Tomb Raider AOD benches: Bad news for Nvidia

[Strontium]

-
Who Me? stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:

I don't know your age, but I can tell you never worked in a marketing
department or ever will if you repeat that above statement in a
interview.

34. And, no, I won't be working in ANY marketing dept. I'm a chemist. I
made the decision, long ago, that any kind of customer service/marketing
would not be a part of my life. Working at McDonald's, as a teenager,
sealed that decision for me. I'll stay tucked away, in the lab. Let all of
the salesmen kill each other, in the front office. I hate buying cars, too.
I can just see the greed and lies, in the salesmen's eyes... In my
experience I've not met a salesman that even, accidentally, spewed forth any
truth.

Maybe it hasn't occurred to you, but game vendors are in it to make
profits. They don't make profits selling to hard core gamers. They
make profits by selling to casual gamers. People who may only play
2-3 games and own a mid performance card (at best, more probably under
$100) and have no intention in buying a $160 card to play a $40 game.
Remember even the Radeon 9500 plays that game in the low 20s frame
rates, most people don't even own that level of card. They'll move on
to a new game that will play efficiently with their present day card.

Yes, they are in it for profits. The gaming industry is a multi-billion
dollar, a year, industry. However, with differences in hardware, they have
to choose a platform and optimize for it. This has been shown in the fact
that, still, many games never get released for PC but solely for XBox, PSX,
etc. Some vendors are so lazy, that they will never even bother considering
different platforms. And, I don't think it's hardcore gamers is their
target. I think it's the 15yr olds that 'gotta have the latest game and
console/PC'.

I think you underestimate the level of hardware that more people are moving
towards. I don't think we are going to be a minority, for much longer...

 

[Strontium]

-
Andrew Stirling stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:

Well maybe...but the tomb raider game which is supposed to be the
hard and fast evidence of how awful DX9 games are on the FX5900
actually runs pretty damn good.

With FSAA and AF enabled? If I recall, from the review, it dropped to
unplayable framerates.

 

[J.Clarke]

-
Andrew Stirling stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:


With FSAA and AF enabled? If I recall, from the review, it dropped
to unplayable framerates.

It is not necessary to enable either of these to play TRAOD. It runs
fine on my 8500DV using the default settings.

 

[Mark Leuck]

good post. i've nothing but respect for the ati team for coming up with such
a great card. after nvidia murdered 3dfx i feared they'd control everything.
good to see such healthy competition and i'm glad to be in a position where
i can choose between the two cards.

Murdered? 3dFX killed themselves

 

[McGrandpa]

good post. i've nothing but respect for the ati team for coming up
with such a great card. after nvidia murdered 3dfx i feared they'd
control everything. good to see such healthy competition and i'm glad
to be in a position where i can choose between the two cards.

Choose between them? You GOT to be kidding! Hah! There I am in my
fave local Circuit City, lo and behold....I have both in my hands at one
time...had to open both boxes....had to check my savings acct from the
store!
Sigh...
now I have to build another computer and hide it from the kids! (Shhhh!
I din't say that! ;o) )

Honestly, *WE* the consumer have got to stop playing this fanboy game.
Look at the hardware honestly, in ernest. You do know the Nvidia is
built in Taiwan and the ATI in China? Amazing American and Canadian
business huh? Both companies work hard to attract the consumer, the
gamer principally. But they can get their work done for less cost
elsewhere in the global village rather than local to them. So, we get a
card for say $400 that would otherwise cost upwards of $600. <looks
around at the relatively short unemployment line....welllll..> Hey, I'm
kinda fanatic about great video cards and my games, ok? Heh! BTW-
CircCity had evidently mismarked the ATI 9800 Pro 256meg at $399.99, the
same price as the PNY FX5900 128 meg non Ultra (if they'd had one, the
256 meg 5900 Ultra would be $499.99, the tag was there, the spot empty,
they said it hadn't arrived yet, was too new). Now, is there a better
reason to sit in front of one computer with tears in my eyes and a huge
grin on my face and a new video card in each hand?

Don't listen to anyone cutting down either card...they're both badass on
even a 2 gHz P4 with 1 gig PC800 Rdram and XP Pro.
McG.

 

[John Lewis]

Not to get between you two guys, but the point is it appears that any
game that is going to use DX9 ps2.0 effects is probably going to
suffer a bit on Nvidia cards. I imagine developers will put in DX8
fallbacks, but of course those might not look as good. And you'll
probably be able to disable those effects entirely, but if you're
shelling out $400 for a videocard, you shouldn't have to do that.

Actually $248 for the FX5900 128Meg...with free shipping within the
US.

John Lewis

 

[John Lewis]

What a stupid comment. You spend all that money on your vid card (none of
the FX's are cheap as I recall) and you're going to place the blame on the
game and forfiet something?! Stupid...

Er...ummm, the eVGA FX5900 128Meg is now $248.. not cheap but
better than the $399 price for same that I have seen bandied
about here...........

John Lewis

 

[John Lewis]

Congratulations, hahahahaha ;-P

Thomas
(Radeon 9500 np 128 MB, modded to 9700, faster than a 400 dollar GF FX 5900
;-) )

Actually $248.

Check www.pricewatch.com

John Lewis

 

[Thomas]

Actually $248.

Okay,

Thomas
(Radeon 9500 np 128 MB, modded to 9700, faster than a 248 dollar GF FX 5900
;-) )

 

[J.Clarke]

Also, they tested on a 128Mb GeForceFX which is hardly 'the latest
board'. Also wasn't tested on anything like the 'latest' cpu either.

They don't say whether it was a 128 or a 256, but do you really think
that's going to make a difference?

And what's "later" than the P4 3 GHz? An Opteron?

 

[Dave]

Did you happen to see the ads for ATI cards all over that website? Yeah, I
thought so. BTW, those Tomb Raider games always sucked anyway.

Dave

 

[Andrew Stirling]

Also, they tested on a 128Mb GeForceFX which is hardly 'the latest board'.
Also wasn't tested on anything like the 'latest' cpu either.

 

[Andrew Stirling]

The Tomb Raider benchmark comparison I saw
(http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/albatron/gffx5900pv/index.php?p=3) stated
it was carried out on an athlon processor (2000) and a 128MB FX5900.
Apologies if you have a link to another.

 

[J.Clarke]

The Tomb Raider benchmark comparison I saw
(http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/albatron/gffx5900pv/index.php?p=3)
stated it was carried out on an athlon processor (2000) and a 128MB
FX5900. Apologies if you have a link to another.