ATi --- Crossfire "Mark II" will finally abandon the Master-Slave implementation.

"Tim O" wrote in message
...


Is there anyone that spends a fortune on new video cards that doesn't
realize they're a sucker deal? Something twice as fast is always a
year away.

... and doing so on a single card.

Now Dell is releasing a PC with four 7800GTX GPUs. It reminds me of the
razor companies with their number-of-blade wars. Did Gillette buy out Dell
recently?

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:59:12 GMT, (John Lewis)
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 16:03:46 -0500, "Magnulus"
wrote:

Is that the biggest problem you could dig up with ATI? Because it
sounds like a non-issue to me.

Sure is an issue if you are somebody not particularly rich but
a PC gaming-enthusiast. pony up $1000 and 3 months later
find that the dual-card implementation that you invested in
had become a totally obsolete architecture nine months
after its introduction.

That's kind of how I felt after paying $400 for a 6800 GT (back in the
day) and six months later AGP went the way of the dinosaur.

Not quite the same issue, but painful nonetheless...

Tony,
I'm surprised you didn't read all of my post. If anything I had a "death
grip" on ATI. Just chalk it up to a member of a distant generation who
suffers from brand * loyalty*. I always dance with the lady I take to the
dance.;-) Just a friendly discussion. Don't let my preferences and foibles
spoil the day S.

"Tony DiMarzio" wrote in message
...
"Ed Forsythe" wrote in message
...
Sure is John but most of us cross over from time to time. Why can't we
just all get along? VBG FWIW, I've been Intel all my computer life I've
finally come to the painful realization that Intel is no longer the
innovator and AMD is kicking but so my next box will be AMD. I switched
from Matrox to ATI years ago when I realized that they dropped out of the
gaming market. Now I'm going to switch to nVidia because ATI and nVidia
are no longer leapfrogging. IMHO, nVidia has the undisputable lead and I
think they will keep it into the foreseeable future. My brand loyalty
only goes so far

"IMHO, nVidia has the undisputable lead and I think they will keep it into
the foreseeable future." --- This coming from a guy who *just recently*
conceded to AMD's technological superiority over Intel?

This "undisputable lead" you mention doesn't exist. It's very evident that
they are neck-and-neck competitors at this point in time. Sounds like
you've got the same death grip on nVidia as you *had* on Intel.

Tony

"Ed Forsythe" wrote in message
...
Tony,
I'm surprised you didn't read all of my post. If anything I had a "death
grip" on ATI. Just chalk it up to a member of a distant generation who
suffers from brand * loyalty*. I always dance with the lady I take to the
dance.;-) Just a friendly discussion. Don't let my preferences and foibles
spoil the day S.

Hmmm... don't you know you're not supposed to be agreeable on Usenet?

"Tim" wrote in message
...
Now Dell is releasing a PC with four 7800GTX GPUs. It reminds me of the
razor companies with their number-of-blade wars. Did Gillette buy out
Dell recently?

Yes, it is nuts. I've got a 7800 GT (not the GTX) that runs just about
any game out there just fine with ungodly amounts of anti-aliasing (more
than I really need) at 1280x1024. Why would I even need two of them, let
alone four? And certain things, like anti-aliasing of normal maps, just are
not going to be fixed by throwing more hardware at it. Unless you've got a
huge widescreen monitor running games at 1900x1200 or whatever, what's the
need?

It all comes down to software. The ultra high end graphics stuff is
basicly dying on the PC beyond tech demoes and the occasional game. So you
can get your super-duper SLI graphics, and find there is absolutely no
reason to own them beyond bragging rights.

:-0

"Tony DiMarzio" wrote in message
...
"Ed Forsythe" wrote in message
...
Tony,
I'm surprised you didn't read all of my post. If anything I had a "death
grip" on ATI. Just chalk it up to a member of a distant generation who
suffers from brand * loyalty*. I always dance with the lady I take to the
dance.;-) Just a friendly discussion. Don't let my preferences and
foibles spoil the day S.

Hmmm... don't you know you're not supposed to be agreeable on Usenet?

"Tony DiMarzio" wrote in message
...
"Ed Forsythe" wrote in message
...
Tony,
I'm surprised you didn't read all of my post. If anything I had a "death
grip" on ATI. Just chalk it up to a member of a distant generation who
suffers from brand * loyalty*. I always dance with the lady I take to the
dance.;-) Just a friendly discussion. Don't let my preferences and
foibles spoil the day S.

Hmmm... don't you know you're not supposed to be agreeable on Usenet?



Yeah! It might let someone walk out their door with a smile on instead of a
scowl!!! Where's the *dignity* man?!? LOL

McG.

"Magnulus" wrote in message
...

"Tim" wrote in message
...
Now Dell is releasing a PC with four 7800GTX GPUs. It reminds me of the
razor companies with their number-of-blade wars. Did Gillette buy out
Dell recently?

Yes, it is nuts. I've got a 7800 GT (not the GTX) that runs just about
any game out there just fine with ungodly amounts of anti-aliasing (more
than I really need) at 1280x1024. Why would I even need two of them, let
alone four? And certain things, like anti-aliasing of normal maps, just
are not going to be fixed by throwing more hardware at it. Unless you've
got a huge widescreen monitor running games at 1900x1200 or whatever,
what's the need?

It all comes down to software. The ultra high end graphics stuff is
basicly dying on the PC beyond tech demoes and the occasional game. So
you can get your super-duper SLI graphics, and find there is absolutely no
reason to own them beyond bragging rights.

*I'll* be seeing about that one friend! I can only go up to 1280x1024 as
that's my monitors native res. All of them.

I'm running an X2 4800+, 2 gigs PC3200 and one (01) 7800GTX 256 (for the
moment).
HL2 running Lost Coast video stress test in 1280x1024 with everything on and
highest, with highest image quality, 8x aa 16x af comes back consistently
with 70.84 fps.
FEAR, in game, 1280x968 (its highest mode I can do) with everything cranked
up give me just in the 40's. Hmpfh.
Doom3. Um, I didn't slow down long enough to do a demo for framerates. I
set it to Nighmare and went for it. Half a day solid non-stop and I'm over
halfway through! Never seen it look so good or play so fast. I have Ultra
quality and everything is cranked up and highest. I'd guess in the 60's
fps.
Then, I had a hd crap out on me last night. 160gb's worth of data, just
flushed. Everything is back UP except for the bad hd. Happily just a data
drive and most stuff is backed up already.
Wheew.... I can't wait to see how SLI will work for some of the games! Oh,
did I mention all this is in XP Pro 64 bit edition? The one game
that's surprised me the most so far is FEAR. It does *NOT* 'give as much
as it gets'.... meaning I think the engine code is not well optimised for
either 32 bits mode or 64 bit mode. Because is simply does not look as good
in-game as HL2 64 bit, Quake4, Doom3.
I think I should see some serious improvment in fr's in all of these major
games with two GTX 256 meg (twins! I'm having twins!) in SLI.
McG. )))

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:44:43 GMT, "McGrandpa"
wrote:

Then, I had a hd crap out on me last night.

Please elaborate with all details. A curious mind wants to know.

160gb's worth of data, just flushed.


John Lewis

"John Lewis" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:44:43 GMT, "McGrandpa"
wrote:

Then, I had a hd crap out on me last night.

Please elaborate with all details. A curious mind wants to know.

160gb's worth of data, just flushed.


John Lewis

Now that in itself has ME curious. Why?

This drive had a SMART error, is 3 years old, has been run quite hot at
times until I realized that it like all the stuff inside the case, needs
cooling. It 'lost' all partition data. I shouldn't have been using it for
anything critical. Now it has a different SMART error. Something about
RAW data rate. It took over 6 hrs to reformat, full drive, single
partition, NTFS.
And, it was only half full. Most of my stuff was backed up. Lost a few
days worth of emails.
Well?
McG.