Q: In the final paragraph of his ATi Radeon 8500LE vs. NVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 Review (http://www.) ($ MySite / video / showdoc.html? U0026 1608 I = p = 1), Anand writes:
This is the perfect example of where the competition really brings us better choices in a market, it will be interesting to see what happens when a capable third manufacturer back to the scene. DirectX 9 on the horizon the major hardware companies are diligently working on their next generation GPU, the R300 NV30 to be something else now shown behind closed doors – as usual, the graphics market always keeps us busy. Stay tuned.
Any guesses? I bet that Anand has a new part Matrox his hot little hands! NFS4, who has seen her?
Best Answer: What you need to do to identify your graphics card is:
Go into Control Panel—>System Icon–>Harware Tab–>Device Manager
Click on the "+" sign beside Display Adapters. This should reveal the brand, name and model of your graphics card. If not, then right click on the name it does give and select PROPERTIES and open the properties box, go to the DRIVER tab and this will tell you the current driver you have.
Now, note the brand, name and model of your graphics card on a piece of paper and then go here to ATI:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
Click on your operating system (XP), then your make or brand, then your model and click on GO button. This takes you to the page with your exact driver. Download ONLY THE DRIVER, not the catalyst+driver!
Put the dowloaded driver into a temp folder for safekeeping.
Go back to device manager and open the properties box and ROLL BACK your driver. Keep rolling back until all the drivers are uninstalled. Windows will warn you that you will not have a driver…Do it anyway! This will force Windows to use the default VGA driver at a horrible 640 x 480 resolution.
Reboot the computer. Everything will be HUGE, do not worry!
Go to the temp directory and click and install the ATI driver.
Reboot the computer.
Click on the desktop, right click, properties box, Settings tab, set to 32 bit color and use the slider to choose you resolution and you are DONE! 
If you want to use the catalyst control system to tweak settings, you must have a minimum of DirectX 9.0c and Net.Framework 2.0 which you can download from Microsoft using their update site. Do not install catalyst until you KNOW you have Net.Framework 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C on your computer or it will mess up your driver installation.
The reason why I recommend a roll back of the older driver is that frequently, a newer driver will be conflicted by the older driver's presence. Thus it is important to uninstall ALL of the old drivers (there may be more than one of them in the XP driver database on your computer.
Re:<< From the front page…
<< Off to San Fran for something special
Admittedly this week didn't go as planned with the GeForce4 Ti roundup still unfinished. Today I'll be hopping on a plane to head off to San Francisco to meet with a company we haven't heard much from in a while. Hopefully I'll see something that makes my 7 awake hours in San Francisco well worth it and exactly 24 hours from now I'll be standing in an airport waiting to head back. The short trip caused me to finish up a lot of things that I would normally have Thursday/Friday to do but because of that I've had to put a lot of testing on hold. Needless to say, as soon as I land I'll start testing again. >>
Gee, I wonder what it could be;) >>
If you look carefully, he is NOT talking about video cards for sure. It could be anyone in any hardware field…
Re:I really wish it was BitBoys Oy
Re:From the front page…
<< Off to San Fran for something special
Admittedly this week didn't go as planned with the GeForce4 Ti roundup still unfinished. Today I'll be hopping on a plane to head off to San Francisco to meet with a company we haven't heard much from in a while. Hopefully I'll see something that makes my 7 awake hours in San Francisco well worth it and exactly 24 hours from now I'll be standing in an airport waiting to head back. The short trip caused me to finish up a lot of things that I would normally have Thursday/Friday to do but because of that I've had to put a lot of testing on hold. Needless to say, as soon as I land I'll start testing again. >>
Gee, I wonder what it could be;)
Re:It's Matrox.
PR within 1.5 mos. Retail by summer.
amish
You promised in the parhelia thread (http://{$MySite}/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=734042) that the announcement would be before May 7… that's closer to 0.5 months
Re:<< It's Matrox.
PR within 1.5 mos. Retail by summer.
amish >>
still bloody too long, and I think my g400 is starting to fail 
or its just hl that is bugging me.. or something else :frown:
Re:It's Matrox.
PR within 1.5 mos. Retail by summer.
amish
Re:<< 7)number nine – do they still exist? >>
Number 9 was purchased by S3, and then closed down along with Diamond/Orchid/Micronics.
Re:didn't the company marketing pyramid3d go belly up before it got on shelves?
i wonder if you could find that on ebay if you looked all the time…?
Re:<< 2)bitboys – could be, they've had test silicon, but it wouldn't be a return engagement since no product of theirs has hit retail >>
Actually, that's NOT true. They've had a product called Pyramid3D that they've had in retail stores. However, it was a bomb and no one remembers it today anymore, obviously. So it COULD be them.
Re:this was discussed in the parhelia thread, but i'll give a quick run-down
1)matrox – very likely, we've had comments from johan over at ace's, rumors at murc (which is a generally reliable source) plus it would be a return
2)bitboys – could be, they've had test silicon, but it wouldn't be a return engagement since no product of theirs has hit retail
3)kyro3 – rumored last year to be out in early 2k2, the company is in some trouble right now as to its future, what with via merger talks and all
4)via/s3 – could be, but then again they are rumored to be in talks for the kyro line
5)3dlabs/creative – certainly capable, but they've already said that their part is definite 4th quarter material
6)trident – they have a compelling part for notebooks right now, with dx8 capabilites and tons of bandwidth, but NDA has expired on it, unless they have seperate desktop and laptop NDAs. plus, they've never been in the 3d gaming market, so it really wouldn't be a return
7)number nine – do they still exist?
as for IQ and vga voltage, matrox was always king of that sort of thing, and as for tv out, they do have the marvel, not that tv out or vga voltage on nvidia boards has usually had anything to do with nvidia. plus the speed upgrade that nvidia has put out for the last two performance chips has not been a generational change. matrox has played the speed differentiation game in the past, and rumor is that they'll do it again assuming parhelia comes out.
Re:Another reasons you'd have to release a card 3 generations ahead would be because ATi and Nvidia always release 2 revisions of Videocard every year.
Re:Matrox ofcorse, what else is there?
Re:he said 'If a capable third manufacturer returns to the scene…"
Which means he's referring to the way things used to be wth 3dfx/ATI/Nvidia. He never insinuated that any company WAS going to release a card to compete and quite frankly I doubt ANYONE can compete with ATi and Nvidia's cards at the present time without upping the current technology by 3 generations. This alone would be required not only to beat them in FPS but in IQ, 2D clarity and quality, DVD playback and TV outut.
Re:<< He was talking in theory not what IS going to happen. >>
I don't think so. Anand is an insider; he knows what is going to happen.
Re:He was talking in theory not what IS going to happen.
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