Well then Supreet ,lets look at the facts from management and not technology.

Nvidia released 3 6800 series cards Ultra,gt and vanilla

ATI released how many x800, x850 cards to beat them 8,10, 15, ?
in Q2 of this year ATI Had ooh ahh are you ready"the fastest card on the planet"oooohhh aahhhh

They also stole market share from Nvidia

the results- a few million in losses,insider trading,stocks dropping by 50%,400 million in stock they had to write down(another hit to the pocket book)lawsuits,paper launches,while Nvidia made 30+million profit in the same time frame.And now they smack their warranty,which really shows confidence in their product
Sounds like a poorly managed company no matter how you look at it.

Oops !

That certainly giving flexibility at each level, certain users have certain budgets.


And my 9800Pro had warranty of one year, and its over now, and yet I am using it, and I know it can serve me for little more period, ...but yea more warranty puts you on safer side.

No use discussing anything about ATI with you.
They just can't do no wrong in"your world"

Thanks for the lame excuses.
I'm out of here

This whole issue with "warranty reduction" is not unexpected... It happens in corporate business all the time, and especially when you're dealing with such a blindingly quick "obsolescence rate" like consumer electronics has adopted.

The warranty reduction addresses several issues, but two key ones... 1) reducing the load on tech support, production, & legacy storage... and 2) dissuading "unofficial upgrade actions" on the part of the consumer.

I'll say this before I explain further... Issue #1 is far more legitimate thatn #2. #2 is more of a "in my professionally personal opinion", and is more or less conjecture...

If you are going to produce a Product A1, and you project production of A1 to cover 3 years, and you also have a warranty on A1 that covers 3 years, then you've got to produce enough quantity of Product A1 to cover 3 years of sales demand _and_ to cover warranty claims for an additional 3 years... It's _alot_ of math, beyond what I'm capable of explaining here. But, the point is, you either have to overproduce Product A1 in that 3 years to cover all 3 years + the warrantied 3 years, _or_ you have to leave your production run open in order to produce replacement cards to satisfy need... _beyond_ the marketed 3 years.

That second option is _not_ lucrative, nor prudent, in today's industry.

The 9xxx -family was such a great success, and the technology didn't change much, in the past 3-4 years, that ATI _could_ project 4-5 years of sales and offer a 3 year warranty on them. But, with the new generation of product, and the technology supporting it changing so d@mned fast (AGP being "retired", PCI-e coming to the forefront, along with advancements made in it... x16... to x32? soon?), making a market projection for your production run is much more risky. You don't want to put all your marbles in one can, and go "okay... we'll need 1.25 million units of Product B2 over 3 years. We'll market 1 million of them, and legacy-store a quarter-mil as replacements for tech support issues". What happens if you don't sell those 1 million? Worse, what happens if your R&D firm goes, "You know what? We've got something in the pipe that we can introduce next year that will eclipse Product B2... we call it Product C4! It will blow the market up!" (Har har!)
You're now not only stuck with unsold units of B2, but you've got to support them, _for free_ (meaning, at a loss to your company) for an additional 3 years while everybody pants and drools over C4's debut.

You could have seen this coming, with ATI unveiling their "trade-in" program... they're trying to get as many old video cards out of the consumer boxes and replace them with new cards. Yes, it's a marketing ploy, but partly... it's also a tech-support / warranty thing as well. If you notice, you can only trade in legacy cards towards specific new models of vid card. More than likely, they're cards that ATI has made a generous market projection about.

Issue #2 is far more... subjective in interpretation. Call me a Conspiracy Theorist, but I think it goes hand in hand with ATI's multiple-card lineup (3-to-1 in model varieties compared to nVidia). With how... "unshaky" things have been over at ATI, I'm sure they're not ignorant to tweakers "modding" older cards in order to squeeze as much performance as possible out of them in lieu of getting a new card. Thing is, though, if that card pops, typically it gets rung up as a "warranty claim" (I know... I've exploited it before too) and the consumer-tweaker hides the smoking solder gun behind their back and goes, "It just failed... I... I... I don't know _what_ happened! 2 and a half years of faithful service, and poof!"
I don't think ATI wants you (the tweaker) to mess with their cards anymore. They can't _eliminate_ that, but they sure can cut their losses by reducing the warranty (thus increasing the risk) on the tweak-minded. They're also going to produce a blizzard of product/model varieties to cover all the bases or possibilities or combinations or configurations... anything to, more or less, "cut the tweaker off at the pass"... "You were going to try and speed up your VRAM? You don't have to... we already have a model that does that. You wanted to overclock your GPU to do renders faster? Don't have to... we have a model that does renders this much faster than its originator." etc. etc. etc. Anything to keep the tweaker, or those thinking about tweaking, from meddling with the card.

I'm not discounting that electronic items fail, and that they have flaws. But, for the most part, if you leave it alone, it will work just fine _well_ beyond its warranty span. Usually, if an item has a defect or flaw, you'll find out in the first few hours anyway.

hey guys what should i get? an x800xl 512mb, a x850 pro, an x800 xt? theyre all the same price at my local warehouseso im wondering :p

oh yeah theres also the x700 im cnsidering but the x800gt x800 and x800 LE all kinda stomp on the exact same price range.....

also should i go xt? or xt pe? do i need that extra 20 mhz? which i probably get from just shaking the computer about....

no offence supreet but giving choice to different budgets is great but.....dude how many x800 cards are there? nvidia could make 6200, 6600, 6800 all just 6800 with lots of funny stuff at the end but

x800LE
x800GT
x800
x800pro
x800XL
x800xt
x800xt pe
x850 pro
x850 xt
x850 xtpe
(add on crossfire versions)

it just seems to be an exuse to shove an x8 in every card, i mean x300,x600,x700,x800,x850......i think ati's kinda making way too many different chipsets....i was happy when there was just 9200 for budget 9600 for mainstream and 9800 for high end.....damn nvidia for starting with those damn 5750, 5950, 5500 and 5300 cards!! and damn ati for continuing the nightmare!!!

Can you also count Nvidia cards like that?...well I would urge Sander to put it as 'Sticky' under FAQs section .

Different core's, different fabrication, different results, different peoples, different mind.

I would just like to address Supreet in letting him know that Nvidia's latest revision of the nForce 4 chipset allows SLI to run in full 16x on both cards.

Good day,

D PV.

honestly the only people who will use crossfire are diehard ATI guys.

I personally have had an Nvidia card last three years and still allow me to play new online games at a competitive level. I am only now beginning to think about upgrading, not because the card has slowed me down, but because I have the money for it.

ATI won with the 9800 series, and if you got into computer hardware during that time, when the battle was really starting to heat up, I understand your faith in ATI.

Otherwise, if you say you have ATI Cards in Crossfire, the only people who will respect your system and your opinion are people who are complete ATI fanboys.

Oh, and I can clearly tell that, you are using a Nvidia card, so yea Nvidia is GOD for you.

Supreet, you are giving us ATI fellows here a bad name.

I am an ATI fan, make no qualms about it. I have been since the Nvidia "driver cheating" days, but that's beside the point.

I for one am going to try the Crossfire platform. For one, if no one buys it then they'll stop making it. I for one am a fan of market competition. Most people here have not seen Crossfire first hand and rely on benchmarks and statements by folks who have ben paid large sums to support their products. Benchmarks and other "quantitative" indicators can be fudged. I'm sure that both Nvidia and ATI have both used "marketing" to alter results of benchmarks on sites. The only way we'll really know the difference is to see it firsthand.

I have already seen that SLI is functional and does provide better gaming experiences, but SLI has also been out for a LONG time, relatively. I am indeed an ATI fan, but I gave SLI a chance. So let's give ATI Crossfire it's fair chance and time.

To be fair, you are dragging up a thread which is many months old. Of late Supreet, who is a long time and valued member of the HWA community, has been much more balanced in his views and wise in his advice, so let's not needlessly stir up old conflicts, please.