vid card question

[38ruk]

i read a 6600gt review over a digit-life.com and with the 128bit memory it did poorly in most tests with AA enabled , the 9800pro, with it's 256 bit memory ,  held its own with AA enabled in most tests , and in quite a few beat it by a good margin. both where 128mb cards. now if Anti Aliasing isnt a concern for you, the 6600gt runs good, able to beat the 9800 pro at most all games at all resolutions without AA.   38

[Skuzzy]

Uhmm,..Star, not to be a nit, but "True Trilinear Optimizations" is as about as accurate a description as you can get for what they are doing.
And it is significantly better than what NVidia is doing with thier version of trilinear, which is disabled by default.  Unless you enable it, all NVidia cards do not do trilinear at all.  They stopped running true trilinear with the FX5xxx cards as the performance was abysmal for them.
They did not allow trilinear to be enabled untkil the FX6xxx cards came out and then they made it optional.

There really is no difference between the two companies.  They are both looking for an edge.  NVidia hides what they do.  ATI was more than happy to discuss what they were doing.  Proud of it as a matter of fact.

I am not sure where you are getting your information from, but it sounds a bit slanted.  Nothing personal, but you might want to read more about this in other various forums.  Your basis for anger towards ATI is rather unfounded.
Oh, and you do know ATI made a switch available to disable those optimizations?

Iti s a highly competitive business.  Both companies stick thier fingers in the mud from time to time.  They both have really good product today.

[DoctorYO]

Do you think I would see some increase in frames with a new GPU...

Currently using old crusty 9500 pro with a 2400 XP (2000 mhz)

now granted 9500 pro isn't a bad card runs HL2 fine and Total War etc...

But when moving mud under AH2 or hoarde the thing bogs down..

Would a new card help out..  Toms Hardware always has a fast rig pushing his GPU reviews so Im confused as if i would be CPU limited with only 2000mhz pushing say a 6600 GT agp....

On top of that Im getting CTD's in AH2 with the 9500 pro but can not narrow it down as what is the problem...

Tried Vid drivers..  no sound..  new sound  drivers..  (could saitek software be a problem.. got a x45 ??) reinstall? its not heat..  its not power supply..  its not Drivers (omega, cats ive tired them all....)

I'm stumped I can fix everbody's other computers but my own doesn't work the Irony...

CTD's happen when i use the normal snap view..  no application log or nothing just CTD....  at random...  have reviewed boards and no luck yet..


Thanks in advance..



DoctorYo

[buzkill]

looks at sapphire 9600xt card....it definatly helped my 2gig system in a big way and cost $135 on newegg. keep in mind that my 2gig cpu is athlon 3000+ 64bit so your improvement won't be as drastic....my old card was also 9200se...so anything is better

[StarOfAfrica2]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Uhmm,..Star, not to be a nit, but "True Trilinear Optimizations" is as about as accurate a description as you can get for what they are doing.
And it is significantly better than what NVidia is doing with thier version of trilinear, which is disabled by default.  Unless you enable it, all NVidia cards do not do trilinear at all.  They stopped running true trilinear with the FX5xxx cards as the performance was abysmal for them.
They did not allow trilinear to be enabled untkil the FX6xxx cards came out and then they made it optional.

There really is no difference between the two companies.  They are both looking for an edge.  NVidia hides what they do.  ATI was more than happy to discuss what they were doing.  Proud of it as a matter of fact.

I am not sure where you are getting your information from, but it sounds a bit slanted.  Nothing personal, but you might want to read more about this in other various forums.  Your basis for anger towards ATI is rather unfounded.
Oh, and you do know ATI made a switch available to disable those optimizations?

Iti s a highly competitive business.  Both companies stick thier fingers in the mud from time to time.  They both have really good product today.

I'm not "angry" at ATI.  They havent done a thing to me.  As a matter of fact, the 5xxx series Nvidia cards USE the Brilinear filtering, and the 6xxx series cards use it by default.  But you can still turn true Trilinear Filtering on.  Even on my FX5900.  Nvidia doesnt advertise the use of Brilinear but they dont hide it either.  ATI only bothered to try sounding proud of it after they got busted lol.  They set theirs up so in benchmarks it shows as true trilinear but in games it uses the brilinear.  I've read 3 different articles from 3 different authors on the issue.  None of them thinks its bad tech, and neither do I.  Obviously if they are both using it, it works.  My only issue was that ATI tried so hard to hide it, and then came out using the "best defense is a good offense" strategy.  Here's a quote from ID Software on the issue, and the article author's comment after.

This is indeed a "cheat" that both major vendors now do.  Instead of always sampling the two adjacent mip map levels and doing a full blend between them, they have plateaus where only a single mip level is sampled, reducing the average samples from 8 to about 6.
It is actually a pretty sensible performance enhancement, with minimal visual issues.  However, having drivers analyze mip map uploads to hide the cheat is an unfortunate consequence.

The colored mip map option in Q3 should have absolutely zero performance impact in the absence of performance options like this.

John Carmack
 


This makes it clear that the performance in the Q3 engine with and without colored mipmaps should be absolutely identical. Tests with NVIDIA's 6800 confirm this. The Radeon X800, however, still sacrifices performance.

[Skuzzy]

ATI never tried to hide it Star, as soon as someone asked, they immediately told everyone how it all worked.  They also stated, at the same time, the next driver would have the option to disable it, and the driver did.

NVidia did hide the bri-linear when they introduced it in the 5xxx series.  They even denied it after they were caught.  They only acknowledged it after the 6xxx series came out, a full one year later and only then did they put in an option to use full trilinear.

And JC is very much pro-NVidia, so never expect him to say anything nice about ATI, but he is addressing mipmaps specifically.

[Kev367th]

Both ATI and nVidia have been 'guilty' of hiding certain aspects of how cards 'work'.
Both are also guilty of producing drivers that are targetted at benchmarking programs.
In all honesty though there is so little between the two companies top end cards it usually comes down to a matter of taste or convenience.
I used to have an ATI9800PRO, on upgrading, for me it was better to get a BFG6800GT than get an ATI x800 and flash a $400 vid card to get the extra pipes open.

Only thing I will say -
ATI is now claiming the highest score in 3DMark even though they were using a highly overclocked liquid nitrogen cooled x800PE (well thats a readily available combo then).
Previously it was a pair of PCI-E 6800GT Ultras, expensive but at least they were stock available items. Hoping that someone does the same to the dual 6800's just to annoy ATI

Hmm nearly $900 for an 800PE if you can find one...no thanks.

Interested to see what ATI's different approach to SLI is considering they are 'claiming' it's superior.

[38ruk]

doc yo , is it a built by ati 9500 pro , i know alot of those cards could be soft modded to a 9700pro , slapshot has the same card and it modded to a 9700pro without issue . just something to look into , btw a 9600 pro xt isnt going to be too much of an upgrade imho . a 6600gt would make a better choice   38


edit : as far as being cpu limited , with a 9500 pro , you probably are close to cpu limit , i had a xp3200+ , and upgraded to a amd 64 3400, i notice a big FR difference with the same 9800 pro, so even at 2400mhz i was cpu limited as far as maxing out a 9800 pro, now if you decide to go with a 6600gt , i think your cpu will be the bottle neck, if you can softmod that card i would say that would be a good gpu cpu  combo , btw this is my opinion ,just goin from my experience...

[StarOfAfrica2]

I have to admit, before I started flying AH again .................. call it what, a little over a year ago ............... I wasnt paying much attention to the technical gaming world for awhile.  For a 2 year stretch in there, I pretty much had tuned out the battles at the edge of anything, so its very possible I have a skewed vision of what is what.  I disliked ATI years ago, being a die-hard Voodoo fan.  Anyway, I digress.  All I know is what is happening right now.  Its all out in the open and I guess it doesnt matter who did what before.  I still prefer Nvidia.  Hell, even if they fall behind, I'll probably root for whoever is bucking ATI.    Its just my stubborn nature mixed with a little of the "my team is better than your team" thing.

One nice little tidbit I did run across at the NV News forum was a rundown on the Performance to Quality settings and how much of what engages which optimizations and when Bilinear is on, when Brilinear is on, and when Trilinear is on.  Might be useful for someone.  

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=31535

[DoctorYO]

It was my understanding that the 9500 (plain) could be softmodded by Omega drivers

The 9500 pro (ati) already has the pipes opened but is at a lesser clock speed than the 9700 Pro.. (i believe all the pro designations are ATI cards may be wrong)

But I appreciate the advice on the CPU..  Everything i read on the new a64's is that  their floating point is in a class by itself.. (I may have to bite the bullet..)

getting cheaper by the day..  754 sockets are dropping like flys (yeah no upgrade path on the 754's) I'll get a 939 if possible....

thanks for the info....



DoctorYo


PS:  Skuzzy any tips on stopping the ctd's tried drivers, sound, etc.. will reinstall next. any tips ?

[38ruk]

doctor yo ,   you are correct it is the non pro , never having the card i was unaware that the pro had all 8 pipes open , is see the main difference is clock speeds and the 128bit memory vs the 9700pro's 256 bit memory bus .  as far as ctd's im sure youve done the sound acelleration down a notch , you might want to check ur irq's to make sure that your not sharing major components , as far as the 754 boards , thats what i run , upgrade path will be limited but they are goin to produce to atleast the end of 05 , and i change boards and cpu's often so its a non issue .  if you look at 939 vs 754 there is a difference in performance , on avg about 5 to 6 fps . single channel vs dual ch , in apps it is pretty even , 3dmarks are better , by 2 or 3 % it not a huge gap , but if money is not a huge issue 939 is the way to go   38

 do you have fast writes enabled?? , also ive read where turning down hardware accel on the gpu helped peoples 9700pro a great deal , it should be on the troublshooting tab in your card settings window , GL

[Machine]

I just purchased a ATI X800 Pro Vid Card and it took care of all my problems running AH.  I was having all kinds of errors with my NVidia Card so when I made this change I now get great

FPS is now anywhere from 85 to 145 and I have Vert Sync turned on.

I just love this card....It Rocks