Results tagged “ati” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

I blogged recently about the new offering from nvidia, the £450 280gtx and how I was completely underwhelmed by the latest releases of computer components.

Perhaps I was feeling fatigued by the constant stream of slightly tweaked and overclocked graphics cards masquerading as the 'next big thing', but I couldn't get excited, even though the 280 is, in fact, very quick.

But now the situation has changed somewhat - and I actually feel myself becoming excited again by new releases.

The reason is that nvidia's competitor ATI has finally got its act together and released competitive cards at the right prices.

As the graph of frames per second at high resolution in current game Crysis shows, the £125 4850 card is the real jack in the box - just about as good as the 9800gtx which is more than £75 extra.

And the top of the range £200 4870 is in some tests better than the £250 nvidia 260 card. This leaves the 280 at the top of the pile - but let's face it, at a minimum of £400 who bar the most deranged tek head with no girlfriend, or, let's face it, life, will be able to afford it?

I almost feel myself catching the upgrade bug - the benefits of competition at long last!

I see the latest 'big thing' in the graphics card world has come out - the £450 GTX280.

Is it just me or do new hardware releases - fail to excite completely, be they cpus or gfx?

I remember when the 6800gt came out and everyone got extremely excited and went out and bought one even at £250+.

I think it's not so much the performance increases being less impressive, rather general 'update fatigue'.

The manufacturers have induced indifference through launching a new product line (esp gfx cards) every three months or so.

This has royally narked some who just bought the latest tech, which has recently come out, only to be repeatedly told they should have hung on another week for something 20 per cent faster at the same price.

Both the 2900 series and 8800 series are serial offenders at this.

Now I just think the days of automatically upgrading to the next generation have waned somewhat. People just think they'll skip a family of cards and wait for the next one.

The latest way to spend £450 - the 2800gtx.

THE perils of a game being made with cutting-edge technology was brought home to me recently when I dusted off an old favourite for a blast.

As a bit of a strat fan I loaded up turn based shooter Incubation - similar in many ways to the classic X-Com series.

At the time it was pretty cutting edge, and utilised a facility only available to people who had bought the latest graphics card.

Those who have gamed on the PC for some time might remember 3dfx - and Incubation had a special enhanced graphics mode which would take advantage of the new hardware.

Sadly my more modern ATI Radeon 3870 512mb card was deemed by the game to be unable to cope in the full 3dfx mode.

It would, however, work fine in the basic graphics mode, although it keeps asking me to load directx 5.0...

How to get it working in full 3d mode? Answers on a postcard to ben.hurst@birminghammail.net please!

SOUND card manufacturer Creative got into a bit of a pickle lately after a computer whiz released new drivers for free.
Creative has hitherto steadfastly refused to release software to make its older products work properly with operating system Windows Vista.
This means that anyone who has an Audigy 2 card, for example, wouldn't be able to use all the features, or in some cases even get it to work at all. Creative have stuck to the line that for full functionality people have to invest in the lastest X-Fi cards, which can set you back a pretty penny.
So, as is the way of the internet, someone released drivers on their own website, which allowed the older cards to work in Vista, and also unlock the features which hitherto had been shut off. The did ask for donations, although this wasn't needed to be able to download the software.
Creative had previously said that it had been unable to produce these drivers - with a huge team of software designers. But one bloke, presumably operating in his bedroom, managed to do what this multinational company could not.
Cynics have said that the tardiness might have something to do with trying to force everyone who upgrades their operating system to buy a new soundcard.
The guy, calling himself Daniel K posted a threat on creative's forums - causing them to go absolutely mad.
As the above link shows, they've been subject to a certain amount of editing, with Creative's line changing from 'get off our intellectual property!" to "However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties.
"We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers."
Just goes to show the power of the internet - a big company like Creative forced to do big-style grovelling.
After all some on the initial comments from Creative were less conciliatory: "By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods."
The potential backlash prompted something of a reversal. But it goes to show what happens if one company effectively has a monopoly on one kind of component - and use it to force consumers to buy the latest product.
So all the nvidia and intel fanboys out there had better hope for more competition from AMD and ATI - otherwise perhaps the same thing could happen.
The question is whether daniel_k is a modern day Robin Hood or a thief of intellectual property. I know what I believe, but it's surprising how many people have different views.