Trident Running Away With Claims

[StealthHawk]

does anyone else seem extremely skeptical of Trident's newest claim of 70% of the performance of the R9700? even using raw performance, i have about 0% confidence in this blazen lie. factor in FSAA and AF, and i doubt it can even keep pace with the previous target of a GF4 Ti4400. Trident uses good ol Super Sampling FSAA. i guess they don't want their users to enjoy clean visuals. just pure speed again :rolleyes:

edit: corrected the percentage

[Starscream]

I think it's a little premature to call such a claim a lie, at least until performance testing of both released cards has been done. Until then it's pretty much an ubsubstantiated claim.

Personally I'm a little doubtful they'll be able to pull off such a claim.

[Bigus Dickus]

Yeah, I think at 1024 x 768 with no AA or AF, it will be 80% of the Ti4600 and 70% of the 9700.

Naturally, that's just about the only case that the Ti4600 is that close to the 9700 anyway, and such situations are CPU bound for all graphics cards (except the Trident it seems :) ).

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Starscream
I think it's a little premature to call such a claim a lie, at least until performance testing of both released cards has been done. Until then it's pretty much an ubsubstantiated claim.

Personally I'm a little doubtful they'll be able to pull off such a claim.

well, if they were using some kind of adaptive SSAA technique, i'm sure Anand would have clarified. but last i heard(a few days ago, maybe more info has come to light?) they were using SSAA, which says to me straight up super sampling. in FSAA situations it will be impossible for the chip to match up to the GF4, let alone the R9700. considering that under such high quality conditions the R9700 is much more than 10% faster than the GF4

[PsychoSy]

Trident, like Kyro before them, have an uphill climb, especially with the R9700, which really shows its cajones the higher you crank the resolution past 1024x768!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

That new Radeon is on fire!!
The NV30 will be molten lava!!

But, the key here is the budget sector, and Trident can pull it off! They could very well give Nvidia's MX and the lower line Radeons a run for their money in both price and features.

[StealthHawk]

you're definitely right as usual Sy. it is an uphill fight. both hardware and drivers must be top notch to dislodge ATI and nvidia at this point. and we have seen many times already that players trying to get into the game again have had a hard time of it. both Matrox and SiS seemed to have chips that sounded good on paper but in reality had some big deficits in terms of performance or features in replacing offerings from ATI or nvidia.

at this point it sounds like the Trident card may perform well in today's games with no extra eye candy on. i'm skeptical as to claims of "full DX9 support" with good speed though. Trident may be right in dismissing DX9 games, saying "there will be none" this year, seemingly to deemphasize DX9(which i doubt it will do well). however, i suspect that cards like the R9700 and NV30 will last quite a while longer than previous cards did. my GF3 is still going quite strong, and R9700 and NV30 will have even more staying power :)

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by PsychoSy
But, the key here is the budget sector, and Trident can pull it off! They could very well give Nvidia's MX and the lower line Radeons a run for their money in both price and features.

If Trident can release solid drivers, their card will give the Radeon 8500 a run for its money and most likely stomp all of the MX line. Now if it stacks up well against a Ti4200, then that will be mighty impressive if they can reach a price point of $100. :eek:

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

Originally posted by saturnotaku


If Trident can release solid drivers, their card will give the Radeon 8500 a run for its money and most likely stomp all of the MX line. Now if it stacks up well against a Ti4200, then that will be mighty impressive if they can reach a price point of $100. :eek:

The 8500 is close to the 4200...

Trident won't do anything, it's a fluke.

[PsychoSy]

Now, Saturnotaku is right on so don't you be going on calling Trident a fluke. Last time we underestimated a graphics card company, they kicked the crap out of their competition then turned around and bought them! :D :p

[StealthHawk]

but nvidia didn't come out of nowhere. their cards had certain advantages over 3dfx long before 3dfx finally died. Trident at this point sounds more like Kyro. it's not aiming to be top dog, just to gather a good profit and midrange and lowend

[PsychoSy]

Actually, Nvidia did come out of nowhere and it wasn't until their Riva TNT line where they started to become a threat to 3Dfx. You gotta crawl before you walk, and Nvidia was in the same position 5 years ago that Trident is in now. What helped Nvidia climb to the top wasn't that they delivered the better product - it was more of their competition imploding upon itself and Nvidia gaining enough venture capital to improve on their designs. That paid off in spades with the GeForce.

It wasn't until the GeForce line until people started to leave 3Dfx in droves. The Riva TNT attracted only a handful of people away from 3Dfx, but it was only a small spark that lit the kindling. Fortunately for Nvidia, the Riva TNT and TNT2 was enough of a small spark that attracted the OEMs but it wasn't until the GeForce line and that's was Nvidia's way of pouring gasoline on that spark.

The rest is history.

As of now, the GF 4200 and 4600 cards only ammount to 3-10% of Nvidia's profit because only the hardcore people are stupid/smart enough to blow $400 on a video card. The MX line is Nvidia's bread-n-butter and Trident is poised to horn in on that action and that's where the money is.

Trident's card is using a form of Tile-Based Rendering and from what I understand, it's not the same as the Kyro line and will be much more efficient. I agree with Trident's assement of the industry - that ATI and Nvidia are charging people way too much for their cards in the form of "features" that aren't even used by the majority of the games on the shelves.

I mean, here they are ready to add DX9 extentions on their hardware when we can still count on one hand (maybe both hands) the games on the shelf that actually use hardware DX8 extensions and pixel shaders of their previous hardware! Perhaps Nvidia and ATI are getting too much ahead.

[StealthHawk]

Trident's card does not use Tile Based Rendering. i believe it has some kind of occulusion culling that is supposed to be included with NV30; the same feature that has given birth to the rampant speculation of NV30's Effective bandwidth.

well, i wouldn't really say nvidia came out of nowhere. they first launched the Riva128 which was behind the times, had poor image quality, and had tearing artifacts compared to the 3dfx cards. that said, it wasn't a abo****ely terrible card, as it was fast(that was all that was promised) and it was a 2d/3d.

i would say TNT got the ball rolling for nvidia, as it was a single card solution that offered higher resolutions and 32bit color. i would have to say the tide really turned with the TNT2, that was really the first time nvidia could match the fastest 3dfx card.

i think that 3dfx's problem was not that the competition was so great, inasmuch as their own products were lacking after the Voodoo2. after the Voodoo2, competitor's products kept evolving, whereas 3dfx released the slower(but it was the first 2d/3d from them) Banshee. their next product was Banshee2 aka Voodoo3, still limited by the original Voodoo's technology. it was not until the Voodoo5 that 3dfx finally innovated with features and caught up to everyone else, and that card was too late. so yes, nvidia rose to power, but 3dfx also faultered at the same time. kind of like the circumstances of the American Revolution, something that will most likely never happen again.

[[Corporal Dan]]

Originally posted by ATI LoVeR 9700


The 8500 is close to the 4200...

Trident won't do anything, it's a fluke.

Yes and Yes

8500 is close, but not quite. 4200 is an amazing value!

Trident has always stunk up the house.

I have 0% confidence, and that's only because a percentage in this case can't logically be a negative number.

Regardless, it will be an interesting battle to see

[Switch]

I can personally say that I can't wait for Tridents release. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to buy one, but I want them to release a card that will do well... You guys are beating the horse before it's even born. Trident's past is not all that bright and their current claims look hard to accomplish but what if it does in fact present 80% or even 65% of the performance of a Ti4600.... and at a price tag of $100..... This will bring some major changes to the market I think.... Of course, if the card flounders well.... we haven't lost much. I'm not looking at Tridents products directly, I'm looking at the possible changes in the market should they succeed in their claims.

I would have liked to see the Kyro III come to life too, but that's just about a lost cause.

[StealthHawk]

current benchmarks at Anand had it hovering @ 50% of gf4 ti4200 performance without FSAA or AF. yeah, yeah, alpha, beta, whatever. with the R9700Pro and R9700 coming out, and with the R9500 also, GF4 prices will drop faster than a rock in water.

[Switch]

You made a boo boo there buddy. If you recall (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1681&p=6) Anand's preview, the benchmarks were run on a beta verion of Trident's XP4 T2. It's not even the XP4 T3, of course it's not going to perform 80% of a Ti4600, no one said it would.

[StealthHawk]

ah, that is right. the benchmarks are from a T2. in that case, we can do some simple extrapolation and give those scores an extra 20%(i believe the T3 is clocked around 300/300).

the beta argument has seriously been done to death. the cards are supposed to ship in October...how much better are shipping drivers going to get?

maybe Trident will prove me wrong. it sounds like they support some kind of adaptive FSAA method in addition to SSAA, so we'll see. however, i still believe that Trident's claims of 70% of a R9700Pro are complete marketing BS hype.

[Joe Shmoe]

Originally posted by Switch
of course it's not going to perform 80% of a Ti4600, no one said it would.
Except Trident.

[Switch]

Originally posted by Joe Shmoe

Except Trident.

Trident never said the T2 would perform 80% of the Ti4600. That's the T3.




And yes, you've got a good point Stealth. Trident will definitely have some answering to do in the way of hardware. 80% of a Ti4600 isn't all that unbelievable. But saying 70% of the new Radeon, eh.... they'll have to answer for themselves on that one. In some instances the Ti4600 only pulls 70%(or less) of that new card....