It's funny reading this about 2 years later, as the 8800GT turned out to be one of the most kick A videocards out there, and excelled in SLI and was on extremely high demand for a long time, and the resulting G92 cored have had such long legs and such a great performance band that EVEN NOW TWO YEARS LATER that red rooster card co ATI cannot beat it without DDR5 slammed onto their TOP CORE TODAY - hence the 4850 is still eating dirt of that "terribly hyped" 8800GT in it's new flavors.
The red rooster charlie is EATING HIS FEATHERED HAT - forever.
So much for the deeply disturbed reviewer.
Basically going with the opposite of what he says is a good bet - and he's still at it - since his recent screeds led me here through one of his own links.
Thanks red rooster, for the total facepalm you gave yourself.

I bought a X1950XT and it failed miserably, before that I had an x800 pro which held out for jsut as long as the GeForce 3 I had before it. After reading about the AA bug on ATI cards I'm glad I went back to nVidia for my latest card, 8800 GTX.

Only game I've had a driver conflict with is World in Conflic, otherwise I love the card.

I'm not biased toward either manufacturer, whoever offers the best price/performance/support is who I will run with and at the moment nVidia supports more titles, has cheaper cards in each bracket and outperforms ATI's offerings.....feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that, it's about 6months since I was researching cards for my new rig so I never really evaluated the new range of ATI cards (R600)

Wow. Here it is, both the 8800gt and the 3870 on the market now. And look at how utterly wrong you were. 

I loved the article. You seem to be correct about VC1. Look at this:
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3986&Itemid=34
RV670 beats GT by a land slide in VC1. I hope your comments about RV670 beating Gt are also true.

These new video cards are going to be awesome. They will support Pci express 2.0 so they will get the big bandwith performance increase. The bandwith should be around 56 GB per second. If you times this by 2 your bandwith is the same as an ultra. You will need an X38 MOBO to utilize this. You can't put them in SLI, but still for the prices of these new Video cards you can't beat the price. With the 780i just around the corner around November 15th with support of Pci express 2.0, ati is sweating bullets. I also now know from a leak from Compusa that the new 8800 GTS's with 128 SP's will also be released on Monday. This guy is definitly an ATI man and he already knows that they are swamped!

Is it just me, or does Inq have some sort of grudge against nVidia? Nevermind that nVidia has squarely spanked ATI at all performance levels and price ranges. AMD makes a lot of promises and we're always hearing from the Inq that the next card will be the big tamale (like all those articles about how the R600 was going to put the hurt on the 8800GTX, or the recent one making the absurd and totally unsubstantiated claim that nVidia had conceded defeat against ATI's forthcoming cards).

Who gives a flip about nVidia's PR? Every company ever engages in spin. DAAMIT did it spades with the R600. Fact is that nVidia makes better graphics cards than ATI, which is why ATI's market share amounts to nVidia's table scraps. 

Sure ATI has a better video decoder, but this is the first high-end DX10 part to actually include one. The other 8800 cards don't have it and the 2900 XT's don't have it either. 

BTW what's the current Linux performance of the two camps. I only ask because that's all I run.

Well I certainly wouldn't expect Nvidia PR to attempt to be fair to ATI. As for the AA bug, who can blame nvidia for exploiting it. Personally I don't care about AA, at all, so I bought a 2900XT anyways. And actually a 2600XT as well, but I'm an pro ati. The 8800 GTS and GTX are sweet cards, and truthfully probably better than my 2900XT, my brothers have one of each, but nvidia is alot like apple computer in my books and I have no respect for them at all. They'll lie and do lame cover ups and screw people because they can.

To say it's 'unfair' to test with AA must be some satirical joke or something, that's not meant seriously is it? I mean really.
I was and am VERY impressed with how nvidia went all out fixing their AF with the 8800 generation of GPU.
And I am VERY disappointed with ATI-nay-AMD for releasing a GPU which falls apart when you enable AA, and I certainly hope, no - expect of them, that it's true that they fixed that bug in their new GPU's.
Don't forget incidentally that DX10.1 specifies some minimal AA as a requirement.

Bad, Nvidia... real bad...

PR and spin is one thing, but lying about a fact that can so easily be checked (AMD not doing HD-acceleration at all resolutions) ist just plain stupid.

And the price points: RV670 is just two weeks away, that´s when NV boards will finally ship. Or has anyone seen them on the shelves yet?

Thanks for making all this public, Charlie, and for those flaming him: If he was an "AMD fanboy", why would he use an Intel CPU then??

PR agents aren't paid to be fair to the competition. They aren't paid to paint the competition in an equally good light and hope the market sees their product is better. They are paid to represent the product and company in a positive light- whatever it takes. These guys are just doing their job as the job description requires. This doesn't mean I approve of the dissemination and selective information, just that I can understand why the company is spreading this stuff.

It seems to me that NVIDIA is scared that ATi will knock them off their high horse, and it surely looks like that will be the case.

Depth of Field is not "Next Gen". It was released by 3DFX as one of it's T-Buffered cinematic realism effects on the VSA-100. Nvidia purchased 3dfx. It's about time they brought these features.

http://www.graphicshardware.org/previous/www_1999/presentations/3dfx/index.htm

Frank

Actually I remember when DX9 titles were first coming out. A few games that were co-engineered by NV like TR: Angel of Darkness showed the Radeon 9600 Pro beating the best GeForce 5950 Ultra at 1600x1200. 

So not all TWIMTBP games benchmark better on NV cards.

"H.264 and AVC" are the same thing, no need to mention both. 

Most HD discs use VC1? Where does that come from? I'd be interested to see figures on that.

I don't know what's up with NV's VC1 decoding, but it's not as important since it requires less horsepower.

Companies trying to hilite strong aspects, choose where to fight, ignore what doesn't work... what's new? Most of them, if not all, do that.

Hi,

Interesting article. It may be worth noting that it would be an incredible move for any business to host its own event and then slam its own products. 

Your indignation at the skewed results they quote while entertaining in its sheer frequency and rancor is a little naive. 

This tangle of lies as you have painted it, is what is commonly known as marketing...

I am surprised that there are not yet 20 rabid Nvidia zealots here to trash this piece in every way they can think of.
As for me, this whole thing is a storm in a teacup because
1) No Vista will ever come near my PC if I can help it.
2) DX10 does not make games better, only more shiny, and I've had shinier for around 10 years now - I can do without another coating.

I'm on XP and I'm going to stay there for a lot longer than Microsoft is dreaming of in its worst nightmares.
When DX10 comes to XP, and it will, then I'll worry a bit about how much Nvidia is lying. Well no actually, because I've long gotten the habit of ignoring whatever PR comes from a GPU vendor. I rely on independent benchmarks to choose which card I want.

I'm curious about the part where you said that ATI's cards can do the whole HD DVD Blu-Ray playback thing. You said it works with HD DVD, but have you tested it with Blu-Ray.

I know it sounds silly, but gramatically, as long as ATI's cards don't work with Blu-Ray, even if they do with HD DVD, then technically NVIDIA aren't lying.

However, if you neglected to say that you have tested Blu-Ray, then I have no further comment.

I may be wrong, but i thought one of the advantages of a digital connection is the reduced necessity for cludgy OSD controls for contrast and gamma etc. 
Being one of the unwashed masses i'm strangely comforted by knowing that my settings are factory set, and unchangeable. 

I agree there's really no excuse for the single input port, unless that reduced the price of the monitor significantly. Which it may have. 

If i would criticise anything I'd criticise: The heat output, which can comfortably warm one's face.
The viewing angle on such a large monitor means you get subtle variations in colour/brightness at the corners or top and bottom depending on how close you are and how you have it tilted. 

However, it's still a helluva monitor, and despite the criticism I'm delighted with mine.

Yep ... gutsy article.

Den't get him started on gaming laptops either ... 

Nice to see someone pointing out the warts on Nvidia's cards too.

Anything wrong with the image quality?

Ghosting?

Might be worth a quick check too.

Wow. One of the most biased articles i've ever seen. Let me guess you like ATI/AMD??

So what I think you are saying is that you're calling "shenanigans" on nVidia's PR slide deck?

You didn't comer right out and say so though did you? (snicker)

Great article Charlie.

I think you are complaining too much. 

After all, you are one of the editors who are cherry picked by NVIDIA. 

Some editors, like yours truly, are yet to be invited to any "Editor's Day" by NVIDIA, although I'm invited to similar events by DAAMIT. 

Also, enjoy your fine rig, which you probably got without paying any dime, while I have to beg, threat and cry for any freebie I get. :)

bit much to take in but good info

You were absolutely, and repeatedly, dead wrong right up until the HD2900XT launch regarding its performance and value (and you didn't even supply a mea culpa afterwards), so why should we believe you now when it comes to the RV670?

*yawn* Again the same old story bashing Nvidia's next GPU when it's about to kick ATI real hard. 

I'm sure AMD appreciates your marketing help, but you'd need a lot more attention to help them with that.

Most of the points were just "this isn't true, believe me" or "I can't say it but RV670's gonna beat it, I'm sure!" How predictable.

As for TWIMTBP program, ATI is only stupid not to have one. If Nvidia helps these games to work better with GeForces, that's only good for GeForce owners. 

All those games will be hot titles and you can bet that people will be benchmarking them like hell. If ATI loses, that's their problem. Sorry for them, but you don't have to cry so much about that.

I don't know what Nvidia have done to you, but you must get rid of this hatred some day. It's getting kind of monotonous to be honest.

If that's how it looks after a quick "Oh, it's going on the internet, best give it a quick tidy" clean-up, I'd hate to see it before. 

And why does that cup look suspiciously new, like you had to throw the old one out because you couldn't get the taste of mould out of it?

Hey Charlie, you'd be well advised to treat similar garbage from other companies as critically as you have this.

Unfortunately you don't.

Nice article. It was fun and interesting to read about the 8800GT and the PR marketing behind it. =)

Although I liked most of the article, I disagree with your judgment that nVIDIA is being unfair by requiring that all games be tested with 4xAA and 16xAF. You said it's unfair b/c nVIDIA "knows" ATI cards have a problem with implementing AA. But, is that nVIDIA's fault or is it really ATI's fault? The 2900XT cards have been out for a while now and if their driver team can't fix the AA problem and some company wants to take advantage of that slipup, there is nothing wrong with it. It's just part of competition and nothing to do with unfairness. It's rather ATI's fault for being incompetent in their AA driver area and for letting their competitor look better for a while until they fix it.

The impression I got was that you were being unfair by calling nVIDIA unfair because perhaps you're an ATI fanboy. I'm not saying that's true but that's the impression I got. As for me, I'm a fanboy of who's got the best and right hardware at the time I decide to buy a new GPU. For the moment, I'm using an ATI 1900XT 512MB PCIE card with Catalyst v7.10 and loving it. =)

Why don't you tell us how you REALLY feel?

It's no secret that the "new" cards are not going to have any new architecture or performance gains, rather than new PR garb and a shiny new box.

Unfortunately, neither ATI or NVidia have yet to come out with anything amazing since the release of the 8800 gtx, and NVidia really seems to have no need to until the tables turn a bit, (as if they have anything to bring to the table right now, anyway). 

In fact, it'd be a year before NVidia could cough up drivers if they actually DID release something that was ground-breaking.

No offense, but ATI products went way downhill after AMD purchased them. It may take a while before they're back on top with exciting products again, but I won't hold my breath. 

I haven't bought a card for over a year simply because of NVidia's drivers and ATI's lack of anything that's more than just par.

That said, you're right. This PR junk is just that. This is nothing new, and nothing that anyone wants to see. Anyone that has any sense will wait for a new product.

I don't think the author could be a bigger ATI fanboy if he tried. 

I'm all about good performance for a good price and could care less about brand loyalty. 

I couldn't say the same for the write of this article. It was painful to read.