[sapiens74]

http://hardware.earthweb.com/prodop/article/0,,12099_942871_,00.html


I thought this was a joke. The 845D as product of the year. Anyways I let him know about it. With products like the Geforce 3 and even the ATI Radeon 8500, a mediocre chipset like the 845D, that was long coming shouldn't even be in the top 5 IMO.

[Brian Frank]

The 845 is a joke in the sense that Intel is now giving the okay to pair it with DDR, but people are talking about it like it's the next BX. I'd certainly lean toward the Radeon 8500 for product of the year, as I have one. I'd also go for SiS as company of the year.

[JP-]

What exactly is wrong with the 845D being product of the year? Its certainly more worthy of the title than a gf3 or radeon 8500.

It does exactly what that guy says, allows the p4 to have virtually the same performance and be alot cheaper than it would be with rdram 'solutions' (man i hate that word). Its exactly what the p4 needed to make it more competitive price/performance wise.

Maybe you could explain to me what the gf3/8500 has done to make it product of the year, apart from introducing a lot of new features that wont be used.

[sapiens74]

If you look at the reviews on anandtech and tomshardware it falls behind the Via and SIS solutions which were already out, which puts it in 4th place behind its own RDRAM chipset and the other 2 solutions. The only reason its not it last place is because of the regular 845 board. On top of that it has no really stand out features like the Via and SIS boards like USB 2.0 and such.

We keep hearing from them to wait for the next chipset to really get the best out of the P4 and it took 3rd party chipsets to make that happen, which is totally unlike INtel.

Anyways if releasing a product that has been available from 2 other companies for over 3 months that costs more, performs less then its competition, warrants a product of the year then they certainly deserve it.

As to the Radeon and Geforce they both are deserving candidates, but the Radeon was a total suprise, that's why I'm leaning toward it. They showed they can make high end video cards as well. It has a plethora of features that some of them may or not be used, but the ones that are used make a big difference for gamers, such as thier version of AA.


Either way the 845D shouldn't even be a candidate, if anything, nominate the SIS P4 DDR Board. At least it performs well enough to be considered.

[Brian Frank]

Is speed the only factor that we should judge chipsets? I like Via, but Intel does not ever BS with you on the chipset front. Even with the i820, it wasn't the chipset itself that was a problem, it was a separate chip. the i820 functioned perfectly by itself. SiS has come a long way, but Intel is only possibly trumped by ServerWorks as far as chipsets go.

Rethinking some stuff earlier, the most improved award should go to SiS or ATI.

[DosFreak]

heh? ATI has always made high end videocards with crappy drivers. The new Radeon didn't change that. They are supporting this rev of their new Radeon far more rapidly than their previous chipsets but speaking of previous chipsets is their support as good as Nvidia's/Matrox/3dfx's every was? No. A big resounding no.

[Brian Frank]

You're right, but at least when they get out drivers they don't suck completely. ATI has done a 180 in driver development here. They still could use some work, but now they are actually making drivers to take advantage of the hardware---something they are still slow on gettting around to.

You've probably been able to tell that I haven't been a real fan of ATI in the past, but the Radeon 8500 is the best I've seen from ATI in a long time.

[clutch]

Well, if you look here it would seem that the i845D isn't that bad after all when compared to current chipsets, and I don't think the new Via chipset for the P4 is even out so you can't compare that, right? Also, it supports ATA-133 natively (and if you look here you might want to reconsider using an ATA-133 card in the current Via mobos) in addition to the other listed options. While I am not saying that it is or isn't deserving of "Product of the Year" from some vague website, I don't think that it's a joke either.

As for ATI, for people that have been building and using systems for a bit longer than 2 years ATI's "recent" performance over the last few years has been disappointing. They were the first to get a card out using the AGP 2X spec properly, yet they could never get drivers out (back in the days of the "mini-gl" driver and various "wrappers"). I still use them in servers and simple workstations, but I can't recommend them for gaming or anything requiring 3D power at all. So to me, they are still lame.

[sapiens74]

Well on one hand we say that performance isnt as important as stability, which would deem the ATI card way better then it's nvidia counterpart. Yeah it's drivers might occasionally suck but ATI cards have always been stable. Also a side note to that, stabilty is easy to achieve when performance isn't needed, regardless of which chipset you use.


If it were a top performer even among it's fellow chipsets for the P4 I would understand, but take into account that at best it's third place for the P4 platform, and not even in the top 5 when adding the Athlon platform in the mix.

If being average means its a great product then the majority of new hardware deserves a share of the title

[clutch]

Try using any of the ATI cards from the last few years and you will find that "stability" is something to be desired when using anything 3D related (which they claim to support numerous times). For 2D, they are fine, but you might as well get Matrox and have both stability *and* performance. The only issues that I have seen with NVidia cards have been from:

A. CosmosWorks cannot establish a mesh using any of the 21.xx and up drivers, but that's a limitation of the program, and...

B. The infinite loop and crashing issues that seem to only affect Via chipset owners (surprise).

I would have thought that the Athlon processors would be the product of the year, or that zippy MP3 player from Apple. But then again, those products are only as good as the platforms they run on, right?

[sapiens74]

Hey that apple thing is pretty cool. Sometimes I actually understand their "vision".

The Athlon XP should have made it over the DDR P4 solution from INtel, tho I still think the Geforce 3 or ATI Radeon improve thier respective systems the most

[JP-]

[CUViper]

The point of the Geforce3 is not so much higher framerates than before, but that it can do more advanced features while maintaining the same framerate. If all you play is older games like CS, than of course you won't see a difference, but when you play the latest and greatest games, the features of the gf3 really shine!

[JP-]

Ok name some games that use the gf3s latest and greatest features, excluding max payne as its the same engine as 3dmark.

[CUViper]

Ok, how about:[list]
[*]4X4 EVO 2
[*]AquaNox
[*]Ballistics
[*]Everquest: Shadows of Luclin
[*]Giants: Citizen Kabuto (there's a special version just for gf3)
[/list:u]

Plus there are many more in development...

[CUViper]

Even better, here's a list from nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=pg_20010529809123

[DosFreak]

The best mobo in the world isn't going to play Quake 3 at 70fps in 2048X1536 with an integrated video card.....

[sapiens74]

I was gonna put EQ SOL in but they totally messsed it up. No new interface as of yet, which is one of the reasons I dont play much anymore

[JP-]

Hmm fair enough so there are some games for it but a gf2 can cope with any of em and still make em look good. Dosfreak when did i say anything about integrated gfx? Im simply saying that the 845d is more deserving of the title of best hardware of the year than a gf3 or radeon 8500. It might not actually be a deserving winner but its a better choice than them 2.

[clutch]

I have to agree with M4Carbine on this, since the GF3 only brings a few new features (something about some strange new alchemy named "pixel shaders" :)) and ATI is just now starting to enable the features with new driver releases that were promised before the cards were released.

Also, why limit yourself to CPU/Mobo/Video Card when you could designate USB 2.0, OSX, Windows XP, Blade Server Technology, iPod (Apple's MP3 gizmo, it's pretty damn cool), etc? It just seems like there's a lot more deserving techno-geek toys that would be more deserving of such an accolade from anybody.