Quote Originally Posted by generics_user View Post
still the x1800 was a decent card at launch, it pushed nv to the "HAHA YOU'LL NEVER GET US 7800GTX512" not available in any store

ati had the upper hand from 8500-x1900 (nv GF3-GF7 series), AMD put a stop to this, but things are looking good that they come back on top (they got back in the game with the 3870s)

to point 1: we talk about dedicated graphics cards, and this title belongs to the rage fury maxx , but in this times we had no shaders


hd4870 looks promising, it may not beat the gt-200, but this time ati is earlier to the market and i believe that the gap between amd and nv is going to get smaller.
The X1800 were good cards (I had 2 of them) and i'm not gonna argue that but the launch was what went wrong. ATi did get some stick from X1800 purchasers for the release of the X1900's but that soon waned and was replaced by cheers from the majority.

GF3 was actually faster than the 8500 in OGL & DX7 games but not synthetics but that's not the point. Infact it was almost a whitewash for the GF3 until ATi fixed their drivers. It had better features but lacked the proper software to unleash it.

Early Crossfire was a bit haphazard aswell but if you look at where they are now, they have once again got a advantage in API (questionable benefit tyet), process (55nm) & have almost made CF an excellent product (profiling still needs to be opened up more) but they still make the odd little mixup along the way (not enough texturing power in R600/RV6x0).

HD 4xxx is again looking at keeping what works intact (with a little improvement) but fixing what they went wrong with before. While it's not looking like enough to retake the performance crown it might enable them to increase the prices enough to actually make a profit, which lets face it, they could really use.

I still see the Intel 740 as a dire product, after all it is the grandfather of the GMA series...