So guys, let us hear what you all have to say now? Any nVidia fanboys?

Its fair to expect some amount of bias on some kids blog, but not on the scale of this author and not on such a respected website like the Inq.

All the childish bias and just outright lies against nVidia (quad sli not working...whatever) in literally every article C. Djemeran ever writes about GPUs just emphasises how clueless and unprofessional he is, and what a dis-service he is providing to people who are needing an honest review to base their purchasing decisions on, not some piece of shit gutter-trash.

When a supposedly professional writer continuously and actively harms with blatant lies the same community that the rest of the inq is trying to serve, surely the inq's bosses must realise its already past time for this moron to be fired. We're all fed up with his clueless ravings. Look at most of the other comments in ths section.

Dear Inq Bosses.. please give us a break and finally fire the idiot who wrote this piece.

I've been waiting almost 3 years for one of them to put out something that easily and obviously convinces me I should buy a new card. Here's to hoping one of them beats the other's ass.

God I really hate some of the people who post comments on websites.... SLI outperforms Crossfire Todd?? Are you retarded?

"Sadly, piracy has killed the Windows gaming market"

Wow, what a dumb comment. Crysis hasn't sold that much because neither NVidia or ATI have a card capable of running it properly, and the majority of gamers don't even have cards capable of running it in jerkovision. And it's not that good a game.

Look how many people are playing WoW. That's where the money is going.

Well, I have a 3870x2 and it sh*ts on anything out of Nvidia's camp, I run it on a 790 Asus mobo with the fastest latest phenom.

Comapred this to my other machine with is a core 2 quad on an Intel 975BX2 and there is no comparison, you have to use the AMD/ATI solution to appreciate it.

UT3 looks gorgeous frame rates are great on my 22Inch monitor, ATI have never disappointed, the drivers are better the hardware is superior in every respect, the visual quality of the rendering is only something Nvidia users can dream of. Sure they may be bragging that their Nvidia system gets 500 billion frames per second on a screen that fills picadilly circus, but thats about as relevant as those that brag their hifi system has a frequency response to 100KHz on the "audio" side, so who can hear that?. All you need is 25 frames per second minimum (thats all you can see - period anything else is wasted) and any one who tells you any different is either in Nvidia marketing person or a complete c*ck (yeah I know these two things are the same in practice).

Its about the quality of the rendering, and ATI have this in bag and have done so for many generations of cards.

"Now the tables are turned." The best word from 'charlie' so far. Full of expression and joy from 'charlie' that nvidia(halleluyah) is finally loosing it's crown. 'charlie' screams and snatches the crown and buy a jet plane, flies to 'amd' headquarters and says ... i, 'charlie-your-all-so-loyal-freaking-bias-nvidia-hater, gives you the 'crown' that you (amd) wants. Now, give me the position of chief advisor of 'amd' and i 'charlie' will make your company (amd) rise above NVIDIA (halleluyah).

LOL

It seems so pointless to engage in a GPU war now, there is nothing left to win. Sadly, piracy has killed the Windows gaming market.

If you look at sales of the recent highly anticipated games on the PC (crysis, COD 4, etc), they are abysmal even though both games were excellent. Given the poor sales of most recent PC versions of EA and Ubi titles and given they own the majority of the development companies it is going to be lonely on the PC platform.

We are already seeing the results. Crysis nearly killed Crytek and they are scrambling to put out console versions. COD 4 sold a fraction on the PC of what it sold on the consoles. The two games I want to play, GTA IV and Battlefield Bad Company, aren't coming to a computer near you. Which means trying to play them using a crap joypad. The only ones doing well are are Valve/Steam, but it takes them years to make each game.

that this is a rumor site, but you could tone down the fanboi attitude just a little bit. Most of the GPU comments on this site read like an DAAMMIT press release. Did the site totally lose objectivity because the Green Meanies cut you off in an attempt to plug leaks? That's the nature of the biz, and if you can't stand the heat, GTFO of the kitchen mate. Remember not to take the slights personally.

The last few ATI / DAAMMIT GPU's were to kick the Green Machine to the curb as well. Still, other than a few useless benchmarks run by people obviously not clocking in the real world, DAAMMIT has had their heads handed to them. Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer ATI to win a round to drive competition, but falsely raising expectations is a good way to help DAMMIT lose market share as consumers buy the cards and are disappointed.

Red? Green? WTF does it matter other than real world play?

Hey Charlie, in case you might be interested... See this youtube video of your fan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pXRGekVb1Q

Your cheque's in the post.

More lip service for ATi please....

No matter how you spin it, nvidia is the favorite in terms of next gen performance. If you could see beyond you own blind bias you would realize that. 

You got burned with the R6XX vs. G8X coverage and you are setting yourself up for another poor crystal ball experience. 

Nvidia has pedigree when it comes to SLi (which still out performs Xfire)dating back to the 3dfx days...for those with short memories.

Nvidias driver support still trumps ATi's.

Nvidia hasn't had to put up with a buy out.

Nvidia has had more time to perfect their new design.

The list goes on, but the point is...as much as everyone would like to see ATi pull off a big win, they should realize that the odds are in nvidias favor.

Technological is difference from speed advantage ya noobs....

All he said Is ATI is ahead in...technology ...like 55nm vs 80nm..... cmon ppl nvidia Is faster using bruteforce.... higher mhz shaders to outdue ati....
Well it works ....What he is saying is it only works for soo long....

He says ATI has more advanced architecture which I see both sides.... It needs more shader power which the next generation will bring.... 

While I see your point of if it isn't faster It is not more advanced, however that flat out is not true.... AMD's quad core is more "advanced" but gets trounced because It can't run at high Ghz... but a quad on one die is more advanced than two duals.... harder to argue here now due to Intel having process lead 45nm....

So AMD has more "complicated architecture and Intel has more advance manufacturing process.....

Can't wait for june...

and btw I own more Nvidia than Ati

A good hardware design is only as good as the drivers that run it and the extended support it has from other programs. 

Hey Charlie, convince me to love ATI and i will defintely be a fanboi! but to be honest, ATI is just shitting and wasting my money!

why? here in the philippines, a 9600GT costs $166. a 9800GTX costs $311. both are factory oc'ed. guess how much an 3870X2 cost? $400. How much a single GPU 3870 cost? $222. All these are in USD.

it is no mystery that the performance of an 9600GT runs in the same league compared to a single GPU 3870. i can even SLI two and match (or better) the performance of a 3870X2.

simply go google and you can see from the articles how even the 9600GT trumps any equivalent attempts coming from ati (3870 / 3870X2).

and now you claim that the 3870/X2 is the more successful product?

i suggest not to be too daamit blind about ati.

i still can't help but to think that ATI and INQ have something together (big money involved here)... Mike Magee! I dare you speak your mind on this issue! You're loosing credibility big time because of some idiot like Charlie and Fudo.

"This has a disadvantage of hard-wiring in the Crossfire modes leaving a little performance on the table,..."

Quite the opposite. Heh, if we have fully memory aware ASICs, the issues of SLI/X-Fire are done with. The goal is to ditch AFR/SFR...

i myself am going to wait to upgrade my 7900 gs to something else come june-july. I was going to get a 8800 GT/GTS but with both companies coming out with cards at the same time, i am going to wait it out a bit longer, and if they arent that much better than the current generation, ill get my 8800gts cheaper then.

All I want to know, is whether the R700 series will have higher texture fill rates than the green thingy.

I always knew you were an anti-MS old man, but that's forgivable. I didn't know you were an ATi fanboy.

Took the lead with the X2? Reactionary GX2? nVidia can only do quad in name? Are you nuts?

It's been shown for a long time that, when you even breathe the word 'antialiasing', a single 8800GTX (and by extension almost an 8800GT) will beat two 3870s in CrossFire, along with a single X2. And for less power consumption, if that's your bag. The same goes for all the other around-GTX SKUs that nVidia is throwing around these days.

The GX2 is a long time in coming, with a lot of well-designed aspects to it. It's just as well designed as the 3870X2, possibly better, but that's not really the issue. The issue is you being a bit of an idiot. What's more, Quad SLI actually works this time around, even in Crysis these days. I'll give you that 7950 Quad SLI was crap, though.

And no, the 3870X2 is nothing like what ATi are planning with R700. What they're talking about is linked / shared memory. I'm not privy to the details on how it's hooked up, but as you say, it lets you lob lots of small chips onto one high-performance part while dodging all the drawbacks that usually burdens you with. It doesn't resemble old CrossFire, new CrossFire, SLI, or anything that has been seen before, and it is indeed quite the revolution. Just don't go mouthing off about nVidia.

I'm glad I was in a position (deployed)in that I didn't have to buy any of the video cards released in the last 8 months, which seems to have been a colossal waste of time. The "specs" on the 4870's look too sweet!

Make GPU love, not war!

"It is the same thing that happened about the time when NV first released SLI, it had all the answers and ATI had to catch up."

Dude, ATI had Crossfire long before NV had SLI. Don't you guys read your own news site? TheInquirer posted long ago that ATI sold a huge amount of Radeon 9800 card set up in Crossfire mode to the military.

Fudo reported that here:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2003/11/10/stonking-quad-r300-graphics-card-sports-1gb-of-ram
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2004/08/16/ati-multi-chip-cards-for-the-military
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2005/03/24/ati-multi-rendering-exposed

~The Dude

Oi I didn't realize the future bridges will share memory. That is interesting indeed. 

Bring on the RV770. All indicators point to it being omega splendid. Something to slap all the NVIDIA fan boys upside the head with. Good stuff. 

I think the fate of ATI rests in the driver teams being able to improve Crossfire scaling... 


Glad to see that the GPU market is going to make REAL multicore GPUs.

mr ATI salesman! what do you have so much against nvidia? is it getting too personal?

as much as you are releasing black propaganda to anything that is against ati, it all backfires at you.

it's as if that for every promotion you do to ati, a major disappointment just happens.

oh well, good luck ati, but better change your attitude and be fair when covering the bases for ati.

I'd say they have some technological momentum, not a lead until they deliver the goods.

Why dont ATI copy the good thing from NV ? its ok if just a little, cause most of good games were dominated by NV (but higher cost), maybe with lower FPS, Im prefer 3870x2 which 200$ cheaper than gx2, but still its really annoying not have the best card. Why dont buy gx2 ? well, Im trapped with description of 3870x2, I though its better. But prices are honest, diferent about 40%(500$ for 3870x2 and 700$ for 9800gx2) its really worth.

By not being either a Nvidia or ATI fanboy i just go where the fastest card is, so if this time the cards are from ATI then so be it.
And nice to see finally multicore GPUs, i was wondering when that was going to be.

Conclusion: next graphics cards from ATI look very promising, and I celebrate that (healthy competition is good for end users), but we have to wait for the benchmarks to claim a winner.

this is just a personal appoinion but this won't matter even if it is true that ati might have a advange in performace this summer, nvidia will get more sales, just because, its nvidia. thats becasue there are alot more "fans" of nvidia, and also nvidia had a longer run all together in having higher performace and better drivers, sure ati haves there moments, but never for long, nvidia always comes back with something better. so i say go ati, u give more reason for nvidia to hurry up and put something better then what they put out

If I remember correctly, a year and a half ago or so (maybe 2 years ago), you were talking about how Mud-slinging-zilla's G80 was going to be iffy, at best. (See here: http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/09/13/nvidia-g80-mystery-starts-thickening)

And, previously, how the R600 looked more attractive: http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/09/14/atis-r600-delayed-until-next-year

Tons of other "R600 will beat G80" type stuff.

...from what I've seen, G80 came to market months earlier, and has outperformed ATi from day one in single GPU applications (YMMV.)

I was praying for R600 to be the be-all-end-all from ATi, and was sorely disappointed. I'm hoping R700 will live up to your hype this time around Charlie.

-Trevor

Worth noting that those articles were from 2006...feels like just yesterday.

Now all we need is AMD to bring out a dual cpu crossfire board and they are laughing!

Man. What is with INQ and ATI? You can't throw a rock at an INQ ATI story without hitting baseless speculation about performance. ATI didn't accomplish crap with X2, which was still slower than the 8800GTX in many cases and is unquestionably slower than the modestly faster 9800GTX. 

INQ's speculation about "no more big GPUs" is baseless nonsense. GPUs are already highly parallel, and as we've seen with quad-GPU solutions, the scaling just isn't there. 

nVidia has clearly been focused on reducing costs and lowering prices while they plot their next-generation architecture. And while I'd love to see ATI actually be competitive this time around (unlike the 2900XT debacle), maybe we (and INQ) should wait until the architecture is here before declaring a victor. Or need I remind you guys of all your articles talking about how the R600 was going to crush the 8800GTX?

Oh yes, as with R600 Nvidia gets its ass kicked real hard and ATI triumphes... or not. Of course I hope so because competition is always good for us.

But to be honest X2 didn't mean anything. In GAMES (oh yes, we don't give a heck about 3dmarks, do we?) 3870X2 is slower than Nvidia's single gpu solutions. So I really hope ATI has something fast, and so that it also runs games fast. You know, I don't buy expensive crap just to run overly optimized 3dmarks all day.