Next NV card

[Mehen]

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=776

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050531_110037.html

[schmosef]

progress is good.

I've been playing Freelancer lately. I remember trying the demo when the game came out a couple of years ago and whatever matrox card I had in at the time just didn't like it at all. I remember not enjoying the game because it played so poorly. fast forward two years and I've got an ATI 9800Pro card now. Wow, this is an awesome game! The visuals are great. I wish it was a little more true to the genre but the story is good and the graphics are good and it plays really well.

I was playing at high rez for a while and the frame rate was good but I noticed that there were a lot of jaggies and the game didn't have an option for AA. So I enabled the forced 4XAA option in the ATI driver and it's just stunning. And it still plays fine at the high rez.

I feel bad for Matrox that they didn't make the right strategic moves back in the day. Now it's obviously too late. I'm glad that ATI and nVidia have been working so diligently to improve the visual PC experience.

[Nicram]

* i'm glad that the image quality in NV & ATI cards is better & better in every release of their cards (soon M will stop existing:P)

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Rumor has it that the 7800 will use around 150W. That's way too much IMO. They really need a die shrink! 0.09 at least for a 300M transistor chip, 65nm perferribly, but of course that's not ready any time soon.

I am pretty happy with both my 5200 and 6600GT. The 5200 is great for work and ocational games... runs at 32 degrees when working. The 6600GT is 51 degrees, still acceptible. Not to mention ForceWare. I've been using BETA drivers for literally years, and no problem in terms of stability at all! I really love NVIDIA's drivers. And of course the hardware is great too! (and on the PCB level both cards are dual dvi and on the board level the build quality is superb)

ATI pretty good too, except I think they can really improve on their drivers (at least I had some not so good experience) Tried to upgrade from CAT5.1 to 5.5 on my 8500 128MBm but ti refused and I can't figure out how to change it back to 5.1 anymore. O.O Tried everything so I guess I will format this weekend. Instealled 5.5 for the compnay machine ghost image w/R9200, CPU usage was 100% with the ATI tray service. I think I know why though... ATI hires first year engienering co-ops on their driver team (one of my friend is working there) so that thought kinda scares me lol haha hope he didn't read this. :P :P