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Fermi (Nvidia Next Gen) GCPU Architecture: Thread of promises, waiting and 2010
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Smash88 said:
X1600 was 4 years ago this month. That's like hating the PS3 because you had a lemon PS2 with a laser that only worked sometimes. CCC is fine, I've had no problems since I got my HD4870 at launch, and I've played dozens of games old and new on Steam since then. I was using old 9.4 drivers for a long time before upgrading to 9.12 when I was hyped up from the Steam holiday sale and remembered to do it. I had no problems on 9.4 and don't have any problems with 9.12 either. I didn't have problems with 8.9 either (which I had when I built my PC).
Minsc
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Smash88 said:
Yea, I agree, just because someone else's games all run fine, and they don't have any real problems, doesn't mean others can't furiously hate the drivers for doing some little thing different or funny. Or they could have just had a bad experience with a different game that never got sorted out, there's no shortage of that for sure.
I just wanted to give another perspective to the "blind hate" you sometimes see with ATI drivers, and make sure people know that you can own 100s and 100s of games and not have a headful of problems with an ATI card.
I mean you can google any video card + game title + problem and you'll get results. nVidia + problem will give you millions of results, as will ATI + problem (probably more for ATI). But I think unless you're going to specifically list out the problem that's causing a rant of "ATI's driver are complete crap" to put it in perspective, I'm going to have to question it based on my experiences!
I still have lots of love for nVidia, especially 3DVision, and want Fermi to do well for competition too - lower prices, and PC gaming in general. If it really knocks the socks off ATI, I may eventually trade my 5870 in for a Fermi, but I have to admit I'm not looking forward to re-testing all 400 or so games with the Fermi right so soon (unless I get a 3D monitor and get to fool around with 3Dvision, that'd make it a bit more enjoyable).
My first 2 video cards ever were nVidia, but I have no love for them. Their business practices the past few years have been pretty despicable. TWIMTBP games seem to purposely gimp ATI cards like Ubisoft removing DX10.1 from Assassin's Creed because only ATI cards had it and it made them run better, and the 9000 series being 10% overclocks of 8000 series cards was really dirty, breaking with traditional naming and fooling people into buying marginally better cards as a real upgrade.
Listen, there is no point in trying to argue, when you refuse to listen. That's like me talking to a brick wall.
All I am saying is in my countless years of working with computers, I know that I have never had as many problems with graphics cards as I have had with ATI. It isn't because their cards are bad, just that their drivers are wonky.
I have never to this date had bad experience with NVIDIA drivers.
Of course this comes from personal experience, so it varies per person. I guess I just wasn't lucky.
Oh and don't get me wrong, I'm sure NVIDIA has a ton of problems with their drivers, it just isn't so apparent (at least for me).
All I am saying is in my countless years of working with computers, I know that I have never had as many problems with graphics cards as I have had with ATI. It isn't because their cards are bad, just that their drivers are wonky.
I have never to this date had bad experience with NVIDIA drivers.
Of course this comes from personal experience, so it varies per person. I guess I just wasn't lucky.
Oh and don't get me wrong, I'm sure NVIDIA has a ton of problems with their drivers, it just isn't so apparent (at least for me).
Just to echo these points; I always used to have trouble with ATi drivers and that pushed me to NVIDIA which I had no trouble with right up to the 8800GT. I have just recently swapped to ATi for dx11 though and have had zero problems (touch wood) since then and ATi have almost fully redeemed themselves in my eyes. The only issue is forcing AA/AF on the ATi whereas on the NVIDIA cards it was easier through nhancer and the like
Minsc
Gold Member
Smash88 said:
There is no point in arguing, since it is impossible to make sense of what you're even talking about in your posts, which is even worse than someone refusing to listen (to what, you come across as incredibly vague).
I never was trying to argue, so much as provide another PoV to an earlier blanket statement, which my more recent experiences certainly entitle me to do. I'd be pretty embarrassed to be arguing about shitty driver quality if I were basing it over experiences from 4 years ago, I'm talking about my experiences yesterday, and the week before, across 100s of games.
Stallion Free
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fizzelopeguss said:
A-fucking-men. This app is absolutely essential if you enjoy tweaking your games, which is a huge part of PC gaming for me. I get a lot of pleasure out of installing older games such as Jedi Knight II, going through config files to make widescreen and then going into Nhancer to make a custom config specifically for the game without having to go through the irritating control panels. It also makes choosing the right kind of anti-aliasing a breeze.
brain_stew
Member
Nirolak said:Actually it's really simple on ATI cards also now. Just use the Catalyst Control Center:
There's still no automatic profiles which makes the driver settings close to useless in reality. Until that's changed I won't be buying another ATI card, too much of a time waster to have to change the settings each and every time I boot a new game
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Dynoro said:
I had this issue with it exactly. I dislike the Nvidia control panel as well. Nhancer is just an incredible interface that makes setting up profiles a breeze and explains everything.
All this blind haters (Sutanreyu,darkwings, secretanchitman, Schrade, Smash88) against ATI drivers must have not used them ever since Vista. :lol Since Vista, ATI drivers have been far better (stable) than Nvidia's. In fact even websites like Anandtech etc have vouched for it. People dont take opinions from a random GAFFers like listed above (or even me), do your own research from reputable hardware websites (HardOCP, Anandtech, TechReport). 
Minsc
Gold Member
brain_stew said:
Yea, that's pretty stupid for there not to be some 3rd party app to handle it, even though it should all be done 1st party, by both nVidia and ATI. Though I believe I read that the ATI drivers due out this month will have customizable per-program specific profiles (for XFire setups only?).
It must be real frustrating to be used to nhancer giving you exactly what you want, and then see newer games do dumb things like put a hard fps cap at 30, if I had nhancer's level of control and then got shafted by a game like that it'd be even more insulting :lol
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Don't get me wrong, I like ATI a lot and have had my fair share of ATI cards... and almost bought a 5870, but it isn't just Nhancer that makes me choose Nvidia. It's getting the best performance on Physx enabled games, being able to force ambient occlusion in some of the latest games and the possibility of me getting a 3d capable TV. Now that there is confirmation coming out that Nvidia can do hardware tesselation, I lose out on absolutely nothing by getting a Fermi over a 5-series. However, I would lose a lot getting a 5-series over a Fermi.
3D and Physics will on ATI pretty soon too, things like nHancer can only be addressed by their driver team, which according to their team lead is on their list of things.Stallion Free said:
I think brand loyalty is stupid, literally. I only do what is best for my money, get the max out of it; bang for buck.
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irfan said:
How is what I am saying brand loyalty? I want the most bang out of my buck and I'm not going to buy a card based on promised "upcoming" features.
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irfan said:
Can ATI run physx in software mode at 60+ fps? I want to play games like Mirror's Edge with all the bells and whistles and I don't see how that desire is going to become irrelevant any time before Fermi comes out. And I wouldn't buy another ATI card until they actually prove they have something that can compete with Nhancer.
The CCC is an unexcusable POS. I have never seen a worse designed gui in my life. There is Ati Tray Tools though.Stallion Free said:
I do miss SSAA which I could get on even my 6800GT but apparently is too high end a feature for my 4850. And not being able to enable physx in Mirror's Edge sucks especially since it's one of my most fave games. I generally miss nvidia's drivers it just worked better. I have an annoying pixel format bug that hasn't been fixed yet.
Minsc
Gold Member
Stallion Free said:
But nVidia doesn't actually make nHancer do they? It's just an app that's available if you own an nVidia card, it doesn't come already installed in the cards drivers does it?
I wonder, is there something about ATI's drivers that make it impossible for a 3rd party to create nHancer, I just figured it was a lack of interest/ability, but perhaps the fault is at ATI and there's something deeper preventing it from surfacing.
It's not really a big deal to me, as it is to some people, I'm happy enough running the games at 1200p with all the bells and whistles built in to the game itself, forcing further bells and whistles doesn't make or break a deal for me.
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Minsc said:
Nvidia doesn't make Nhancer, but the way there drivers are made, they fully support it. Their drivers come with all the profiles for different games with default settings/SLI configs. Nhancer is essentially going into that profile file and checking off the boxes you want for the settings in each game.
I' had a 8800gtx for 2 years, and i never felt in love with nvidia drivers. That, and i had a lot of freezing issues (most likely software problems, if you search on google you will see a lot of results about that).
Now i own a 5870, and i'm prefectly fine with ATI drivers. 0 problems. Actually, i feel more comfortable with them.
I used nhancer with my nvidia cards, but i don't really miss it (but i can see how someone would)
Now i own a 5870, and i'm prefectly fine with ATI drivers. 0 problems. Actually, i feel more comfortable with them.
I used nhancer with my nvidia cards, but i don't really miss it (but i can see how someone would)
I'm sure you wouldnt buy anything ATI even if the sky came down.Stallion Free said:
I'm not promising them either, just saying the deal breakers that the fanboys are trying to pimp here are not really deal breakers. I can honestly cannot imagine some one saying PhysX is a deal breaker with a straight face except Nvidia PR .. or fanboys.Durante said:
Its time you let you go man1-D_FTW said:
or should I quote your post eating your own words? 
(I dont hate Nvidia, I hate their tactics which are probably the worst in the industry after Intel)Some one who has both green and red experience.CoLaN said:
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irfan said:I'm sure you wouldnt buy anything ATI even if the sky came down.
:lol The card I had before my current one was an ATI. I have been flipping between the two companies when purchasing cards for the past ten years or so. Some of the Nvidia features have really grown over the last year though.
CoLaN said:
I've the exact opposite experience... I used to love nVidia, then switched to ATI for 2 gens (3k and 4k series) because their HW was better. I didn't play too many PC games until 4k series. Once I started to, I ran into all sort of game freeze issues. After spending hours trying to resolve issues without any luck, I decided to simply switch back to nVidia card; I've had zero problem so far.
Rabid Wolverine
Member
Stallion Free said:
Usually no when Nvidia borks Physx to only be optimized on their(addional) gpu's instead using spare CPU Cores.
I hope this flunks, use the DX11 standard so everyone can enjoy.
irfan said:I'm sure you wouldnt buy anything ATI even if the sky came down.
I'm not promising them either, just saying the deal breakers that the fanboys are trying to pimp here are not really deal breakers. I can honestly cannot imagine some one saying PhysX is a deal breaker with a straight face except Nvidia PR .. or fanboys.
Its time you let you go man
Some one who has both green and red experience.
Go head and post it. Just because I didn't post a thousand word Treatise that detailed my every point of logic and you think there's contradictions, I could care less. Look at your god awful OP in this thread. And the fact whenever you post some snarky Nvidia comment you have to use a ton of :lol :lol :lol . Protip: If you have to :lol :lol :lol at what you wrote, it probably is rambling garbage.
SimpleDesign
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I'd like to think everyone feels this way.Rabid Wolverine said:
SimpleDesign
Member
DirectComputebee said:
Here1-D_FTW said:
I post ":lol " because thats how I feel about certain things. Do you prefer LOLcopters?1-D_FTW said:
Stop being so touchy, if Nvidia comes out and blows every other card out of the water, then I'll be the first in line to buy it. You can just do a search on my post history, IMO the best cards of all-time are 8800GTX and 9700Pro. I honestly have no preference in IHVs, only that as of late Nvidia has been becoming Intel Mark II and they are whining at Intel for the exact same tactics.
If you can come up with a better OP, then please feel free to PM me and I'll remove the current one and post yours.
If GF100 is closer to the 5900 then they wouldnt need a 395. I'd honestly also think that a GPU with so much power wouldnt sip so less power that they can cram two of them under 300W.avaya said:
TouchMyBox
Member
Hey guys, can't we all get along and love every piece of silicon which allows us to play our games at 1080p/60fps? 
bee
Member
vocab said:
physx may well die soon although its unlikely, i don't consider it a selling point myself
never really used nvidia control panel for more than 10 secs per driver install so i can't hate it, nhancer replaces 99% of all the useful functions it has for me
i actually had a ati 5870 on pre order when they shot upto £340, i ordered at dabs who had them on pre order for £290, they put the date of arrival back 4 times and eventually i cancelled, looking back i have no idea why i even ordered one as i don't really need the extra power in the games i play, must of been the upgrade bug
the reason for my interest in fermi is because i really wanted to upgrade to 120hz for general gaming (what a great move that was) and at the same time i bought the nvidia 3d vision and i love it, so since then i'm stuck with nvidia as i refuse to give up 3D
the fact that the ati 5 series can't even run simple 120hz without a 2d clock workaround hardly fills me with confidence about their 3D plans
I'm quoting fellix from B3D:avaya said:
If thats a 360, then huge win for Nvidia. If not, then its a worse match up than RV770 against GT200.
Nvidia apparently has requested the videos to be taken down so that lends some credibility to it. Now it'd be great if we get some kind of confirmation on the number of cores.
There is little chance Nvidia's top single GPU configuration based on Fermi will come close to a 5970. That'd be a massive leap in performance and we'd see benches leaking all over the place if that were the case. Instead, Nvidia is staying very quiet. In fact, them getting all pissy about a video with supposed performance numbers is telling. I expect Fermi to be 10-20 % faster than a 5870, give or take, depending on the game.
No, no, you confused it with this: www.intelsinsides.com/RavenFox said:
Gully State
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vazel said:
He was talking about Nvidia..
I don't think anyone is calling anything a deal breaker it's just that particular features can make up for a raw price/performance advantage. Features like 3D vision, or physx, or nHancer, or better AF quality, or better support for games that are not that mainstream (eg. Anno 1404 was just plain broken for a few months on ATI). Each of them may only be of marginal importance individually or matter only to a few people, but in total they can easily swing a purchase decision, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.irfan said:
Yeah, I've owned 3Dfx, Matrox, ATI and Nvidia at various points in time and it always sucks to give up some small advantage you had become used to when switching. It's just that the infrastructure of small advantages NV has built up this time around is particularly hard to give up for me. I think ATI is trying to do something similar now with unique features like eyefinity or RGSS.irfan said: