The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[zerazax]

Rumor is that the 470 is horrible at overclocking. No digital VRMs, much hotter than the 5870, etc.

[eric66]

Rumor is that the 470 is horrible at overclocking. No digital VRMs, much hotter than the 5870, etc.

what do you expect from company which kept delaying cause of not being able to reach desirable clocks and kinda did that after 3 or 4 revisions

[ajaidev]

lol you all are saying without digital VRM's the thing will not OC well at all. Well that may not be the case the GTX 480 seems not to have them and neither does 5870 lightning.

Digital VRM's are more advanced and such smaller and less flexible...

[mindfury]

lol you all are saying without digital VRM's the thing will not OC well at all.

I didn't say that.I just don't think 4-phase vGPU and 1-phase vMem are enough for OC.

Look at Msi HD5870 lightning,there is 15-phase (13+2) power supply.

[Sam_oslo]

It is too early to speculate about the OC-headroom yet. We have to wait for real hands on experiments.

But the lack of hefting vGPU-components on Fermi could indicate a cool and power efficient GPU too? just some hopes/speculations for now.

[zerazax]

I didn't say that.I just don't think 4-phase vGPU and 1-phase vMem are enough for OC.

Look at Msi HD5870 lightning,there is 15-phase (13+2) power supply.

Yep, the reference board layouts of the 470 are not in the same class as the 5870 at all

[Origin_Unknown]

is it the end of the month for a release?

[NaMcO]

Just curious if you did not buy the 7000 series nvidia cards because of hte high failure rate, the 8000 series cards because despite a 5 year beta perioid they could not produce a vista driver that worked... or for that matter a 6000 series card because of over heating issues?

Funny when I hear people say "nVidia makes a quality driver or product" they have the same fail rate or worse ATI does.

The big problem with ATI drivers? Finding one that fits an old ass part. Always has been and thats the chief complaint.

Has ATI had HW/SW problems? Of course.. to say otherwise would be ridiculous and make you sound like a moron (oops sorry for quoting you).

I like ATi because the have supported features that I tend to use first... IE .. multi mon, multi 3d mon etc.


Now does that mean I wont run nVidia? Absolutely not. I will abuse that HW just like I do ATi. Will I use it for my main dispaly? No.. but I admit thats a preferential thing. Not a fan boy thing. I like ATIs IQ better than nVidias.. many prefer it the other way around.

I have actually gone to the point of explaining it.. nVidia is "realistic" and ati is "cartoony" for lack of the correct way of explaining it. nVidia has a high gamma rate as default so everything to me like white washed. At the same time ATI does cartoony stuff like delineated lines on objects (no blur) and vibrant colors.. unlike relife.

CSAA works for nViida because LCDs dont have the color range real monitors do... so its like free AA I was running 24" CRTs up until last year.. so maybe I should try nVidia again. problem is their cards are STILL so over priced for the power you get..

295 costs $500? 285s are selling used for 3-400 WTF? Well admittedly those are forum prices not ebay.. I bought a 280 for under 200 last year.. and have seen 295s sell under 300.

I have seen nvidia fanboys trash forums with their grabage... and remember when they were paid to do it.

so yeah I guess I am a bit of an ATI fan boy... not cuz im getting paid.. not bwecause I have an allegiance ot the company. It just worked better for me since forever. Since I returned my FX5200 to go back to my radeon 7000, since I dumped my 7900GT for a x1950.. to my roll thorugh 3 8800 series cards all giving me BSODs... t ojust pick up a 3850 instead... to my 4850-4890 run...

I will go 5800 before I go "fermi." If youwant to call me a fanboy, I do not care. I know this for 2 reasons.

Firstly ... 5800 will be cheaper.. Secondly.. I can make my lights flicker with a 4890... whats a fermi gonna do?

I didn't get a 7000 series as my interest in computers decreased that year because of some familiar problems. I went from a 6800GT to 8800GTS 320 but i do know the major flop 7000 series cards were (no problems at all with the 6800 though). I had a 9700 PRO, 9800 PRO and x800 PRO prior to that 6800, the x800 fried but well, s**t happens.

I work closely with a computer shop, most returned parts or issues with video cards are ATI. Either problems with drivers (people go back to the store for that), games that will crash instantly on startup or that recent GSOD issue. It's been like that since ever, no wonder there's this feeling that nVidia is more reliable. The RMA ratio is way lower and people still want to buy 295's and 285's, they were stupid to stop making them.

To be honest, i don't see a difference between nVidia's or ATI's IQ so that's not a decision point for me. I like the way my 4870x2 displays my game graphics, i just don't like when i run a game and it lacks effects because the video card doesn't support it. Like i said before, rather have them all than don't.

I didn't care much about the Cypress thing after the day i got one here at home for a review. The drivers wouldn't install, took me a long time to make that card "just work" and all in all my 295 would completely bash it in every game. I know those were early drivers i know the gap is smaller now, but still launching cards priced like this with incredibly bad support like that... Meh. I just thought "Yeah, good old ATI" and moved on.

If my way of thinking labels me as a Fanboy, so be it, but me, like everyone else, just look for the product that best suits me. I don't care about the price/performance ratio (always thought this was ridiculous) or i'd end up with something like a 5770 to play 1920x1200 (lol) and neither do i care about heat or consumption. I watercool my video cards and got an 850W PSU. What i do want is the possibility to tweak my games the way i want them to look like, spend a full 20 mins doing that and then go play.

Weird way of thinking? Well, it's mine, it's who i am either accept it or ignore it

lol what x1900 was killer card best single card with much better iq if you can enjoy games with poor iq don't know that more like nvidia fanatism to me

I know the x1900 was nice, 8800 was just "nicer". That's why i skipped x1900. It took one hell of a beating from G80 in every aspect. As for IQ, that used to be true years ago when there was a real noticeable difference, specially in video output to the TV, nowadays it's just the same.

[Zoran]

I might disagree with you on that reliability thing.

If someone brings ANY card back to the store for driver issues and the store accepts that, that only shows that the people working in the store are not even remotely familiar with the hardware market! If someone of my customers calls me with a problem I'm almost always ready to answer their questions and/or solve it straight away and they are usually happy. If I'm not familiar with the problem, I look it up and solve it for them, as not everyone is a computer freak/geek who buys one.

On the other hand: I had NO! dead ATi cards/chipsets ever since I sell them (for 7 years now!?), quite the opposite on the nVidia front! I stopped selling them because of a sh*t load of dead cards, mobos and notebooks, unless the customer REALLY REALLY REALLY WANTS an nVidia part!

IMHO, nVidia drivers are just as bad as the CCC ever since they changed the GUI years back! Sure, if you own a SLI config, your life is a bit easier as you can specify things per app. For single card config though, I don't see any difference.

I am not a fanboi of neither camp, I just base my decisions and opinions on my own experience.

[E30M3]

I didn't get a 7000 series as my interest in computers decreased that year because of some familiar problems. I went from a 6800GT to 8800GTS 320 but i do know the major flop 7000 series cards were (no problems at all with the 6800 though). I had a 9700 PRO, 9800 PRO and x800 PRO prior to that 6800, the x800 fried but well, s**t happens.

I work closely with a computer shop, most returned parts or issues with video cards are ATI. Either problems with drivers (people go back to the store for that), games that will crash instantly on startup or that recent GSOD issue. It's been like that since ever, no wonder there's this feeling that nVidia is more reliable. The RMA ratio is way lower and people still want to buy 295's and 285's, they were stupid to stop making them.

To be honest, i don't see a difference between nVidia's or ATI's IQ so that's not a decision point for me. I like the way my 4870x2 displays my game graphics, i just don't like when i run a game and it lacks effects because the video card doesn't support it. Like i said before, rather have them all than don't.

I didn't care much about the Cypress thing after the day i got one here at home for a review. The drivers wouldn't install, took me a long time to make that card "just work" and all in all my 295 would completely bash it in every game. I know those were early drivers i know the gap is smaller now, but still launching cards priced like this with incredibly bad support like that... Meh. I just thought "Yeah, good old ATI" and moved on.

If my way of thinking labels me as a Fanboy, so be it, but me, like everyone else, just look for the product that best suits me. I don't care about the price/performance ratio (always thought this was ridiculous) or i'd end up with something like a 5770 to play 1920x1200 (lol) and neither do i care about heat or consumption. I watercool my video cards and got an 850W PSU. What i do want is the possibility to tweak my games the way i want them to look like, spend a full 20 mins doing that and then go play.

Weird way of thinking? Well, it's mine, it's who i am either accept it or ignore it



I know the x1900 was nice, 8800 was just "nicer". That's why i skipped x1900. It took one hell of a beating from G80 in every aspect. As for IQ, that used to be true years ago when there was a real noticeable difference, specially in video output to the TV, nowadays it's just the same.

The ATI fans will kill you, they are a real strong force her, every thing Nvidia ever done stinks.

[NaMcO]

Oi, wait. PCs leave the store working perfectly with Windows installed. Customers return after "i don't know what i did but this happened". It's not a store problem. Of course all problems are solved, and that's not even the point, point was that most problems rise from ATI related issues.

The ATI fans will kill you, they are a real strong force her, every thing Nvidia ever done stinks.

Well, i don't have a problem with that. These are just opinions and experiences and i'm gonna stop posting, just watch. I'll know what a 470 and a 480 are once they're out. Speculating will take you nowhere anyway.

The nVidia hate should end though, it's not nice.

[ajaidev]

Oi, wait. PCs leave the store working perfectly with Windows installed. Customers return after "i don't know what i did but this happened". It's not a store problem. Of course all problems are solved, and that's not even the point, point was that most problems rise from ATI related issues.



Well, i don't have a problem with that. These are just opinions and experiences and i'm gonna stop posting, just watch. I'll know what a 470 and a 480 are once they're out. Speculating will take you nowhere anyway.

The nVidia hate should end though, it's not nice.

No

[NaMcO]

Last post. You know why that happens, right?

3 zillion nVidia users, 100k ATI users... and there was something about that old graphic which i can't recall that made it inaccurate anyway... Don't remember

[annihilat0r]

No

yeah, yeah. a single source of information is enough to reject any claim. Sure the claimer himself has an ambiguous "source" but yours is too. This is for a "unspecified time in 2007" where Vista problems were very frequent and it also says "..NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system." This is not a general graph, it's for a certain time.

If you take into account everything Nvidia's market share should be two to three times that of ATI's so this graph tells us nothing.

[RaV[666]]

Namco

You know that intel has the most market share ?
Then nvidia then ati, nvidia has more market share, but not even near amount you think.So this graph about bsods st still valid.I just dont get it how come you are so blind?.
I get it, nvidia drivers are better polished, have more features, but the difference is SMALL ,and for most of the lacking in ati drivers there are solutions.In few areas ati has the upper hand even.Eyefinity for example.

[eric66]

yeah, yeah. a single source of information is enough to reject any claim. Sure the claimer himself has an ambiguous "source" but yours is too. This is for a "unspecified time in 2007" where Vista problems were very frequent and it also says "..NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system." This is not a general graph, it's for a certain time.

If you take into account everything Nvidia's market share should be two to three times that of ATI's so this graph tells us nothing.

nvidias market share was never 2 or 3 times more than atis current ones are 19 vs 23 so i don't know where ppl are pulling this 3 zilllion vs 100k or 2 or 3 times more cr_p

[ajaidev]

yeah, yeah. a single source of information is enough to reject any claim. Sure the claimer himself has an ambiguous "source" but yours is too. This is for a "unspecified time in 2007" where Vista problems were very frequent and it also says "..NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system." This is not a general graph, it's for a certain time.

If you take into account everything Nvidia's market share should be two to three times that of ATI's so this graph tells us nothing.

ATi's driver never had anything as sever as the Nvidia's card burning drivers..

I do agree that Nvidia drivers are more feature packed and very stable but who is to say that ATi's are totally unstable?

The newer catalysts especially after 2XXX series were pretty stable. The new ones after that just improve on that and add features.

[Farinorco]

Last post. You know why that happens, right?

3 zillion nVidia users, 100k ATI users... and there was something about that old graphic which i can't recall that made it inaccurate anyway... Don't remember

Come on man, I didn't want to enter in just another ridicule brands war, but what you are trying is to justify (to achieve piece of mind) the purchase of your favourite brand products. You don't need to do that, if you just prefer some specific brand, don't look for excuses to buy it...

NVIDIA has a bigger market share in mainstream segment, but not in the proportions you are saying. That graphic shows a 28.8% of NVIDIA caused crashes in Vista, and a 9.3% ATI caused. That's a whole x3.1 numbers. If NVIDIA was really more reliable than ATI like you're trying to imply, that shouldn't be this way because no, NVIDIA doesn't have "way more than triple the market share than ATI has" in the mainstream (and that's what a Vista focused graphic is going to show you) market.

The drivers thing about ATI might have some far away in time basis, specially when talking about OpenGL drivers (which were once pretty bad), but nowadays are nothing else than FUD. You know what it means, and you know how it works in the computer world. Everything in technologies fails from time to time. How much time did NV needed to make a properly working Vista driver for their cards that didn't cause random crashes, for example? When there's FUD around a given product/brand, when that happen it's "the confirmation of their problems with...". When there's not, when that happens it's nothing else than the technology, which is by nature prone to fail.

You have even said things before as prefering NVIDIA because they have a "dedicated drivers team". Do you really think that a hardware vendor with the weight of NVIDIA, ATI, Intel, AMD, and even some much smaller ones is not going to have different teams dedicated to the different tasks affecting their products, including drivers? FYI, ATI has 3 dedicated drivers teams, and at any given point in time 3 different driver versions under developement. They are divided into 3 different developement phases, and each driver is (at any given time) in a different developement phase. The whole developement process is 3 months (including testing and bug fixing of the drivers after applying any changes), and this developement model allows them to release periodically (once a month, hence the naming of drivers version with a number showing the release year and month, 9.11, 9.12, 10.1, 10.2...) an updated version of the driver. Enough dedication, planning and periodicity?

Of course, all that doesn't mean they have not problems with drivers. They have them. As NVIDIA does. As everyone in the market launching bleeding edge technologies every time. Exactly as that graphic exemplifies (it doesn't pretend to be a measure of which is the more reliable company, but it's a good example of what I am saying). There have been known problems with ATI drivers, and there have been known problems with NVIDIA drivers. FUD spreaded around ATI ones is what makes some people to react in a different way to ones or others.

And I will mention also other aspects of reliability for a tech product. Like the quality control issues of 8800GT when they were launched that caused a whole bunch of RMA's. Like the M versions of NV GPU's frying in laptops around the world and causing them several loses.

I'm not trying to imply that NV is any worse than ATI in terms of reliability or confidence. I'm just trying to demonstrate that, as you said, "s**t happens". To everybody. And FUD around ATI is just unjustified.

[Zoran]

Could you guys hating the CCC please describe exactly what your problem was with it other than things being in different places than in the nvidia drivers??

I personally had far more trouble !installing! forceware than ccc so I'm curious...

EDIT: as it stands momentarily - there is about 10-20% more people using nVidia GPU-s than ATi ones, so the comparison "3 zillion nVidia users, 100k ATI users..." is COMPLETELY WRONG! and as far as I remember by the time that Vista crash pie-chart seen the light of the day the market share stood at about 19% ATi 25% nVidia and the rest was ruled by Intel and others.

[Helmore]

This thread is going nowhere this way. This thread is about Fermi and not a battleground for the continually recurring driver wars.

IMHO, you base your purchase decision on what hardware gives you the best performance at that instant in time. The quality of their drivers is not something I really look at, as they each have their ups and downs.

[Dimitriman]

This thread is going nowhere this way. This thread is about Fermi and not a battleground for the continually recurring driver wars.

IMHO, you base your purchase decision on what hardware gives you the best performance at that instant in time. The quality of their drivers is not something I really look at, as they each have their ups and downs.

AMEN to that..

and to the previous discussions, give this a little read and spend some time to reflect your opinions

Prejudice – noun
1- An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.

2- Any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.

[cegras]

Two things I love on this page:

a) People dragging up old ATI stigma about drivers

b) The same people refusing to accept old news about nvidia causing crashes in Vista

Bonus: c) The laying of blame for dying graphics cards on the users, no the .75 drivers

[flippin_waffles]

I think that what is happening here and elsewhere is pretty plain to see. the fanboys must really feel their back is against the wall here, so they seem to have fallen back on the only thing left that nv still has in their corner (according to them): the driver issue. They seem to be playing that for all it's worth, probably a focus group strategy. Bad drivers is a stigma that has been attached to ATi, even though that era has ended 10 years ago. Let's talk about fermi and if the new drivers will burn that card up too, or it will just burn on it's own.

[ethomaz]

Crysis Warhead: HD 5870 vs GTX 470 (Already posted?).

PS. GTX 470 confirmed looking the mem size.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I think that what is happening here and elsewhere is pretty plain to see. the fanboys must really feel their back is against the wall here, so they seem to have fallen back on the only thing left that nv still has in their corner (according to them): the driver issue. They seem to be playing that for all it's worth, probably a focus group strategy. Bad drivers is a stigma that has been attached to ATi, even though that era has ended 10 years ago. Let's talk about fermi and if the new drivers will burn that card up too, or it will just burn on it's own.

Another fanboy post from flippin waffles.

You must have stock in AMD. You just bash any company that competes with them.

Two things I love on this page:

a) People dragging up old ATI stigma about drivers

b) The same people refusing to accept old news about nvidia causing crashes in Vista

Bonus: c) The laying of blame for dying graphics cards on the users, no the .75 drivers

a) Crossfire sucks I wouldn't touch crossfire with a ten foot pole. I haven't been too impressed with ATI's drivers but I was running an x2 so I'll blame it on that. I would be willing to give a 5870 a shot.

b) I assume that you are referring to that pie chart. I have one question to ask, what was ATI's market share at the time? Intel is the only one that came out looking good with that one.

c) I haven't seen the past couple of pages in this thread. I just saw that flippin posted and I knew that it was going to be good so I had to read that. Anyways if it's the same people that are in the other thread blaming this latest driver issue on user error I agree that is insane blin fanboyish. Nvidia pulled the drivers for a reason.