Ati Q3 - Total annihilation against Nvidia

[onewingedangel]

Why does it always seem that Ati's 'Next' graphics card will always be the biggest and best, yet at the time you can actually buy them theres always a better alternative?

Its not since the 9800 that ati have had the lead.

6800>x850

7900 was roughly equivilent to x1900, but was cooler, quieter, and had the gx2 if you really wanted performance, plus he 7800 was avaliable way before the x1800, so the family had a head start there as well (I still went the Ati route though)

8800>hd2900 (and the ati alternative is six months behind the nvidia offering)

Ati's main problem is that they are perpetually behind nvidia in their release timescale, they really need to speed up their time to market - hopefully the tie up with AMD will help them here.

r650 will be up against g90 so any theories as to performance lead is unknown

And when it comes to features you don't buy a product that will start to show an architectural advantage 12 months down the line, but is slower than the rival products for the present and immediate future. Just look at how P4's are now outperforming A64 chips thanks to developers optimising for a multithreaded environment. People still bough a64's because at the time they were the better chip.