F**k up?!?! LOL????

Quaff works perfect and Quake works like shit... F**k up my a$$! How blind are you? I am begining to believe that ATi really do have special eye drops for its costumers so they can see it all well...

I agree why didn't they go to nvidia for the detenator 4 problem. Nvidia worked 6 months to get there latest drivers to even use some of the new fetures on the geforce 3/4 {Ex The new memory feture}. Lets say ATI did cheat, what of it I say good for them Nvidia delayed the d4 to spoil the radeon 8500 release why can't they fight fire with fire.
Give ATI 6 months and lets see what tipe of driver support they give for the card, and why all this over just one outdated game?
Yes quake is used for benching, but ppl are starting to use other game like aquanox why don't you test it on that and see if they need to cheat there??

Well why din't ppl go to nvidia and ask them why they delayed the detanator 4 releas?? ATI had no chois in the matter if nvidia wants to play unfair then let ATI play unfair. All is fair in love and war.

Actually I dont really fault ATI or NVidia or any other card company this crap goes on because so called reveiwers
think that running Q3 benchmark is the only way to test a video card there are many things a video card has to do right not just Q3 or 3dmark. Many times I've seen posts from people happy as can be that with the new drivers there 3dmark score went up 50 points what you dont read about is that other apps stopped working properly. Oh but who cares It still gets a great score on...

The stability of ATI drivers has been dropping for years now. Now they are cheating in their drivers!

ATI drivers SUCK!

Maybe you oughta read this...

http://www.geocities.com/radtruth/p1.htm

It seems that this "optimization" only affects like 5 textures in the game (and that most levels look perfectly fine).

Somewhat of a sensationalist article isnt it? Looks like more of a f**kup in the driver than cheating, but hey dont let that stop the flamewar you're having so much fun with...

And #122, it's not only that, it's the principle...

The simple truth is that ATI have cheated, and as the GamesMaster once says (C4 a few years back, ran 7 series) "Cheating is not allowed!"

So go play your Civilisations or whatever on your Voodoo 3500, see if we care,
IntelMole

Okay #122, note one thing...

No-one here plays in 640x480 or 800x600 unless they have a reason... the only reason i play that is cos my system is crap... and the difference this makes would be your "1 or 2 percent"

Oh no, they play in 1024x768, or 1280x1024, or even 1600x1200

Why? Because they can, because it looks nicer, and also because it means they're getting their money's worth on the card...

At 1024x768+, this cheat will make a huuuuuuuge difference, we're not talking a few percentage points, we're talking 5-10 frames/second...

Think about it, at that resolution, the primary bottleneck is memory bandwidth... 64MB DDR simply cannot move stuff much quicker... so, what do they do? They maul the textures so they look like a dog's week-old dinner and then they take up far less space... so the card can push more through the memory...

Result! Instant cheat, and 5-10FPS or more on a system doing 25FPS @ 1280x1024... that's about 20-40% increase...

See where I'm coming from?
IntelMole

I'm glad someone is on their toes and holding ATI's to the fire. I am upgrading my Geforce 2 in the very near future and I am waiting for ATI to sort out there exposed assets. In other words, they don't think their card is comparable without cheating?

# 126

ATI still bad.
Nividia still good.

nobody I know who has the card (ie. people who have an idea how to set up a pc) has any trouble with theirs... excellent quality at blazing speeds.
------------------
So you're saying the Tom's Hardware review was bullshyte, and that the instability experienced with the Radeon was because Lars Weinand doesn't know how to set his card up properly?

All we need is 3dfx back .. :-)

saber, with 9 driver releases since release, including 3 for XP - I wouldn't be worried about driver updates.

nobody I know who has the card (ie. people who have an idea how to set up a pc) has any trouble with theirs... excellent quality at blazing speeds.

in fact, why don't you get here to pick up two - and you can put one under my christmas tree.

Originally Posted by lightsaber
If I am getting a new video card from my wife for christmas (and yes, I want top of the line, she doesn\'t want to pay that much for it...) would not the Radeon 8500 be a good purchase/gift?

The new drivers will be out by then, and currently, from what I can see, the 8500 is mostly on the performance level of the GF3...and it is about $50 less than the GF3-Ti500.

Thanks.

AG 122,

Uh, you must be talking about YOUR lack of a life.

I'm happily married and quite successful, thanks.

Dick.

http://www.theinquirer.net/07110102.htm

ATI market share vs nvidia. Interesting :)

And nobody was talking to you, anyway.
---------
Then keep the off-topic chats private.

Originally Posted by Trident Troll
124,

He asked a question.
I was only providing an answer.
I don\'t recall saying anything about unbiased media or trustworthy news outlets. I only deal in facts.

And nobody was talking to you, anyway.

#122, LOL . . . I'm running a Matrox G400 right now, since I'd feel like I was cheating on her if I switched to the GeForce2 Pro lying around.

Uhh . . . and I'm not doing so well in this 'life' game. Relationships bunged up, grades going down the toilet . . . where's the save/load feature, mang?? The one thing I can count on is my baby . . . aahh . . .

/me hugs his InWin Q500

# 114

Think, before u post something. Ati right now is better than Nvidia (for example, u can go to www.tomshardware.com and see the results of tests). U have to deal with that. Stop say this stupid phrase, that Ati sucks. I don't have anything against Nvidia, but Ati Radeon 8500 is better than GeForce3 Ti500.

124, instead of spouting useless criticism, make it constructive and specify what you consider better sources of news. Saying I watch CNN doesn't mean I trust them to report the truth, the whole turth, and nothing but, so help them God--it just means they're the most convenient source. I suppose CNN's left-wing slant is balanced by Fox's right-wing pandering--whoop-de-doo.

riiight, and Fox and other sensationalising media dicks are supposed to be better than CNN. Fools. There is no unbiased source of news in the mass media. Get over it, and stop relying on these clowns to bring you 'the truth'.

Anyway, Tom's put up an (on-topic) review:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q4/011107/index.html

Check it out.

Originally Posted by Trident Troll
Because CNN is a chicken shit network that was founded by the king of the left-wing extremists.
May they all burn in hell...

Geez are you guys still using Quake to measure with? This is so 20th century. Try UT and get with it...

And now that the flame bait is trolling in the water. I'll get real.
I'm running a 3dfx 3500 which works just fine for me. Sure some of you seem to want the highest FPS rates and worry about every little 1 and 2 percent increment, so naturally companies cheat on the bench mark. For a change why not recognize that unless your trying to hit some mystic epileptic producing frame rate that only you know about all of these cards are Good Enough! Try different games and different results will occur. Keep standardising on one damn benchmark and all you get is optimization to that mark. And who knows, some of you fan boys just might be pleasently surprised to find that some of those other games are seriously cool too. UT rocks, and Serious Sam is simply too damn funny to take serious. Good Game of Mech Warrior anyone! How about making your mind work with a game of Civ3 or Alpha Centauri. Somethings are good release, but you can exercise your brains as well as your trigger fingers too.
And for those of you getting really schizo over this card or that cards realtime frame rates, try looking up and a litle to your left. That's called a window and the frame rates out that are damn near seemless. Plus if you go out the door over there, take a shower and dress nice, you might even discover something called girls. Talk about 3d action ;>)
In short, get lives you lamers. There's bigger sh*t going on then this tempest in a teapot.

AG101, I appreciate the advice, but I have a Geforce2 MX right now, not an ultra. The TNT2Ultra is the card in my Linux machine. A Geforce3 ti200 would certainly give me a performance boost over my MX.

Yeppers, can't live a day without communicating with someone's disembodied virtual head. w00t.
-----------------
LOL

Anybody know if the eyes blink on those models? It would be kinda goofy to have 'em blink randomly, but it would be even worse if they didn't blink at all . . .
---------------
I never even thought of that. And now I'm really interested to find out. Anyone tried this must-have feature on their matrox and care to report?

TV Tuner,
DVD,
Amazing Cutting Edge Graphics,
and everything else I want

Any ideas people?
-------------------------------------
TV tuner: Pinnacle or Hauppauge model. Best not to get it integrated if you ask me. I'd go for a stereo model, of course.
http://www.pinnaclesys.com
http://www.hauppauge.com

Have yet to see LifeView http://www.lifeview.com.tw produce a decent TV card and stable software, so best avoided. But their new models could be decent; I really don't know.

DVD playback: I dunno, but nVidia does fine here...
Cutting edge graphics: I dunno, but nvidia does fine for me here..

Trident Troll,

I didn't think I could get more sick than knowing that there were people willing to die for bin Laden. It's funny how I always looked at the dark points in history (most recently, Nazis and Communists) as something we've overcome...

Why haven't I heard this on CNN/etc.?

113, ATi bought the company (ArtX) that designed the GC video core (Flipper). Its architecture is not really comparable to the Radeon, so there won't be any cross-development there.

Originally Posted by Trident Troll
I suspect that Matrox is about to go out of business.
They have ceased responding to tech support emails from customers, they have laid off quite a few employees, and they have recently made rather ambiguous claims about their next major product.
These were exactly the same things that 3dfx did right before they were bought out.
--

I found a link to that story that people were asking about earlier.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38164,00.html