HAs nothing to do with justifying purchases it has to do with reality and truth. nV has no equivalenet level of HQ AF, it's a hardware limitation (just like FP16HDR+AA) and no magic drivers will ever fix that.
You mean like the magic unsupported patch that enables HDR+AA in Oblivion, and has issues with rendering shadows?
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=98&Itemid=29
However, as we enter August, we are still left without a WHQL driver incorporating the 'Chuck' patch, nor do we have a non-WHQL release of CATALYST 6.7 incorporating this functionality.
Maybe the lack of supported FP16 HDR+AA games is the reason so few people care about this check box feature?
Just like everything else, there are extraneous factors, but we're talking about head 2 head so those other things you want to toss in there to make yourself feel better really aren't relevant.
Heh- I don't need to make myself feel better. You seem to put more stock in this stuff than many people might though?
The fact of the matter is that the image quality is pretty similar and posting a link to some 4X AF pictures on low end cards doesn't really prove your point. How about some 16X AF High Quality comparison?
What does market share have to do with this? But people obviously care or else it wouldn't keep coming up in reviews;
Like I said, the first quarter Mercury research poll showed that ATI only captured 17% of the performance DX9 market.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=116466&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=855747&highlight=
Do you honestly think if there was some huge difference in image quality 4/5 enthusiasts would be ignoring ATI? When their cards are usually cheaper? Uh huh. And they didn't just get swallowed whole by a cpu maker that needs a business chipset and some integrated graphics either....errrr...oh yeah.
Really it's a checkbox feature, just like SM3.0 support on the GF6 series, and it only matters a small amount to people who care about the difference; but you wanna talk about AF then it matters, if you don't care then don't bring it up. :roll:
Hmmm You've been here a long time. I wonder if you were this down on ATI back in the R300 days when ATI had angle dependent AF and nV 5900s had angle independent AF? Should we do a search, or do you want to fess up now?
Or were directed here by the viral PR firm you work for to spread the news... :roll:
:roll:
Oh boy. Another self proclaimed "expert" on the PR business who has no clue what he's talking about.
1. I have no connection to any PR firm of any kind, and haven't for many months. While it is true I used to get parts and software from AEG and nVidia, I only work with nVidia now. I'm a moderator on nZone and at GeForce3d, and still do beta testing for nVidia on occasion.
2. No one "sends" me anywhere, nor does nVidia necessarily approve of what I say. They don't try to control it either, because guess what? I don't work for nVidia.
BTW, why didn't nV simply provide the drivers to all the main review sites and help out if they were so interested or is their policy of Beta drivers not working well where no reviewer gets enough time to know what version nV will finally decide to certify. I'm sure that most reviewers just don't care whether nV wants to wait or not and then gets the review done with the tools at their disposal, later they may wish to update the review which is nice, but what would be nicer would be if nV focused more on review site relations and helping them unbiasedly, instead of sending their P minions into the forums after the fact to try and spread the 'love'. Seriously, talk about getting it all backwards, more interested in Spin control than in helping to get accurate information (because not all accurate information is to their benefit so they wouldn't want that right?).
Firing Squad didn't seem to have any trouble getting out a good review of Quad SLi with the 91.37 beta drivers almost two weeks before THGs article with the pre-betas?
HardOCP and HotHardware got out user impressions and a few benches of the 91.45 production drivers a few days later?
Only THG used the old pre-beta drivers lately, and frankly, I'm a bit sick of flogging that horse. They admitted that it needed to be re-examined, so I was
right? :roll:
I'm sure it was an honest mistake on their part, and I can understand being busy, so it's not a big deal.
Interesting how you think me pointing it out is though? Why is that? What's it to you?
I agree that it would be great if all reviews could be current with all the latest drivers and hardware, but as long as nV and ATi aren't willing to be completely open and uncontrolling in their support, then they will be at the mercy of review sties' lead times, and while this may be old news, there's no way the reviewers could know what nV felt like doing sometime down the road once they found a driver they liked enough to certify. Since this is and investigation of something even nV didn't support at the time of writing, I'd say it's a nice effort, and hopefully tey'll update it again when they have the time, until then nV will be stuck with poor impressions of 'Quad' SLi due to their own resistance to be open and helpful to reviewers. And you can take that back to the mothership with you. :tongue:
Your speculation is all well and good, but nVidia released the Beta drivers for Quad SLi on
July 17, two and a half weeks before the THG article was released. Surely as industry professionals THG was aware of this development, and had those two and a half weeks to either re-bench or post pone the article?
Anyway, I'm not going to get into that whole AEG thing again here. I've said in this thread what I plan to say about it. (especially as I haven't even talked to anyone from there since March)
ATI makes some nice hardware, and there's no doubt that on some monitors, with some games, you can see they have less shimmer in some spots. HDR+AA is a novelty in it's infancy, by the time the Chuck patch is incorporated into drivers, the G80 will be released, with the R600 on it's heels, and current HDR+AA will not be what anyone with any money will want to have.
You and I have no history, and therefore no quarrel beyond this thread.
I'm not here to start or participate in flame wars, if you want to, I'll just end up putting you on ignore and it will be one sided.
I'd rather discuss the issues without sarcasm or accusations, but I guess that is up to you.