if you're starting at 5 fps in some titles...80% improvement gets you...9 fps. hurray!

And to think last month I bought nVidia... :(

Lets see the big benchmarks!

Seems to me like AMD is paying lotsa attention to the crossfire configs and the 2000 series. their loyal customers running on the X1900 series could use a boost before we jump to directX 10 too you know!

AMD has brought this company way down with them.

They throw out percentage gain that are very suspect.

LOL 14.1% to 18%
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32292/135/

15% to 30% thrown around in this one
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31682/140/

16% to 42%
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32626/144/

The HD 2900 XT was released 7 months late and now 5 months later supposedly DX9 will be able to perform at the level of the old 1950 XTX.

They collect premium dollar for old tech that was obviously barely tested far from finished drivers.

A huge consumer ripoff...

1) HD 2900 XT on a old 80nm process
2) Hardware encoding and decoding missing for high def video on high end model
3) 512 meg RAM to battle against 640 and 768
4) Cross Fire problems not working or being reduced to 32 bit mode
5) Drivers untested and unfinished

Wow ! must be nice to run a shabby company

If they have truly fixed cross fire for HD 2600's. I'd be willing to bet that a crossfire setup of 65 nm HD 2600 XT OC with the 512 DDR4 (I paid 129 with a $10 rebate) costing about $250 would kill the 80 nm HD 2900 XT at 400 plus.

Does this mean ATI is ready for another Tom's Hardware DirectX 10 Showdown?

...on tomshardware.com that is!!!

let's see how the scores scale!

i'd certainly like to see some benchmarks with these new drivers. tomshardware, maybe you could get on that already :)

...using 7.10 drivers. If only to see whther the improvements are as impressive as mentionned in the release notes and to compare ATI and Nvidia performance... again...

This reminds of a few years ago when NVidia and ATI would do vapor hardware releases. I.E. they would announce their new top end card but you couldn't find it in stores until months later.
So now you can get the hardware when they announce the cards but it wont do what it's suppose to until months later...
I feel sorry for all those ppl that bought an HD card when they came out and now they are so much cheaper and only now can you get it's true performance.

Will we see new benchmarks from Tom's Hardware to prove/disprove these claims from ATI? 70-80% performance increases is a mighty boast, but its one that ATI needs to get right if they want to compete with nVidia, who has been kicking their butts left and right with Dx10 cards.

I don't see how this is about any specific games. It would seem to me the drivers were just tweaked for bandwidth hogging code or some processes were rerouted through the shaders more efficiently, or both.
I'm sure every game not on this list would show some nice improvement as well.
Is that not the case?
This is almost DOWNPLAYING the driver!
I'd like some actual STAFF feedback on this question please, thanks.

Does this mean we can expect a retest of the major AMD/ATI cards from Tom's? I would really like to see if these claims are true or just hype.

I hope THG will update their DirectX 10 Shootout

did your dx10 shootout include the new drivers?
would like to know how the radeons are doing if you didnt.

We've all seen it before....
The computer industry lives on false claims and missleading or down-right false advertising. I would be suprised if these new drivers give you even a 10% increase.
Gaining 10% with just a driver revision is actually pretty good though.

advantages for my X800xtpe agp :(

guess it's back to playing doom 3 all over again.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Can anyone confirm if there really is a huge boost in performance with the new drivers? because that sounds like a huge increase.

My current box uses an Nvidia GPU, but that is a pretty solid driver update. It's good to see AMD is keeping on top of graphics drivers, especially for those using a Crossfire setup.

I got the drivers on Tuesday and haven't tested them as of yet.

I know that I am able to play HL2:E2 on 1280x1024 with everything maxed ncluding full HDR and everything else maxed out and its smooth as all get out even at the end with the striders blowing up buildings and with the Advisors thingymagig.

I guess I'll test 3DMark06 and HL2 Lost coast to see if my score goes up or if my 70FPS in Lost Cost goes up.

For those who have ATI cards, could you please tell us what your previous benchmarks were and after install the new Catalyst driver?

Yeah, give us tha Benchmarks so we can see for ourselves.

our drivers sucked before. Now we have fixed some HUGE bugs.

As usual, dropping updates for "old" (x1950 age, excluding XTX) cards. And I swear I already had adaptive AA on my x1950 pro back with cat 7.2 and older...

nivida cards have been pretty good from the start.. well the 8800xxx ones are ne ways..

AMD/ATI are jst releaseing crap atm ...there CPU's better get getter or there'll be no price war

I just RMA'd my HD2900 Pro. Pure hype people. Put it this way, if I'm getting 15 frames in DX10 and I get, 80%, that's 27 frames. But, you won't get 70% increase in the HD2900 series of products, maybe 10% at most, which is just a 1.5 FPS gain, so 16.5 frames. BIG WHOOP!! It's hype people, 70% maybe in a specific application under DX10 or 9, but not OVERALL. That's the issue here. It's not 70 or 80% across the board, it's when doing ONE application, and come to think of it, did AMD claim 3d application performance increase or 2D application performance increase?

We assume 3d, but in all actuality it could be 2D...we don't know. But from http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=463 they state this, "The move from the 7.9 driver to the 7.10 "Shoot-em-up" Catalyst update didn't have much of an effect on our single graphics card performance at all. In only one or two instances did we see any changes, and neither was what I would call "drastic" enough to change my opinion on the HD 2900 XT for the current generation of DX10 games. The HD 2900 XT is a solid competitor against NVIDIA's 8800 GTS 640MB, but the Catalyst 7.10 driver hasn't done anything to overtake it."

The boost came from HD2900XT Crossfire platforms, NOT SINGLE GPU SETUPS!! ATI/AMD is still way behind...

your such and amd/ati fanboy stop writing articles period.

Its about time they stared useing that gddr4 you got to be dumb to think that the grafic cards where being used to there full potental it has more stream prosessers faster clock and gddr4 it was bound to happen AMD is now giving you the keys to unlock the beast. If your still either a intel hugger or a nvidia junky get over it AMD has the best over all design and power under the hood.

I have been using since last night, big difference on x1950pro vista 64 on cs source, bf2, and bioshock

I have been waiting for this release. I have had a 2900XT for a few months. Every driver update has improved performance. I downloades this driver yesturday. My system doesn't crash under max settings, finally, and I am seeing a big improvement in FPS. I have no regrets buying this card.

Just great another new driver. Hmm, 7.9 was good because it drives up my game FPS by around 30 - 40 and what now? another 30-40?
Hmm, Can't wait to try the new driver out. Since I havn't benching since the 7.8 drivers.

I got MSI HD 2600 XT (stock speeds), XP, DX9, AMD 64 X2 5200 , 2 GB RAM and after the update i got no speed increase on the WIC in-built benchmark. exact same result. i wonder where the promised "The entire HD 2000 series will see “at least” 70% more speed under DX9 in World of Conflict, according to the manufacturer." went.

Better design? I guess, if you're into slower, hotter PCs.
There's always one, and your spelling tells the whole story.

Reading some of these misconceptions, falsehoods and out n out fanboish lies, Im glad Wolfgang wrote this. 256 and 512 vs 640 and 768? Whatever happened to the 1 gig 2900? And isnt the new 8800gt supposed to be 512? Look, the boys are back in town, and if they dont wanna know, forget em. There exists 1 card better than the 2900, the GTX, thats it (the ultra is just a suped up GTX) so theres no domination here, and with the new releases, ATI will be competitive. If 80 NM is old, then whats the 8800 series done on? Sheeesh

rofl!!! just rofl!!!

You ATI bashers are just sad sad people. They can't handle the fact that maybe not only ATI cards are more advanced but also can in some cases surpass their precious nVidia cards in speed too. I have nothing against nVidia and I think they make very powerful graphics hardware. But so does ATI.

What are you on? AMD/ATI are in a major financial mess, nVidia has taken the DX10 ball and is running with it, I used to be an ATI fan used ATI ever since the old 9800 cards and I currently have cross fire x1950XTX in my pc, I was thinking of getting the X2900 but after seeing the benchmarks I decided to hold of, AMD's acquasition of ATI has parctically destroyed the competition unless they can pull something out of their behinds and I am not talking about some rubbish PR about drivers. time to wake up and smell the fresh coffee.

Ati has always had issues with great cards and bad drivers. Thisis going way to back to when Rage Pro was a card to be reckoned with. If there claim prevails I just might start buying back into my Canadian company.

I can't wait until Tom's puts the claim to the test!

the 2900 is still a direct competitor to the 8800 gts.

only now the 2900 isn't as bad as it was at crossfire or dx10.

the way they have worded it makes it sound alot beter than it really is. thos big increases are when in sli in dx10.

but its still good news, competition is always great news for the consumer. don't be fanbois.

AMD didnt screw the R600(completely), it was well into development when ATI was acquired. And until i purchased my 2900 Pro i had been using Nvidia for my last 2 cards 6800GT/7900GT, So don't assume I'm a fanboy. and Last gen it was the opposite ATI led, and Nvidia was behind with the 7 Series. Sure Nvidia used less power and was quieter, But the 1900's were ahead in performance.

I have both I compared them the ATI card is much faster than it was but still won’t do everything yet, AMD has given you 1 key so far jest hold on. I normally find it the other way around the Nvidia cards have a hell of a time with drivers and ATI normally has a easy time I was actually fairly surprised about the recent ATI card drivers myself I had a feeling they were not using them to their full potential.

My AMD still uses less power and puts out less heat than my core 2 duo at apx. The same clock speeds. (INCLUDING OFF DIE MEMORY CONTROLLER/NORTH BRIDGE)

I haven't gotten my hands on a quad AMD, well not sitting in fount of me but I expect the same results (server processors). The desktop quad I expect will be the same. Yes I run both AMD and Intel; Do I have a loyalty to any of them? no if Intel makes a processor that is better than an AMD equal ill jump right over the same goes with Nvidia and ATI/AMD. Now the main reason I’m with AMD right now is I can now have 32 core servers and a maximum of 8 with Intel on one system and it’s not a toaster, more pins for more bandwidth, cooler, uses less power, easy to upgrade, has a on die memory controller, float point calculations per sec, has everything on one die, and let’s face it Hyper-Transport. It’s Time to wake up and smell that fresh brewed coffee.

Great hardware, but worthless with their crappy drivers. Hackers seem to have always created better work arounds then what ATI publishes. They just don't know how to optimize their code, (i.e. the kings of graphic fatware) or create an uninstaller that doesn't jack everything up. But very nice hardware. NVidia is admitingly less but because it works, they win. How often would you drive a sport car with 1 mpg?

Nvidia made a DX9 card with token DX10 support a year before any games would be out to support it. It's been established that nvidia has performed horribly in Vista, under dc10 since the HD2900 came out. Where as it's the opposite for ATI, it's a DX10 card with token support for dx9, it is optimized FOR dx10 games, and they didn't care too much how it fared in old titles.

As for AMD vs intel, the only area where intel wins in power consumption is laptops. Despite having a larger die, memory controller and higher voltage requirements AMD chips still consumer less power, both at idle and peak, overall systems consumer 40% less power, and run at least 30% cooler then intel.

As for nvidia....overpriced, power hungery cards that you can use to grill up a burger on.

"ATI cards are more advanced but also can in some cases surpass their precious nVidia cards in speed too."

If thats true how come Nvidia gpus do better in games? oh wait thats right Nvidia is kicking ATIs ass. you are just pissed that you have a shitty Grahpics card.

I have never seen the poor performance on my ATI 2900 that Tom's guys have. Not sure how they did that poorly. My 2900 has performed extremely well since the 7.8 drivers. Tom's used to be a good source for qualified and equal hardware reviews. Not any more I guess.

Try nVidia drivers under 64-bit Vista and you won't be saying they are that great. ATI's 64-bit support rocks.

I will publish full benchmark results later, however on the old drivers I was scoring 17432 FPS on Atari classic pong. With the new drivers I get 33774. That is over 190%!

I love the new drivers. I just wish they would support Windows 3.1.

Since nVidia did not answer the question that are they Gay friendly publicly, I guest for me ATI is the only option for now since did score 80/100 from HRC research of LGBT right inside their company. But I still not buying AMD processor until the meet Intel 100% in LGBT right.

Well it appears the rumours are true and suddenly the ATI cards are competitive - good news because that means Nvidia price drops - they happened today!

Iseefractals in a Lady-Boy-Fan-Boy if I have ever seen one - reads Toms Hardware for how Nvidia kicks ATI's ass in DX10 in every game - these results will help their cause, but to say ATI is the better DX10 card is laughable

7.8 -> 7.9 -> 7.10 ??

Wow, someone at AMD/ATI must've missed the math lessons in school eh? hehe, I'm gonna give the new drivers a shot when I get home.. But they better have solved the TV-Out issues for the X19xx series.

Look at all the bs flying around in here.

First off AMD's current CPU's are in no way more efficient than Intel(not clock for clock or power). When it was P4 vs A64 yes. Core2 vs A64 X2, No chance with the exception to idle power. Since my computer is always at load that does not matter to me.

Now ATI vs Nvidia. I have had the same number of both. I go with what is fast. So far all ATI cards i have owned i changed the stock heat sinks on due to noise. So Nvidia wins there(GF4ti was dead silent, 8800GTX quite every thing in between was ATI : 9800pro , X850XT and X1900XT). Performance wise it depends on what games you play. For OpenGL Nvidia wins 90% of the time. for DX9 its about half half(if you get a comparable card). For DX10 with the 7.9 Nvidia was winning. Who knows how the new drivers are....

Do i believe this 80% here 23 percent there and so on. NO

They said the X1000 cards would get a 23% ETQW boost. tested(X1900XT 512) and busted Average frame rates are the same max are the same min are lower(but this could be a test anomaly or the new drivers actually drop the min...ouch...3dmarks 2005 and 2006 lost some points too, but once again. i see no difference in the new driver.)

So fanboys on both sides get ure stories straight or shut up....

Iseefractals: BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW, I WISH I BOUGHT INTEL/NVIDIA PRODUCTS, WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SUCH A FANBOY.

ATi vs nVidia: Name some games that the HD29xx sweeps the floor with the 8800's. Oh wait you can't.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=463

Catalyst 7.10 vs nVidia. Notice how the 8800 cards consistently matches/beats the HD2900. Especially during in the World in Conflict benching (which is a DX10 game)

AMD vs Intel: Who cares about how much power a processor takes up? Running a computer doesn't really zap that much energy. Is the processor is too hot for you? Buy a better heatsink.

Enjoy running your games on your inferior performing computer that "consumes 40% less power and runs 30% cooler."

If you can get 80% out of the same hardware just because of a crappy driver, fire the software department. I admit to knowing very little about programming graphics drivers, but if there's any truth in those percentages, the code must have been a disaster.

I bet that's one of the real reasons companies are so reluctant to open-source some of their code...

Iseefractals, do you even know what a graphics card is?

Ati X800 pro card was a great card for me for 3 years but it cant compare to my 8800 GTS 640 with the new games on max settings!

I think when nvidia's geforce 8 were released they hurried to catch up for the market and skipped some driver features just for the sake, which is bad for the consumers. I agree to karlito. It's frustrating for gamers who bought ATI cards first. Well, at least, ATI is cheering them up now. I wish luck for ATI and I hope they can be competitive this time with nvidia. I'm on no side between nvidia and ATI. I use intel onboard video..lol.

i have a choice to make....
I am buying a laptop for under 1k, i have the choice between an HD2600 and a GF8400. What do you think ill pick? (BTW the geforce model has a smaller screen for the same price, both use an AMD TL-56, 1gb ram, 120gb hdd) I dont know... but the ATI based one seems a bit better of a deal...

Price is a factor that is hard to deny. While you may get better performance from a top end Nvidia, you pay more. All the benchmarks in the world dont matter if you cant afford the price tag (which im guessing most of you cant, and are just shouting about benchmarks-LAME-). So before you go out and buy a vid card, make sure you are getting your moneys worth. You may find that one or the other company has a better card in your price range.

Dont be a whore to one company, you will lose 90% of the time. Do your resarch, and dont assume that because one company has the top card, that the rest of their lineup is better too. This applies to all computer hardware.

I did see some notable gains in 'World in Conflict' under DirectX10 with the 7.10 drivers. The results from the WiC benchmark yielded almost a 100% gain in performance under the new 7.10 drivers. I got 17/9/38 (avg/min/max) fps results at 1920x1200 with the new driver versus 9/5/15 fps with the 7.9 drivers. I also ran the test using DX9 with WiC and 3DMark06, but noticed negligible improvements - still obtain an average of 11450 in 3DMark06.

Good job ATI/AMD - keep the improvements coming.

I noticed about a 40-70% performance improvement in Quake Wars... 0% in World in Conflict ... 100% in Supreme Commander, BioShock was already at 60 fps (locked at 60), Lost Planet still has serious problems with Crossfire, Crysis MP Beta is still a no go in Crossfire mode and without crossfire the FPS is still pretty bad (single digit range).

So yes, some good improvements, but still much work to be done (especially in Crysis).

Rob.

Iseefractals is kinda right guys. Nvidia cards may still be winning with higher scores, but ATI cards are still cheaper so I think it kinda works out in the wash.
But what Iseefractals said about ATI making a DX10 card with Pseudo DX9 and Nvidia making a DX9 card with Pseudo DX10. DX10 was supposed to have a few more capabilities with RAM (Like dynamic RAM or something) and Nvidia couldn't pull it off, however ATI stuck to their guns and did it. Sadly Microsoft bent to Nvidia's will and made DX10 not need that feature.

yeah, i'm all for a dx10 shootout - reloaded. Plx

The new driver is definetly an improvement but not as much as advertised. I own a ASUS EAH 2600XT DDR4 and from the preliminary benchmarks I have done the 3DMark06 scores are ~50 points higher which is not much but Quake Wars saw a better improvement, I am seeing at least 5-10fps increase in 1440x900 and that is a lot considering the card was on the edge of 30fps, the game is much smoother now!

On the other hand I just don't understand why you people are arguing about expensive graphics cards when both ATI and Nvidia flagships can play all the games at MAX quality, I think the mainstream is where the battles should be fought (price/performance anyone? or you all are rich and have money to burn!).

Ok here is my take on all of this, I have owned both nvidia 8600GT (620/1800) and ATI 2600XT and from my experience the 8600GT performs better in Quake Wars and World in Conflict while the 2600XT performs twice as better in Bioshock and a little better in Company of Heroes.

I don't use this card to play games at all, as the matter of fact I don't own a single game, but this new pdate has done wonder on my Adoble lightroom and Adbe PS 3, I almost buy another Nvidia card since it takes FOREVER just to switch from one pic inside lightroom to another (I strictly shoot in RAW only, but after I download the new driver last nite, I did not have that problem no more, now I can switch flawlessly without delay AT ALL. amzing. it is 80% different.

Great stuff Paul - WiC must have been great at 9 frames per second - that is an awesome result from the ATI card which ISeeFractals assures us owns every Nvidia card on the planet.

I can't wait to rush out tomorrow to get an ATI card to enjoy the game "The way it was meant to be played" at 9 FPS!!!!!!

I am in the process of buying a new video card. I've stuck with my Radeon 9800 Pro for quite sometime. However I would switch to Nvidia in a heartbeat if it offered much better performance. Now I am not so sure. I have been a follower of THG since the late 1990's (I remember the big scandal with the Pentium bug). Some proper benchmarks with the new driver are in order and I am sure THG will follow up on this as they always have in the past.

Hey Blow - I've got something for you to blow right here.

Did I say that I play WiC at 1920x1200?? No - I simply stated the difference in performance between driver revs at that high of detail level. When I drop the resolution to 1280x1024, I get very playable frame rates.

WiC is an RTS so sub 30FPS is SOP.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/09/directx_10_shootout/page7.html

They really do. I wouldn't trust any claims from AMD/ATI.

That link to the shootout.. was for the old drivers v7.9... not the updated ones

Ok .. b4 i install the new driver ( 7.10), i did a little bench with css using video stress test.

7.9 - i got 59.7 avg
New driver - 30 avg >.>

it got a bit slower ..

same settings same res

AMD swallowing ATI reminds me of when and I can't remember but Diamond either swallowed 3dfx or vice versa but it spelled disaster. We had to very creative and hard working companies striving to do what they do, to the very best. Now AMD thinks they can do something better then a company who only had one focus. This is typical of big business not understanding the finer details of proper managment. Way to kill not only a good graphics company but competetion for another good graphics company. Worst thing to happen to the PC sector since OS2/Warp!

I know this isn't the target. But this card still delivers ever after 3 years.

I gained about 40pts in 3dmark06 with new cat. driver.

Blessman - "Vista is gold right out of the box"
Blessman - "Vista is better then XP at every step of the way"
Jeff - "Vista is the future"
R - "accept Vista as superior"
Alex - "Not to mention a billions other things that Vista does that XP doesn't."

First here is a news flash:

*** VISTA AKA Win ME 2 has year and a half tops shelf life left. MS IS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE ON windows 7 AKA Vienna & will now be releasin it in 2009 instead of the original 2010 projection. This is possible because Vienna contains a lot of the longhorn functionality that was stripped out in order to create a very weak Vista OS release ***

SO PLEASE !!! Post those 10 new features we can't live without until 2009.

Please tell me if vista is gold, the 'end all' and the future.

Why will you be whisked away into another OS in less than a year and a half?

In case you can't do the math 'Win ME 2' AKA Vista was released with a projected total life of 2 years (very similar to the Win ME fill the MS coffer campaign before the XP release, a release you suckers jumped on as well while the smart ones skipped it and continued using WIN 98SE.)

Why hasn't MS posted a new road map showing either the cancellation or release date pushed back until 2013 for the Vienna OS ?

Why did MS strip the named longhorn OS down to vista and release it and will be putting it into the soon to be released Vienna OS?

WHY CAN'T YOU GUYS POST 10 NEW FEATURES OVER THE PROMISED XP64 REWRITE?

WHY?

WHY??

WHY???

Alex you said you have a billion things, all I need is 10.

Come on fan boyz... Where do you run and hide at looking AT YOU blessman AKA running man

"Worst thing to happen to the PC sector since OS2/Warp! "

Ummmm no i!!!

Longhorn being split into two operating systems is.

OPEN BETA VISTA and then a more stable Vienna. Coupled with the farce DX10 on vista only change and Halo 2 & 3 vista only games.

Look no further you open beta tester with no consumer back bone or fight. Shelling out bleeding edge top dollar to a company that continuously takes you for granted and steers you like cattle to what ever OS they can create.

An OS with the same WIN ME type life expectancy, that's the tech crime of the past decade easily pal.

"Microsoft apologizes for slow additions to Windows Vista Ultimate"
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32757/140/

They're laughing AT you with your money in their hand...

I have to say, I updated from 7.8 to 7.10
Bioshock went from choppy to very playable on my 1950Pro/AGP 512MB without changing the settings.

OMG 70%-80% increase in performances Sign me up where do I buy one of these amazing pieces of crap?

I will be right back, I think I saw an ATI card at Walmart yesterday, I will let you know how well it goes!

=P

Why is there so much whining from early adopters and so many comments from others posting things like, "I feel sorry for the people who bought these cards early..."?? Why should anybody feel sorry for a blasted one of 'em?? ESPECIALLY any of these clowns who are semi-illiterate enough to actually complain about the performance of cards at a website that has consistently displayed benchmarks on said cards that have been well below par since the cards hit store shelves.

And for those of you splitting hairs between the actions/practices of nVidia and ATi, BOTH companies are guilty of the same 'Hype-and-Switch' garbage: Remember the much vaunted 9.0c Shader Model 3 support promised by the 6x00 line of GeForce cards? Yeah, you can get all the latest-greatest-movie-quality-effects-and mindnumbing-new-features of SM3 on a 6500--if you want to run the game choppier than a Teppanyaki dinner...

I downloaded it last night. Massive improvement, and I am running an "AGP X1950 Pro". Nice increase in Battlefield 2142, running at 1600*1200 and was able to increase resolutions on Medi II Total War to 1600*1200 in tactical battles. Oddly enough this is one of the most power hungry games in the large battles.

ati2mtag invalid display type

had to go back to 7.6 to use my computer after upgrading. what a joke.

Several months back Nvidia owners were ready to sue Nvidia because their drivers worked so poorly with Vista. It took several months for Nvidia to fix the problems. Their cards have been out much longer than the ATI cards and their drivers matured and gotten more stable and more performance over time. I expect the ATI drivers to do the same. ATI deserves the same respect and time that Nvidia was given to perfect their drivers don't they?

This driver is only good with aa and af on.

the fps wont drop that much.

DirectX 10 as a whole is still terrible.

On all the DX10 cards:
Single card showed only -2 to 2% gain in FPS. Crossfire showed 30% gains in FPS.

Please run some benchmarks to verify AMD's claims, and then post an article discussing the result.

"ATI deserves the same respect and time that Nvidia was given to perfect their drivers don't they?"

Who has given either company respect?

The deserve no respect when they collect TOP DOLLAR for their product.

Wow it's as if you think they didn't get a heads up on the up coming vista, XP 64 or any upgrade.

I guess this must be news to you, prior to beta testing graphics card companies get the skinny on future changes.

As an example www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33181/144/

They have been working with it now after the release why do they sell the product and have people hold for driver revision for another year...

come on be for-real...

What the hell does how good vista is or isn't have anything to do with this topic?

Tom's doesn't have squat on ATi's true top-end cards, the HD2900 1GB DDR4 models that are available on Newegg. Surely these would at least contend with nVidia's top-shelf, especially with the updates. Any way you look at it, ATi and AMD will always be the underdogs here.

You nay-sayers about the time it takes to perfect hardware and drivers. Have you actually had to do this yourself from scratch? Get a job with either one and see what the pressure is like first-hand before you call either company slow.

I personally do not have any such experience, but I would prefer someone with actual credentials comment on what is and what is not a realistic time frame for getting a product right.

Honestly do Nvidia users tend to be waaaaaay more defensive or is it just me? AMD/ATi have always been the less flashy types, and that appeals to me. Nvidia releases a card with "20 Pixel Pipes!!!!" and ATi releases a card with 12 pipes (plenty) and dedicates the surplus to picture quality. Nvidia releases a DX10 card with junk drivers for DX10 and gets away with it because no games exist for DX10. ATi optimizes drivers for DX10 and multi-gpu sets on its admittedly late hardware (but just in time for the biggest game push ever). Same with Inteldia. Intel releases a 6000ghz. Pentium Ultra Core Asteroid Processor and AMDs 2.2ghz budget CPU performs at 90% of it. BTW Intel uses minimum power consumption, AMD uses average on its ratings. Intel/Nvidia hype scaling, one in the same. U stooges should look at some of those 8800Ultra benchmarks in DX10 games. $700 dollars to get 30fps in an RTS? LOL u should be shot u nerds.

I dont need 7000000x5000000 resolution on my ATi card, its about image quality with ATi not frame rates ur eyes cant differentiate. It boils down to ATi having a quieter classier fan base who doesn't spew crap on a message board between zit popping. The blocky rendering with everything cranked also pushes me away from Nvidia AND the advertisements pre-game. Valve uses ATi but do u see it every time u load? trust me, theres enough AMD/ATi dedicated users to withstand a 15 year olds trashing. And yeah douche Im happy with my year old card that churns out perfectly fine FPS. BTW i saw a noted improvement in First Strike mod for 2142 but only 8 point gain in 3DM06.

Even the 8800gts 640mb often outclasses the top ATI card. And the image quality is better. Check out the review on half life 2 episode 2 at www.hardocp.com, then tell me if ATI has better image quality.
Actually, I'd be interested to see what performance gains ATI can get out of this driver. The 2900 has been performing under spec for a while so I'd like to see how much they can get out of it. Still to hot :(

Everyone should switch to Matrox then!

Heres my 2 cents... even tho its gonna be bashed by an nvidia fanboy in 20 seconds..... In November 2006 I bought the 8800GTS 640 I was so happy to open up this product and gaze with wonder at the huge GPU that was daring me to tear apart my case to fit it. I put it in and loaded the nvidia drivers from their website... Once the card was in I booted up..... Scaling issues FTL??? Oh noes, my first nvidia experiance was bad. I still used the card hoping that like all good products the drivers would get better. I would start up any 3d game and play happily at max settings for 15 mins?!?!?! Crashed??? BSOD????? Why did I pay $450 to get 90-120 fps on oblivion for only 15 mins??!! Pissed off and reluctant to admit that I fell to the mighty hammer of false advertisement, I headed to "the forums" only to my horror and amazement to find that on 4 top forums there were 40 page postings on the same issue??? Hmmmm nvidia loses????? Decided to take back to ATI in May when I got my HD 2900 XT. I have been running games since may with only one crash (caused by a memory hole found while running memtest) and will never buy nvidia product again.

Sorry Bren_1a, I thought that you actually read fully...

Please lose the speed reading pal, it's not working for you.

maddad said "ATI deserves the same respect and time that Nvidia was given to perfect their drivers don't they?"

the article is about driver enhancements in DX9 and ::gulp:: DX10.

So lets look at your posting... "What the hell does how good vista is or isn't have anything to do with this topic?"

I said "Who has given either company respect?

They deserve no respect when they collect TOP DOLLAR for their product.

Wow it's as if you think they didn't get a heads up on the up coming vista, XP 64 or any upgrade."

*** Breakdown for dullards *** along with a mix if for the 'waffler'...

The graphics cards companies were fully aware of vista prior to the beta test release.

If it is true that vista beta testing lasted 3 years (actually it's still going you open beta vista owners). They have supposedly been looking at the same graphics hardware for almost 3 years now. R600 was announced long ago. This may be shocking ATI had an even bigger advantage because of its partnership with microsoft stemming from XBOX 360 etc.

So almost 4 years of programming and testing and the drivers still need major work.

*** SIDE NOTE TO WIMPS, DUMMIES AND ANKLE GRABBING FANBOIZZZ ***

I don't give a rats azz which company screws consumers. *** NEWS FLASH *** THEY COLLECT TOP PREMIUM DOLLAR FOR PRODUCTS THAT AREN'T READY, sometimes never finishing and in many cases not meeting the advertised functionality.

The question isn't "how hard is it to do this task?". The real question is why put things in writing suckering the public when testing would have shown the error and inefficiency.

The fair thing for the consumer would be these companies release their products with a posted % completion and price relative to it.

They should simply say "The HD2900 or 8800 still has work to do and issues. We are willing to sell the card now for 200 and charge for service packs as we fix, correct and complete to the advertised functionality".

Is that too much to ask? honesty? instead of collecting ::gulp:: 449 up to 850. And have the consumers DEPRECIATING ASSET grow old before it is fully usable.

Wow I didn't think I had to spell this out... But those rose colored glasses must help clog up your judgement.

I bought the Orange box and steam told me to upgrade my drivers for my x1650 AGP card. After downloading i couldnt load TF2 because of a direct 3d error, ran a test in the directx diag. tool and it had several problems.

Had to roll back to catalist 7.8 to get my vid card to work again(and it looks great still).

I guess AGP is finaly toast.

What did you do when u upgraded driver? Did u just downlaod them and install without uninstalling? You use driver cleaner? I use an AGP x1650 and have no problems, but I do complete uninstalls and reg cleaning when I do driver upgrades.

As for Nvidia finally catching up to ATi image quality on their 300 dollar cards, bout frickin time yo. My 1650 looks substantially better than a friends 7800 or 7950. Yeah he gets double the frame rates (me 50-60, him 100-120) but he still says my games look smoother, more organic. Image quality tests proved it, wasnt just my pimpin monitor. I mean if Nvidia was so sure they have a better product why are prices dropping to compete with the 2900pros? If their rep. was untouchable wouldnt they just let products speak for themselves? They have opened up an Ati card and probably didnt like what they saw. Price/performance is what I care about and Nvidia is scrambling to get into that niche. Hell if im still shopping when the 8800GTS hits the $200 area Ill swoop one. I bet ATi fills the gap before that with 2650s or 2700s.

It's actually true, I own both cards and tested. The 2900XT 1GB card (stock clock) does actually squeeze out a little better performance than the 8800GTX at 1920 x 1080 (equal graphics settings).

However! Image quality varies from scene to sceen, sometimes it looks better on ATI, sometimes on nVidia. BUT, nVidia currently have the better overall image quality due to the poor shader implementation under ATI -- shadows in ATI are just barely noticeable vs. much more clear distinct shadows in nVidia. Also, with certain graphics settings, objects will just disappear under ATI that are fine under nVidia.

7.10 is definitely going in the right direction, but I think more work is needed -- especially when Crysis is released. 7.10 didn't do a thing to help out Crysis image quality nor performance.

Rob

hey fuck ati and fuck the faggot up there gay-i-fying this conversation this is about ati's shitty drivers that are way exagerated not homo-talk

Ok, being in the industry a long time I can truly say that what is up with all of bashing? Just like ATi is going through its times right now, anyone remember the FX 5 Series?? Yea its old news, but its called catch up. AMD and INTEL do it all the time, so does ATi and nVidia. Quit blowing your load on someone because they dont have the greated product ATM. Try the drivers for yourself, if you like em, great, if you dont oh well!

Oh, for 'ni**erknocker' your language is not needed here, your the type of person to bring a respectable thread (even tho its fan boy laiden) and ruin it. Go grow up!