Ah hah!!
No offense, but I must declare.... DUH!
Of COURSE it's "unsubstantiated crapola". Please note the use of uncertain modifiers such as "could be", as are found in the Inquirer article that the above parties claimed as *fact*. I have no clue how the finished Radeon 8500 product is going to compare against the Geforce3 or Ge3 Ti, and I for one am willing to admit that any and all numbers I am throwing out in terms of performance are SHEER SPECULATION, just like every single ounce of crap that Rcf and Juin have been spewing on this board for days about the 8500 "kicking the geforce3's ass". Funny how you jump on me, but not those two trolls who've been waltzing around for days and weeks proclaiming ATI superiority. But then I suppose we all know you're an ATI lover Noko. I don't discredit you for it... I just assume you're an 'image quality' freak, and that's ok. You also must have a use for all those other features of the Radeon cards, and I can respect that. I'm a fps freak... I need high framerates to play games competitively, and I don't care about minor image quality details I won't notice in heavy action anyway.
In regards to 10%.... why couldn't it push the Ge3 ahead? The only proven fact of the 8500's performance is from tests done with the reference boards, which is the only thing we can base any speculation on right now. You may have faith in ATI to pull out some 'miracle drivers', but in my experience they have never developed their drivers to full potential. (and in case of the Rage 128, I suffered MISERABLY with shoddy drivers and general performance). Going to Nvidia was the best thing I ever did, and there were never driver concerns thereafter.
As for what I mean by "performance victories", I'm talking about the major performance benchmarks that are used by most hardware testers. Yes... Q3 is one of them, and let us all pray that one day Q3 will finally be gone from these benchmarks. To me, performance means high 3d framerates with good image quality - this is the average definition of the vast majority of pc gamers. My definition of image quality may well be different than yours. Is that clarification enough?
For me, great dvd playback is not important. (that's why I have a decoder card and a dvd player). For me, FSAA and exceptional image quality is not important - I usually turn off extra graphical features, to eek out extra performance. As for Hydravision... isn't that dual monitor support? I believe this is a feature Ge3 cards are coming out with, but one which I have no use for at the time, even when dealing with multiple photoshop projects. Now Truform is something I'm very interested in, and I can't wait to see next generation incarnations of this in future products from all companies.
If your going to police for trolls Noko, please police on BOTH sides of the fence, Nvidia as well as ATI. I am not a troll of any kind, and my response in this thread was a reaction from troll behavior of ATI origin. So nyahh
"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky