ATI Inferior to NVidia?

[theaxemaster]

That's almost identical to my progression:

GF 2 Ti (EXCELLENT card, lasted a long time)
Radeon 9600 XT (horrible drivers, no noticable perf. increase over the 2Ti)
FX5900 XT (pretty decent, since it was the 2nd gen of the FX's)
7900GT (very good performance, drivers sux)

Though I have noticed the same things you are talking about, the color representation doesn't seem to be as good in games. My FX card did great with the colors, the 7900GT seems to be rich in reds. And the new drivers BLOW. The old nv control panel gave you much better control and didn't annoy you with SLI warnings (as if I didn't know I didn't have another card in there nvidia! You're not getting that much of my money!). That stupid warning should ONLY come up if you have two cards installed and SLI isn't working.

I just hate the new driver interface, its like they tried to dumb it down, and ended up making it VERY inconvenient and hard to understand.

 

[sojrner]

That's almost identical to my progression:

GF 2 Ti (EXCELLENT card, lasted a long time)
Radeon 9600 XT (horrible drivers, no noticable perf. increase over the 2Ti)
FX5900 XT (pretty decent, since it was the 2nd gen of the FX's)
7900GT (very good performance, drivers sux)

Though I have noticed the same things you are talking about, the color representation doesn't seem to be as good in games. My FX card did great with the colors, the 7900GT seems to be rich in reds. And the new drivers BLOW. The old nv control panel gave you much better control and didn't annoy you with SLI warnings (as if I didn't know I didn't have another card in there nvidia! You're not getting that much of my money!). That stupid warning should ONLY come up if you have two cards installed and SLI isn't working.

I just hate the new driver interface, its like they tried to dumb it down, and ended up making it VERY inconvenient and hard to understand.

umm... if you saw no improvement from a gf2 ti to a 9600 xt then you were doing something wrong. My friend still runs a 9600 xt and plays all hl2 game incredibly great and even FEAR at a playable rate (800x600)... you cannot say the same for the gf2! I would argue that the FX series was Nv's absolute worst forray into the fight w/ ati and a very poor stand-up to anything above teh 9500pro in ati's lineup.

that 7900gt you have is a good one though, I know nothing about those new drivers but it sounds very annoying. Seems like something that would be an easy fix if enough ppl complain about it.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The latest comparison, 7800GT vs X1900XT, reveals a couple of interesting differences. In my opinion, nVidia's 4xAA is superior to ATI's in terms of quality.

Funny thing is every review I've seen mentioning the difference favoured ATi, @ 4 vs 4 and even 6x vs 8x.

There are situations where Adpative or Transparent are better depending on the scene. An interesting benefit you have now is temporal AA, which is nice.

Anywhoo, still depends on the situation. Angle dependant AF really is most noticeable when you have scen with perpendicular lines.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIyLDgsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

 

[cleeve]

When I was testing Nvidia's Transparent AA, it did nothing in Far Cry or Oblivion on the 'Multisampling' setting of Transparent AA... it worked on the 'supersampling' setting of the transparent AA, but at a huge performance cost.

Ati's Adaptive AA method is much better in the titles I've tested.

As for regular AA, I find Ati's quality to be notably higher than Nvidia's... their 8xAA is comperable to Ati's 6x AA from what I've seen.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

When I was testing Nvidia's Transparent AA, it did nothing in Far Cry or Oblivion on the 'Multisampling' setting of Transparent AA... it worked on the 'supersampling' setting of the transparent AA, but at a huge performance cost.

Yeah I heard that being a bug early on, but surprised that's still the case. 8O

Ati's Adaptive AA method is much better in the titles I've tested.

As for regular AA, I find Ati's quality to be notably higher than Nvidia's... their 8xAA is comperable to Ati's 6x AA from what I've seen.

And that's matches up with most of the reviews I've read. The only place I've seen people say there's true parity was @ 2X MSAA. But by the same token, the differences are small so some people might not notice the difference. And it is worth noting that some times the higher AA on the ATi top end card comes at less of a performance penalty, os being able to go to 6X AA versus 4XAA, or the next step up, is nice too.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

nVidia's basic AA is extremely poor. I dont remember ever maxxing out the AA on my ATi cards, and still seeing alaising.

Transparency AA on the other hand is cool as f**k, and I really enjoy the situations where it is used.

 

[stOrmy]

if that is completely based about linux then wtf are you doing. who cares about linux support for games.

rickler was talking about ati drivers of today. if he wasn't then he has no point. which is abit like your whole post.

can we please stick to today and now when discussing this. background is all well and good but should not be the crux of anyone's arguments.

I was talking about drivers today as well fanboy. :roll: Did you not see the comment about my friends issue with current ATI drivers? I quote,” I have a friend right now playing with older ATI drivers because the new drivers crash his computer.” Sorry you didn’t catch it, and yes it is Windows. By the way, although I had a few comments about Linux the rest of the comments were based on Windows experience over the years. I do agree that ATI has improved in the driver category but based on my friends experience I have to believe it isn’t perfect just yet. In fairness, I’m sure that there are some users that have had issues with Nvidia drivers as well. Like I talked about in my last post to you, both are great companies and it really depends on the individual. At times both have the best cards on the market that is the reason why I have owned several GPU's from each company.

One last thing! I mainly use Windows but do occasionally play around with Linux as well. To some on the forums Linux may be very important. To others it may not matter at all. Maybe you should read the title of the thread because it doesn’t say anything about Windows only. I hear a lot of talk from you but nothing really important. Enjoy. 8O

 

[wishmaster12]

Who cares about linux. If you cant get a driver to work you shouldnt own a computer. Nvidias Raw power is as raw a eggs

 

[wishmaster12]

who cares about the lighting effects i think ati pixel sharders are better
Doom 3 and quake gives me a headache

 

[wishmaster12]

i always get my drivers to work mabay if it not supported it might fail
if its some crappy unsigned driver my computer is always up to date.
i never use un signed driver it screws up my system

 

[wishmaster12]

My registry is better than yours. You dont have the same registry as i do

 

[GeneticWeapon]

My registry is better than yours. You dont have the same registry as i do

It makes me cringe that you've decided to post here. Please find another forum.

 

[sirheck]

i agree

 

[sojrner]

oh and usually when 1 out of every (insert number here) people have a problem with drivers, it is usually IMO the users fault not the drivers. no company can make something work on every system.

quite true... many times it is some off-beat app running in the background that is conflicting. Other times it is simple user error during the install or the like. Finally it could just be plain stupidity.

3 guesses (and the first 2 don't count) on which issue is the problem here.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

ATi drivers and their shitball control centre suck arse.

Maybe AMD will finally fund a rewrite of their OpenGL code :roll:

 

[sojrner]

oh c'mon man, kindof a harsh blanket-statement...

I will fully admit that openGL has not been great on ati, but they have pretty much caught up to Nv in windows and their doom3 leap in performance shows that. The same can't be said in Linux, but then who games in linux? (would still be nice to have better functionality in the linux drivers like Nv I'll admit)

I will also say that their newest driver crashes in bf2 (on some systems), but was listed as a known issue on the release notes and will be/has been fixed.

Nv is no stranger to driver crashes in windows, and I personally ran a test system (laptop last year) w/ a gfgo6800 that would crash ut2004 (bsod) running in directX, regardless of drivers version. Had to run it in openGL, which is no big deal but still directX instability abounded which is not good. I have also seen other issues doing admin work at LAN parties a group of us ran. Both brands suffer driver instability. That is why ati's new version turnover is so fast and Nv releases beta versions so often.

I cant argue about the ccc as it seems a subjective thing. I don't mind it, and Nv is going the same route so... You can always get the non-ccc version if it is that big of a deal...

of course you wont as you are running a fine Nv system. How about that new Nv control center? (or whatever they call it) does it suck yet too? (genuine wonder there, no sarcasm)

 

[raven_87]

I'm just wondering, but has anybody besides myself actually gone under the "custom install" for Catalyst drivers.....you see there is a check mark next to what you can install......one of them happens to the the CCC. In case anybody missed it

Unfortunately it is the way the industry is progressing. Everything will be under its own "control centre" ---(anybody read up on Vista lately? yeah...F that)

So what industry corps are going to do is cater to the retards who don't know any better by doing such a thing, and the rest of us that might have a clue will resent the fact that their burying advanced options....either way, the more and more we look at it, the gaming industry, more importantly the gamers themselves are being 2nd shelved to the HTPC, media centre and 'basic' crowd.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

oh c'mon man, kindof a harsh blanket-statement...

It is, but I've been an ATi user for 95% of my gaming life, and I really do hate their drivers.

How about that new Nv control center? (or whatever they call it) does it suck yet too? (genuine wonder there, no sarcasm)

It honestly works perfect, and I dont have .net on my computer.

ALT-TAB out of BF2 some day, and try launching the Catalyst Control Centre while the game is running :roll: .......I can do that with the new nVidia control panel.

 

[raven_87]

ALT-TAB out of BF2 some day, and try launching the Catalyst Control Centre while the game is running

Ok: ..........and........done.......BF2 hasnt crashed amazingly, but its not very fair to pick that game GW :lol: :lol: :lol: that freaking thing will crash and burn if you breathe on the monitor :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[GeneticWeapon]

its not very fair to pick that game GW :lol: :lol: :lol: that freaking thing will crash and burn if you breathe on the monitor

Ok...pick another game that's a memory hog, and do the same :?

 

[raven_87]

WoW? ....been there....done that.....threw up

I could just run a Blend test of Prime95, thats 1.75GB worth of RAM and open the CCC.....we'll see how that goes... :roll:

 

[sojrner]

It is, but I've been an ATi user for 95% of my gaming life, and I really do hate their drivers.

Fair enough I guess... subjective reasoning is still reasoning I suppose. Hate is an awefully strong word though... really hate do you think? perhaps just a mild disslike? lol... jk. If you just dont like it, then so be it.

ALT-TAB out of BF2 some day, and try launching the Catalyst Control Centre while the game is running :roll: .......I can do that with the new nVidia control panel.

well, my system has plenty of ram and power. I can alt-tab out and do that just fine, even in bf2. (not the 6.6 drivers mind you, I mentioned that above) I am sure that is not what you meant, but I do not see a terrible usage of memory for ccc... but then even my last system had a gig, so my standards have increased a bit I am sure on what I think it too much ram usage.

My philosophy (right or wrong) on this is that today ram is cheap. If I am not performing well enough w/ a gig, then I should get 2! :twisted: Then 4 if need-be, and so-on... 8O

 

[sojrner]

actually I think there are more options in the ccc then there are in the old control panel. (oc options for one)

the ccc has a default "basic" mode, and an "advanced" mode. I do not know of an option that is not shown there, but I could be wrong. I am pretty sure that the members here are under that "advanced" crowd. (some notable exceptions for sure, but...)

I assume Nv has the same in their new ones, looks like GW likes the new driver so there must be plenty of options.

oh, and GW: Forgot about this earlier... I have heard alot of ppl complaining about the new Nv drivers popping up w/ a notice saying that sli was not enabled even when they had only one card. Does that happen to you or is there a simple way to disable that? Just curious.

 

[raven_87]

Anybody using the CCC to overclock aside from overdrive features deserves to be strung up by their big toes..... :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

 

[sojrner]

Anybody using the CCC to overclock aside from overdrive features deserves to be strung up by their big toes..... :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

umm... is not "overdrive" in fact the same as "overclocking"?

just pulled it up and yep, looks like overclocking to me... unless I am horribly miss-informed on what overclocking really is.