Radeon beats GF2 and V5?

[Clayeth]

I just looked at this mini-review of the ATI Radeon... and WOW!

It can't keep up with the GF2 in lower 16bit resolutions (only 110fps instead of 129.5) but that doesn't really matter. But it dominates higher resolutions, The articles I'll put links to at the bottom of the post will explain why this happens (a new HyperZ Z-buffer makes better use of wasted cycles or something like that). It can run Q3A in 1600x1200 ALL MAX SETTINGS at: 35.9fps beating the GF2's 30.2. This is with unfinished drivers too, so they should increase soon.

Also check out the one about the image quality. It dethrones the GF2 as the best looking card out there!

According to the reviewer the next test will be to see if it can beat the V5 5500's FSAA.

It overclocks well, and will be available soon (in fact, some should be available now):
Radeon 64MB DDR SDRAM (With Video Capture): $399 -- Available 8/1/00
Radeon 64MB DDR SDRAM (No Video Capture): $349 -- Available 7/17/00
Radeon 32MB DDR SDRAM (No Video Capture): $299 -- Available 7/17/00
Radeon 32MB SDR SDRAM (No Video Capture): $199 -- Available 8/30/00

Check these out:
http://www.planethardware.com/reviews/videocards/Radeon_handson/
http://www.planethardware.com/reviews/videocards/radeon_oc/
http://www.planethardware.com/features/radeon_screenshots/

Here's the quote that really sums up the articles:
For now the GeForce2 GTS and Radeon are the two top dogs in the video chip pack, with no foreseeable challengers arriving to market before the end of the year. Perhaps the V5-6000 card will arrive on the scene in September or October to challenge the leaders

Oh boy, that one will get Rooster hot... oh well check it you for yourself, I hadn't heard a little about ATi's new card but nobody seemed to think it would challenge the GF2 and V5, but this could get interesting!

[Clayeth]

The things that go bump in the night have arived...

no, not really. Just wanted to let more people see this.

[Entropica{KS}]

I saw it!

Interesting. Competition is great. I'm actually in the market for a new card to replace my TnT2 Ultra@175/195 and to go with the Athlon Thunderbird or Duron (replacing a Celery 500@563) I'm looking at.

Some of the Quake3 scores are amazing, what a great game engine. Too bad I'm so thoroughly entrenched in UT.

I'm not sure I remember correctly (I read the story earlier before your post off a http://www.anandtech.com link), but in the image quality test, didn't the guy admit at the beginning that they left texture compression ON for the Geforce2 while it was off for the Radeon? Seems to me that blows the whole test. Compressed textures, at the SAME resolution, will tend to not look as good (S3TC, DXTC, etc. all use 'lossy' compression), but will cause a performance increase. Now, using HIGHER res compressed textures could improve quality, but here in this test, they used the same resolution textures, just compressed on the nVidia card, so of course it didn't look as good. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

I feel not being able to fall back to 16 bit to get a large speed increase is a handicap. If we all went for max image quality (32 bit) all the time, Radeon would be fine. If the 32 bit scores were as high as the 16 bit scores for the Geforce2, of course it would be an easy choice. But the fact is, if you buy a new card looking for the absolute fastest frame rates (in Quake3 and such, and image quality be damned), you're prolly not thinking 32 bit, and in that scenario, Radeon makes very little sense. I also read that its 16 bit has gross image quality problems. But I'm glad consumers now have a couple more choices.

[won't the Geforce3/NV20 probably be out by November? won't it most likely wipe the floor with everything out there, provided it has sufficient memory bandwidth?]

The V5 5500 is looking mighty nice to me right now. You can run UT in Glide (admittedly, 16 bit only) and get the very highest frame rates possible. Or you can go to 32 bit and not do all that badly either. V5 seems to have the edge with the UT engine over the Radeon and Geforce2.

The price thing hurts, too. And I heard the 32 MB DDR Radeon has slower RAM and a lower clock speed standard than the 64 MB part.

The biggest determining factor (for me) though? I have a CircuitCity credit card, and they carry only 3Dfx products (at least on their web site; if anyone knows that they have other brands in-store, please tell me). The processor/mobo upgrade 'we' can justify; it'll help my girlfriend do her papers, play Solitaire, surf, email, and chat, hehehe... ;) but a three or four hundred dollar game card? That's going on credit.

Entropica{KS}