Crossfire misfire

[Hovis]

Despite ATI's best efforts to cheat on the tests the word is out from the launch in Ibiza. The next generation ATI cards are at best about 20% slower than the Nvidia equivolent. Don't believe the hype (and they will hype) because they suck.

Reasons why ATI suck:

1. They wouldn't let the journalists test the cards fairly. They modified the games being tested, they had goons watching every test, dodgy as hell.

2. They lie to shareholders. Looks like the CEO might be looking at some jail time Enron style.

3. They are corrupt. They pay for good press, they pay a lot (taking several dozen journalists to the last night of Pascha in Ibiza for instance), and when they don't get it they get very nasty.

Anywho, just had to get that off my chest because I couldn't put it in the magazine. :D

Bottom line is Crossfire and that generation of cards are not up to it. They were using the very best they had at the tests, the one in a thousand uber-cards that sometimes pop out and they weren't cutting it. They even flew in some of the best overclockers in the world with access to liquid nitrogen (I shit you not) and they struggled to get close to the 7800GTX. This amuses me because a lot of the ATI senior bods are at best wankers and at worst criminals.

Downside is though that this could kill ATI (and while I'm tempted to say they deserve it for being ***** and the small matter of lying to boost their share price) then we'll all get arsefucked by Nvidia.

Rant ends. Enjoy the news while it's still hot. :D

[GuardianAnge1]

wow... journalism rocks.. free night at Pascha...

[One Armed Scissor]

i guess when i hopefullywin the loter the R520 will be staying away.

but i still wub my 9800pro with fridge on the side

[Hovis]

Sad to say all ATI graphics cards have been 9800 Pros for years. Just with more pipelines and RAM. That's why they can't do HDR or any of the directx 9.0c effects.

[Hovis]

wow... journalism rocks.. free night at Pascha...

It wasn't just journalists most of the ATI top bods were there too. Word is they are spending out the company funds on themselves because the CEO and the Chairman have been on the fiddle. Basically the top two guys lied about what ATI was doing and when things were coming out, which inflated the share value, then they sold a bunch of their stock and netted about $50m each. They could be looking at some jail time, so it's no surprise they've been hitting the minibar.

[Flufball]

Rubbish Hovis, stop trying to excuse a free holiday with the phrase "Work" :p

[Hovis]

Rubbish Hovis, stop trying to excuse a free holiday with the phrase "Work" :p

I didn't get to go. I'm just reporting back what the guy from the office who went said. He had a shitty time of it too.

[Hovis]

Although just to add 'work' for me today involves monkeying around with a two foot tall remote control dalek. :cool:

[Flufball]

I think the phrase "You Bastard" springs to mind :p

[One Armed Scissor]

i wish i had your job...

infact i jsut wish i had a job :(

[JojoTheSlayer]

Yeah, Crossfire was a disapointment.
Only upside is that its a bit cheaper to upgrade to dualcard (Sli/Crossfire) if you already own a X800 card.

Glad I went for a 7800GTX :D

[Hovis]

You should be Jojo, they fucking own. I am a jealous man. :mad:

My plans to put a new system together keep getting put on hold by poverty, travel and beer issues. I've blagged some bits but the best mobo I can get won't do SLI and I'm going to have to pay for some new drives, a GeForce 7800GT and an X-Fi sound card. I'll post another thread about them. :cool:

[GuardianAnge1]

the ASUS SLI one is only like 100 quid no?

[Hovis]

Motherboard is about £100. The 7800GTs are around £260. The GTX cards are a bit rich for my blood at about £300-£400.

Get this though, we've got an Asus board in the lab at the moment. It's SLI 7800GTs IN ONE DUAL SLOT CARD. It's fucking sick. Still needs an SLI board to work naturally and Asus tell us it'll retail for about £620, but it's awesome. Opinion seems to be they just released this monster to settle any questions folks might have about who makes the fastest card in the world.

Another turn up on the ATI front. Word from the gang is that they have got the mutts nuts of RAM architectures, not sure exactly what that means but it's good. But the cores are supposed to be bollocks. Opinion also suggests that no way is it possible for ATI to build the cards they are planning to sell, this being based on the immensely high RAM clocks these things are using. Something in the region of 1.4GHZ. It's very hard to make RAM to those sort of tolerances especially when you consider they are looking at releasing 512meg cards.

[One Armed Scissor]

1.4 ghz o_0

[Flufball]

Bah SLI, I could barely afford 1 GTX let alone 2 GT's when I updated my machine.

My nice GTX will do me for now, untill I can afford to buy a new mobo and another card....

[One Armed Scissor]

according to sqaurehed the R520 is better than the 7800 at high resolutions

[Flufball]

Now who do we belive, "Squarehead" or Hovis? Hmmm.....

[One Armed Scissor]

i dunno, but he showed me the thing he got it from, at higer resolutions, and with AA anf that other filtery thing the ATi crap wins

[Hovis]

The only ATIs around, and they are few and far between, are the super high end ones, and they are pretty good. They are probably going to be hideously expensive though. Thing is the spec they want for their top end cards is going to be an absolute fucker to make. Building graphics cards basically requires that you have as low a 'fail rate' as possible, the easier your card is to make the fewer will fail. For ATI to make serious money they need a card that can be easily produced, and the amount of pipelines and RAM they want won't be easy to make at all, they will in fact be extremely hard to make especially if you want to profit from the sale.

We're getting our hands on one for a few hours on Friday in the office where we'll test it on our machines and get the definitive scores. The previews are saying some good things, but reports from my sources first hand, while inexact, tend to be more reliable. Anyway because I'm a good lad I'll give you a sneak peek when we've properly benchmarked the thing. When I've seen a card benchmarked on my test rig with my own hands then I know what it can do and not before.

I'm still pissed off with ATI (despite them trying to make friends again over drinkies tonight) but I'll be fair with them, if they have built the next big thing and can charge a fair price for it and provide drivers that work you guys will be the first to know. :D

[One Armed Scissor]

aparantly the test scores i seen used "cutom demo's"

[Hovis]

There's fishiness afoot. Nvidia's PR guy told me tonight that the gold version of FEAR, which they have BTW but I never told you, works better on Nvidia. Adam's (the Nvidia head of PR for europe) a top bloke, always gets the round in, but he would lie for cash and since it's his job I'll wait and see.

[Flufball]

ATi's Driver team's attitude is terrible, or at least what I've experianced of it, thats why I dislike them, on the other hand their general PR team, or at least the woman I worked with, was ace at her job.

But then, meet one meet them all.

[Hovis]

Well we benchmarked their best card and it is better than a 7800GT. Problem is the thing costs about £500. I shit you not. Their equivolent card (as in around £250) is likely to not be as good. £500 quid gets you SLI 7800GT, so no contest.