't support AA (Like many games that use defered lightning)

- ATI has to overhaul game profiles. I use ATI Tray tools. It is so much better and I prefer it even over Nvidias profiles. But out of the box Nvidias game profiles are much better.

- You will find specific game issues with both brands. E.g. Nvidia has a AA issue with BF2142 and a XP stuttering issue with Bioshock. ATI I haven't found an issue with the current games I am playing yet.

- ATIs display scaling (1:! or pixel mapping) for 4:3 games just works. In XP and W7. Had lots of issues with Nvidia. Under XP it never worked.

- Games that are not popular tend to run better on Nvidia cards. Brand new games usually also run a bit better on Nvidia cards.

So by going from a 9600GT to a 5750 I have adressed a few issues (1:1 display scaling and AA fix in BF2142) but gained a few new ones (No hope for AA in many games that use defered lightning / potentially less performance with new titles and non mainstream games and of course no Physx)...

So whatever card you end up buying, there will be some issues with either option. Its a luck of draw if the game you are playing is affected or not.

I bought the 5750 because of its price / performance and also because it uses very little power and I expect good driver support because it is ATIs latest card series...

I don't think the 9600GT will get a lot of attention regarding drivers anymore. And the (years old) issues with BF2142 and Bioshock are still around.

Having said that, if Nvidia had a similar 40nm card at a similar price / performance I would have likely bought a Nvidia card... So maybe next year...
Click to expand...

You just can't simply force Anti Aliasing with Deferred rendering under DX9, that's simply not possible without driver tweaks, the only engine that uses deferred rendering and currently has a hack to enable Anti Aliasing is the Unreal 3 engine and both vendors supports Anti Aliasing, but definitively ATi has more issues, in some Unreal 3 games you have to rename the game's executable to UT3.exe to make Anti Aliasing work, but other games that uses deferred rendering like Timeshift, anti aliasing simply doesn't work at all, the same for Call of Juarez BB which uses a blur filter around the edges.
 
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Phil1977

Senior member
Dec 8, 2009
228
0
0
Yea it seems to be a trend that more and more games don't come with AA options...

We have all these new video cards, yet IQ is taking a step back...
 
ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
tviceman said:
The 5x00 series is great price/performance part and currently the best high end cards available. But I have to ask: how many times can an architecture be updated/refreshed before it starts showing it's age, i.e. bottlenecks and design limitations. They've been on this current architecture for quite awhile now and even though Fermi's not out yet, Nvidia will likely bring Fermi's refresh to market sooner into Fermi's life cycle than in G80's and GT200's cycle.

If AMD can keep refreshing/updating their cards as opposed to bringing a completely new architecure to market and stay competitive then that's really good for them and us. But I just have a feeling that, by this fall, upper and high end must-have cards will be squarely back in Nvidia's corner. I guess if they are coming out with a completely new architecture in about a year, then it'll probably work out great for them. We'll see though.
Click to expand...
I like this question.

"Architecture" is nebulous at best. The first rule of engineering is to not throw out something that works unless you have a good reason to, and it should come as no surprise that that's exactly what happens in the tech industry. Would you believe that Intel's latest Nehalem/Lynnfield processors are nothing more than very souped-up Pentium Pros from 1995? Nehalem is a product of incremental improvements: a new FPU here, a new branch predictor there, etc. Intel officially classifies it under an architecture 2 generations later, and it shares virtually nothing in common with the original Pentium Pro, but if you follow the "well, it's almost like X" trail all the way back, you get a Pentium Pro.

AMD and NVIDIA are going to do the same thing. Fermi had a lot overhauled, but it still has a great deal of GT200 in it. NVIDIA replaced what they felt needed replacing, such as the raster and geometry engines, and spruced up the rest, such as the ROPs and CUDA cores. AMD did the same thing with Cypress to a much smaller extent, replacing their tesselator unit and updating other parts to be DX11-compliant. Fermi was the bigger change of course, but neither one of them is what I would classify as being a "new" architecture.

It's always possible that AMD has cooked up something entirely new, but I expect that "new" is going to be as in "Fermi new". AMD can and will replace whatever they feel is holding back their design, and bring the rest of Cypress forward. Even if they were to throw out their 5-wide SIMD design, the fixed function pipeline, the ROPs, and the texture units would probably not be new (although replacing the SIMDs is such a huge undertaking that admittedly, most people would call it new). Just because one part of the design is bottlenecking you doesn't mean you throw out the rest; it's a waste of good engineering (and bad sense) to throw out something that works unless you have something better. Designing a chip is such a massive undertaking that you almost never are going to replace the whole thing - you will spend your engineering resources on coming up with the best solution for your bottleneck, and then focus on the new bottleneck in the next iteration.

An architecture, in that respect, can live forever so long as you continue to take good care of it by continuously replacing the weakest link. Right now there's no reason why R600 can't live forever, just like the Pentium Pro.
 
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S

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
1,002
126
When you look at the 5870 on paper you'd think it'd be as fast (or faster) as the 4870x2, but generally it isn't, right? My guess is that something is holding it back, not keeping all of those execution units filled with data. Maybe with some driver tweaks things will improve. But I wouldn't be suprised if AMD tweaks things somehow, maybe a new/different hub... would they go back to the ring bus they liked so much? But I can't see them just doubling up their part again like the seemed to more or less do with the 5870 without some sort of tweaks beyond just making it 'bigger'.
 
Nemesis 1

Nemesis 1

Lifer
Dec 30, 2006
11,366
2
0
edplayer said:
that isn't going to happen









do you have a link to an ATi/AMD employee claiming that?
Click to expand...



Ya It does seem early for GF 28nm but ,I am pretty sure AMD/ATI is upset about their present fab solving problems at particular point in Time. It is just Bulk tho . The other fab is saying 28 nm in 4th qt so its possiable . But what I really look for reguardless of die size is improvements in tess.improvements AMD was quik with DX11 so we should see large improvements there. But I hopeing that GF deep pockets allow them to get ahead on 28nm bulk. That would be great , Sept would be perfect.
 
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