That's another thing I wanted to talk about. For some odd reason I wasn't also thrilled with the full AA and Aniso results. I still expected its AA and AF algorithms to be so minimal in performance drop, that you lose only 10% total, which would result in still a powerful score. Again sorry for sounding somewhat Anti-R300, but the 8160 score is not impressing me again. Granted the score difference between it and GF4 is spectacular, but I still wanted more. Again I think this is a 3Dmark deficiency and I hope ATI tries to optimize drivers. They are known not to be able to fully unleash their cards' powers so early on with their drivers.
Of course the results in some tests, such as the Nature one, were impressive, and the Parhelia Quad Vertex test was something I was bluntly impressed, those show a lot of potential in this card.
It just saddens me to see ATi destroy the multitexturing lead their cards had.
Also, I guess another reason why I am not as impressed, is because we are only seeing the clock per clock comparison. Yes on that level, it's impressive. Feels like an AthlonXP over a P4 at the same clock. However I am very disappointed in the following:
ATi selfishly omitted going for 0.13m production, therefore their card not only requires more power supplying, but it runs hot as hell, and most likely will not OC.
This also means that chances of seeing the true meaining of the R300, which is to use HIGHER speeds than just the same Ti4600 ones. It may use 19GB of bandwidth per second, but its GPU clock is only 10MHZ above Ti4600. On average it had 30-40% better per-clock performance, so now that we know this (I always like to know the per clock advantage a new card offers), why not use higher speeds! Imagine it running at 400MHZ GPU and 400MHZ memory, that would make the card nearly twice faster by NORMAL operation, and even more in AA and Aniso!
Well this ends my pessimistic look on this card. I personally love the per-clock advantage it has, I have no problems with that, I am impressed as all of you. But I think the potential in it is so much hampered by Ati. As outlined:
-Lack of better driver performance
-Using 0.15m process means that:
-High power req
-High temps means overall hotter case airflow, and might have noisy HSFs
-Expected low overclocking potential, may not even go higher than 20MHZ more in GPU/Mem
-Cannot clock much higher, and the possibility of unleashing fury with 400MHZ GPU and Mem will be wishful thinking until a process switch.
-Finally this also means the card COSTS a lot because of that. A smaller process would mean less costs
-Using 8 Pipelines each with 1 texture per clock means it's almost the same as the GF4 Ti4600 using 4 Pipes with 2 textures per clock. It is apparent in multitexturing of course, but not in single texturing. Unfortunatly if THG is right, current games have become very multitexturing dependant.
There ends my ranting, and as you can see, ATi is to blame for making this marvel, lack.
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Is the opportunity to earn money by working, free?<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Eden on 08/20/02 03:40 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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