ATI is smug but Nvidia's the bug in the rug

[coldstorm]

minium they recommend is 9500 or 5200 that says all u can't run them either . also after crawling though ati site there is no other card except the x800 (no info on x700 so there is still hope for ati people ) that uses 3dc with that kind of exclusivity most game designer will forget about it until other models get it . Not very good idea by ati                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

all @ti cards from now on WILL have it  , the X-600 and X-300 are just uber cheap-to-make 9200s and 9600s  , but with a chip 60% smaller , if you see a dell with an X-300SE : DO NOT  BUY IT FOR GAMING! its  as bad as a 9200se  , but so cheap that dell loves it .

 Farcry 1.3 will have it, so all games based off the crytek engine will benefit from it , the next Xbox will have the R520 in it which will have shader 3 and 3dc , so  Xbox II ports will have it  , the guys in valve praised 3dc in great detail and they mentioned that they will introduce it to Source at some point .  All the companies that are in bed with ATI will most likely introduce it to their games no matter what engine they use for their new games [ and get complimentary bribes ] . 3Dc has a future and  i DO hope Nvidia makes something similar... or buys ATIs patent so EVERYONE can play UIII at high details without needing a 512mb card.
    This is as almost as easy as Truform to introduce into games [ to enable truform you add 1 line of code 'enable npatches' ] , Unreal Tournament, Wolfenstein , Jedi Knight II, Enter the Matrix   and lots of other titles adopted Truform so their games will look impressive on paper [ truform does WONDERS for ETMs graphics , ETM had SM 2.0 , truform , soft shadows , ragdoll physics etc.  so it DID look good on paper ]  

.  And they will probably do this for 3Dc [ i hear they are  making a new ETM ]                    

[coldstorm]

u not understanding unless u got a x800 u can't benfit from 3dc.got a whole year to wait till ati release next set of cards. the r520 is next year not this year .farcry will have it and valve but that becuase it in ati cheque book like like id is in nvidias. but other than those anyone else annouce they will be using it ? ati is currently only in bed with valve if i not mistaken                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

i see it this way : get a cheap X-700 , benefit from 3dc speed improvement of up to 20% in 4-6 months with FarCry 1.3 , Half Life  II will probably also release a patch for it [ they did with HL1 and truform]  .  

wait 6-8 months and get a cheap R520 , benefit from 3DC then , benefit from  Shader 3.0 6-8 months after .

or :
Get a cheap 6600 and benefit from Shader 3.0 a year or more down the line , at which time you will not have the RAM to get high texture detail anyhow [where 3dc would come in if it were @ti ]

if the 6600 GT were 512 mb and still 200-250  Nvidia would be the better choice , but right now the BEST choice is to get an ATI SM3.0 card next year with 256mb of RAM so you can play games with up to a GIG of textures .
 
People with 9800 pros can more than wait  till next year , and can you REALLY afford 2 6600 gts AND an A64 And a high end Nforce IV mobo?

Alienware PCs can join  ATI graphics cards in an SLI style interface as well , its called a PCI-X16 hub .                    

[coldstorm]

ati never said x700 getting 3dc. ati site don't even have a word about it .6600 gt should have a 256 version would most likely cost between 200-250 with two of those in sli u got 512 . alienware pcs are few and far between almost as rare as the quadro 4400 so don't come with that they don't even have a model out yet they got protypes what is intresting is that eveything is water cooled but no final version yet. When they release the ati version of well then we know what performace increase it can do . The number of game companies who going to make 3dc will be few ati will have to pay them to do it since it not even profitable to make 3dc a primary feature right now with so few people owning one the risk alienateing the majority of their customere will keep most away. also as much hype 3dc is ati know it will not get 4:1 compression always there will be time when 2:1 or even 1:1 becuase compression ruining the output image .1 Gb of textures will have alot of losses at 256 mbs                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

with two of those in sli u got 512

 got you there  :-)  

in SLI mode the two cards will each need to contain the same data as  if you only had one card , this way the CPU doesn't have to do TWICE the work, it just sends the same data to TWO cards , so it still works out that if you had 2 256mb cards , and you played a game that needed more than 256mb, you would have to resort to compression , on NVidia cards you would loose alot more  IQ , and in the case of an ultra high end game like unreal III [ which uses more than a gig of memory uncompresed ] you would have to play it on lower settings .
  The X-700 doesn't officially exist till September 15th ,  but we already have 3dmark scores [ 7000 3dmarks ] details on the chip [ 8 pipes, X-800 core, 3dc etc. ] . We will also see an 'R480' [.11 process as well ]  soon which will be  represented in two products :  a 16 pipe version the same price as the X-800 pro  with a GT suffix [ .11 means cheaper ] , and a super clocked X-800XT [ .11 means 700mhz + clocks with good cooling ] .  
   The X-800 pro may be stripped down  and sold at around 300 US , to get rid of Excess chips, or it will be moved to the .11  process as well to lower costs .                    

[coldstorm]

my understanding of sli is different but i didn't read tech report .how i undertsand it is that each card id given half the screen to render so half the texture for one and the next one is another half. no one said x700 getting 3dc 8 pipes yes but not x800 core. i sure on that point also . if u look at the world record futermark clain the chip was clocked at 700 mhx but required liquid nitrogen cooling so it would not fry so back to u .aslo lower circuit size don't mean cheaper mean more chip on wafer but yields on lower are not as good as higher count circuitry also .11 techonology to make the chip  is alot more expensive than .13                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

sometimes games  will use the same textures/shaders/maps in both halves of the screen  ,   especially when looking at the floor    and it also removes the necessity to keep a large and constant flow of  data , in which case you would eat up the system resources .
     And the nightmare scenario of the video card needing to accsess SYSTEM ram in order to work doesn't involve TWO cards BOTH eating up their own share of system ram , and forcing you to use more virtual memory . using the Hard drive constantly eats up as much as 20% of CPU time on a 3ghz machine , this will put you in a vicous cycle of lag that boggles the mind [ it happened to me with my 32mb TNT2 and generals ] . Both cards will have to use all of the same data , so if you need to accsess system ram you would only need ONE cache .
   What gives the speed  is that each card does HALF the processing , video memory doesn't give much of a speed boost  unless ALL of it is being used .

 <<<< this is officially my last post in this forum                    

[strongton]

IT COST NVIDIA more than a few millions to have its TWIMTBP – The way it meant to be played marketing program up and running but if you ask us it efficient if you ask us.

We found a link where you can find complete list of Shader model 3.0 games. Quite a long list don’t you think.

If you ask ATI, it will give you all kinds of reasons why Shader Model 3.0 is not that important as it all can be done in Shader Model 2.0b the one their hardware use. It is partly right - it will just be a bit slower with 2.0b then it is with 3.0 but from now on it won't be telling us how there won't be many Shader Model 3.0 games available.

The list has twelve games on it plus Unreal 3engine. Nvidia scored many EA games but I guess that comes from TWIMTBP partnership that those two companies have. Don’t get me wrong we think SM 3.0 is very good stuff and more games are coming. µ

List includes many good titles such as: Lord of the rings: Battle for the middle earth, Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl, Vampire: Bloodlines, Splinter Cell 3, Tiger Woods 2005, Madden 2005, Driver 3.0, Grafan – never heard of it, Metal of Honor: Pacific Assault, Painkiller trough Patch, Far cry trough Patch.

Last but not the least is believe it or not Half Life 2 that will have support for this Shader model that currently works only at Nvidia cards.

Nvidia sure did a great job for getting attention to their marchitecture and we are looking forward to see all those games in action. µ

                   

[W1nTry]

So much for no games eh Trinireturnofthenotsowellinformed? and here I was thinking that you had some kinda lack of a game list supporting Shader 3 to push ur point. Now tel me, considering these games are slated to use Shader 3.0 which company has a card that supports it NOW so they can develop their games for next year? I don't hear anything...