why ATi sucks and I wasted my money.

by GNU Jeffz on 01/19/2007 04:42, 43 messages, last message: 02/13/2007 01:48, 6053 views, last view: 05/18/2024 20:38

I enjoy playing sauerbraten fairly often and cube not as often. I use GNU/Linux and not Windows. I have had the same machine with an ATi 9800 PRO 128MB since mid 2003 and it has served me well, just about every map except for Thor is enjoyable to play.

Recently I considered purchasing a new beast but decided that perhaps just a video card and some more memory would suffice for playing sauerbraten.

So looking at my alternatives for AGP (no PCIe) and at that time thinking \"Yeah, ATi have been pretty good to me with the 9800 pro I have\", I decided to go with another ATi card.

I found the HIS IceQ X1650 Pro 256MB, r535 vs r350, three years inbetween and it appeared to be the newest AGP card, I thought \"hmm ok, there should be a moderate improvement\". After I install it and the latest drivers from ATi\'s website, to my disappointment the new card ran about at about 50% of the 9800 pro!

Wonderful, what a piece of shit.

So, let me get this straight, in 3 years from now, ATi will release a card that performs worse than their current range?

oh ok I see, I will keep that in mind.

Thank you ATi.

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#1: ..

by Passa on 01/19/2007 04:48

Yay! You admit that ATI sucks, thats progress :)

Take the card back and point out it doesn't work (even if you got it on eBay, just lodge a complaint) because a X1650 Pro should perform way better than that.

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#2: ..

by GNU Jeffz on 01/19/2007 04:52

That would be dishonest, I got what I paid for, my beef is with ATi not with a computer shop.

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#3: ..

by GNU Jeffz on 01/19/2007 05:16

of course.. see me thanking them?

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#4: ATI

by rock.n.rol_w/o_cookie on 01/19/2007 05:18

Erm...you know that you can´t really compare an older highend card with a newer low-midrange card, do you ?

If you had bought an ATI card from the X800 Series, maybe a X 850 XT, which is about 2 years old now (low prices), it would run way faster than with the 9800 pro (and 1650 pro, too).

Of course way better would be a new Geforce 7600 GT/AGP (Not GS !) :)

In fact, there is no big difference in R350 and R535:

8 pixel shaders (9800 pro) against 12 pixelshaders, a lower clocked GPU and slow GDDR2-Ram (x 1650 Pro)

This card is just too weak for playing good games, sry :)

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#5: ..

by GNU Jeffz on 01/19/2007 05:22

yeah, I noticed that the X800 series had a higher fill rate when I was comparing specs, I guess I should have paid more attention. but really, what is this card supposed to be for, solitaire?

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#6: ..

by Passa on 01/19/2007 09:57

Look, all I know is this:

A X1600 XT will outperform a 6600GT (only just), so I'm assuming that a X1650 Pro is close in performance to a 6600GT, which again, I will assume, is more powerful than a 9800 Pro (at least in Sauer, my other PC with a 6600GT gets 100+ FPS with max shaders on and at 1280x1024..)

Something is wrong with your card, trust me, and yeah, you have a complete right to take it back (it wont really bother the PC place, theyll just sell it to some other poor soul..)

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#7: ..

by SanHolo on 01/19/2007 11:22

The problem is with the drivers.
I'm not too much into them, but everything below the R300 (your 9800) is supported by stable and good OpenSource drivers, while everthing R300 and above (your X1650) is not and obviously the ATI-drivers suck.

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#8: ..

by sinsky on 01/19/2007 23:16

Well I've noticed I talk against ati cards from time to time but I use mine quite happily. Ever since I noticed this strange talk I stopped doing so, and silently continued observing other people do it :)

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#9: Re: ..

by GNU Jeffz on 01/20/2007 07:49, refers to #7

SanHolo,

You'd think ati would know how to write drivers for their own cards.

crazy.

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#10: ..

by Drakas on 01/20/2007 10:18

nVidia never let me down!
Buy nVidia!

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#11: ..

by Snowy18 { Clan 3D1T } on 01/20/2007 23:07

Well ATI.. is bad

N-Vidia The Way It Mean to the player?
i have Nvidia my other PC a ati and cant play battlefield, sauerbraten and wt* ..




8 + 5 let me think....

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#12: Re: ..

by SanHolo on 01/20/2007 23:21, refers to #9

Yes, ATI knows how to write their drivers. They do a good job – for Windows and Mac. They don't obviously care about the Linux-drivers, they seem to be content that there even IS a driver available...

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#13: Re: ..

by Passa on 01/20/2007 23:39, refers to #12

Pfft. SanHolo, I guess you haven't noticed, their Windows drivers suck too. Unlike Nvidia as well, which has virtually one driver that supports all of their cards, ATI stops supporting cards here and there, with different drivers for this one and that one..

Some Catalyst drivers made my other PC with a Radeon 9250 overheat, some made it work fine. All resulted in it having an green tinge to all Doom 3 based games. ATI now no longer supports the Radeon 9250, even though Nvidia still makes drivers for the GeForce 2 MX.

ATI are going to release (with AMD) some graphics processor CPU style slot on mobos soon.. so only AMD users will be condemned to ATI cards :)

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#14: ..

by muzyk10 on 01/21/2007 01:22

GNU Jeffz : whot framerates U have on sauer?
i\\\'m playing sauerbraten on Gentoo with Radeon 9700 (open drivers),Duron 1.3GHz, having ~30fps on 1024x768 px.. it was pain in the ass to use Ati drivers, finally i did it but results dissapointed me (~12 f/s - Direct Rendering=Yes).. Ati is NOT really nice if U think about \\\"Linux\\\'s preformance\\\" .. just my 3 cents :)

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#15: Re: ..

by Passa on 01/21/2007 01:23, refers to #14

Well I use the Omega drivers for them (under Windows XP) and it gets 130FPS or so in Sauerbraten with shaders disabled.

Sounds like you didn't install the drivers properly if Cube doesn't run, and that you were still stuck with Mesa drivers.

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#16: ..

by GNU Jeffz on 01/21/2007 13:04

muzyk10, depends what map,190 on face-capture, 170 avg on metl3, metl2, nmp9, 100 on ph-capture, 80 avg on metl4, 25 avg on urban_c

at 1220x1024 using my radeon 9800 pro.

I've since removed the x1650 pro, which got less than half the above rates.

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#17: Re: ..

by SanHolo on 01/21/2007 22:15, refers to #13

I've never used Windows, so I don't know about their drivers on Windows.

On the Mac, I can't compare, but I think they are okay. =)

1*1=?

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#18: Re...

by ByT3R on 01/21/2007 22:26

I just bought a standard Ati X1300 (also AGP), run Win XP and Fedora Core 6, It runs great and even Thor is acceptable with about 25-50 fps. I'm thinking it might be a driver problem, what Distro do you use? It might also be your mobo, what kind you have? I think your card needs AGP 4X or 8X, I've heard that running it in 4x mode might bring some problems with it.

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#19: ..

by Passa on 01/21/2007 23:24

I'm telling ya GNU Jeffz, if it isn't a driver problem, then mate, you've gotta return it, if it doesn't work correctly, then its the PC shop's responsibility to replace it for you, or give you your money back.

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#20: ..

by ash222 on 01/22/2007 04:50

Well i got an ATI 9550 a few weeks ago, and i must say it works fine for every single game, (i play quiet a few next gen games) i can run most games on mid-high without lag. so idk what you guys are doing wrong, get some more ram and a faster processor

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