OT: ATI or NVidia

[Hammer]

seer wrote:
ATI seems to have always been better in the cooling department, and as a side-effect, don't require as big a fan.

Perhaps true, but the latest/fastest ATI card x850 does.

They have Low-K Black Diamond(minimise leaks) added to their chips.

[Hammer]

Glaucus wrote:

Also Nvidia killed 3dfx (which was a cool company imho) and they refuse to freely release information about their cards to developers. So I would go for an Ati card, but thats of course only my personal opinion.

3dfx was swallowed by nVidia. The old 3dFX team was assigned to make the GeForce 5 series of cards, formally known as the FX line. See the link? So 3dFX is still around in spirit. unfortunately, the FX line was considered a failure by many enthusiasts, and nVidia is trying to get away from the line as fast as possible. That may be the last "FX" series we'll see.

  - Mike

GeforceFX has some bugs in handling odd number textures and its missing a 8x1 mode. In Doom3, FX59x0 operates as 8x0, while HL2 operates basically at 4x1 (4x2 is practically useless). FX doesn’t have FP24 only FP16 or FP32.

PS; FP16 spec is still part of DX9.

Issues was fixed with NV4x range...

[Hammer]

Yeah, I've heard that too. Reminds me of AMD vs. Intel somehow.

It should be i.e. refer to http://news.cens.com/php/getnews.php?file=/news/2004/11/30/20041130013.htm&d

Graphics-chip supplier Nvida Corp. and microprocessor giant Intel Corp. recently entered into alliance while ATI Technologies Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices struck a similar deal.

To bring balance to Intel+NVIDIA alliance, ATI and AMD responded with their own alliance.

[Hammer]

You gotta admit it seems rather backwards. AMD has always been considered the gamer's choice (especially today with their amazing 64bit chips), and nVidia's nForce have also been the number one chipset amungst gamers (which as far as I know, is not offered on Petium motherboards).

Factor in XBOX1(P6 + nForce IGP).

It’s probable that the AMD64’s PCI-Ex motherboard market maybe too competitive for NVIDIA i.e. early release of ATI’s Xpress motherboard has potential dethrone NVIDIA and resurgent VIA (K8T890) can be dangerous. VIA doesn't have to handled memory controller issues in the AMD64 market.

There are at least six core logic builders in AMD64 and performance deltas doesn’t vary much due to common AMD NB. These are SIS, ULI, VIA, NVIDIA, ATI and AMD.

[Hammer]

@Wayne

There’s an interesting article from http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=838630
about for Valve's HL-2/HL-CS and reasons why FX has “issues” with it.

As a side note...
It seems that somebody has imported HL2’s near photo realistic textures into DOOM3 RT shadow and lighting engine...