Author Topic: ATI gets tea-bagged (Read 1133 times)

SLCR · « **on:** August 15, 2006, 01:52:16 AM »

How many FPS's will AH get with this badass?

NVidias new "vid card"

-SLICER

OOZ662 · « **Reply #1 on:** August 15, 2006, 02:16:00 AM »

The same amount you would from a quad-SLI or, depending on the CPU, an AGP graphics card.

Masherbrum · « **Reply #2 on:** August 15, 2006, 06:05:02 AM »

Those aren't for gaming.

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #3 on:** August 15, 2006, 08:41:40 AM »

A bunch of friends of mine are in the process of making a game. Apparently, ATI is teabagging itself:

http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=865
http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=840
http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=857

SunKing · « **Reply #4 on:** August 15, 2006, 09:05:43 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by lasersailor184
A bunch of friends of mine are in the process of making a game. Apparently, ATI is teabagging itself:

http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=865
http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=840
http://forums.ttrgame.com/showthread.php?tid=857

That's right, you bounced fanboying RO for this vaporware.

edit- Edited for Sailor because he wants to be a grammar Nazi.

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 15, 2006, 09:11:35 AM »

I'm sorry, was that english? Or are you trying to make up your own grammar rules this time?

SunKing · « **Reply #6 on:** August 15, 2006, 09:12:40 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by lasersailor184
I'm sorry, was that english? Or are you trying to make up your own grammar rules this time?

Awesome defense. Still vaporware. You were in every thread on the RO forum then over night you fell out. What happened?

Mustaine · « **Reply #7 on:** August 15, 2006, 09:22:43 AM »

from one of those links:

Quote

The questions almost everyone asks when they buy a new graphics card. "Which is better, ATi or nVidia? Does it matter? Aren't they the same card anyways?" and so on and so forth. Well, after a week or two of research, and some time spent on heavy duty vendor specific optimization, I've found the answers to all those questions, from an advanced features support point of view. nVidia/ATi may or may not be faster than the other, that isn't what I'm looking at. I'm looking at which runs *better*. Which will let you have the latest and greatest effects a year or two down the road.

It isn't ATi.

ATi is... shall we say... a little behind in the game. It is well known that their OpenGL support sucks. There are some very very basic extensions that ATi doesn't support, entirely because the driver just isn't there. The hardware is completely capable of it (in fact, on macs, with Apple's custom driver, the extensions are there, so it really is just the driver) ATi just won't spend the time to update the driver.

ATi's D3D support is behind as well. This is less known, largely because MS and ATi are quite close at the moment, and MS has been cutting ATi some serious slack. Let's go through the list of major Shader Model 3.0 features, and see how ATi has handled them.

1) Dynamic branching
Arguably the most well known and most used SM3.0 feature. ATi introduced a version of dynamic branching with the Radeon 9500. They called it SM2.1

2) Longer shaders
ATi has increased the number of *COMPUTATIONAL* shader instructions their hardware can handle. ATi has not increased the number of texture instructions their hardware can handle, most notably dependent texture reads. Those are still at Radeon 9500 levels.

3) Instancing
ATi introduced a version of instancing with the Radeon 9500. When D3D came out with a dedicated instancing API, ATi changed their drivers to accept commands from that.

4) Vertex texturing
ATi has no support for vertex texturing. They claim it is too difficult to implement. However, the driver does advertise support for vertex texturing, allowing ATi to claim SM3.0 support. If one were to query what texture formats can be queried in a vertex shader, none are listed as compatible.

What about OpenGL features?

1) Floating point textures
ATi has not added true support for floating point textures in OpenGL yet, despite there being an ARB extension for this since 2004, and ATi having its own custom extension for this since 2002.

2) Pixel buffer objects
Necessary for render to vertex buffer. ATi has not implemented this extension in their hardware. The extension came out in 2004, and works on a GeForce 2. (Mac side, ATi cards down to the Rage 128 have support for this extension)

3) GLSL shaders
While GLSL vertex shaders will run on GeForce 2's, ATi requires a Radeon 9500 for GLSL vertex shaders. If one were to use the old style ASM vertex shading extension however, vertex shaders can run on the Radeon 8500.

5) Non power of two textures
Not supported on ATi cards. Supported on the nVidia 6x00 and 7x00 series cards.

Ya, who sees something here? Let me put it bluntly.

ATi cards have not changed since the Radeon 9500.

The X1900XTX is an overclocked Radeon 9500 with a ton of VRAM and support for longer shaders. Beyond that, it has a better driver. There, that's it. No additional feature support over the 9500. Nada, nothing. ATi is stuck in a rut. nVidia has been adding more and more support to their cards (and standards compliant support I might add) while ATi has been trying to squeeze out as much MHz as they can.

Get an nVidia card. Two years down the line, it'll still support all of the latest and greatest features that GPU programmers will cook up. I said it earlier, and I'm standing by it: The GeForce 6800 is the best bang for your buck at the moment. It's cheap, it's fast, and it's got awesome feature support. And, when apps are properly optimized for nVidia cards (and nVidia has step by step instructions on how to do this, and dozens of tools for measuring performance and such. ATi has generic optimization tips that they, *gasp* stole straight from nVidia) the 6800 will own most ATi cards quite easily.

What sparked this post?

Well, I spent most of yesterday optimizing the various shaders I've written to run better on nVidia cards. nVidia performance was sucking a bit, and I thought, you know, what the hell, maybe something can be done. Quick google search and bam! a dozen papers on how to improve shader performance on nVidia cards. Went through their handy step by step instructions to write shaders that run much *MUCH* faster on nVidia cards and still compile and run perfectly on ATi cards and, at the end of the day, got a 30-50% FPS boost from Jeff's 6200. Not bad, eh? Especially since the FPS he's getting now tops what I get from my X600.

So, I figured, what the hell, maybe I can do the same thing on ATi cards. Quick google search, and... nothing. So, I tried ATi's developer page. Look! Papers everywhere on optimizing OpenGL performance! Perfect! Wait... I've seen this chart before... and this text... this is the nVidia paper on general OpenGL optimization with ATi logos slapped on it. The hell. From there I did a bit more digging on ATi support for advanced features and... ya.

I'd like to know what truth there is behind all these acsuations?

Skuzzy?

if it is the truth, then like I've personally thought, Nvidia is the way to go for a long term gaming rig.

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 15, 2006, 09:26:28 AM »

The Third Reich was my original game. From there I branched over to RO.

However, my end there began when there was a mutiny on the RO team. Most of the people who made RO great got kicked out and recieved no credit for making RO the UT game winner.

Anyway, I finally uncorked on some communist who was screaming about capitalism and the US. But I guess it's my fault. I should have expected communists and socialists to flock to a game that glorifies them.

TTR has had a few fallouts of the team as well. But right now, they are working on an engine which the developers purchased. No idea as to guess when the game is coming out, but they have been making some very cool stuff.

Mustaine: I assume it to be true because that guy (delerium) is in the process of writing (rewriting) the graphics code to make it do the standard stuff, and then to give it full on shader support. Unless he's messed something up, ATI isn't as good as NVidia.

lukster · « **Reply #9 on:** August 15, 2006, 11:36:48 AM »

They claimed that this would run any game made in the next century. Shoulda been a disclaimer, "or until directx11"

Skuzzy · « **Reply #10 on:** August 15, 2006, 12:04:50 PM »

Dunno who that delirium guy is, but the tag fits. He has a truckload of ill-info in those posts. Lost credibility with me.

Mustaine · « **Reply #11 on:** August 15, 2006, 12:20:14 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Dunno who that delirium guy is, but the tag fits. He has a truckload of ill-info in those posts. Lost credibility with me.

danke. wouldn't think a company that large would be as far "behind the times" as is lead to believe.

Masherbrum · « **Reply #12 on:** August 15, 2006, 01:22:41 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Dunno who that delirium guy is, but the tag fits. He has a truckload of ill-info in those posts. Lost credibility with me.

He seemed "Nvidia biased" in his write up.

DYNAMITE · « **Reply #13 on:** August 15, 2006, 01:47:12 PM »

All I know is I love my x1900GT... it was a good price, and I get alllllll i need out of it.

If you aske me though, you can't lose either way... I've had Nvidia cards in the past, and will more than likely have one again in the future... just like I'll buy another ATI as well...

I just don't understand card-fanboys.

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #14 on:** August 15, 2006, 02:55:54 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Masherbrum
He seemed "Nvidia biased" in his write up.

Too bad he has an ATI card himself. He has nothing to gain from being Nvidia biased.