This is PR? (new ATI cards)

Initial admission: Yes, it is pretty lame to not be able to match the performance of a six month old 8800 GTX. It is also lame to gather on some other continent and reveal that information.

However, in all honesty I'm never all that interested in $500+ video cards. Their performance is generally just academic to me. I'm looking at what's going on $100 through $300. Matching the performance of a 8800 GTS is definitely competitive in that price range, so I'm more interested in price, power consumption, noise, image quality, features, and what situations performance is strong or weak in.

I'm still very curious to see exactly what they have.

Not surprising after AMD's purchase. They are in a real bind financially at the moment. If AMD had not bought ATI, I think things would have been better in the short term.

I dont particularly care if AMD cant come out with a vid card that will compete with the 8800 gtx. As long as they have a competitor to the GTS and it has at least 512mb memory then that is fine for my needs.

Another aspect in that midrange/mainstream segment is that the 8600 cards have rung in and are definitely unspectacular. Performance wise, they don't even beat what ATI already has on the market. In particular, the X1950 Pro is unbelievably cheap on newegg nowadays...as low as $129.99 after rebate. Although I am sure they will come down, 8600GTS only gets down to $189.99 right now and is a weaker performer, only boasting features of DX10 and video decoding. DX10 is a big deal for longevity, but I don't honestly expect a 8600GTS to still be "good enough" by the time real actual DX10 games start coming around, anyway. If ATI/AMD can just come up with something that beats their own X1950 Pro and has the modern features, they'll be doing well.

After watching what has gone down in the last couple days I think this might be working out in NV favor. With the “r600” cards not being able to compete – at least on the GTX level I think after the price drops the 8800gts 320/640 will see is going to put them in high-midstream. Maybe NV is hoping people will be willing to pay a few extra coin for a card that will perform x-times better then the 8600gts – with the 215 offer from the cyber deals section on the 320gts and such – I think we will see more of that.

Yeah, I was previously expecting 8600 cards to look pretty good to me, but after seeing what they can do, spending some extra money on a 8800 GTS sounds like a better idea, especially if their price keeps creeping down.

LOL figures that amd/ati would do something like this... this makes me even MORE happy with my 8800gts... NVIDIA FTW!

Long time ATI fan here. I purchased the x1950 pro agp, ended up sending it back for a refund. Now I'm doing a major upgrade and going to nvidia for the first time.
The His model I had was a great looking card, heatpipe cooling etc, but I don't buy my cards to look at.
So now I've got a 8800gts on the way.
See yah ATI.

This is beautiful!

I never liked ATI anyway, and I can assure you I'd love to be the first to tapdance all over their grave.

Still... as an objectively-speaking Dr. of Journalism... I feel I should say something at least neutral here...

Umm... Strange weather we've been having hunh? One minute it's hot... then it's cold... Not entirely unlike a certain graphic chip manufacturer...

ATI won me over with the 8500. it started out being pretty crappy, but by the time they had refined their drivers, it was competing with gf4's.

then along came the 9700pro. totally destroyed everything else available for 2 straight years.

there have been a couple missteps. i think one of them was allowing themselves to be bought out. i used to be a huge ATI fan, because of their past products, and that they were Canadian....but times have changed..

I would truly hate to see ATI go away. We need competition.

I'd also hate to see ati go. Competition is a must. Hopefully their cards will be faster than the 8600 and at a similar or lower price. I'm not going to be in the market for a top of the line card for quite some time so if they come out with a good mid-range card I'll get that.

The one and only NVIDIA card I have owned, she was a trooper. I am almost committed to a GTX now...

i wouldn't worry about ati/amd going anywhere.

They supply chips for the wii and the xbox 360, both outselling the ps3 by a large margin. They might be behind the desktop video card market, but in the console world they are on top.

Pcmod said:

i wouldn't worry about ati/amd going anywhere.

They supply chips for the wii and the xbox 360, both outselling the ps3 by a large margin. They might be behind the desktop video card market, but in the console world they are on top.

Click to expand...

This is what may hinder AMD/ATI from competing with Nvidia in the high video card market.

They may move towards console/chipset and midrange video markets. Would be very bad for computer gamers as they may not have much competition to keep nvidia's prices low.

John G said:

Yeah, I was previously expecting 8600 cards to look pretty good to me, but after seeing what they can do, spending some extra money on a 8800 GTS sounds like a better idea, especially if their price keeps creeping down.

Click to expand...

Actually the 8600GTS 512Meg (256-bit interface) is suppositly coming in June as well. Keep an eye out for that. Hopefully ATI will up there memory interface to compete unless the 2900XL is suppose to take on that slot.

Peepaw said:

Long time ATI fan here. I purchased the x1950 pro agp, ended up sending it back for a refund. Now I'm doing a major upgrade and going to nvidia for the first time.
The His model I had was a great looking card, heatpipe cooling etc, but I don't buy my cards to look at.
So now I've got a 8800gts on the way.
See yah ATI.

Click to expand...

Long time ATI fan here as well back from the 9600/9800 days.

Myself, I'll probably be going 2900XT.

deathman20 said:

Actually the 8600GTS 512Meg (256-bit interface) is suppositly coming in June as well. Keep an eye out for that. Hopefully ATI will up there memory interface to compete unless the 2900XL is suppose to take on that slot.

Click to expand...

I suspect that a 256-bit interface may help out these cards a lot... In the benchmarks they typically keep up with or slightly beat current ATI cards at low resolutions light on image quality features, but at settings that typically stress memory bandwidth significantly they start falling flat pretty quick while the ATI cards continue pretty good performance. The added memory bandwidth, possibly even with some slower memory to offset cost, may actually perform very well at a good price point.

Peepaw said:

I would truly hate to see ATI go away. We need competition.

Click to expand...

Well said!

Glad some people have some sense. Wake up people if their were no ati, we would be stuck with 8800gtx's @ £500 probably 18-24 months between release of the next high end card.

If R600 competes with 8800gts and i will be happy, i mean who can afford a GTX anyway?

Oc1Kenube said:

Well said!

Glad some people have some sense. Wake up people if their were no ati, we would be stuck with 8800gtx's @ £500 probably 18-24 months between release of the next high end card.

If R600 competes with 8800gts and i will be happy, i mean who can afford a GTX anyway?

Click to expand...

I can't... but that's just because I'm still living in France.

A whole lot of people on this site can though... I'll probably get an EVGA 320 GTS and then step-up once I can put a few more bucks with it. Maybe once I switch from networking to doing video card reviews they'll give me a GTX for free... One can only hope.

if the 2600xt doesnt come out real soon with good results... i think i'm gonna go back over to nvidia and get a 8600gts or a 8800gts...

Im actually really impartial over this, but i like to see ATI doing good because when i got into custom computers for gaming and such, ATI and AMD were the kings of the world. The 9500pro was an amazing card for $200, and it still performs (company of heroes, at a really playable FPS on medium 1024x768 res, with only a little slowdown when things get amazingly hectic) well. Can even play FEAR and still look good. I didnt like the 9600 cards because ATI misstepped with those guys, especially since the 9500 pro > 9600 pro. 3 of my friends got 9800 pros for their builds, 2 of them have since upgraded (one to a 7900gt and one to a 6800gs), but the one that still uses it is very happy with it (aside from the fact that it cant run RB:6 vegas). To see ATI misstep with the 2900xt made me sad, but im confident at the end of july they will find their place. Once the 65nm versions come out, paired with more refined drivers, im sure the cards will be a force to be reckoned with. Especially if they can bring high power graphics to their lower price-range cards, especially on the 65nm process. AMD is barely staying afloat, or so i hear, with their CPU market so if they do well with ATI they can make enough to keep both companies going strong...so they really need to regroup and rethink things you know?

Anyways, as i said, im rather impartial. I use whats best for the time, right now Nvidia and Intel have it so thats the way i went. I really wanted an Amd system because im AMD at heart, but hey...Intel moved towards the amd style of "low ghz, crazy performance numbers" so i guess thats AMD-ish? lol
I actually waited a bit for ATI but when their performance numbers came about, i just stuck with an 8800gts and so here i am.