Radeon 9800 Pro Impressions

[MikeC]

Originally posted by jbirney
Mike,

I second HB request. Would be interesting to know what you think of the AA and AF when you had a chance to look at both D3D and OpenGL games.

Affirmative!

[MikeC]

Originally posted by Red Dog
quote:
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Originally posted by scott123
Time to re-name this web-site from Nvidia news, to VGA News.
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the thought crept into my mind the day we didnt get a nv30 preview card but a few other "big" sites did.

It really didn't matter since I was vacationing in the Bahamas at the time

[muzz]

Originally posted by MikeC
Thanks. I'll certainly be conducting overclocking tests! That window unit A/C can get the temperature in the computer room down to 60 Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) when I close the door

Put on your sweatshirt...........

Maybe you should build an air duct so that A/C unit goes straight to the 9800 Pro.

[Red Dog]

Im loving my 9800pro.

I set it and forget it at 4xAA/16xAF.

nothing slows it down. the card is an utter beast.

I dont know how people live without AA/AF.

so far the omega 3.4's are awesome with the exception of the included overclocking utility (rad clocker) not saving settings at boot. I downloaded the latest version of radclocker and all is well.

I would love to be able to add a trickle of digital vibrance.

hopefully we see the 3.5's soon.

Originally posted by Alceryes
Even more interesting would be to get the OpenGL Wrapper from Rage3D and run the Dawn demo on your new 9800Pro (you thought it looked good on the FX5900 just wait till you see this......

It seems that NVIDIA's 'Dawn' demo actually look AND runs better on 9700Pro (and higher) cards - even with the added overhead of the wrapper interpreting FX specific commands.

More reading on the subject here...http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=9650

Not everything in the Dawn demo is rendered properly on an ATI card. Although it does run A LOT better on an ATI card.

Discussion

[Alceryes]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
Not everything in the Dawn demo is rendered properly on an ATI card. Although it does run A LOT better on an ATI card.

Discussion

...right, you can't display the "point" or "wire" frame as it will cause the demo to crash.
'course I don't give a #%$^ about seeing the wire or point frame. I prefer seeing Dawn in the flesh... The crash is probably due to the OpenGL wrapper.

Oh, that reminds...I'm not sure if this is just for ATI cards with the crack or if it is actually in the unaltered demo for the FX...but for those of you who don't know this you can remove dawn's clothes by simply changing the .exe name.
Change 'Fairy' to 'Quake3' and you get Dawn naked except for her wings. Change 'Fairy' to '3dmark03' and you'll lose the wings as well. AND for those of you just going into the demo directory and changing the .exe and running it from there you are missing out on the 'Ultra' setting. You'll need to change the 'Dawn Ultra' shortcut under 'Nvidia Demos' in your program menu to correspond with what you changed the .exe name to...
HAVE FUN!!!

[creedamd]

Originally posted by MikeC
I though this would be a good move for us.

Might as well having coming in from both directions. You are a pure genius, Mike. Glad to hear all is going well with the advertising as a lot of sites say that it is peanuts. I look forward to seeing some reviews on this puppy.

[Hellbinder]

MikeC

I think its more a case of ATi Finally having Something worth being interested in. Which is a realatively new development overall. Its just hard to ignore what ATi has pulled off with the R3xx.

I hope Imagine Gets their PowerVR series 5 out the door in a few months, and the DeltaChrome shows up. It would be nice to have some 4 way flame wars going on around here hehe

[Vengeance]

quote:
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Originally posted by scott123
Time to re-name this web-site from Nvidia news, to VGA News.
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Originally posted by MikeC
The thought of taking out a second domain name has crossed my mind

Mmmm I might just have to start stoping in a little more offten then

[Typedef Enum]

This might seem lame to some, but I actually decided to replay the original Unreal game several days ago, and I'm about 3/4 of the way through it.

There exists a bug that prevents AA from working under D3D, but I'm not entirely sure this is a definitive bug with the Catalyst drivers. Nonetheless, OGL works fine with AA.

Anyhow, I'm pointing this out because for the first 25% or so, I was "living" without AA under D3D, and finally switched to OGL. At 1600x1200, there still exist those who think AA is not worthwhile, because they believe that jacking up the resolution is just as effective. It's amazing to notice how wrong that really is. Since making the switch from D3D->OGL, the IQ is really a strong testament to the overall quality of the Antialiasing modes available in the R3xx series.

On a sidenote, replaying Unreal using the UT textures really is amazing. Hard to believe that something that old can still look so good.

If you really want to get a good feel for the strengths of ATI's AA, fire up IL2 Sturmovik. Quite frankly, I'm not so sure that I've seen a better illustration of how superior their AA is to the competition.

[Quinn1981]

This is really amazing news. It's always good to get another view and try something new. Hope you have fun with it.