If you'll forgive me for hijacking this for a bit... I'd like to chime in this one. Yeah, I know... it's not worth it. But I got brain cells to burn so I'll give it a whirl. Besides, not having an "Explosive" burden can definitely make a difference in the state of mind.
What kR4MR has demonstrated for us is an equivalent to not only trolling but also redefining stupidity as a whole. Webster's dictionary would have to be rewritten to compensate for this new level and definition. As many have said time and time again from forums across the 'net, don't feed the troll. They require attention and that's all they seek. Their greatest pleasure is viewing our angered response. Their greatest weakness is intelligence and patience. Use them as your weapon, and they will fall. Prove them wrong, and you are victorious. Force them into namecalling, and they forfeit the match. It's a battle of wits, for which the winner is determine by the capacity of either side.
The battle here is obvious. kR4MR denounces all ATi products. So the natural response and replies are from those who currently or previously owned such products, myself included. How long did the battle lasted? Very short. In fact, it probably never started in the first place. My first exposure which somewhat instigated the battle challenge came from his denouncing of ATi products. But the battle never got underway as he immediately forfeited by calling ATi users/owners "tards."
For a long time, ATi has tried to enter the 3D market to compete with the likes of 3dfx and nVIDIA. Various attempts in producing a competing 3D product did not fare well due to the capabilities of the two leading companies' products. And in 2000, ATi finally has something substantial to show, a new product that they called the RADEON. The RADEON series progressed and matured, like any products do, in order to improve both in features and in performance. And then something happened, which nobody thought would ever have happened. Yet this kind of event happens with all kinds of leading companies -- Squaresoft/Enix and Microsoft to name a couple. What happened? nVIDIA slipped.
In 2002, nVIDIA brought forth the GeForceFX series, introducing full 32-bit floating-point processing crucial to complex shader calculations and computations. The problem, however, stem from its real world performance by which ATi's ground-breaking Radeon 9700 product performed significantly better overall in shader performance despite the GeForceFX capable of 32bit floating point operations. The update follow-up did not help nVIDIA either, as the hardware was still based on the design from the NV30. Yet perhaps one of the better known mishap from nVIDIA was the fact that the card required such heavy duty cooling it spawned a series of internet jokes and clips poking fun at the noise it generated.
Due to this, ATi gained confidence and focused more on their 3D research in order to keep the lead they have and to improve their products so that their next series of products may compete well with nVIDIA.
Today we are seeing ATi doing more to compete well with nVIDIA's line of products that not only spans graphics but also logic chips as well. A competitor to SLI is available and ATi also produces chipsets for both Intel and AMD products. The market is healthy and competition is keeping both ATi and nVIDIA on their toes to win customers over. But when introducing anything new, things do not always go perfect the first time, such as nVIDIA's original GeForce 256.
As many people will tell you, there are ATi products out there that're well capable of running the games and applications they have. If they did not performed as they had hoped, ATi would have left the 3D arena already. But they are still here and they are still wishing to capitalize on the 3D market. And with Windows Vista coming soon, it's a greater reason to continue trying to capitalize on it. Yet one has to wonder, though, that if we were to put you in front of a computer where you cannot peer, look, or investigate in any way what hardware is inside, would you tell the difference between a system running nVIDIA hardware and ATi hardware just by playing games on it? I can assure you that BF2, FEAR, Far Cry, Quake3, Doom3, Half-Life 2, UT200x, and a lot of other titles will run at your common 1024x768 resolution on a typical 19" CRT monitor. Want Anti-Aliasing? Surprise, surprise, ATi is known for better AA image quality than nVIDIA's, even during the dark days of nVIDIA's GeForceFX series.
No matter how one looks at it, both nVIDIA and ATi have their strengths as well as their weaknesses. My ATi TV Wonder PCI card has been with me for many years. And if I recall correctly, it lasted longer inside of my computer than the Radeon 9800 Pro I have, the very ATi product that I have used for a long time. It goes to show that ATi can make products that work to your needs and all of them have something that suits a consumer's requirement.
It's a known fact that ATi makes competitive products that rivals that of nVIDIA's own. A person will decide which is a better buy based on what information that person has gathered. It's not misguided nor is it scamming. It's how things are. You cannot force people to purchase a certain product. That's not how anyone wants to do business. Let the consumers make that choice, even if it's going with neither company. Even if a product is deemed inferior by a small number of people, they are vastly outnumbered by those who look at hardwares on both sides and are willing to determine which product is generally the best to go with for a certain price point or for a certain requirement. There's no shame nor is there any crime in suggesting another to go with a non-nVIDIA product. To proclaim a competing product or technology as inferior... is like saying the Apple computer is inferior to our PCs. It's not a wise thing to think of and shows only ignorance.
Anyway, I'll end this by saying that ATi will continue on like any other company. ATi cannot simply leave nVIDIA alone for the 3D market. Not only do they give the marketshare to nVIDIA but it gives nVIDIA a complete monopoly over it. And that's not a good thing. Amusingly enough, we should be thanking ATi for getting this far, for not only have their products improved over the years but they are also doing us a favor: keeping nVIDIA in check.
