Slashdot Mirror
Previewing ATi's Radeon X800 XT & X800 Pro
Giant_Panda writes "A few short weeks ago, it looked like NVIDIA was back on track as they were
able to overtake ATi and reclaim the 3D performance crown with their GeForce 6800
Ultra. Now, it seems like ATi has fired back with a killer card of their own.
HotHardware just posted a preview of the new
12-Pipe ATi Radeon X800 Pro ($399) and 16-pipe ATi Radeon
X800 XT ($499). The X800 XT seems to be faster then even the new GeForce 6800 Ultra
Extreme cards that were rumored to exist on a few sites this past weekend
and the X800 Pro is a great performer as well. (Other sites have just
posted previews:
TechReport,
Hexus, Lost Circuits)"
At what point is there simply too much noise Vs. signal about how good one card is VS. the other. If you're a fan of nVidia you're going to buy their card no mater what and likewise for ATI no? -nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
ATI did a great job with upgrading the R300 To bad for the lack of PS 3.0
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for it's children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Seems like they're cutting the traces on the extra pipes when creating the 12-pipe Pro version. Not that soft-mods were universally successful anyway.
A complete list of articles related to this can be found @ OverclockersClub.com.
... but will it ship with a voucher for Half-life 2? "Now only 2 video card generations away! Buy now!"
yup and in 2 years when someone actually releases a game that uses all that horsepower it'll be awesome.
Video card upgrades - hardware's version of the leveling treadmill.
These new video cards have more memory than I have RAM! Geez...
At the levels of performance that you are talking about with the ATI and NVidia cards, there really isn't a large difference between a few frames here and there. I mean, most of the time, the declared "winner" only bests the other card on a majority of the test, not all of them
Just pick whicher brand you like better and you'll feel better off letting go of that $500...
But the lack of Linux-drivers is holding me back. Not only does NVIDIA have Linux-drivers, they have 64bit drivers as well! Yes, X800 is better overall than 6800 is. But fact is that one of them works well with Linux, while the other one does not.
Ati: If you want to have my money, you better pull your thumbs out of your ass and write some Linux-drivers!
Or maybe I will buy this card, and hope it works well with the Generic Ati-drivers that ship with Xorg/Xfree...
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I'm going to wait for the 'NVidia 7000 Ultra Extreme Pro Super Plus - Special Limited Edition'. Then I'll be so very l33t.
Jason.
Here's another two other reviews, one at AnandTech and another at TomsHardware
There is also a story ver at Tom's Hardware Guide. --> http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040504/index .html /. effect.
Link is in text to prevent
I found the "Any" key.
Is there any point in getting one of these cards for any reason other than playing the latest games?
While it's true that both ATi's and Nvidia's new cards scream, it has to be noted that ATi decided not to compete with Nvidia on quality. The new 3.0 versions of the Vertex and Fragment shaders, as implemented in the NV40, are a stunning advance over the 2.0 shaders in the newest ATi cards.
At my company, we had considered using hardware for the final rendering on some of the shots in our current visual effect movie, but the 2.0 shaders just didn't have the capability -- they really are suited only for games (not too surprising, that's where 99% of the market is.) The lack of fully-functional floating point buffers, the limitation on the size of the shader programs, the lack of texture mapping in the vertex shaders -- these are all devastating to the notion of doing high-quality hardware rendering.
All of these limitations, and more, were addressed in the new 3.0 shaders.
I am sure that ATi will support these features eventually, as games come to require them -- but right now you are really comparing apples and Porsches when you compare ATi's and Nvidia's latest offerings.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
what i'd really like to know is if these new cards will outperform my geforce 2mx in wordperfect scrolling.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Someone please divide price by benchmark and plot this in a graph please!
Maybe I'll do it if no one else can be bothered.
A blog I run for the wealth
Make no mistake, I'll eventually buy one like these .. after it's well down the price curve, bugs fixed, drivers updated, in a couple years.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I read a few of these reviews, including the Tom's Hardware Review and this card looks very good.
I'll be in the market for a new card by the end of the summer, I'm currently a couple of generations out of date with a GeForce 4 (which still manages to do the job, but is showing it's age against games like Far Cry).
I'll be watching how the cards do over the summer (once they can actually be bought) and make up my mind then. If I had to make the call right now... I think I would go for ATI. One less power connector inside, smaller, less fan noise, and less heat in general.
The nVidia card does have an OpenGL advantage (at least for Windows Gaming), but the ATI card can just do a bit more in terms of having AF / FSAA turned on (which is killer for my GF 4).
Bottom line... both this card, and nVidia's previously announced cards, are great for gamers if you've got the coin for them.
I think a real big advantage for ATI is the fact that their card doesn't take up two slots, require a monstrosity of a heat sink and fan, and recommend/require a 450W power supply like the '6800 does. Even if the new ATI card wasn't as fast as the 6800, I wouldn't consider buying a video card like that. And I've always considered myself a fan of Nvidia cards (I used to hate the "ATI OS" that ATI's old drivers used to install -- it was very invasive). ATI has produced a very competitive card performance-wise, while keeping the same form factor and with a reasonable (relatively speaking) level of power consumption and heat dissipation.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
As much as I like the nVidia kit "just working", I wish they would get their head out of their arse and implement true DirectX9, not just the shite that's part driver.
Have a look through the feature sets between ATI, nVidia and DirectX9 - nVidia supports the barest of minimums to work with DirectX9 written games.
No wonder Carmack shunned nVidia
There has to be a time when they support the games, instead of just paying for a prissy ad at the start of a game.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
Better performance than a "rumored" card that no one has seen? You don't say!
I think the /. editorial standards have now dipped below those of the New York Times and USAT. /shrugs
I know that ATI has their little RPMs going, but the reason I have switched to using nVidia is because of the crap that went on with ATI and lack of Linux support. And now, they finaly released some drivers, but no support for older cards, and no way to actually install it properly on a Debian system.
nVidia at least allows for distribution of their drivers
This is the only reason why I switched to nVidia. I don't see how anyone using Linux can support the bad support for Linux from ATI (as compared to nVidia, of course).
As to the card itself, well, I think nVidia and ATI was always close enough :) Sometimes competition works, and ATI & nVidia are prime examples of that.
PS. Please, don't troll me about the free drivers. I want/need real drivers, and not some partial implementation.
I am running a ATI 9600xt and playing BF; Vietnam. Anyone else notice that if you lower the video quality the picture quality is the same but the game play is much better. What gives?
faster than, not faster then.
with ultra shit support.
The fanboy following video cards is endlessly annoying. I own a Radeon 9800, and it was good value for the dollar all around, but quite frankly, the support sucks.
ATI relies on big benchmark numbers over real world results, I guess that's what 'uber pc geeks' want. nVidia seems to cater to gamers by working with developers to make sure games USE all those fancy new functionalities of the GPU. Ie; nVidia's "The Way it was Meant to be Played" program. ATI plays lip service to it with it's "Get in the Game" program, but they don't provide the same support (like sample codes for killer shader effects, etc)
So we end up with TRON 2.0 having really cool glowing effects on nVidia, but flat and tacky looking on ATI. We have soft shadows in Splinter Cell for nVidia, blocky PSX-era crap for ATI.
Hell, I could go on for months listing all the anomalies in actual real-life games I've encountered. Texture corruptions in Tomb Raider: AOD, outright crashes in Halo.
For all the hype around FSAA and anisotropic filtering - just about EVERY GAME I've enabled them for has crashed hard. Unreal 2, Halo, XIII.
Oh, and the worst, the absolute worst, is frame drops to 5fps and worse in CounterStrike when there's smoke onscreen. I mean COME ON, I had a RivaTNT2 that played the game properly. There's no excuse for that, save a piss poor opengl implementation.
So I tried Will Rock, the game whos screenshots were on my 9800's box, and is a member of the "get in the game" program. This ought to SMOKE on an ATI card, right? Almost, awful looking texture corruption in menus, stuttering in-game for no apparent reason (nothing on screen).
Missing proprietary nVidia features is fine, substitute your proprietary ATI features. Just make them stable and working.
I've used ATI forever, they used to be a cut above the other retail level cards. Now they've slipped hard.
This is a case where nVidia will slowly strangle the competition, because the competition sucks. I'd really like to see ATI turn around and focus on the gaming experience, not the mutual masturbation you see on rage3d.com (the unofficial "support" forum) - with a bunch of kids comparing benchmarks and overclocks, with two or three frustrated folks chronically posting for advice on with mishmash of driver files will actually work with Counter Strike.
Anyhow, hooray for leapfrogging nVidia in phony-baloney do-nothing benchmarks. Will this fabulous new technology actually work with games or is this just more MARKETING BULLSHIT for the likes of toms hardware and hardocp to spread?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
My 3d card history goes as follows:
1999: Voodoo3 AGP
2001: GeForce 2 MX
2003: GeForce FX 5200
2004: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Many I know follow the benchmarks and nothing more when buying. The only reason I used to be loyal to nVidia is becaues I used to run linux (ATI has shit linux drivers).
Photos.
/.'ers might want to check out the review. There's a good picture of a 100% polygon girl called Ruby, and we all know that this is the only female most /.'ers ever get! ;)
welcome our NVidia overlords (at least until this afternoon whn ATI respond with something new....yawn)
*Now with hyperthreading lumpy bumpy bobbly engine, essential for word processing*
The ati cards slightly outperform the geforce 6800. Buy either brand and you'll get what you pay for. I'd go with nvidia for their great driver support on windows and linux.
As much as I want to like this card, I fear that they've taken a wrong turn on the path they plan to persue.
As a 3D developer, one of the most exciting things that has come about recently is Shader Model 3.0. It allows you to get greater effects with less operations using some new developments. However, it requires a 32 bit precision. Read more about it here.
ATI has chosen to continue with it's 24-bit precision architecture. While fine for most applications, some of the exciting new developments require this newer spec technology. I'm sure that it will be interoperable, but all that speed may end up being wasted while computing certain operations.
I'm left wondering why I would buy a brand spankin' new card video card when it doesn't support the newest APIs all that well. Oh well, I guess I get to stick with nVidia...
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
I really like the styles on that article for editorial links and sponsored links. Nicely done.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I was a die hard NVidia/Dell fan for years. Click, click I got my nice neat box in two days and watch as my roommates who built their boxes local with cards other than Nvidia chipset have problems. I quietly chortled in my dark room of Tribes while they rebooted.
:)
But over the Christmas holiday, it finally came time to upgrade. I decided to save a few bucks (actually, this was more a mandate from the wife) and build the box myself. This actually meant that I had to do some research instead of the click and ship of my beloved Dell.
Cutting to the chase, I tried my hardest to find an Nvidia card that beat what most reviewers claimed was the cream of the crop, the ATI 9800XT. None really did. That, and I got a free version of HL2. Point, set and match.
I'm one of the converted. I will put my first list together of what I'm familiar with. Then, I'll do the research and see what's the best. The lists may not match, but I'm becoming geek enough to weigh loyalty vs what is best for me. Needless to say, I and the wife have been ecstatic with our little Shuttle/ATI monster and the extra couple hundred dollars in shoes. Respectively, of course
I plumped for an NVidia card for my new machine, but did consider the ATI ones. In the end I went for NVidia because the drivers seemed better supported. My question is, did I miss anyone? Are there any other cards that can run modern(ish) 3D games under Linux?
Unreal Tournament 2004
When I first saw "X800" I thought my eyes were missing "10" in there. I guess they figures 4 digits was enough and decided to start over.
Another thing -- who pays $400 for a video card? I understand being cutting edge, I guess I can just wait a little while until the price drops, even if it means not playing the very newest games. But kudos to those of you that do pay up -- you're driving the PC industry forward, realize it or not.
Now I can play quake at 10,000,000,000 frames per second!
With all the focus on speed and 3d-features that no-one will use for a year, how about the new cards' TV output?
All the cards I've tried so far have had serious problems outputting decent quality video at TV resolutions and refresh rates. Especially PAL seems to be problematic, 720x576@50Hz is not something the drivers have heard about.
This really sucks, as PC's are used in HTPC applications more and more. I recently tested a bunch of ATI video cards, and none of them had good enough quality to watch a DVD on a TV set - interlacing problems were all around.
It seems to boil down to a ps3.0 card with large infrastructure demands (2 slots/big power supply) vs. a ps2.0 card with modest demands (not much worse than 9800XT). This leaves me with questions before I upgrade my 9700 pro.
#1. Will PS 3.0 really matter in games?
Will it be like the nv30, where the new features were near-real-time. Perfect for rendering and art production, but useless for games. Will we see a visual benefit of 3.0 that will be usable in games? If we do, nVidia wins this round.
#2. nVidia Immaturity.
Far cry is the first game that leaves me asking too much of my 9700. Apparently the nVidia card is waiting for some fixes and a PS3.0 path to resolve some visual anomalies in far cry. Some have said the visuals are clean when hacking the GPU ID and running the 6800 as r300, but the performance is barely better that the 9800XT! There is also evidence of hand-coded shader substitutions(with no visual differences) in the drivers. This leads me to believe nVidia has more work to do where it appears ATI has more mature drivers (what a change).
I'm playing wait and see before I upgrade the 9700.
Let me first say that I'm pretty firmly in the ATi camp, but I really want to see better competition than this.
For two generations now, ATi's tended towards smaller, sleeker, more elegant designs, while nVidia's products keep getting larger, noisier, hotter, and more power-hungry. They're tpically more expensive, to boot. Making the decision for which card to purchase right now is an absolute no-brainer.
On one hand, ATi's X800 draw little power, has superior image quality, doesn't take up multiple slots, and is really bloody fast.
Then there's nVidia's 6800 - huge, noisy, hot, crappy image quality, requires a 480-watt PSU, and is slower.
If this is how nVidia's archetecture's going to work, maybe it's time that they stopped paying to plaster their logo on every game-related item on the market, and slashed their prices so they can at least be competetive at a price point.
I'd love to see some program that does "reverse VRAM reclaiming" so those of us who don't need 128mb of video RAM power can get some of that ram back for compiling or something.
Okay... that WAS geeky.
Both cards have their ups and downs. ATI is a tad bit faster, yes, but THG states that the video multi-pixel renderer thingy with NVidia is more technologically advanced then ATI... whatever that means. Ok, I'm no fanboy of either company, I have both cards, so I don't care which I get (though ATI does have one hot chica... that alone might sell me), I just want to know WHEN these cards will be released and how much they'll cost. I don't want the Ultra OMG 1337 xbox huge Nvidia card. I need a new card now, something budget, but not too budget, I still want to eat. When can I get one, and how long do I have to eat ramen noodles for?
Can you please elaborate on this statement?
I'm running 2.6.5 right with Nvidia's drivers on my debian system. I'm having no problems whatsoever. What kernel release are you talking about?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Would have to be a RAIGPU, as Graphics processors are not Disk.
I was talking with people on another board (hardware mavens), and for most of us with a late model card from last generation (Radeon 9800, any of the competing nVidia cards), the X800 really isn't worth it.
A good denominator is fpspb (frames per second per buck, a made up value from Tom's Hardware. For the cash, you can squeeze a lot more out of a $200 Radeon Pro 9800 (especially with overclocking) than you can with anything else right now. You're only talking a marginal difference of fps between this generation and last at high (1600x1200) resolutions, and an almost non-existant difference at "normal" resolutions. The $200-300 extra price premium isn't worth those extra frames.
I don't own very fancy video cards, but I do own both the last generation ATI and last generation nVidia cards. I'm using the nVidia right now as I type this.
Both companies make a great product. I say that only because I don't play games on my computer that require anything higher than a TNT2! I must praise ATI for writing a better driver kit for the Windows platform. Those Catalyst drivers almost make me forget about ATI's old methods for getting your system to work with their hardware. nVidia's drivers are equally as good. Under Windows, there's nothing that anyone should complain about, except for the poor DirectX 9 implementation that nVidia graced us with a while back.
Both cards are good at what they do for me. They provide fast 2D performance, and stellar 3D performance in the games I like to play. I'd love to get Halo looking just right on my box, but when you put it side by side with the X-Box (both output to the same LCD/TV flat panel device), the X-Box simply shines.
As for Linux, we all know where nVidia and ATI stand. ATI needs to be more aggressive with their driver releases, and nVidia needs to start releasing source code for theirs. I presume the only reason that nVidia went down the binary-only road was so that we wouldn't find out how ugly their driver code really is.
The article gives me the impression that it's atleast 20-30% faster. It isn't, and it isn't in all games, the 6800 beats in out in a lot of them too. It's only by a few FPS as well, nothing that you would really even notice playing games either. That's only on Windows and Mac OS X, when you get to Linux, nVidia will kill ATI on every game, no question. Also, feature wise nVidia is king there too. nVidia is still my choice.
Now I can buy a 9800ProXT+ or whatever they are called now for $200 less! Happy days!
/usr/games/fortune
stolen from Anandtech
HardOCP
Ascully
DriverHeaven
TrustedReviews
K-Hardware
Hardware Analysis
Hexus
The Tech Report
Beyond3D
Neoseeker
ExtremeTech
Gamers Depot
Lost Circuits
Firing Squad
Tom's Hardware
Bjorn3D
Hot Hardware
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 10.9). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 12.3). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 14.9). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.4).
How exactly do people come up with model names/numbers for some of this stuff? For instance the X800, sounds like a mix between generic and random.
...now you give me some good drivers and i might go away from NV but as long as your drivers *SUX* ill stick with the goooldnv.
So, ATI's new 12 and 16 pipe (!!) Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 XT cards are coming soon at $400 and $500 each. I suppose in fine ATI tradition we'll soon see the Radeon X800 XT XXX XPXP XFactorX2 card (obviously optimized for HDTV quality streaming porn under Windows XP on Athlon XPs) as ATI decides to test out the theoretical maximum limit for how many Xs one can fit in a product name.
The new ATI cards are said to be faster than NVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme. Of course, I hear rumours that NVidia is countering the ATI X threat by naming their next video card the GeForce 68X10^100 Ultra Extreme Voodoo SuperPowerMax Orgasmatron XPXPXPXPXP (take *that* ATI!) Pro++. NVidia claims this card will be able to render polygons so fast as to actually prepare a delicious microwave dinner in half the time while eliminating 1/3 the fat.
However, it looks as if ATI will beat NVidia to the punch once again as NVidia is forced to let their release date slip due to reported problems of paint (and sometimes skin) peeling off unprotected surfaces directly behind the card's DVI outputs. NVidia says it will ship the retail boxed versions of the card with a special lead coated radiation blast shield.
In related news, NVidia has filed patent applications on its' high performace game wave absorbtion optimizing planar deflector.
Although the X800 cards can now process longer and therefore more complex shader programs than the R9800XT, they are still limited to 24-bit floating-point precision and ShaderModel 2.0.
Lame. This is really just a faster version of ATI's previous-generation card. If/when games start to take advantage of S3.0, ATI owners who spent $400 for this card will not be happy.
Somewhat off topic, but can someone here explain the difference between these high end gaming cards and a workstation graphics card (for Autocad, 3D Studio, Maya, etc). As I understand it, it has to do with how they deal with dedicated rendering windows, but on the other hand, these high end game cards often come with Autocad drivers, and seem to work perfectly fine for the above programs. So why get the latter, and these cards are often $1000+. What are the speed/quality differences?; most game sites don't review these other cards.
Bannerless/click-through-10-page-less:
HotHardware
AnandTech
the meaner looking larger card with enough horsepower to electrocute a small rodent is far more appealing to buyers..
or am I the only one...
did you forget to take your meds?
I WAS an nvidia fan, until they pulled that crap with the lower-end FX series. I still have nvidia cards, but my next purchase will based solely on price/performance, brand notwithstanding.
I'm a (wannable) OpenGL application coder. I can't very much code a game/app supporting the cool features of my video card when the driver sucks. So you won't see good linux games until the cards are better supported... not making the drivers because of lack of 'nix games is a poor arguement.
I don't know about you, but "XT" doesn't sound all that "high tech" to me.
Maybe ATi will come out with these cards next.
Radeon X800 AT
Radeon X800 386
Radeon X800 486
And then they'll run into trademark problems with a certain other semiconductor manufacturer...
Obviously this thing exists only to go after the performance crown, and keep the coolness factor that gets the gamers interested in your product.. The gamers won't buy this, but it will keep them interested in other ATI products.
After another generation or two of cards, they should be able to have similar technology available in a realistic card. One that will not require more power than the rest of your system, or a huge fan to dissipate all the heat.
I would like to see a version that has 1/5 of the 3D performance, but has the video processing capabilities (MPEG2 encode/decode, WMV9 accel, etc.) at 10-15W power.
I don't want to have to retrofit my computer with a 500-watt power supply, and I don't want my video card taking up TWO goddamn slots. :)
The X800 matches or betters the nVidia card while having a lower transistor count and lower supply requirement (350), thereby meaning I can run the damn thing in just one slot!
OEMs are going to balk at needing to suck up two slots when they can just go to ATI and get an equal card that takes up one.
The only different I can see is PS3.0, which ATI chose not to bother with since it won't affect image quality for the next 12-18 months. Makes sense to me.
The difference I see this time (and which I wrote about in a related post here) is that the new nVidia card is a power hog and requires you to buy a new power supply if you don't meet the requirements for its two-slot design. The X800 takes up just one slot while generally matching the quality.
I guess I just see that two-slot, power-sucking design as a huge hassle. I can't imagine how noisy it must be, though I haven't heard it really mentioned in review. But I think the non-fanboys will take a look at the two cards, see that one takes up one and the other takes up two, and go with the one...
Hmmm, I've not had any problems with TV-Out since my GeForce MX4-440. My FX5200 (cheap) card even does the DVD out rather well... I quite often use it to watch movies from either DVD or DivX files.
Of course, the output is NTSC in my case, but it does have a PAL option. If I remember correctly, my old ATI Radeon AIW was fine with the PAL support, even on input.
So I was looking to build a HTPC and the low power of the new ATI line is intriguing. However, this review doesn't comment on the HTPC aspect at all. It says the cards have MPEG 1,2,4 acceleration for encoding/decoding. What about HDTV support? Anybody have any links on this info?
For me, once my card is hitting over 50FPS I don't really care. In fact, for most cards as long as the FPS doesn't such... I don't care.
While lack of chop (FPS) is good, having crisp well-aliased graphics is equally important. We're talking anti-aliasing, curve simulation, particle effects, colour depth, lighting, refraction, etc
Yes, I don't want my game to look like a stuttering 1970's film reel, but neither do I want it to look like a washed-out technicolour movie.
In fact, I'd say that the rendering quality is more important than the FPS. For applications other than games where "realtime" isn't that important... having a realistic rendering is much more important than how long it takes to render it.
FPS-per-buck isn't a bad denominator, but it doesn't cover other overall quality issues.
While it's true that both ATi's and Nvidia's new cards scream, it has to be noted that ATi decided not to compete with Nvidia on quality. The new 3.0 versions of the Vertex and Fragment shaders, as implemented in the NV40, are a stunning advance over the 2.0 shaders in the newest ATi cards.
What stunning advance? ATI chose not to include them because they wouldn't affect anything in the next 12-18 months. They said they'd include them once they became a relevant issue for gaming.
The CEO of CryTek even said there is absolutely no visual difference between PS2.0 and PS3.0 in Far Cry.
All of these limitations, and more, were addressed in the new 3.0 shaders.
I fully expect an X820 XT in the next few months that has PS3.0. The big deal here for me is the quality matching in almost all areas, but at a one-slot, 350-watt requirement. I'm not going to run out and buy a new power supply for a two-slot nVidia card...other than that, the new GeForce is a great comeback for nVidia. But I don't see how it's going to win the hearst of OEMs with its massive power consumption.
I only just heard about this game a month ago (seems I've been lax in following PC gaming in the last few years), but apparently it blew everyone away, and the demo was as talked-about as the shareware version of Doom was way back when.
So I went out and bought Far Cry--I was fucking blown away. CryTek beat everybody to the punch (here's looking at you, id Software), but in addition to have Doom 3 level graphics, had the balls to decide to have massive outdoor tropical island environments with no limit of visibility.
The graphics are not the reason the game is amazing, not by a long shot--but goddamn, the CryEngine is the best out there today. EVERY SINGLE AREA in the game had some sort of "oh my god" moment, whether it was something amazing the AI did, an amazing graphics demonstration, and so on.
What are you going to do with an X800 under Linux? Run gee-whizbang-hardware-accelerated xterms?
The only thing I can think of is Unreal Tournament 2004, which runs fine on current top-of-the-line cards as it is.
I'm sorry, but Linux only has 1% of usage according to Google Zeitgeist...I just don't see it as a priority for ATI, and since they're running a business you should be able to understand that too. They're busy writing the new Catalyst drivers for Windows to take advantage of this card.
That's two words and a number, jackass.
Radeon VS. GeForce, Cost per Frame
*CPF = Cost per Frame
**Per Aquamark 3: 1024, P4 3.2, 1024MB CAS2, i875P
Radeon X800 XT
Cost: $499 (MSRP)
FPS: 57.96
CPF: $8.60
Radeon X800 Pro
Cost: $399 (MSRP)
FPS: 54.89
CPF: $7.26
Radeon 9800 XT
Cost: $396 (Pricewatch.com)
FPS: 47.9
CPF: $8.26
GeForce 6800 Ultra
Cost: $499 (MSRP)
FPS: 62.65
CPF: $7.96
GeForce 6800 GT
Cost: $399 (MSRP)
FPS: 61.3
CPF: $6.50
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
Cost: $365 (Pricewatch.com)
FPS: 50.93
CPF: $7.16
Winner: GeForce 6800 GT
NOTE:
This is ignoring other factors that go into TCO such as power consumption (the Radeons use far less power and may not require a power supply upgrade)
This is based on the Aquamark 3 benchmarks at 1024x768 only. If you wish to gather the mean of the other benchmarks in the linked review to figure a more percise CPF please reply.
Intended to make you think about what your getting when you pay the extra $100 for the top of the line card.
If you were wondering, I'm an ATI fanboy and would personally buy the Radeon X800 Pro if I had $400 to blow.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Can't they limit the release of new kickass cards to once every three years? I can't keep up. I haven't gotten my money's worth out of my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro yet...
Here's what I've used:
Some Phoenix-based VGA card
A Cyrix MediaGX's integrated SVGA card
Some Oak Technology-based VGA card
An i810
An S3 SavagePro2000 integrated card
A nVidia TNT2 M64 32MB
My next card will probably be the nForce2 integrated video, both because the nForce is a great chipset, and because nVidia cards have good Linux support. BTW, ATI's Linux support has gotten better, but I'd MUCH rather have a nV card for their Linux support. On another note, I'm not getting one of these 6800 Ultra Extremes, or whatever they are - my current box is a P233MMX with 96MB RAM and a 200W Baby AT power supply. The TNT2 works FINE.
From the benchmarks it seems as though ATI's offering have the edge over Nvidia for DX9 games. For OpenGL though it's quite the opposite.
So my prediction is that Nvidia will spank ATI on Doom 3 and ATI will trounce Nvidia on HL2. I wonder how much the popularity of the two games will affect hardware sales. Probably not at all.
This means my plan to buy a 9800 Pro or XT this fall for less than 300 are closer to being realized.
No sig for you!!
Ever notice how ATI is becoming more like AMD as nVidia is becoming more like Intel AMD = ATI = Smaller, elegant, and cost effective solution Intel = nVidia = Bigger, power hungry, and costly solution I'm not trying to troll, just noticing how the two vendors appear to me.
I'm still using a Matrox I bought almost 4 years ago. I'm planning to buy a Radeon, but still find a decent Radeon 9600XT expensive, not to mention the 9800XT. Will I be able to buy one of those in a few months for, say, 50% of its current price ?
Ya, playing cutting edge games. I dont know when you stopped following Linux in the news (1996?) but things have changed a lot. My particular poison is Postal 2 but Savage Newerth, Unreal Tournament 2004 and * ID games are all pretty worth while.
Framerates are framerates, no matter what you platform. Just because Linux might only have available ports of 2 or 3 current top selling games doesn't mean Linux users shouldn't care how they perform.
Quack, quack.
I used to be an NVidia guy. I have a dual slot 5900 Ultra right now, and it's getting replaced with a smaller, less power hungry X800-XTPE in two weeks. Power isn't an option since I have an Antec TrueControl 550 supply, but when you take a lot of power which the 6800 obviously needs, you also throw off heat. And in Arizona, computers running hot is an issue.
The X800-XTPE is more quiet bang for the buck than a 6800U.
Re: Why do you need a card that produces games at that high of a res? a) 1024x768 looks like crap on a big monitor. b) If I'm running at 1600x1200 in a game and we're running at each other across a field, I'll see you first. With a decent res mouse you can pluck someone off when they're only 10 pixels wide. c) Because the women love it.
Why does nVidia recommend a 450-watt power supply, and ATI recommends 100 watts less?
The X800 has a lower transistor count and power requirements. How about reading all the reviews and not just Tom's Hardware (who always loves nVidia).
Two slots? Huge and noisy? Forget that. Next.
"Well I am an EE" And you cant spell GEEK without EE!
PS 3.0 offers 32 bit precision and an "unlimited pipeline", vertex textures, etc.,. Here's a good article on the differences.
Let's put it this way, ATI pretty much just doubled the vertex and pixel pipelines and did not change much architecture wise beyond it's last version of cards the R350. NVIDIA's new card is much more innovative actually, but it's questionable whether its timing is right with the current lack of PS 3.0 capable games. Also, a bad omen for NVIDIA is the fact that ATI's PS 3.0 R500 architecture is nearing completion and they have already shown their PS 3.0 cards, if you will.
It's also, unfortunate that these R420 ATI cards still beat the NVIDIA 6800's in a lot of the current benchmarks, despite their superior tech.
I'm sticking with my second hand R350 ATI 9800Pro that O/C's to 9800XT speed now, personally and I'll skip this iteration of cards. The 9800 will do PS 2.0 plenty quick (at a slightly lower res.) for the latest games including Far Cry and Doom3 and HL2 when they come out.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
The reviews on THG show that the 6800 beats the significantly on most tests. On the few occasions where the ATi wins, it's not by much. I find it difficult to understand how the original poster came to conclusion that the ATi is faster.
But more significantly, the ATi card does not make any meaningful improvements over the original 9700 in terms of shader technology. Conditional branching in fragment shaders, for example, really is a required feature these days.
ATi have really missed the boat on this. NVidia's previous generation of hardware had better shader tech (although it was slow). ATi are now 2 generations behind. A lot of people expected more than an overclocked R300. You have to wonder what they've been doing these last few years.
Up to that point, having more text on screen is useful. After that it should start scaling, but doesn't.
There are many game that don't scale well, so your surprise is a function of which games you play.
...they sure have eye-pain-inducing text in their graphs.
People, please. Can we turn the friggin' ClearType off?
Especially within applications (I'm looking at you, Adobe PhotoShop Album 2).
Makes me feel like I have chlorine in my eyes. Agh!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
c) Because the women love it.
;-)
I love you, man!
ATI will offer the X800 for PCI Express.
That IS worth the upgrade.
I bet you live with you parents...
Hell, with that kind of heat, why not just do normal (hot) fusion?
Sun would most likely drag them into court over that one though.
ft
I've got to be free...
...leather babe or hot fairy chick. decisions decisions.
http://endian.net/details.asp?tag=atir500
The R500 architecture will support DirectX 10, PS3.0, with 128-bit precision.
ATI has everything planned out. So it's a situation where nVidia has just come out with their next-generation card, but ATI has just sped up their last card to kill time until the super-high-end card comes out later this year. ATI has yet to reveal their true next-generation card, while nVidia's new generation card is already equalled by ATI's current one with simple feature increases.
I'm running CS on a 9800Pro, and I get way more than 5 fps, and that's with maximum settings... Smoke is never a problem. Admittedly, the performance isn't as good as the windows drivers... but it's very playable, and is far better than 5fps.
BTW, steam runs under the newest version of WineX... it's stable as a rock, and works beautifully.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It's due out Q4 2004, and it will support PS3.0, 128-bit precision, as well as supporting DirectX 10.
:)
This was just to kill time and compete with the new nVidia card. ATI was so confident in its previous architecture it just added new features and sped things up and called it the R420.
So it's not ok for Microsoft to charge $150 or so for an upgrade every 2 to 4 years, but it's OK for Apple the charge $80 or so to add 4 or so new features every year? Double standard? How's about yes.
1. Not as good with OpenGL apps. ....as a side note, my personal opinion is that ATI's Linux drivers tend to trail the Windows drivers.
2. No support for 64-bit drivers, period, let alone Linux 64-bit.
- Hawkeye
P.S.: I don't think I'd buy another 0.13um based GPU.... Those power numbers suck, for both ATI and NVidia! My FX5900 is bad enough!
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
1) There is no such thing as a free ride.
2) They'll never be able to stop the flow of information.
When will they make an adult game title with the babes like "Ruby"? A crying shame these graphics are put to waste on guns and explosions when they could be put to use with big guns and big explosions!
But omit Linux and still get the same answer. For high end game cards, nVidia and ATi are the only ones that are serious. Matrox's last offering was the Parhelia and it didn't do all that well when it was new, never mind now. S3 produces nothing remotely close to high end, and the new XGI just doesn't live up to promises.
Now that isn't to say that some of these cards aren't viable at lower levels BUT ATi and nVidia also have excellent middle and low end offerings.
Linux, Windows, or anything else, you really should stick with ATi and nVidia at this point.
What people are forgetting is, that increased power consumption equals more power outages at lan parties with many people, which sucks big time, I sure wouldn't want to be plugged into the same outlet as 2 people running the latest and greatest ATI or nvidia card, They'd load up a game, and flash the break flips. :(
P.S good luck in tournaments with that crap!
I'm an ATI fan... but how many X's are they gonna put in their names?
... x0r.
Soon ATI will become ATIX with their flagship card being the XX8X XT Pr0
Well... as long as they run fast...
i had an ati vga stereo fx on a 486 sx. combination video card/sound card/mouse port
the mouse port drivers (supplied by ati) would conflict with the sound card drivers (supplied by ati) disabling sound blaster support.
that's still the saddest case of driver malfunction i've ever come across
However, for production-quality rendering - which uses the GPU more as a highly parallel array of FPUs rather than a traditional scanline renderer - PS 3.0's far greater flexibility is a godsend, and so is true 32 bit float accuracy.
My gaming machine (where I want good-looking games and minimal fan noise) has a DX9 Radeon chip, and will likely get upgraded to another one, for the same reasons. My workstation (which demands float accuracy and shader flexibility far more than speed) currently runs a GeForce FX, and will also be sticking with nVidia for the forseeable future.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
usually dirvers issues are result of specific confirgurations in your system - ATI drivers are of top quality now and often exceed that of NVIDIA now.
Ever since the radeon line of drivers ATI has been excellent in their drivers support. It is true previous to that ATI did have poor support (myself though never having any issues and have had more BSOD"s with nvidia drivers)
Did you ever consider it may have been something else in your system conflicting with the drivers -to blow this off and never go to ATI because of this to me is ridiculous. It may have even been a bad card - it does happen.
Also - do you trust a company that is known to "optimize" their drivers to the point of removing entire scenese from games, shadow and lighting sections?
I would ait until some image quality testing comes out to see if NVIDIA has gone to good side as opposed to staying on the cheaters side.
YHBT.
YHL.
HAND.
Why are you complaning about a "gamers" card not having support for this, no support for linux, crap support for this.....
:)
You are complaining about a card thats primary purpose is for gaming - not design - What O/S has brought in the most money - i think we know the answer, unfortuantly - so because of the time is spend developing driver for the platform that will bring them the most finacial benfit - welcome to the world of buisness - i am sure if more devlopers coded for Linux, then support for "gamers" cards would increase - so dont get mad @ ATI or NVIDIA or Matrox - get made at the game developers for not wanting to spend their time on a platform that is ever chaging what seems to be weekly.
last time i checked ATI's FireGl had full support for linux and so did NVIDIA Quadro cards.... So if your a desginer - buy a designers card and stop complaining how your Gamers card lacks OpenGL support for working on 3d renders and other such projects or other features that do not belong in a "gamers" card anyways.
Okay, end of my useless rant
everyone knows PC guys wont talk to mac guys, unless its to make fun on them /im not serious, have a sense of humor
Rember way back when the "harly of video cards"* came out, it had the same sorts of problems, now you can get ones with passive heatsinks. IMHO NVIDA seems to realse what is basicly beta cards into the market and then they tweek them to whats needed.
This meens those willing to take the sharp edge to get the performance now can get there cards and the rest of us can wait 3-4 months for an updated card.
now if only the coudl get there beta cards out on the market a good 6 months before ATI ratner then after they woudl be set =>
* After the cards where fixed, NVIDA relased a hummours view of what was going though there minds when they allowed that monster on to the market.. funny as.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Yeah, the funny thing about the low-end FX cards (like anything below the 5600) is that it's the same shit they pulled with the MX series previously. Why even put FX on the box if it's not even close to a REAL FX card? The MX's are a shame, and the low end FX cards are too, but at least you know that the MX's are different.
The underpowered 5200FX would get smoked by anything from the Geforce4 ti4x00 range. Nvidia, shame on you.
An ATI fan trying to call Nvidia for driver tampering? Way to show just how ignorant you are.
Perhaps you should learn a bit of history before you get all self-righteous. Naw. history is for losers.
I'm going to go play Quark III.
It's been a long time.
LOL i am ignorant, nice that you make the assumption i am an ATI fanboy - sorry, but there you are wrong.
I know the history - again yourself being ignoratn assuming i dont - I am aware of ATi cheating in the past as are many others - when was the last time they cheated - removed shadows / lighting and other scenese from games? - I am also aware of them (ATI) coming out and admitting it and then stopping the "cheating" - NVIDIA how ever did not - when nvidia was accused of cheating they began encrypting their drives and dening everything! that was said - If you are blind to that then the fanboy here is the NVIDIOT.
i own many flavours of cards - in fact more NVIDIA then ATI - my ti4200 and ti4600 ULTRA kick butt - the FX line how ever i can not say the same. I buy what card is worth my money. I would buy NVIDIA again if theire card is superious to ATI - and if they cna earn my trust back and assure me they are not "optmizing" their drives for more FPS and lower IQ.
Before you call anyone an nvidiot, you should check to make sure they're not using a Trident Cyberblade XP al1 16MB video chip. I'm agnostic through the use of a universally inferior graphics chipset. :P
The fact remains that both lied. Only an utter fool would proclaim to the world "don't trust these guys! They're cheating and liars! Go with these guys! They're honest!!" while knowing full well that both companies have cheated and lied on benchmarks in the past. Any way you slice it, advocating ATI as some more honest alternative to the lying/cheating Nvidia is pure ignorance. In fact, I'd consider it MORE ignorant that you hold such a stance after knowing all the facts. Seriously. WTF?
It's been a long time.
poor you - i think i have an old SIS 16mb agp 2x card you can have :) hehe
:)) - then until these recently made accusations (mainly circling around the game FarCry and changing of the .exe name results in lower performance - same trick nvidia tried before) i will be very hesitent to buy an NVIDIA card.
Well, the way i see it - i do trust ATI more then i do NVIDIA - as for the reasons mentioned because when ATI was called out - they admitted it and stopped where as NVIDIA did not and continued with it.
I know every company cheats somewhere to try and get ahead, for me it is more so how they deal with the accusations once caught - for me NVIDIA did not do this very well at all and because of the "possibility" of still cheating or "optimizations" occuring - (but not yet proven and i hope the acusations are wrong as i want a dual DVI output video card
I wish trident / SIS or Matrox could compete with NVIDIA and ATI in the high end gaming market as more competitors would be nice! I am sure those companies wwould cheat eventually, maybe... or not. - any word on the SIS vid card that was supposed to compete with the high end ?
Oh well - my side is i would rather recommend ATI right now due to what seems to be once again a new card with better performance - better IQ and quality, and better performance once AA and FSAA are turned up and less power consumption and space saving (although who uses all PCI slots anyways) Also, ATI has gone a good long time with out doing any "optmizations" to their drivers to give more FPS and less IQ. To each their own in the end.