I've finally lost my patience with nVidia, and the dirty info I get on them on a regular basis! >:(

They pull this stunt!
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?show=62

And in the end, they did their best to make sure they retained all of 3dfx's intellectual property.

From day one, nVidia was always jealous of 3dfx and had it in for them, all the way till the end!
This article proves nVidiots were hypocrits! Bah!  >:(

I have a friend who's partner worked on the shutdown team @ 3dfx.

She has been telling me about all the nasty little actions that nVidia got up to while the 3dfx take over was in process, as she was there while it was happening.  And yes, there never was any intention of keeping on x-3dfx staff at nVidia, and helping x-3dfx customers out with driver support, it's true, it was all about claiming 3dfx's knowledge and 'know how' of the market, and making sure they one more competitior out of the way!  :(

Yah, it was a sad state of affairs back then - not like it did nVidia any good anyhow! ::)

ATI's cards can STILL kick their A$$! ;D

Heheheh! ;D

ex-3dfx, not x-3dfx...there's a big difference.

wrote on 22.04.04 at 09:07:34:

ex-3dfx, not x-3dfx...there's a big difference.

Sorry for the shortage of my e's.
I have 'e defecit syndrome'. Hehehe!  ;D

wrote on 22.04.04 at 01:34:09:

Yah, it was a sad state of affairs back then - not like it did nVidia any good anyhow! ::) ATI's cards can STILL kick their A$$! ;D Heheheh! ;D

Yes, I will finally admit that ATI cards do have a more powerful and performance edge over nVidia cards! It's true.  That is why they are so more popular with gamers!

You know what they say, "What goes around, comes around".  Maybe nVidia have dug their own grave here, let's hope so, after what they did to 3dfx.

Now, I just have to tear this GeForce2 Pro out of my machine with pure rage!  >:(

hooray, the fanATIcs strike back!!
hehe, just kidding, my little radeon 9200 kicks a$$ ya know...well hasn't got shader 2.0 but p-shader1.4 are the fastest so far & ut2004, far cry and bf vietnam keep on rolling & rolling & rolling!!!  8)
let's see shader3.0 cards coming w/ pci-express. nvidia outnumbered the radeon9800xt ways, but ati keeps coming..w/ real pci express, not the crappity smacking bridge solution from nvidia  :P

What we need is someone who has had vast amounts of experience with the latest of both ATI's and nVidia's cards and to tell us their opinion on which series is better overall? FX or Radeon? In terms of performance and technology, of course. ::)

I knew that nVidia had the PCX series ready to deploy, but I didn't know ATI had hit back with anything in terms of the new PCIExpress technology.
Anyone got any URL's for ATI's new 'masterpieces in the making'?  ;)

wrote on 24.04.04 at 14:41:09:

FX or Radeon? In terms of performance and technology, of course. ::)

ATI, for sure...yet

concerning the pci-express stuff, nvidia uses still the old agp interface delivering new pci-express cards w/ a pci-express-agp bridge chip. --> no real pci-express at all & maybe even slower than an agp card w/ the same specs (there's big latency 'cause all data is send through the bridge).
here's a link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/index.html
still agp, but it gives you good comparison..
well, ATI will present their new shader3.0 generation w/ real pci-express, delivering better performance (as their's no latency caused by some bridge system). so don't be too surprised of the benchmarks you see in the article, ATI will at least launch a hard opponent for nvidia's new gfx. but you'd know, the problem i mentioned some weeks ago in some other off-topic thread (why nvidia was slower in shader2.0) may be gone now..

I wouldn't say I hate Nvidia nor would I say I love 3dfx or ATI.  These are big corporations that are out to make cash out of people like us, especially those of us who are easily conned by flash names and big numbers.

Nvidia are simply going through a phase, they'll either pull through this, likely, or go under like 3dfx did, unlikely.  In a years time people may be saying exactly the same about ATI as they're saying about Nvidia now.  ATI are currently leading the market, no doubt.  Nvidia, due to it's aggressive corporate tactics and it's over reliance on ressurecting old tech and relabelling it 'MX', are starting to falter and struggle.  Most of their up and coming releases are just hype, as ever. The FX range wasn't what it was hyped up to be.

Since Nvidia's aquisition of 3dfx tech there has been a downward trend.  When the early Geforce cards were released Nvidia looked set to dominate, with 3dfx faltering and releasing stopgap cards, and ATI were, well, ATI, just like Matrox were Matrox and S3 were S3.  It looks to me as if the all too familiar 3dfx "practices" have seeped into the Nvidia Corp. ;)

Hmm...

Currently owning a whole series of Radeon Retail Cards (Radeon 7000, 7000VE, 7200, 7500 Ultra, 8500, 9000 and 9700pro), I must say I'm impressed with what ATI delivered so far, both in terms of performance and Image Quality.

Due to personal reasons, not a single NVidia based Card or Chipset I own, so I unfortunately can't compare things myself side-by-side ;D

But I must agree, ATI had its high's and low's as well (some Driver-wise, and a few Image Quality vs. performance 'tweaks' ).

Let's just wait what the new Kings of Video Hardware of both manufacturers are delivering, and see what is left after one takes away marketing "fog of war" ;)

You know.. the only reason why all of 'us' (3dfx'ers) hate nvidia so much is because they killed 3dfx, very simple..

3dfx faded away, we all naturally developed hatered feelings towards nvidia, and the only company in position to kick nvidia's ass is ATi, so we all feel "on ati's side"
I'm not saying that it's the right/wrong side, i'm just saying that instead of constantly bashing down on how bad geforce cards are, you can look at how good they are (half empty/full glass).

3Dfx cards weren't anything close to perfect, either.

Take a look at Valve's system spec survey, all 4 top GFX cards are nvidia's.. and there's a good reason for that.
they offer the most performance per buck, and for the avarage joe - there's no need for all the flufffy 8xantialiasing and 16xanisofiltering and 30gb bandwidth.. the cards JUST WORK, and most people don't need more than that. (id'e trade my whole 3dfx collection for a radeon 8500, without thinkin twice)

Both nvidia and ati are there to make money, period.
ati just got lucky that when the whole 3dfx downfall occured, they were on the safe side.


Anyway, that's just my opinion, i don't love nvidia or ati, i just love radeon cards (and can't afford them).

As they say - look at the inside of the vase, not on the 'made in china' sticker. (:P)

Remember that without the Microsoft / nVidia partnership that we wouldn't have XBOX! ;)

And there's DEFINATELY something to be said for XBOX Live! ;D

However...it's STILL not as rosy as it seems! :(

MS and nVidia have since fell out and guess who's making the GFX chip for the XBOX-next... ::)

...three little letters A-T-I! 8)

Nvidia will never go away. True, I don't much care for some of their business practices, but it's how corporations survive in a capitalist economy. Nice guys finish last, it's the facts of life.

Some have suggested that Nvidia will meet the same fate as 3dfx. I don't see any correlation between the two. You are looking solely at their "high end" cards, and what they do with the "latest" technology. You also need to look at a few other things. Nvidia has a huge OEM sales base, mostly with the GF2/4 MX. 3dfx had what, a few V3 1ks? And most of ATIs OEM stuff is the Rage, which even the horrid MX-series still beats. Nvidia is falling somewhat behind in developing PCI-Express technology. And that matters because???? PCI-Express is still about as useful as 64-bit, if not less, because at least the 64-bit athlons have better speed. PCI-Express is still now widely available, and I don't see that it will be right off quick. Also, the bus speed is not the major drawback of modern video cards, if you don't believe me on that, do some benchmarks with AGP 4x vs. 8x. And finally, IMOHO, I think Ms would come to Nvidia's backs to save them in a crunch.

EDIT: Also, that article is very old news, the lawsuit is often said to be the last straw that sent 3dfx down the tubes.

I dont care for nvidia because they werent interested in incorarating 3dfx into there company, they just wanted to stamp them out, and they didnt think twice about us users, i had a v4500 and a g2 card  and for what i was playing at that time i was fine with both, nvidia must of figured that 3dfx owners didnt also own there cards too with that move, so im not gonna own another of there cards, ive had 3, now they lost a customer ;)  they should have thought about some sorta support when they took over 3dfx, not for ever but at least a year, they jacked me over now the wont get my money.i have more games than i have time to play as it is, and they run fine on my v5500 ;D

guys, anyone followed my link? anyone read in this other thread why nividia was failing in shader2.0 speed? anyway, nvidia is coming back, you'll see when you follow the link..but ati is there to strike back, for sure. so i don't see nvidia falling now, nor ati. & as patience said, there are other competitors to arrive, so let's see what xgi will deliver in shader3.0 speed (what's up w/ s3? released their stuff yet?)

As bad as it sounds, I still own the card that toppled 3dfx's crowning glory, the Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce2 Pro DDR 64mb.  I admire the hardware and technology that has been put into it, as it is still performing brilliantly on today's new games.

I just don't like nVidia as a company, and ALL of their strategies.  
The marketing strategies and the amount of different "MX" and "FX" and "XT" models that are produced to dupe the customer into getting something they could have really done without.  However, the customer can also be blamed here as many unexperienced graphics cards buyers buy on the "base it on bigger numbers" motto.

Other strategies such as takeover bids and the way they take to see out rivals.  The way they lied about 3dfx customer and staff support throughout the process, and gave nothing back to the 3dfx loyalists once nVidia claimed what they set out for, CAPITALISATION.

This is the factor that makes me wonder if the GF2 will be the last nVidia card I own?

Would this be due to the fact, to spite nVidia for their harsh treatment of 3dfx?
Or,
Because their future technology is now seen as inferior compared to ATI's "real" PCIExpress and Shader 3.0 technology?

Well, morally, it's both.  I have no past experience of the FX series to base my opinions on, but I do have advice, reviews and experience gathered from users who have used both the FX and the Radeon series.  And everyone says go with Radeon.

Maybe nVidia will never meet the same fate as 3dfx, and get their come-uppance, but I believe they copied some of 3dfx last marketing strategies, which are becoming bad habits for nVidia, and this will lead them to always play second fiddle next to ATI.

I just can't wait to see what Matrox, ATI, XGI and 3DLabs all have to offer us in the future.

Such is capitalism...

This is unfortunately the harsh reality of the world we live in.  The whole Nvida 3dfx thing is just an exampleof this.  But what most people don't seem to understand, they will if they read up on the subject, is that it was 3dfx that were mostly to blame for this situation.   Also Nvidia did not purchase 3dfx, they purchased core technologies and the Voodoo name, which means that Nvidia are not responsible for support.  This was purely a calculated move to kill off the competition.  What was left of 3dfx was entirely responsible for customer support and warranties on existing products.

The time has come now, for people to just get over it.  Why support, endorse or hate either one of these?  They're big fat capitalist graphics card corporations  out to make a wad of cash out of people that can afford to sit about playing games, they're not football teams, religious groups or political pressure groups.

3dfx were every bit as "bad" as Nvidia (or Intel, Ms, etc).  ATI are no angels either, they have pulled some scams in their time, don't forget Quake3 vs Quack3. ;)

sometimes in life you pick sides over things others might think silly, ive picked sides over a few things that have meant something to me and thats that, my brother loves nvidia and buys a new card of theres every year, i play alot of call of duty, the game looks good and my frame rates are good and its on my v5500  :) and that puts a smile on my face and ill not ever get over that as i kick his nvida backed ass all over the place ;)

I'm not sure why anyone would love nvidia but hey... :)

I've never bought their cards either, not since TNT/TNT2 anyway, and I used those purely for the Voodoo1/2 cards I had at the time.  But I don't waste my time "hating" Nvidia perhaps because I have better things to do.

Later. ;)

wrote on 27.04.04 at 00:58:12:

I'm not sure why anyone would love nvidia but hey... :) I've never bought their cards either, not since TNT/TNT2 anyway, and I used those purely for the Voodoo1/2 cards I had at the time.  But I don't waste my time "hating" Nvidia perhaps because I have better things to do. Later. ;)

Ah, amen to that m8. 3dfx is gone and dead people, if you want to continue to hold on to your voodoos, and hating the company that took in many of the employees who were stranded by 3dfx, be my guest. I don't really know if nvidia could support 3dfx users, 3dfx didn't exactly build their cards to last or be ready for the next standards. You all seem to hate nvidia because they're a corporation. Well, that's what corporations do. But just remember, hatred like yours might someday fall back on you. Nobody is perfect, everybody is looking to grab that little extra boost, that extra wad of dough, that couple extra 3D Marks, and nobody's exempt. I was once an nvidia hater, too, but I've stopped to look at things for what they really are. Nvidia bought 3dfx's technology just the same way as 3dfx bought STB (okay, it was *technically* a merger). Nvidia makes graphics cards, and hey, if the next time I go to buy one, Nvidia can give me a better product for my money, that's where my money will go. I'm already seriously looking at those nforce chipsets, they appear to be really good.

i assume amp to be right.
me purchased 3dfx boards because it was the fastest & most stable sh*t on the market. now, it's ati. so why should i buy something else, as ati isn't the most expensive gfx producer?

>>adding<<
besides, 3dfx & ati seemed/seem to be companies closely connected to their buyers, some kind of good relationship, ya know. you won't find such one @ nvidia.

wrote on 27.04.04 at 12:45:40:

i assume amp to be right. me purchased 3dfx boards because it was the fastest & most stable sh*t on the market. now, it's ati. so why should i buy something else, as ati isn't the most expensive gfx producer?

Hmm, you all seem to love to parallel Nvidia's pixel pipelines to 3dfx, what about ATI not bringing up the latest pixel shader standards? Doesn't this sort of remind anyone of a certain hardware TnL engine? Fairly useless at the time, but almost a requirement for games produced not long afterwards...


Quote:

>>adding<< besides, 3dfx & ati seemed/seem to be companies closely connected to their buyers, some kind of good relationship, ya know. you won't find such one @ nvidia.

I don't really know about that either. Quite frankly, I've never contacted ATI tech support, but Nvidia has a tech support forum that got my linux driver issue straightened out within a couple hours, that's the fastest I've ever had anything straightened out. Hell, most of the time, tech support email addresses either never respond, or spit me back some automatically generated cr*p telling me how to do something that I already explicitly stated I've already tried. My experience with Nvidia has definately been my best one with any tech support of a company.

EDIT: Micha, I did read that article, albiet a couple months ago.

wrote on 27.04.04 at 21:45:39:

EDIT: Micha, I did read that article, albiet a couple months ago.

hooray, it was useful!  ;D

anyway, i agree nvidia to have better (afaik ati don't offer it so far) linux support.
contacting ati support isn't useless at all. e.g. you'll mostly receive a free driver/support cd if you request for one.


wrote on 27.04.04 at 21:45:39:

you all seem to love to parallel Nvidia's pixel pipelines to 3dfx, what about ATI not bringing up the latest pixel shader standards? Doesn't this sort of remind anyone of a certain hardware TnL engine? Fairly useless at the time, but almost a requirement for games produced not long afterwards...

well, good things take their time, right? ati wasn't the 1^st company to present dx7/vshader1.1 boards, either...but hey, they recently offered bettter picture quality. useless to talk about their pshader1.4 engagement...
concerning the use of shaders, my radeon9200 (still pshader1.4) has only to issues concerning so-called dx9 games:
1. Halo - the guys which should appear like being hollow are reproduced badly (anyway, we know pshader1.4 to have ghost shaders, right?)
2. Far Cry - the reflectance inside the sniper occulars are rubbish - crappity smack it
what i want to say by that: shader2.0 aren't so widely used nowadays or in other words: pshader1.4 are mostly able to do the same job (mostly even faster). so i don't expect new games to use shader3.0 so quickly. the only enginge presented up to now doing so is the unreal engine 3 (@ gforce 5600 presentation) - really amazing sh*t!

At the end of the day, people take their own opinions on things for what they see them, just like nVidia and ATI.

People like beta and amp have every right to do what they feel, and if that involves buying an nVidia card because they believe it to be the best choice for them, that is the right thing to do.

It just seems that this forum is biased to the opposite, in that most users have a bad relationship with nVidia because of how nVidia treat people on a GENERAL level.

It just seems the majority of users opinions are to choose ATI over nVidia, for whatever reason, be it that it is down to a dirty past towards the 3dfx treatment, or down to today's issues such as a GENERAL reputation of bad user support, incompetitive high prices of hardware or inferior technology standards against ATI's.

Hey hey, I didn't say I've bought any  :P (save for my $10 GF2). And I think beta was trying to say that he doesn't sit around the house thinking "Hmm, what can I do to take down Nvidia today?"

wrote on 30.04.04 at 21:35:14:

Hey hey, I didn't say I've bought any  :P (save for my $10 GF2). And I think beta was trying to say that he doesn't sit around the house thinking "Hmm, what can I do to take down Nvidia today?"

or, in other words:
"Hmm, what can I do to hate down Nvidia today?"
;D

Hehe. The nVidia Hate Squad!  :)

He is a member of the basque seperatist group, Al-nVidia! He was found with weapons of mass-Hardware Acceleration!

wrote on 03.05.04 at 14:56:31:

Hehe. The nVidia Hate Squad!  :) He is a member of the basque seperatist group, Al-nVidia! He was found with weapons of mass-Hardware Acceleration!

Who on earth are you talking about?

Quote:

Who on earth are you talking about?

what? didn't get it? well, i don't have time to explain; I'm off to hate nvidia now. ;D

Well at least someone got it (thanks btw, Micha!)  ;)

Looking at the comments in here, it seems that time has stalled. We are back in 2000.

What I would like to add is the following:
1) today graphics quality is a big leftover. You see tons of FPS games released, yet only a few would compete in quality with a good 1999 Unreal Tournament (even in D3d). We talk about 32 bit color, 1024x1024 textures... yet the results are not so amazing. If it runs deadly fast, 60 -100 fps it is the number one card.

2) capabilities. We have Pixel Shader, Vertex Shader, Dot3 bumb map, 32 bit Z-buffer... All these words are to boggle your mind. Actually only a tiny number of the games released after 2000 use any of the above. Most of these are pure marketing. On 1999 every new improvement (albeit there were not many new technologies released) was implemented in games. At this moment, most of the games are not even at the standard of a good Dx7 game. Only few games use 2003 technology.

Regarding to ATI vs Nvidia. There is S3. There is Trident (although not a sane choice) and Sis for the low-budget people. The world simply don't end with ATI or Nvidia. Besides that, S3 has given and it will still give nice features and offer good quality for the money you pay.

ATI and Nvidia. Actually none is too good. On one side might be ATI on another one is Nvidia. What you have to admit is that ATI offers slightly better quality at the moment and a bit more speed for the money you pay. Drivers are quite buggy for both of them actually. Anyway, the Detonators thing is by far the most stupid driver set. They release drivers almost 2 times a month, and you never know if it is better or worst than the last ones. You don't know also where is the good part. If I have to be more critic, I would say that Nvidia has far more potential than ATI, but it does less because it cares less. It fully seeks profit all the way, and marketing. I am not saying that ATI is an angel, but clearly none of them are respecting the costumers.

And yes, "Nvidia, the way it's meant to be played!" is a crappy example. It offered some better compatibility with the mentioned games, but some boxes from 1999 were labeled "runs optimally on a Winfast (GeForce) card" when you have 3dfx mode. And the last thing: anyone Glide, S3Metal? These direct interfaces, if used properly can smoke the best direct3d performance with 20 fps in some cases, not including the compatibility and quality. But they don't want to develop such direct interfaces, and go happy MS Direct3D (sometimes I have some doubts on how direct it really is)...

Oh boy... (56k/ISDN/DSL Warning ;D )

My 2 cents :

Q: What card shall run the current Games in Glide or S3 Metal, and who shall develop the API's ?

A: That's why it doesn't work you fool!
S3 has been virtually off the Market for too long, and 3dfx is unfortunately gone...
(there were times when we had "Glide Only" Games, and to a certain point, non-3dfx Users complained with a good reason)

About the Quality thing :
Yes, to a certain point people are chasing Performance.

But if you look deeper into things, you will find advanced Users looking very well for maximum Quality. OmegaDrive's Drivers and Software like Rtool allow to select the highest possible Image Quality possible.

And if you mention the alternatives, one has to look at what happened with the SiS Xabre, for example :
The Driver uses a massive Performance Cheat, reducing Texture Filtering quality (could almost be called "shameless plug" ).

And to give you an impression what people (like us) are really looking for in terms of Quality (which is very well possible with ATI or NVidia) :

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2003-A.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2003-B.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2003-C.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/Unreal2-1.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/Unreal2-2.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/Unreal2-3.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/Unreal2-4.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2004-A.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2004-B.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2004-C.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2004-D.jpg

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/ut2004-E.jpg

Notes :
- NONE of these were running anywhere close to 100fps. They were situations to push even a Radeon 9700pro close to its limits, but with is luckily a moveable limit, thanks to modern Card's power reserves.
- the are only 80% jpeg quality, resized down to 1024x768
(otherwise, Forum Users would kill me)
- those still Images don't to the Graphics any justice, seeing all those Details in motion and interactive is a yawdropping experience

This is what you won't get from a so called "High Quality" Banshee, Voodoo2 or Savage4.  I wish you would finally understand what nowaday's "Quality" stands for. Most Screenshots listed above, likely have more Details, Textures, 3D effects and Artist work in one scene than an entire Quake2 level.

And the Big Texture ( 2048x2048 ) advantage can best be seen here :
http://www.falconfly.de/temp/UT2003-close1.jpg
http://www.falconfly.de/temp/UT2003-close2.jpg
http://www.falconfly.de/temp/UT2003-close3.jpg
http://www.falconfly.de/temp/UT2003-close4.jpg

This is what modern 3D Graphics is all about.
From your writings in the last months, I must assume, you have never witnessed those High-End Graphics in your lifetime.

Otherwise, I cannot possibly explain the nonsense you've been tossing in this Forum.
...unless a Troll you are (which becomes the last possible explanation over and over again)

I know what the latest and greatest things on the 3d gaming and accelerators market look like. I saw Unreal 2 and Unreal Tournament 2003. I saw the latest Radeons 9800 XT and the latest GeForce 5900. The games are impressive, even very impressive in certain aspects, and this is a thing to take note, as not many games look so good. However there is something that is not so good in terms of quality, again.

I looked at the green picture. On the floor you can see a metal plate. The "glitch" is the bilinear filter, am I right? We are in 2004, and this thing simply shouldn't happen.

I admit that the faces look excelent, and that the weapons have very high details. But having details as polygons is not the full job. The sky also looks realistically. But I know these games, and I know that they are not very Impressive if you ever saw Virtual Reality simulations, and chainlinked rendering in action. I don't compare these situations to a PC. But we could ask more from the GPU and game developers, as it is not impossible to push the envelope.

The explosions. Well, explosions, glares, glows are hard to make. First of all the efect is very dependent on if you use a particle system a 3D object, or a mapping of any kind. But these explosins are not the best I have seen (or at least not the best they can be). But any explosion consumes tons of processing power (right!) and it could drop the framerate quite a lot. This is one of the reasons for which the high detail textures were disabled in the first Unreal Tournament 2002.

Glide, S3 Metal. Most of the current needs of graphical devices and games are based on the assumption that Direct3D would deliver nearly the maximum thorughput of a video card. This is completely wrong. Some developers discuss in private that Direct3D might already hit it's limits because of the complexity and the high level of abstraction layers it has, having very few options to handle directly how a request is being solved. Not mentioning the known fluctuation of performance tipical for d3d. Also, d3d is slightly different when you read MS books, and when you actually implement it. ATI and NVvidia would have the money to invest in a direct video interface. But they don't do it because it simply works well enough for their expectations, they get their profits and are not willing to constantly invest in this direct interface.

Most people know, but they won't recongize that doing a D3d app cost more than an OpenGL one. But they choose D3d because it is simply the most used interface, and many videocard manufacturers improve their d3d performance over time, as opposed to OpenGL. Less to blame the developers is because of the documentation. OpenGL has scarce documentation and has no implementations on anything but C (as far as I know). Also, when you get the dx sdk you get tons of examples, documented instructions. This is one sane and acceptable reason for developing on d3d. Others are not so much.

Hm, sorry, but there is no Metal Plate on the floor, and I observe no error in rendering.

Also, there is no Bilinear Filtering used, it's all Trilinear and 4x (16 tap) Anisotropic Filtering.

The Explosions (as I mentioned) are extremely dynamic, thus they cannot be judged from a single Screenshot.
You got all kinds of Explosions in those Scenes, with items flying around, adhering to correct Gravity and Collision kinematics.

The effects they mostly rely on are Particle Systems and massive Overdraw.
--------
While DirectX/Direct3D is indeed not the fastest platform around, is it currently by far the best developed API.
I wish as well, people would be pushing OpenGL more, but it is simply developing/validating way too slow to be widely accepted.

But overall, you need a widely compatible High-Level API, otherwise noone will be able to complete work on a 3D Engine in less than 5 years, while constantly having to adopt to newer Architectures.

OpenGL is already out of the play in terms of compatibility, since every manufacturer has to manually implement proprietary extensions, just to get their Effects going.
(the result is that you have to fully implement, bugfix and develop independent Rendering pathes, which I imagine is a time-consuming pain in the arse for any developer)

Whoa Guys!  :o

Going a bit off-topic here, but allow me to respond to your comments!  ;)

In aspects, I think you are both right.

Yes, we have advanced in terms of quality and performance in our graphics, this is true.  Some of the games I see today running on the high-end Radeon cards still amazes me!  We have really come a long way in the past few years.

Although, I can understand parts of what Andrew Boiu is saying.  Yes, we do have all these new improved features as super fast trilinear filtering we could have only dreamed of a few years back and the better support we now have for running games in FSAA.  The use of Pixel and Vertex Shaders.

But the fact remains, that over the past few years that although the technology has progressed, it has not progressed as fast as it was looking to do in late 2000.

For the past year (or more so even) the Radeon and GeForce series have only made updates to give better support for aspects such as DX9.

What we usually see a lot of is, increased GPU clock speeds and more memory added to the cards.  You must admit that is the main key to all the "improvements" in the cards.

Now we are presented with too many cards to choose from on the shelves, from each brand, ranging from "watered down" versions to full heavy loaded high-end models.

This shows they may be running out of ideas in the R&D department.  :-/

The PCI Express range is coming, true.  But what are the companies really gaining from this?
At this point it only presents more bandwidth to use the current technologies we have now supported in games, only to run them in higher resolutions.
It's also another money making racket for the big dogs to cash in on, as it adds more variety to their series of models to spend your money on.

In the late 90's, 3dfx were way ahead of the game in terms of R&D (Research & Development, for the numbnuts).
They started designing the Rampage technoology back in the day when they were putting ideas together for the Banshee! The only trouble was, was that 3dfx didn't realise they were onto a good thing, and the ideas got scrapped.
If that kind of effort and know-how was around today in the companies that still remain, who know what kind of cards they could have produced by now.  ;)

Well, this might due to the fact, that DirectX is (for the first time) waay ahead of what the Hardware can really do with a decent speed.

It will take even another Generation beyond NV40 and X800 to really take full advantage of all the possibilities, with sufficient performance going along.

Also, the Tech Demos (maybe also for the first time) give an Idea, how those Games could already look like. Only problem being :
No Hardware is quick enough to do it (including even the fastest CPU's), but the features are (mainly) there already...

Who knows, maybe we see full use of Pixel Shaders and complex PS1.x/2.0 Instructions in 1-2 years in Games ;)

My bottom line is :
In terms of both Quality and Performance, we have gotten better and bigger than ever before in the 3D world. Anyone complaining about supposedly 'lower Quality', referencing 3-4 Generations older Cards, is a crackpot IMHO.

Oh dear, nVidia are at it AGAIN! :o ::)

Go check it out... :P

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1845416#post1845416

And YES, it has been confirmed that the pictures ARE genuine! >:(

1) WOW talk about calling the kettle black- It takes a big pair of stones for anyone at Nvidia to be crying about drivers being optimized or downplaying features.

Bottom line is the new cards from ATI kick ass and don't need two power connectors or two slots to do the job.

2) I'm howling with laughter- Check out some of these translated nuggets.

"sometimes I have the feeling that you are a robot, that never laugh or times find somewhat amusing... Your reactions to sometimes really merry things are always bone drying.  Are you at all reasonable for humor?"

"it is not wrong also, but in the clenched, does not work it mixes simply only merrily marketing meant not to lie, to only say but, what lets the competitor look bad and one are well it stop one sea-honour selective perception sing and/or one tries the people these to make clear"

What a scream!

Indeed. Pure marketing ploy. Corporate rule.  Get your claws into the opposition before they do to you.:)

I see a lot of words from nVidia, and the fact that they dis the x800 technology.

I don't see ATI mouthing off at nVidia's faux pas.

I think ATI will wait for the two cards to be pitted together in competition and let them speak for themselves.

We'll see who's laughing then, and I assure you it will grow very quiet in the nVidia corner! ;)

nVidi-ar$e! ;) :D

LOL! :D ;D

ROFL! ;D ;D

My first ATi card was a Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro 128MB 256Bit DDR. well gotta say never took nVidia ever again!!!

The FSAA and AF is way sharper than that of the GeForceFX series that time and so was the performance while using FSAA & AF in nearly everygame.

My last nVidia was the Leadtek Winfast A250 ULTRA TD that's a GeForce4 Ti-4600 , still useing it now. That was to me one of the best GeForce cards ever.

Now I use a Connect3D 9800 Pro 128MB 256Bit DDR. in FSAA & AF it's sometimes 70% faster than my older R300 aka Radeon 9700 Pro. Normally I Play C&C Generals and FS 2004 and that is where I tested both cards. the R350 has actually some slight improvements with performance and  HyperZIII+.