Looking Back Pt. 3: The 6800 Ultra, ForceWare, and the Future
by Ryan Smith on May 11, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
D3DAFTester
As always, our first test is the venerable D3DAFTester, which is a detailed but easy way to spot any global driver changes that would affect anisotropic filtering quality. It won't show us any application-specific changes, but it is still always a good place to start.Given that this tool is a way of checking "correctness" for anisotropic filtering (and has been for a long time), we seldom expect to actually see any changes with D3DAFTester. It doesn't disappoint us here, producing the exact same graphs for all the versions of the ForceWare drivers tested.
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LoneWolf15 - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
Currently they are, yes. But some years back, they sucked.That's true. However, "some years back" is around the time of the Radeon 8500, far before the 9xxx line or the X800 line. This issue is no longer relevant, and yet people who haven't used ATI cards in years flog this dead horse over and over again.
ATI isn't perfect; their multimedia cards (i.e. TV tuners) still need work in the software department. However, it's been a long time since ATI has had serious driver issues, and many who haven't had an ATI card since Rage128/Radeon/Radeon 8500 days talk as if things haven't changed.
Powermoloch - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
I've been using Ati's drivers for quite sometime, and I noticed a gradual increase of performance from my experience. Especially on the 3dmark scores lol.MrKaz - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
What’s the problem with Control Panel?I like it a lot. Ati drop it in 5.11, I keep it installed with driver 6.4 and have no problems.
poohbear - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
have u even owned an ATI card? i'm currently running a 6800gt, but my experience w/ the 9800pro was great and i dont know what u're talking about w/ your driver instability comment. maybe u should read the article again, it praises ati's driver team quite a bit.