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ATI X1800 CrossFire Cards Reviewed
AnInkle writes "ATI finally joins the Christmas party. If money is (virtually) no object and high-end 3D animation is part of your game, you'll want to check out The Tech Report's review of the ATI X1800 CrossFire card before spending your green on the green team. From the review: 'This new CrossFire card also sweeps away some of the limitations of the first-generation CrossFire hardware introduced just a couple of months ago, allowing mega-high-res gaming.' Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true, it would mean that this CrossFire graphics subsystem would arguably stand alone at the top of the graphics benchmarking mountain."
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3668
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Conclusions
A Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire rig is mighty fast. Also, it's six degrees Fahrenheit outside right now at my place, and I've enjoyed the room-warming benefits of CrossFire and SLI systems throughout the preparation of this review. My mind boggles, though, when I try to consider the value proposition of plunking down $1200 for a pair of graphics cards and roughly $200 more for the motherboard. Could a pair of Radeon X1800 XT cards in CrossFire be a better deal than two GeForce 7800 GTX 512s in SLI?
Yeah, I suppose so, especially with GTX 512 prices currently in low-altitude orbit. I do have my reservations about CrossFire, including the hassle of dealing with external dongles and the iffy I/O performance of CrossFire motherboards that use ATI's SB450 south bridge. Still, CrossFire performance generally scales well enough from one card to two, and I said in my initial CrossFire review that the long-term success of this solution would hinge on the quality of ATI's new GPUs. Turns out that the Radeon X1800 XT is a very desirable graphics card that matches the GeForce 7800 GTX feature for feature and adds a few new wrinkles of its own, including finer threading granularity for Shader Model 3.0 and the ability to do antialiasing with high-dynamic-range rendering. The Radeon X1800 XT trails the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in overall performance, but Radeon X1800 CrossFire may hit the streets at prices as much as $150 lower per card than the 7800 GTX 512. (Radeon X1800 XTs are already widely available at $599 or less.) In the rarefied air of big-money graphics subsystems, that potential $300 price difference--if indeed it develops--could make a Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire system a, uh, er, uhm, solid value.
Yeah, I said it.
It's bitchin' fast, at any rate.
Don't go buying a Radeon X1800 XL card, however, expecting to add a Radeon X1800 CrossFire card later if you care at all about value. Dropping a $599 CrossFire card into your system and lopping off half of its RAM and much of its performance potential isn't the brightest of moves. That solution sacrificies too much, in my view. You can get a dual-graphics solution involving a Radeon X1800 XL, but it's far from optimal. Perhaps in the future, if prices drop dramatically on the Radeon X1800 CrossFire Edition cards, teaming one up with an XL could make some sense. That seems like a shaky prospect to me, though.
How would an improved Nvidia 7800 leave ATI at the top??? Unless I'm mistaken (and I'm not) more RAM is better for a GPU, making the 7800 with 512MB insane. The only way this works out is if the GTX is the lower end 7800, but even then it's impressive to have 512.
I am Spartacus
Notice how the author acknowledges that "the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is practically otherworldly." Doesn't really sound like there's any argument to be had.
My work here is dung.
ATi works with linux great. There's an internet myth that "If you use Linux, you must use nVidia", and it's nonsense. Just like the "Azureus is useless because it's Java" myth. Or the "Redhat is the best distro for nubs" myth, but thankfully I think that one's finally evaporating.
At a cost of $1200, you're better off getting an XBox 360, a PS3, and the new Nintendo. You'll probably have a couple bucks left over for lunch. Just way too uch money for the average Joe. But I bet some uber Slashdot users already have them :)
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/you can already get high end GPUs, since ATI and Nvidia supply GPUs for Macs. Now that the high end Macs have PCI-e, they can use the same 7800s or Quadros a PC can. Their the graphics platform, so not releasing a high end card for OS X is unwise.
I am Spartacus
The GTX 256's perform at or near the X1800XT's (looking at the linked benchmarks). These cards will cost you at least $400 less for a pair, use a single slot design, run cooler and quieter.
**(And yes they now support Linux in SLI).
http://www.kubuntu.org/
No, it doesn't work great.
;(
ATI's drivers are painfully unstable, there are lots of ways to hardlock a linux system with ATI's buggy shit drivers. An easy one is to use xinerama and kdm, at least from my experience. A whole lot of features of standard X11 drivers are missing (Composite, for example) and the performance is still a good 30% slower then it is on windows. The regular unaccelerated drivers from Xorg are way faster for regular 2d rendering and support all the usual features.
You call that great? Its fuckin not. ATI's linux support is -improving slowly-, but it is improving. But there is no way its great, or even good. Or even mediocre. It sucks. Binary drivers *SUCK ASS*, and I hate having to put up with them for 3D acceleration
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
...then you have no frame of reference and should probably not speak on the subject of ATI's Linux support. If you own a laptop and want 3D hardware accelleration on Linux, nVidia's generally your only choice. You MAY be able to get particular ATI cards to work with a whole lot of headache, but with the nVidia cards you have a sure thing and can be comfortable knowing the company ACTUALLY CARES whether or not you can use their hardware effectively on Linux. For me it doesn't make that much of a difference when I do laptop shopping. Restricting oneself to machines using nVidia cards SEVERELY limits your choices, and all of the 3D games I play are Windows-only. However, nVidia does support Linux FAR better than ATI, especially for mobile computing.
One of my regrets in life is all the money I wasted on new CPUs, RAM and video cards (remember the Diamond Monster 3d? the GeForce 3? The Radeon 9700 OEM?) back in the 90s just to play the latest games. And all those hours reconfiguring config files to squeeze the last resources available.
I wish I had all those hours back, and all that money. I never got my money's worth. I still have a Radeon 9700 OEM in a PC downstairs. Granted it's got a better picture for watching movies on TV than my GeForce 3, but still, what a waste. What I don't get is why my parents or girlfriend-then-wife never set me straight. I guess they thought I'd be happy.
sigh. if only I'd spent those hours working on my career. if only i'd saved that money or spent it on cool experiences i could look back on
"Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true..."
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28227
"[Nvidia's next-gen card] is expected in early February and Nvidia is already playing with these cards."
So it would suprise anyone that they would discontinue the old card when they launch a new high-end card? Why is that a 'rumor', it is common sense.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
But is it possible that the reason Nvidia is discontinuing their high-end card in February of 2006, is because they are releasing a NEW card that will probably trounce anything ATI has out.
Just a thought..considering that it seems about time for Nvidia to release a new GPU in the next 3 months or so.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Everyone who thinks otherwise may come over and get them shitty binary drivers (and their evil companion, the installer) to run on my 64bit SuSE 9.1 (a lot of that is probably due to SuSEs directory changes, but without fucking docs from Ati there's no way to correct this). One of the reasons I still keep a WinXP install, otherwise I would've gone wine long ago.
Gladly, there's the R300 project (not usable, but on the way...)
If you skip down to the section on motherboards, they show that SLI isn't even remotely worth it.
Please help metamoderate.
Now that the high end Macs have PCI-e, they can use the same 7800s or Quadros a PC can
Is this really true? I though Mac video cards (regarless of the interface) had to have big-endian support as well as the ability to enumerate on the Open Firmware device tree.
Macs have had "standard" (electrically, anyway) AGP cards since the Graphite G4, but I know I've never been able to run down to Fry's and stick any old 8X AGP card into my G5. This will probably change with Intel Macs, but as for now, I don't think any old PCIe card will work, will it?
I just love the way that the guys at nvidia refer to this ATI technology. It's not CrossFire, It's MissFire.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I wish there weren't idiots out there who'll pay £370 for a graphics card. That way these companies wouldn't be able to charge the exorbinate prices they do and I'd be able to afford one!
I know EXACTLY how you feel. Just the other day, I saw a BMW M3 drive buy, and thought the exact same thing. It's not fair that people will pay for luxury goods! By doing so, they deprive the lower classes of the same goods! High-income consumers have a responsibility to the lower income classes to only by cheap things!
Wait a second, I just remembered - if no one paid the price they were asking for this good, they would STOP MAKING IT. The price of marketing and production wouldn't suddenly drop to accomodate the fact that no one's willing to pay that much.
The definition of the word "crossfire" as it pertains to a physical object:
A short circuit between two spark plug wires on an engine which causes a cylinder to fire at the wrong time, or causes more than one cylinder to fire at a time. It is a BAD THING (tm).
Now, it is perfectly normal that Chrysler pick the same word for one of their new cars, truth in advertising and all that. But the people at ATI don't want to have a name associated with a malfunctioning ignition system.
Holy crap, batman, any of these SLI/Crossfire modes will need quite a robust power supply. Even at idle in those configurations they'll pull about 150W, but when in max use can draw over 400W of power! I guess playing high-end games these days also comes with a big hit to your electric bill. Cripes! People might need to get a second job just to play games.
today is spelling optional day.
I think this has more to do with drivers than anything else. Gaming companies are reluctanct to spend any time on driver development / optimization for Mac when the vast majority of the market use Wintels for gaming. This is actually Apple's fault for releasing underpowered home computers for the last 3 years. Hopefully this will change with Apple's switch to Intel (I own a Powerbook and a Mac Mini, both of which would run games like garbage no matter which video card was installed because the CPU is way too slow).
The problem may be that all 60 driver developers are sub par.. but having worked at a contract house that created custom drivers for ATI chips, I can safely say that with the hardware register references that were given to us by ATI, I was amazed to even get the video card to switch resolutions properly. The engineers doing the hardware over at ATI might be awesome, but they can't document worth shit!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Considering how video cards have recently overtaken CPUs in complexity, I don't think they're charging too terribly much. Not only do you get more transistors in a modern GPU than a Pentium 4, but also 256-512MB of GDDR3 RAM. Granted, this sort of power isn't necessary for a lot of people. That's why both nVidia and ATi offer cheaper versions of their flagship cards with similar capabilities, only slower. For example, the GeForce 6200 and the Radeon x300 are both decent gfx cards that are available for around $50.
I wonder if ATi and nVidia even comes close in terms of profit margins on GPUs as Intel does on CPUs...
If people stopped paying the premium price they currently pay for bleeding edge technology, (which drops in price in however many months when ATI or Nvidia make the next 'breakthrough') they wouldn't artificially inflate the prices in the first place.
It is hard to get excited about bleeding edge graphics cards, because ATI and NVidia refuse to publish their register sets so people can write good free Linux drivers. I have programmed ARM, Blackfin, and PIC processors. In all cases the registers are exhaustively documented and there are thriving communities of experts trying to get the most out of them. Your $600 video card's drivers were probably developed by a team of 4. Is the code any good? You will never know. Thanks for nothing ATI and NVidia.
an ill wind that blows no good
Um not to put too fine a point on it but I think the point was made that Nvidia *might* stop making the 7800 in which case it would be all alone at the top of the heap. In this situation which was described had you read the article was the point being made not at the moment, but perhaps shortly, as long as nvidia don't come up with something better in the mean time.
just a thought, might have been a better idea to read closely.
Nah, PC is a cheap hobby. An uncle of mine used to collect model trains. They are just pieces of plastic with an electric motor yet cost as much as a top of the line GPU.
Should I talk about people that follow their favorite soccer clubs to other countries? 12 hour drives just to sit on a plastic seat and back again? For that matter just a pair of concert tickets to a mainstream band. Thank god I don't like them because I am not plunking down the price of a mobo to stand among teenagers.
Once you become an adult and get a real job you will realize that you will have money to burn (provided you don't get kids who will burn it for you) on your chosen hobby. For some that is gaming.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's called credit, and loans. ;-)
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
A pair of these ATI X1800s may cost less than a pair of 512MB GeForce GTXs, but nobody buys the 512 MB GTX for SLI, it's way too expensive. You can get 95% of the performance at 50% of the price by just buying a pair of 7800 GTs and using SLI. There is no game out there that a dual 7800 GT SLI system cannot run at any res, with full graphics turned on.
If you read any of the enthusiast sites, they back the 2x7800 GT in SLI as the best top-end rig. It basically comes down to the fact that dual 7800 GTs are so fast, you gain no noticible performance benefit from using 7800 GTXs.
What we need is a system where a governmental body can set a maximum price on all consumer goods, and then use their powers to force the various companies to continue to produce said goods in the event that the set price provides no incentive to produce the good.
Or do you have a better idea? I'm not too sure mine will work, and I'm tapped.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Amen Brotha!! So I have a good job, no kids, low mortgage, and I still get crap from my coworkers because I spent $500 on a video card. But no one blinks twice when a coworker spends that much for a cable for his winch on his 4wd, or the guy who spends that much on a Koi for his pond, or the girl who spent that much for 1 day of skiing. Nor the guy who spends three times that much per month for child care! PC gaming is relatively cheap hobby.
Given that ATI and NVidia are both on my "do not buy under any circumstances[*]" list, it seems like a case of measuring the non-reflectivity of pots and kettles to me! :)
[*] Actually, there is a circumstance under which I'd consider them, but I refuse to hold my breath waiting for a full source-code release to either company's drivers or even a full spec release.
Bingo, we have a winner.
There have been a few Mac/PC cross-platform video cards over the years, but all of these have accomplished this by having two BIOSes, one for Open Firmware and one for the PC BIOS.
With the Intel Macs, at least in the dev kits, it is just a matter of drivers, and the current builds have at least partially functional ATI drivers. No nVidia drivers yet though...
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true, it would mean that this CrossFire graphics subsystem would arguably stand alone at the top of the graphics benchmarking mountain."
So... if nVidia couldn't make/supply video cards (the rumour is that 7800GTX's are in short supply due to high demand), then ATI would have the fastest video cards...
Freakin' genius rocket scientists we have doing article submissions around here.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
They are, specifically on NVidia hardware. Gelato.
NVidia care about this kind of market, hence they have WORKING OpenGL drivers, something ATI done care about (even though they like to claim OpenGL 2.0 functionality without even supporting the base requirements in hardware!)
So, submit your own.