NVIDIA Vs ATI

(karpo_007) #21

Nvidia’s DX 5900 is probably the fastest card on the market right now, but Nvidia’s new budget cards aren’t that good. GF FX 5600 Ultra loses to GF TI 4600. Best choice right now would be Radeon 9700 non-pro, You can get it for about 200$. Beats every Nvidia card below FX 5800 and is quite afordable. I’ve heard that the compatibility problems are rare now days to.

(Emon) #22

Having owned and worked with numerous cards by each company, I consider myself quite unbiased, something not very often seen when it comes to video cards or other technology.

I had an ATI Rage Pro AGP 2x way back in 1998, and although it was a budget card, it still blew. A lot. A year or two later I was using a TNT2 Ultra, which I absolutely loved at the time. The drivers were great, no serious problems. Then in 2001 I got a GeForce 3 Ti 200, which I’m now about to sell. I could overclock it easily, the drivers were simply fantastic. If there was even a slight bug in the drivers, it would be fixed within days or weeks. ATI, on the other hand… hasn’t been so good with the Catalyst drivers I have for my new Radeon 9700. It’s a great card, but the drivers keep giving me problems. One version has a bug in one game, the next gets rid of that and creates another bug. The past three driver releases have had a critical bug in the control panel, where it fubars the arrow keys and six block above it in games, the result of some stupid hotkeys or something in the control panel. The problem has been all over the Rage3D forums, even acknowledged by ATI employees I believe, and still not fixed! I’ve had to resort to either not installing the control panel or not running it.

(karpo_007) #23

Thats true about ATi card’s, some people have problems others have none.

(Cosmos) #24

I can’t really comment on ATi products as I have only had a ATI Pro 128 16MB which is in my old computer, it was crap and my computer didn’t run any games. I replaced it with a voodoo banshee 16mb and it has worked fine since. Just an old computer for the parents which works fast enough for them.

(IgmanStein) #25

As far as relaibility is concerned, I have had several nVidia cards die on me and have never had an ATI go bad. It’s just my experience so I am not saying that ATI is better, just that if an ATI and an nVidia card are about the same price, I am going with ATI.

(Cosmos) #26

What is the most money you guys will spend on a GFX card?

(Dawg) #27

I just installed a new CGA card!

wheeeeeeeeee!

Dawg

p.s. I am, of course, kidding. I voted nVidia for no other reason than its the card I have and I am happy with its mediocrity (gf3).

(Emon) #28

  1. Part of me dislikes ATI for their especially shady business practices, but they still make damn good hardware, and software is getting better. And I agree that nVidia’s Linux support is simply amazing. (Because of this, I voted Other)

  2. I choose whichever product gets the best performance to price ratio at the time. January 2002 it was the GeForce 3 Ti 200 for my budget, a few months ago it was the Radeon 9700.

  3. For the HL2 and D3 thing, well, I think both will be fantastic games, in terms of technology and otherwise. I think HL2’s engine is going to be a lot more vesatile than Doom III’s, simply because of Valve’s objectives. Valve wants an engine that can be used for anything by any modder, and are making it quite easy to get there. Doom III, however, will probably be used for more specific applications, although we’ll also see some amazing evolution happen with it over the years like we have for Quake III.

(Emon) #29

And, as for the record, many other games feature the same physics engine as HL2’s. Just for the record. :slight_smile:

(Cosmos) #30

The poll is all square at the time of posting.
31 for Nvidia and 31 for ATI as well as 4 “other” votes.

:moo:

(damocles) #31

And, as for the record, many other games feature the same physics engine as HL2’s. Just for the record

That’s funny, I was under the impression that Valve developed the physics engine in house solely for HL2. That would mean that NO other games will have the same physics engine as HL2.

Many other games will have physics engines of sorts, but if UT2003 is anything to go by, they will suck donkey balls. UT2k3’s “rag-doll” physics were pretty naff. They actually had to build sections into the levels where the bodies could fall and bounce off of beams just to show the physics were actually in the game!

D3 is promising physics too, but from the video they look like pretty ordinary physics. There didn’t seemt o be rag doll deaths either.

I think the HL2 physics will remain the best physics engine around for quite a long while. I wonder if valve have any plans to source it out to other companies

(Emon) #32

Nope, it’s Havok, physics middleware. A lot of games use it.

I dunno where people got the crazy notion that Valve developed it!

(Weaver24) #33

I Honestly think it would be an incredible waste to spend hours of hard labor… and nearly a year or two in development to just put it in ONE game.

If the physics engine is a good one, other game developers will want to use it.

It takes A LOT of work to make a physics engine.

(Emon) #34

That is precisely why they used Havok. It’s easy to impliment, saves a lot of time and is a very robust and complete physics system. I believe they have some sales pitch like, “Why reinvent the physical wheel?” Which they use to try to lure developers away from making their own physics.

(damocles) #35

“Making a game with the complex physics interactions and physics gameplay of Half-Life® 2 is really hard - but it would have been impossible if we hadn’t started with robust fundamental physics technology from Havok.”

“Havok has been working with Valve for almost three years to deliver breakthrough physical gameplay. Havok 2, launched at GDC 2003 incorporates all that we have learned from working with each other

So it’s actually a new version of havok, co-developed with valve. This means that when HL2 is released this year it will be the first game using that physics system. That’s where peopel get the impression valve is developing a physics system. They started with Havok and worked with them to develop a new improved system.

So future games will get the chance to implement them, but for at least 6 months I’d say that HL2 will be unmatched in physics prowess.

(twiFight) #36

nonsense, there are a few games out there with revolutenary systems already. Sure, maybe HL’s system is one of the best out there, but they are only doing what others have been doing before.
Not that I’m trying to bash HL, don’t get me wrong the system will be great - but it’s not what emon said that they invented the wheel.

by the way, what physics system is Deus.Ex 2 using? Also havoc, or did they develop their own system? I heard just about everything will have it’s physical effects in deus ex 2

(Emon) #37

Deus Ex: Invisible War uses Havok, as does Thief III. The engines are nearly identicle.

damocles, that’s probably where some people got that impression, but a lot of people are just HL fanboys and assume Valve made everything. I’ve heard people say that Valve developed all the shader technology. Bunch of nonsense, they are D3D shaders!

(twiFight) #38

I assume shaders don’t have anything to do with shadows?
Is there a good page with explanations about 3D techniques
like shading, vertex/pixel, polygons and that kind of stuff

And easy to read cos I’m not english so I don’t know all those fancy words…

(Emon) #39

I don’t know of any pages that can really explain it all, use Google on those topics. The Quake III Shader Manual can give you a basic explination of what a shader might be, look for that.

(twiFight) #40

OK, you can find the shader manual here in case anyone else is interested too.

Shaders are short text scripts that define the properties of a surface as it appears and functions in a game world (or compatible editing tool).