ATI support poor or just slow?

[Kano]

@mugginz

Haha, as it expert you get win 7 for free for 30 days.

[mugginz]

@mugginz

Haha, as it expert you get win 7 for free for 30 days.

And it can be extended to 120 days. I forgot about that.

I should go find a demo of Arma2 me thinks.

[mugginz]

no only SSAA kills 100% of all Texture flickering and Shader flickering.

and only SSAA sharps the textures.

Does TR SSAA count?
What about CSAA?

When I look at stills of a game and find the graphics pleasing and without jaggies and when watching the game play that's without shimmering, etc. then I consider that good no matter what you call it.

why only on short notice ?

It's not very elaborate. Needs more detail and skulduggery.

[Kano]

I would try maybe SLI/Crossfire to see how the drivers perform. But most likely that's no good solution for permanent use. That's mainly something for benchmarks.

[mugginz]

German C't wrote this in the release article of the GTX480.

and yes you can calculate it mathematical because of the traffic need of the pixels ;-)

But as there are other overheads, theoretical throughputs in themselves only get you so far. Real world results trump theoretical throughput in my mind.

not really you also can use a Crossfire system or a 5970-2gb-vram

Or you can use nVidia in SLI.

High-resolution only needs more 'Vram' you can also use a 2GB vram card!

But what about the extra parallelism of the higher spec cards?

yes you need a 100? or 150? main-board.. but hey you save so much money on nvidia its really cheap against a gtx480
about the scale how cares? amd is so cheap you can always beat nvidia on price!

I dunno about that. Multi-GPU has some drawbacks such as micro-stutter that are only worth putting up with when it's really demanded. Where there are single GPU cards that'll do what you need, at least in my view they're a better choice. Especially when there's a possibility that you might need the most performance possible. If all you ever need is the performance of 4 x 5830 then maybe but what happens if you need more? If you can afford a 5870 or GTX-480 to begin with your future possibilities are greater. You have to way these things up on an individual basis.

[mugginz]

Currently downloading the Arma2 Demo. All 2.8Gs worth. I hope it's worth it.

[mugginz]

no CSAA do not count i'm not sure on TR SSAA... "TR SSAA and AD SSAA""nevermind i found the answer. one is an ati option only and the other is an nvidia option only. "

SSAA is the best DSSAA not so..

if you play Arma2.. arma2 does have ingame SSAA+super LOD Burns every Computer in the hole world!


But you can compare this result to an 4XSSAA test run the difference is impressive.

It would seem that you consider SSAA to be the most important factor when choosing a graphics card.

Given that nVidia by default provide for SSAA in DX9, 10 and 11 titles where ATI only provide for SSAA in DX9 titles, and while with hacks you can sometimes enable SSAA for DX10 & 11 titles for ATI it's far from perfect, would you then conclude that in you opinion, when requiring the best IQ, nVidia is the best choice generally?

Or has ATI now released updates to make SSAA available for DX10 and DX11 titles?

It's not very elaborate. Needs more detail and skulduggery.

sorry my english fails here :-(

Your conspiracy theory didn't provide any detail or evidence. All of the best ones are based on "evidence", no matter how fragile.

[Panix]

Is there a Cole's Notes for where the discussion has gone?

I would like to do more with my card so I can grasp the content here but alas, I loaned out my computer temporarily and now mostly use a laptop with an old ATI card.

Q, conspiracy aside, I am not someone who values or bases my perspective on future progressions. I want to know what's going on now and if the future is a concern or priority, then I want it based on near future. Video cards are coming out all the time and new ones may have major changes or only subtle. However, the problem when it comes to ATI, is that the development of the drivers is so slow. Whereas, the crappy Nvidia drivers are a binary blob for the most part and they are able to do a half decent job at being up to date. I guess that's the compromise (or sacrifice) one has to make and decide on priority?

I like the open source options but since I'm more of a video hobbyist rather than a hard core gamer, I prefer an extensive feature as much as possible. I realize that Nvidia has the closed and proprietary features but until I read/learn of ATI tackling the bugs in their drivers sufficiently, I have a hard time considering ATI for my next video card upgrade.

If the newest 10.7 driver has a lot of solutions and it looks like there's considerable progress, then it will be tempting to consider an ATI card. However, the fact that developments in the kernel and X Server seem to lead to a slowdown in ATI's support means a barrier to using the 'latest' distros. Isn't that an obstacle to choice, ironically? I guess if you're an expert or developer, you can patch stuff but for the everyday common user, that's a lot to ask, maybe?

Carry on... I didn't mean to interrupt the discussion...too much.

[mugginz]

Is there a Cole's Notes for where the discussion has gone?

One will be release post haste!

I would like to do more with my card so I can grasp the content here but alas, I loaned out my computer temporarily and now mostly use a laptop with an old ATI card.

Ouch.

Q, conspiracy aside, I am not someone who values or bases my perspective on future progressions. I want to know what's going on now and if the future is a concern or priority, then I want it based on near future.

This was largely behind my delay of the purchase of the HD 5870.

Video cards are coming out all the time and new ones may have major changes or only subtle. However, the problem when it comes to ATI, is that the development of the drivers is so slow.

It'd be horrible to buy a card, have it hobbled due to its drivers, and then once good drivers were released have the next generation of cards released and make your initial purchase seem obsolete. It's something I'm risking myself. Here's hoping for a good 10.7.

Whereas, the crappy Nvidia drivers are a binary blob for the most part and they are able to do a half decent job at being up to date. I guess that's the compromise (or sacrifice) one has to make and decide on priority?

Their closedness was a price I was prepared to pay for the results I was able to get with an nVidia card. I'm now using closed drivers with an ATI card so maybe that makes me doubly bad?

I like the open source options but since I'm more of a video hobbyist rather than a hard core gamer, I prefer an extensive feature as much as possible. I realize that Nvidia has the closed and proprietary features but until I read/learn of ATI tackling the bugs in their drivers sufficiently, I have a hard time considering ATI for my next video card upgrade.

If the newest 10.7 driver has a lot of solutions and it looks like there's considerable progress, then it will be tempting to consider an ATI card. However, the fact that developments in the kernel and X Server seem to lead to a slowdown in ATI's support means a barrier to using the 'latest' distros. Isn't that an obstacle to choice, ironically? I guess if you're an expert or developer, you can patch stuff but for the everyday common user, that's a lot to ask, maybe?

I'm personally hoping to be able to sing ATI's praises very loudly when 10.7 is released. I'm currently having issues with 10.6 but they're largely known and so would be a bit redundant for me to mention them in passing but I'll be trying to keep detailed notes on what I find in the new driver with respect to driver quality and robustness. One issue that probably does bear mention is the hard locks I was having with fglrx and Wine. Not your run of the mill segfaults, but real deadlocking goodness from ATI. Something I didn't get with nVidia.

Carry on... I didn't mean to interrupt the discussion...too much.

Thank god someone did!

[bridgman]

However, the fact that developments in the kernel and X Server seem to lead to a slowdown in ATI's support means a barrier to using the 'latest' distros. Isn't that an obstacle to choice, ironically?

I have a crazy idea. Why don't you look at the list of supported distros for the Catalyst driver and the list of other distros where the driver seems to be working, decide if you can live with that list (or with the currently available features of the open driver) and make a decision based on that ?

Seriously, you're agonizing over this too much