I love everything 3D Prophet!

That's a sweet card, Obi-Wan...

I wanted one for the longest time, but couldn't find a reliable retailer for high-end Hercules parts that would ship to my location.  Then they discontinued 'em, and the 9800's were out, and I sort of gave up on it.



Nice catch.

Well, I have to say that my 6800GT pretty much hammers my old 9800 Pro in everything... and it flat out blows it away in OpenGL games.  It will never achieve the place in my heart that the old GF2 Ultra did, but it's still a damn fine card.

My 9800 Pro (Sapphire 128MB) was vastly improved by the addition of a Zalman VF-700 cooling solution.  It may not have the raw power of the 6800GT, but it only puts out half the heat... that's worth something.

Obi, I wouldn't agree on that. Pretty much all the today's cards have the same (perfect) 2D quality. Especially with the DVI outputs. DVI does not depend on the quality of components used on PCB. If the 2d image is crappy, then the card is faulty. If colours are a mess - adjust gamma/saturation/contrast.

3D quality is another story: 3dfx on the pedestal (apsolutely first place, the cleanest, sharpest and most colourful display, even with 16 bits), ATI follows behind with nice colours, and NV falls faaar behind. I remember the time when I compared the 3D output of the Voodoo 5 5500, ATI Radeon 8500 and GF FX5200. What a difference... Like a comercial for contact lenses!

It's no wonder NV won the speed-battle in 2000-2001; there was apsolutely no chance to improve image and texture quality (at least not enough to compare with voodoo) in detonators...


I hate this nostalgic feeling

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What others?  I'd like to form my own opinion based on evidence, thank you.

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You're trying to tell us that ATI doesn't use "cheats" (a.k.a. optimizations) in their drivers?  Um, I have a really nice piece of ocean-front property in Utah that I think you might be interested in...

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I've run both of those games on my 6800GT with no rendering problems.

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That's quite a sampling.  I don't suppose you bothered to take comparable screenshots with each of them so that we could analyze them objectively?

I'm assuming you meant 2D when referring to the Matrox cards...

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Show me.

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Hmmm... what an objective, logical statement.





No, I'm not trying to pick a fight, despite what it looks like.  I am, however, tired of reading extravagant claims about how one graphics hardware developer totally dominates the others... without any useful evidence.

If you want to convince me, try providing persuasive evidence.  If you don't know how to do that, read the following article:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679&p=15

Now use that format (or something very similar) to show me specific differences, and suggest to me why the difference is actually significant rather than a mere point of interest.

Judging from what must be hundreds of IQ investigations and 'optimization' findings I've reviewed :

Currently, Nvidia apparently got its latest 'optimizations' (since a few months) into the OpenGL, hence its fast rendering. As usual, these are hidden until discovered, after which they move on to other hidden optimizations (or keep at it until the uprising becomes too big for their PR to keep down).

Very competitive speed with optimizations turned on, but more or less clearly reduced IQ.
All that translates into hefty performance losses when forced to render 100% IQ.

We all know about the past, blatant cheats, which got NVidia their reputation it still has.

OmegaDriver comes to mind, as NVidia prohibited him to distribute his Driver sets (which revealed how much their Cards were loosing them put on really full IQ). They had to bite the sour apple when the community uproar prove to big to handle for them.
ATI, in turn reacted positive and even took the one or other optimization Option into their own Drivers for the User to enable/disable.

ATI occasionally did comparable, although far not on a such significant scale (so they're not fully innocent either), but when discovered the issue quickly got a sound response and plausible explanation, and the Company chose the cooperative way (Options to enable 100% IQ Rendering in the Driver Controls, aka A.I. and "High Quality").
That made it much more transparent, which lead to ATI's current reputation as unchallenged leader in IQ.

Currently translates in close performance race with Optimizations enabled, clear winner though at 100% rendering (since quite a while).

What it all boils downto is personal flavor (100% IQ desired or 95% being good enough in favour of competitive performance) and whether a User accepts being repeatedly un- or mis-informed concerning actual IQ used in the NVidia Drivers.

Since most optimizations have only mild effects to the casual Gamer, it's more of a philosophy question.

My philisophy is that I expect nothing less than 100% IQ from current generation, 500$ + Hardware.
So far, only ATI remained to deliver exactly that.

For the 95%-people, there's enough left from NVidia to be happy with, with enough suitable options to choose from at fair prices.

Note :
As history teached us, all above holds true until proven otherwise. Who knows, maybe tomorrow someone discovers some hidden ATI optimization.

Another important lesson learned that it is not enough to look at any single review Site to judge the Hardware. It has become mandatory to find out on what actual IQ the Benchmarks/Comparisons were run.

Not few (formerly highly regarded) Articles were rendered useless, as the reviewers did not pay sufficient (or any) attention to fully disable all optimizations and put the Hardware really on the same level.

hmm Ati has better 2D than 3dfx as far as I know ATi Video chips are most ly used in High end servers also they are much older also, 3dfx has better image quallity in games for they are built for ATi is much like Matrox 3dfx does have sharper image quallity than NV however.

every card has it's own very special pupose like FalconFly said.

For 2D:

1. Matrox [G400MAXX]
2. Ati [Rage Fury MAXX, Radeon 9700 Pro]
3. 3dfx [Voodoo3, 4 and 5]
4. S3 [Virge 3D, Savage 2000]
5. nVidia [Riva TNT2, GeForce4 Ti4600, GeForce 6800GT]

[This is because that well state the obvious Matrox is King in 2D and they still are, thier cards have 3 sepperate 420Mhz Ramdacs]

For Present 3D :

1. Ati [Rage Fury MAXX, Radeon 9700 Pro]
2. nVidia [Riva TNT2, GeForce4 Ti4600, GeForce 6800GT]
3. Matrox [G400MAXX]
4. S3 [Virge 3D, Savage 2000]
5. 3dfx [Voodoo3, 4 and 5]

[this is because 3dfx cards are missing alot of advanced Pixel and Vertex Shaders.]

For OldSkool:

1. Matrox [G400MAXX]
2. 3dfx [Voodoo3, 4 and 5]
3. Ati [Rage Fury MAXX, Radeon 9700 Pro]
4. nVidia [Riva TNT2, GeForce4 Ti4600, GeForce 6800GT]
5. S3 [Virge 3D, Savage 2000]

[this is because that Matrox had EMBM as a speciallity which made the image quallity insane for it's time 3dfx had FSAA and FXT1 in later cards but still lacked EMBM]

Anyways these are the results of my experiences with these Card brands from plain 2D work with photo's to advanced 3D Flight Simulators to 3D shooters.