GeForce 5 this Fall...

Let me add to the speculation. Suppose GF5 was ready in the fall, and suppose the the G5 would debut in 2003. I think that it would make sense for the GF5 to be in the G5. And if this is so, then maybe the G5 will get a healthy dose of graphics acceleration.

Again, all speculation, but reasonable.
__________________

Fear the King.

total bull

why is this total bull? because nvidia has the full market right now. ati's best consumer retail is the 8500 all in wonder, and it can't come close to the gforce 4 in fps. next, hmm, let's check on how long it's been out, since feb, they go at least a year before even introducing a new chip because if the said this fall that a new one was coming out, nobody would buy the old one, especially when it has plenty of life in it. next, geforce 5 will as always premiere on a pc, not a mac, it has never premiered on a mac and it never will because 90% of nvidia market is pc. apple got in big trouble for trying to claim they had it first and had to remove it from their site after a call from nvidia lawyers. apple said they had it first, but really you could only preorder it in a new pm and then wait a month for it, about 3 and a half weeks after the pc release was the earliest you could get a mac with a gf4. same will be with the gf5.

Re: total bull

Originally posted by mozez
...next, hmm, let's check on how long it's been out, since feb, they go at least a year before even introducing a new chip because if the said this fall that a new one was coming out, nobody would buy the old one, especially when it has plenty of life in it...

Click to expand...

Actually, nVidia typically follows a 6 month refresh cycle. That's why ATI has such a hard time keeping up with them.

I agree that it's too early for a completely new chip, but not at all for an updated one. Who's to say that nVidia won't call the NV25 or 30(which is it?) a GeForce 5?

Re: total bull

Originally posted by mozez
ati's best consumer retail is the 8500 all in wonder, and it can't come close to the gforce 4 in fps.

Click to expand...

ATI's best consumer retail card is the 8500 128Mb, not All-In-Wonder. Please, do you really think that everyone will go out and buy the most expensive chip when you can get an awesome one for a whole lot less money? Who the hell cares about how may FPS you can pull, when there's hardly any games that will take advantage of it. Look at Quake 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, does 200+ look better than 100+? In my opinion no, but if you think so then by all means waste your money

What I find most curious is that its a 8xAPG card. What if Apple in their new desktop design opts for this type of card, woudl that hold up the delivery or would they just go with a 4x and say it can handle an 8x later down the road.....

ATi's card has always been known for good image-quality and great 2D performance. That's really important when you're a graphics pro, webdesigner, etc. When I'm going to buy a new gfx-card I'll rather get a 8500 than a GeForce. Plus I'll save money...

Matrox has also been known for image-quality and high-resolution sharpness, so I'm looking forward to the new Parhelia 512-based gfx cards that I hope will come to the Mac platform as well. I'm sure they will pack a punch for most hardcore gamers as well.

Re: Re: total bull

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
I agree that it's too early for a completely new chip, but not at all for an updated one. Who's to say that nVidia won't call the NV25 or 30(which is it?) a GeForce 5?

Click to expand...

It's the NV30, followed by the NV35 in Q1/2 2003.

With the developers of Doom III saying that a geforce 3 won't be enough to play the game, it doesn't surprise me that such a powerful card is planned so soon. Don't graphics cards usually remain one step ahead of games, and take a little while before they're fully utilised? The site mentioned directx 9.1, which hasn't been released yet.

If that gf card is AGP 8X only, then it will fly about as well as a lead brick. People will only be getting it inside systems, and will not be upgrading what they have. IF it will run equally well inside an AGP 2x/4X slot, then it has a chance.

How many people (besides the reaking rich) can justify getting a new system JUST for a video card?? Better still, to get a few more fps out of a game? I have an ATI Radeon 8500, 64MB version, inside my game peecee because it was much cheaper then gf cards that performed as well. I was tempted to replace it with the 128MB version, but thought about it for a few and realized a few things. One, games won't require that much video card memory for some years now, and two... what would I do with my 64MB card???

I firmly believe that ATI cards are a better product. Maybe my feelings are based on the fact that ATI chips have been used in Mac systems for ages. That kind of loyalty earns it a special place in line for my hard earned money. nVidia is too new to the Mac scene, so I feel no loyalty to them, or from them to Apple.

I have to wonder when ATI will be releasing their next generation of GPU. ATI's 8500 chip pushed nVidia to develop the gf4ti just to keep up. I remember that ATI had dual head video cards before nVidia did, and for less $$ too (standard issue with ATI cards, more recently added to ones with nVidia gpu's).

Personally, I see the current cards from ATI being able to handle anything you can toss at them for the next few years. I have no intention of going to a new video card until AMD comes out with their next generation chip. Then I will wait for the motherboard to come out that I want (on board RAID controller). At that point, I MIGHT make a new system and get a top end video card (95% sure it will be from ATI).

Bottom line, unless there is a game either out, or soon to be out (less then a month away) that REQUIRES (not recommends) a higher video card, keep what you have. If it comes down to that your software is dragging because of your video card... well, you have bigger problems then that since your system is probably a generation or two old anyway.

Re: total bull

Originally posted by mozez
next, hmm, let's check on how long it's been out, since feb, they go at least a year before even introducing a new chip because if the said this fall that a new one was coming out, nobody would buy the old one, especially when it has plenty of life in it.

Click to expand...

No offense, but you don't know crap 'bout PC gamers. "Hardcore" gamers get the next gen cards w/in a month of release and I'd say most serious gamers get a new card atleast every 12months. And As stated before Nvidia worx on a 6 month product cycle (and they have been for years). That's one reason they are king of the hill. No one else can keep up.

As for the ATi being so "lowly" compared to Nvidia... Caramack used an ATi card to demo Doom III.


Lethal

hmmm.... fully dx9 compliant anyone?

The next gen games due for release are expected to play pretty poorly with the current crop of vid cards. Epic/DE seem to have taken the opinion that its better to release a game that pulls ~60fps on current game cards and expect graphics cards to catch up, rather than one that pulls 150 at release and in six months looks 'flat' and ugly. DE are on record as saying that ut2003 is expected to pull around 60fps on a current pc, and that there are no current video cards that fully do justice to the render engine.

ATI

Man, when ATI makes the 9000, 9500, or even the 10000, nVidia is doomed...

Re: ATI

Originally posted by MacAztec
Man, when ATI makes the 9000, 9500, or even the 10000, nVidia is doomed...

Click to expand...

Hell YEAH!!! I would purchase an ATI card long before one with nVidia's GPU inside it. When I get my next Mac tower, I will either go with the cheapest card (probably a low end ATI one) or get a good ATI one installed by Apple. If I opt for the cheapie, then I will go out and snag a top end video card from ATI and put that inside the tower instead of the stock one. I like the way the ATI cards react and render. The Radeon 8500 and 7500 that are inside the game peecee and my TiBook (respectively) rock.

Alpha

We know whats up in the gaming world.

ATI makes awesome cards. Seems to me that nVidia is interested in MBs of RAM, and not stability and quality of their card.

MacAztec, even Photoshop seems to like ATI cards better then nVidia ones. Considering how graphics show up better via an ATI card then nVidia even when you are talking the exact same image file. I have actually tested this at work, where we have mostly Mac's with ATI video cards. There are a few with nVidia cards, and the color accuracy is not there compared to ATI's cards.

It's weird that it's just the opposite on the PC side.

nVidia is the benchmark against which other cards are measured...even ATI.

ATI has not shown the same consistency of driver quality that nVidia has. There are even questions as to ATIs rendering of certain elements, such as sky textures, in 3D games.

For PC gamers, ATI is seen as a cheap substitute for an nVidia card. Strange...

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
It's weird that it's just the opposite on the PC side.

nVidia is the benchmark against which other cards are measured...even ATI.

ATI has not shown the same consistency of driver quality that nVidia has. There are even questions as to ATIs rendering of certain elements, such as sky textures, in 3D games.

For PC gamers, ATI is seen as a cheap substitute for an nVidia card. Strange...

Click to expand...

You can't prove that with my Radeon 8500 (64MB version) inside the game peecee that I built. It does everything really sweetly. I have zero complaints about the card. Now, I just need to reinstall everything on that system since I pulled the hard drives that were in it out and installed a new pair on the RAID. I will be booting from that (I want the speed of RAID 0 on booting) as well as installing all my software (mostly games of course) onto the 320GB drive that is created by the RAID (two 160GB drives).

Do you think that will be enough??

Originally posted by AlphaTech
You can't prove that with my Radeon 8500 (64MB version) inside the game peecee that I built. It does everything really sweetly. I have zero complaints about the card. Now, I just need to reinstall everything on that system since I pulled the hard drives that were in it out and installed a new pair on the RAID. I will be booting from that (I want the speed of RAID 0 on booting) as well as installing all my software (mostly games of course) onto the 320GB drive that is created by the RAID (two 160GB drives).

Do you think that will be enough??

Click to expand...

I'm not trying to say that you're wrong. I'm just saying that nVidia's track record on the PC is much better than ATI's.

You, as a tech, will be able to troubleshoot/setup a system better than an average user, so it's expected that you wouldn't have experienced too many problems. I think ATI probably ironed the driver issues by the time you got the card. At the time this article was written, they were finally starting to see decent performance from the 8500: http://anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1558

ATI also recently released a driver update (about a month or so ago) which also fixed some issues.

Yes, since I am a tech, and know what I am doing, I avoid some problems that others might encounter.

as far as the very high end cards go, ATI may in fact be catching up with nVidia in the PC gaming world. the plain and simple fact still is that nVidia dominates this market from the bottom up. Just live with it. nVidia is indeed the standard of PC gaming. Example, I spent $150 on an ATI 64MB card a few months ago. I took it back in less than a week and got a Geforce2 Ti with 64MB as well. The nVidia was way better at gaming than the ATI. It was just no contest. In Macs it does seem to be the other way around. Definitely interesting.

Originally posted by sparkleytone
as far as the very high end cards go, ATI may in fact be catching up with nVidia in the PC gaming world. the plain and simple fact still is that nVidia dominates this market from the bottom up. Just live with it. nVidia is indeed the standard of PC gaming. Example, I spent $150 on an ATI 64MB card a few months ago. I took it back in less than a week and got a Geforce2 Ti with 64MB as well. The nVidia was way better at gaming than the ATI. It was just no contest. In Macs it does seem to be the other way around. Definitely interesting.

Click to expand...

Which ATI card???

I know more then a few people that have tried out both, and the ATI Radeon 8500 wins top spot. If you buy a cheap video card, you get a cheap video card... not much thought needs to go into that. Get a top end card from ATI and it will blow your pants off...

Originally posted by AlphaTech
...Get a top end card from ATI and it will blow your pants off...

Click to expand...

Get a top end card from nVidia and it will blow your wallet up.

That's been my main complaint about their hardware: price.

PC gamers who want the latest thing from them are truly on the "bleeding edge" of technology.

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


Get a top end card from nVidia and it will blow your wallet up.

That's been my main complaint about their hardware: price.

PC gamers who want the latest thing from them are truly on the "bleeding edge" of technology.

Click to expand...

Yet another reason to go with ATI... cost. I spent under $300 for my Radeon 8500 when it first came out. nVidia cards were selling for at least $100 more then that, and were not as good. nVidia had to come out with driver patches just to compete. I still favor ATI over nVidia, but at least there is a choice.

I once used to go out and get the latest as soon as it came out, then I had to be more intelligent with my spending. So, I have calmed down a bit. Not to say that I won't get a new video card when ATI puts it's next generation out, but I will wait for it.

Respect and the greater good

Whenever I buy anything I do it because I can respect what it is trying to do or I respect what the manufacturer is trying to do. Hence why I use PPC hardware and would never use x86, why I will use anything over Windows no matter what petty sacrifices I may have to make (like waiting that extra month for a game to come out or, in the case of Linux, going pretty well without games).

For this reason, I could never buy a nVidia card. The only reason why they work well is due to their tight integration with Windows proprietary 3D APIs (such as dx). Since I don't want to help someone who is ushering in an era where open standards die (OpenGL) in favour of proprietary ones I can never make myself buy one.

It always amazes me how many people never think of things that way. It is re-assuring, however, that I can usually make a Windows mule into a Linux jockey or Mac user after about an hour talking about this. It is nice to know that there are others that think that way when asked to.

Do you understand the weight of your dollar? Do you all know that what you buy now decides what you can buy later?

Consider it because seeing this issue clearly is very important to those of us that are power users and developers and may completely change the way you look at computers and innovation in general.

But that is just my point of view and my humble opinion,
Jeff.

nice post, welcome to the boards.