Geforce3 or ATI8500

[Makaveli]

I highly disagree with you saying the Geforce 3 drivers were perfect from the start. I seem to remember nuremous issues with certains games from Day 1.

And from your logic they may have cheated, But to me a Gamer and Computer User I could careless I don't play Quake 3!!!

 

[TWC]

I dont believe Invidia needed any benchmark help when the GF3 was released, it had no competitors.

You`ll get nothing and like it.

 

[Matisaro]

I seem to remember nuremous issues with certains games from Day 1.

You remember wrong then, the 12.xx series of drivers were stable as hell and good performers. The gf3 has only just been out for 6 months and you claim it JUST got stable drivers, thats utter bs man.


As for ATI cheating, it does not MATTER if you play quake 3 or not, and it DOES not matter what your point of view is, apparently you are missing the point so I will lay it out for you.


A: Quake 3 as old as it is is probably the most used gaming benchmark there is. ATI knows this.
B: ATI made its drivers AUTOMATICALLY AND SECRETLY turn down its visual quality settings which playing quake 3, this caused the 8500's framerates to go up making it look stronger in comparision to the gf3. This is BLATANT and obvious cheating, it may not matter to you that ATI is cheating to con the consumer, and thats your right as a consumer, but I personally think it reflects VERY poorly on them and their product, if they had such high confidence in the 8500 why cheat hmmm?

But since you "highly" dissagree with me in regards to the origional gf3 drivers, I will focus on some facts about the nvidia drivers.

FACT: Nvidia has never failed to provide a working feature they advertised at launch, if they couldnt get it to work, they did not claim it was there. Where is your smoothvision?
FACT: Nvidia has probably the BEST driver support of ANY company, ati may have promised to change its ways, but its track record speaks for it self.

I do not propose to hang those who buy the radeon 8500, but I myself will certainly NOT buy one, and those who do should be happy, the card is fine, even with the driver issues, and the price is nice. My objection to ati and the 8500 is in the underhanded way they tried to trick the consumer into buying their card, instead of relying on the cards ample merits, and getting their driver team in shape, they waste their time and ours with cheat drivers and false benchmark scores, this is why I will not buy the 8500.

If you like the 8500 thats fine, dont go saying nvidia's drivers sucked and other lies halftruths and innuendo on the board to justify your purchase.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Makaveli]

I never said it didn't need benchmark help. The Initial Geforce 3 drivers won't problem free, as some of you seem to imply!

 

[SerArthurDayne]

Bah! Compared to the Radeon drivers, the Detonator revision at the Ge3 release was perfect. I don't remember any issues offhand at all.... if you would be so kind as to remind us what these issues were and perhaps back it up with some links describing these issues, perhaps you would have a better argument?

And as for anyone putting their faith in ATI to create some decent drivers for the Radeon, I sure hope for your sake that ATi breaks their looooong history of crappy driver development. However, the fact that ATi seems to have prematurely released the Radeon 8500 in what is arguably one of their most important hardware launchers EVER seems to imply that they have not changed their ways at all.

ATi knows they've been branded for bad drivers, and they no doubt knew the first thing everyone would look at upon release was how their drivers stacked up against Nvidia. Above all else they needed stable drivers with consistent performance. Instead they have drivers that don't offer full functionality of the card, compromise image quality in a popular benchmark, have major stability problems in certain games and operating systems, and offer erratic performance overall between various games and benchmarks. This failure to be strong in the one point they needed to regain consumer faith is what confirms my wariness of ATi. I will never buy another product from ATi again unless they deliver what they promise - I would suggest that everyone looking to buy a Radeon 8500 waits until they produce good drivers. The only problem with that approach is that it might be a very long time indeed.

"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky

 

[Guest]

This is one of the best threads I've read in a long time...
Well, I'm sure we all know why ATI "cheated". I just feel bad for the engineers that had to code that for the PR guys who suddenly got smart and noticed the Quake3 benchmarks everyones using...I bet someone even said, "you know, it's great, it's like cars and 0-60mph." You can just look at the first page on their website to see why they did it(and it looks like someone gave them what they wanted...) The guys at Anandtech should be comended for sticking to their review process, only using drivers released to the public. The whole bit about Anandtech "rushing" ATI is complete nonsense. Whose fault is it for putting down a deadline and not meeting it? I'm not going to hop on the bandwagon and say they've been lacking in the driver support area, I don't disbelieve you, I've just never purchased an ATI product...to me, it was because they always had a cheap looking box, nVidia always had a nice clean looking product. You think it doesn't matter, oh, does it ever. So, bad ATI, slap on the wrist, but don't be so quick to think nVidia is the glorious champion. I'm very sure they've had their "naughty" moments. Considering they incorporated in April of 1993, reincorporated in 1998, and went public in Janaury of 1999, I'm sorry, but you don't become "the recognized global leader in advanced graphics processing technology for mainstream platforms" without stepping on some toes. I for one like the new Radeon 8500 box, don't want to support too much of any extent the Microsoft and nVidia "deal", just check out nVidia's webpage for that one, and remember in America, competition is good(remember when 3Dfx was around, we had some fierce competition going on, usually that is good. And for a product that comes even a tiny bit close to the nVidia monster, I'd gladly support ATI, maybe even buy a game with the money I can save purchasing an 8500?

I just took a gander at the Anandtech review myself, yep, ATI and drivers don't mix, be on the lookout I guess.

It just goes to show you, read the article before you comment, otherwise you just end up editing...What's this all about?
"We were told by NVIDIA that these new drivers would not only improve performance, but that they would be made publicly available the very same week we tested with them. Obviously, that didn't happen..."-Anandtech.com

See, nVidia likes to play naughty too(and be the first ones to do it!)...bad nVidia, bad.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by PachoC on 11/05/01 04:26 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Matisaro]

The reason they didnt release the drivers publically right away, was two fold.

On the honest side the drivers lowered some games performance,and they wanted to iron out the issues with them. (bear in mind even their lowered performance kicked the crap out of every other videocard ever made at the time)

The slightly underhanded, BUT PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE AND ADMIRABLE buisness move, was to put off the driver release till the 8500's release was closer. Thats how buisness is, NVIDIA has never cheated(that I am aware of) at a benchmark like ATI did. If they had I would reevaluate my stance on the two companies to reflect this. I do not accept cheating in testing, many people rely on those tests to tell them which card is better suited for them, if you cheat on them it shows you to be a bad company.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[MeldarthX]

Now, now.......all graphic card makers have been caught doing this. Nvidia, 3dfx*before going under* Ati......

Ati's hardware is more powerful than the Geforce3, but drivers are its sticking point.

If they can get the drivers mature soon they can get market share, because its still 75-100 dollars cheaper than the Geforce3 ti200.....

I've always like 2d far better on Ati than geforce series, and dvd play back is still the best on Ati.

If its just gaming the Geforce3 is the one to go with, if you want to use it for more, then look at the Ati.

But its the one that you feel best about, saves you some money and runs stable......

 

[Matisaro]

Now, now.......all graphic card makers have been caught doing this. Nvidia, 3dfx*before going under* Ati......

No, ATI is the ONLY company ever caught cheating like this,(that I know of or have heard of) I welcome links to state otherwise.

Ati's hardware is more powerful than the Geforce3, but drivers are its sticking point.

The drivers are the heart of the damn card, if the drivers are bad a gf3 will perform slower than a tnt2, even if the hardware on paper is more powerful, as long as ATI keeps screwing the drivers it is a moot point.

If they can get the drivers mature soon they can get market share, because its still 75-100 dollars cheaper than the Geforce3 ti200....

What kind of crack are you smoking.

Price watch prices.

Gf3 ti 200= 164$
http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/4129-1.htm

Radeon 8500=189$
http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/4187-1.htm

BEAR IN MIND THATS THE OEM VERSION AT 250/250!

LoL, looks like that point is effectivly refuted.

I've always like 2d far better on Ati than geforce series, and dvd play back is still the best on Ati.

That is your oppinion, and many review sites have claimed this is a myth and wishful thinking, anand did visual tests and said that the difference was negligable. I posted links earlier to dvd playback reviews which show the ati as having WORSE image quality than the gf3. Another non point for you.

If its just gaming the Geforce3 is the one to go with, if you want to use it for more, then look at the Ati.

But its the one that you feel best about, saves you some money and runs stable......

With the points I made above, this entire comment is now invalid, there is no proof ati has better image quality, and it costs MORE than a gf ti 200.

Add to that the fact that the cheap atis are oem crippled versions, its drivers are NOT stable as of now, and ATI has stooped to cheating on benchmarks puts ATI in a very dangerous position market wise.


~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[MeldarthX]

Lets not get into this one again. Nvidia has good driver support, but come on now, they have done the same thing Ati did. Every company has, is your memory so short on Nvidia never releasing buggy featured drivers?

I can start with their fsaa when 3dfx was around, they rushed jobed that to say they had it, when it did not work period.

I agree that Ati was foolish to do this, but Nvidia is not god of all gods when it comes to releasing clean drivers.

Something just seems fishy about the link you put out. I've seen both cards in action, Ati has always seem crisper and cleaner when it comes to dvd and 2d. 3d Nvidia still is the champ, but not by much.

It comes down to price, performance and stablity....if you have all that in your card......then there are no worries.....

 

[MeldarthX]

Links are not around anymore, this was when Nvidia was going head to head with 3dfx. Nvidia was caught lowering res to increase frame rate. But same right 3dfx was caught doing the same thing.

If I can find them I will, but its been over a year so, actually finding them is going to be a bitch.

Thanks for the point out on the prices, its been a long night.

You only commmented on a couple of things I posted. Yes, Nvidia has most of the time delivered their drivers with less bugs than most others. That does not make them perfect. You seem to be only falling back to Anand; when other sites have shown Ati's playback and visionals are better. Tom is one of them. You shown a link to small place in Japan that shows this.

I agree with you that Ati screwed the pooch big time on this; but its not the end of the world. Ati is now releasing drivers every 2 weeks. They are taking a page out of Nvidia's book. We'll just have to see whether or not if they can do as well.......

 

[Matisaro]

Find the links, untill then ATI is the sole cheating comany.

Nvidia's drivers have ALWAYS been top notch, all drivers have bugs but nvidias are generally regarded as the best there is.

I have personally seen a radeon and gf display on the same monitor, I cant tell any difference, I provided a link I saw at the regsiter, it was to japanese site. I have no Idea on their credability, I merely post links.

ANAND is the only site I am aware of which did a comprehensive video quality comparision between the 8500 and gf3, if you have other links I would be happy to check them out. Untill then you are just making statements which are not backed up. (PS: toms reviews suck, incase you havent noticed, check out the commentary on his reviews in the cpu forum so anything he says I take with a grain of salt.)


I never said it was the end of the world, what I am saying is that ATI cheated, and for me thats a big deal, also atis drivers arent as good as nvidias, AND the ti200 is cheaper, all good things.


BTW: nvidia does not release drivers every 2 weeks, alot of leaked drivers get out but nvidia releases only stable tested drivers.

(or the last 4 nvidia driver releases(NOT LEAKED) 3 of them were whql certified, and the fourth was not, but only was up for 3 weeks.) And there generally was 2 or 3 months in between all of them(save for the 21.81-21.83 which was 3 weeks as I said.


~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Makaveli]

First of all Slow the Fu*k down!
This is becoming rather personal, You're to use to fighting off those Trolls in this forum. Less coffee please!
I never once said Nvidia drivers SuckED! I never claimed them to have hardware that wasn't working when released!
All I said was when the Geforce 3 first came out there were drivers issue's and still stick to my opinon!

As for the cheating they did so what I don't give a [-peep-]!
It's up to the user to decide whether or not to purchase the card. You screaming about the cheating, is not the best way to get your point cross. I do read, I am on the internet, Still up to me how I view the situation!

Calm down man. I've owned both Nvidia cards and Ati cards
I'm not biased in anyway, Just you telling me Nvidia drivers had no issues was incorrect.

As for that other guy waiting to jump on me for links I will get them and post them when I have time.

This is suppose to be a forum are we not allowed to disagree?

 

[Makaveli]

Also for the record I don't own a Ati Radeon 8500 or 7500.
So i'm not trying to justify any purchases!

Next time ask before you ASS-UME!

 

[SerArthurDayne]

Pthbbbbb, I'm not waiting to jump on you

I just wanna see links to these supposed issues, for I don't recall hearing of any major issues upon the Ge3 release. Is that so much to ask for?

"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky

 

[Guest]

it's not "cheating", at least in America, but it is still a bad business practice. Poor 3Dfx, and look at them now...

Check out the article, linked below:
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/chi2000829002244.htm

To recap, shame on ATI. But, I don't think nVidia is all that nancy of a company, and I find it amusing that a big company like ATI, was willing to rush a release of drivers, for what...an independant hardware review site? Wow! I'd hate to see ATI flushed down the toilets for this one, if it makes it to "TechTV", yep, they're screwed.

 

[pr497]

aren't these company 1 (ati) vs. company 2 (nvidia) forums just great?

I don't claim to know anything about everything, I just tell people what I know.
-PSB

 

[juin]

FPS are just number that have nothing to do with gaming experience

Go with radeon.But i really dont know how the driver like take your via chipset.

Wisdom dont come with time
Meilleur chance la prochaine fois

 

[Guest]

FPS are just number that have nothing to do with gaming experience

You don't really believe that do you?

------------------

<b>Do YOU deserve Da Bird?</b>

 

[AMD_Man]

They don't as much as people would want you to believe. How smooth a game is not directly related to fps although it's a factor. Sometimes when playing a game 100fps+, even then, you may end up with sudden jerkiness throughout the game. The Amount of RAM is an obvious factor to how smooth a game is. The core speed might not affect fps much it does improve smoothness in a game.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Smilin]

"FPS are just number that have nothing to do with gaming experience"

You are a tard.

 

[Matisaro]

I am completely calm, and this is far from personal.
I am not screaming about the cheating.

You may not give a [-peep-] if they cheat, but I and others do, and I personally think it makes their company and product look bad.

Nvidia drivers did NOT have an issues on release. The 12.41 drivers were stable and fast, disagree? Show us some links!

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Guest]

I bought an OEM 8500 a couple weeks ago, and was mad when I found out it was underclocked, so I returned it and bought a Gainward GF3. So I have seen both.

The only 3D game I really played on both cards was Oni, and it definitely looks better on the GF3. The reason was not fps; rather it was artifacts and shifting/blinking planes on certain images from the 8500 that were not there on the same scenes with the GF3.

I was really excited about the 8500 at first, then pissed that the OEM card was underclocked, so take that into consideration. But for now, I want a card that will work with any game I try, and I want it to work TODAY. The hassle of trying to diagnose problems is not something I want to deal with. The GF3 cost me $239, which is comparable if not less expensive than a retail Radeon.

I'm not anti-ATI, but I'm going to let their current situation be the test for them. If they come through on their promises about the Radeon 8500, and the performance quickly solidifies with good drivers, then in two years when I'm buying again I will look very seriously at ATI's best product.

Until then, I'm happily gaming with my oc'd GF3!

Save the children

 

[Makaveli]

And it was written!

<A HREF="http://www.acidhardware.com/reviews/gf3000d/index.shtml" target="_new">http://www.acidhardware.com/reviews/gf3000d/index.shtml</A>

"The reason why we did not see any reviews of the GeForce3 until a month or so after it had been released was because nVidia held back their reference cards. The reason they did this is because they had a lot of problems with their drivers and also because today's games do not take advantage of the GeForce3's technology. Benchmarks with games such as Quake 3 Arena did not show a significant performance increase over the GeForce2 Ultra. Now with benchmarking programs such as AquaMark and DroneZ which were made especially to take advantage of the GeForce3, the performance increase is dramatic".

<A HREF="http:////www4.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q3/000825/" target="_new">http:////www4.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q3/000825/</A>

"I personally had no compatibility issues with my software testing when the Ultra and Detonator 3 performance numbers were being generated but that was due to the platform I used and the limited scope of software being run. Running a wider variety of compatibility testing to find issues would have required much more time than was available at the time and it still wouldn't have compared to the amount of testing that went on the day of release to the public. After the review, however, I was able to find a few problems while testing other game software as quickly as starting Diablo 2 and Quake 3 Arena Multiplayer. If two of the most popular 3D games being played right now are having problems, I wouldn't be surprised if many others did too".
From Mr. Pabst himself!

<A HREF="http://www.eurogamer.net/content/r_geforce3t" target="_new">http://www.eurogamer.net/content/r_geforce3t</A>

"Apart from a couple of <b>issues</b> (including a refresh rate problem that limits punters to a rate below their monitor’s abilities), the unified driver programme is an excellent way of giving the customer an easy option. Here is the latest driver for your NVIDIA card. This is the only file you need".

<A HREF="http://www.pcbuyersguide.com/hardware/graphics/NVIDIA_GeForce3.html
" target="_new">http://www.pcbuyersguide.com/hardware/graphics/NVIDIA_GeForce3.html
</A>
<b>Driver Issues</b>
"We've read a few reports of other issues with the Detonator XP drivers: some users report problems setting Vsync and/or AGP4x mode, others note a change in the registry key used by the drivers that makes most prior "tweak" utilities stop working. (The new keys are detailed here). Lastly, it seems that some some users are experiencing "locked" refresh rate related problems after the upgrade. Fortunately, this issue -- which doesn't affect everyone -- is easy to fix, using the procedure detailed at www.nvnews.net".

The Detonator 4 drivers are available for Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP from Nvidia.com. See ActiveWin.com for details.

<A HREF="http://www.innermac.com/features/gf3preview/gf3pre-10.html" target="_new">http://www.innermac.com/features/gf3preview/gf3pre-10.html</A>

"Although we didn't spend a lot of time testing many games, we still managed to find quite a few corruption and other issues with the NVIDIA drivers on the GeForce3. Although these 2.x series of drivers address many of the problems that we found in our earlier review of the GeForce2MX, the drivers continue to exhibit problems in various games. Here's a quick glimpse at some of the issues we ran into from our limited testing".

There are some links, Nvidia might have the best driver team in the world but they are not perfect. They are far better than's ati's team no doubt about that.
But 100% perfect drivers they are not!

 

[SerArthurDayne]

#1: Acid Hardware Review: The "problems" with the drivers were that the Geforce3 did not show a significant increase in framerate over the Ultra in Quake3. That is HARDLY what I consider a problem. This was very swiftly remedied you should recall from subsequent driver releases which were quickly put out. Also note that just because a hardware site says "Company A had driver problems" does not make it a fact - the only problem AcidHardware even mentioned was the Q3 stuff, and they didn't even offer proof of it.

#2: "I personally had no compatibility issues with my software testing when the Ultra and Detonator 3 performance numbers were being generated but that was due to the platform I used and the limited scope of software being run." So he got through a bunch of benchmark suites without a single problem, not bad... the Q3 problems were again related to a very slight decrease in expected performance, and this is the same problem that you tried to show in the acid hardware review. Remedied swiftly with a quick driver revision. He also mentions Diablo2 but fails to explain what problem he had. More detail would be nice.

#3: This is dealing with the XP Detonators.... I thought we were looking at initial Ge3 launch no? As such there are already fast, stable drivers available for users with Geforce3's at the time of this review, and Winblows XP is crap anyway.

#4: Again, this is regarding the Detonator XPs...

#5: Umm... WTF?!!! This is Geforce for the Macintosh! Get that crap off this board immediately! AND this is also regarding the Detonator XP's... sheesh, we told you to find links regarding the INITIAL Geforce3 release, not XP stuff!

So in conclusion, regarding the Geforce3 LAUNCH, you found two issues... Quake3 lower framerates, fixed almost immediately with new driver revisiosn, and some unexplained issue with Diablo 2. So compared to the Radeon 8500 launch, the Geforce3 launch was pretty much perfect.

"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky