Radeon X800 XT or GF 6800 Ultra ?

[Smith|]

That was about ATi's use of brilinear filtering (a mixture of bilinear and trilinear), it was brought up by die hard nVidia fans to put some dirt onto ATi, but was found out that nVidia ALSO uses the same method of mixing the two, but ATi's version of it produces a better, clearer, image. So the whole thing was null and void.

And about 6800's "more room to overclock," this isn't true. The 6800 is comprised of over 220 million transistors, over 50 million more than the x800 series due to support for PS3.0 and VS3.0. This many more transistors causes imbalances and more heat to be generated, which is why the 6800 is only clocked at 400 Mhz for it's core and the slightly overclocked extreme addition is only 40 mhz more on the core.

An overclocker had to use dual cascade cooling to bring the temperate of the core down to -98C to get a 600 Mhz clock on the core. Stock cooling can get you maybe 40-80 Mhz on the core for a 6800 Ultra, stock cooling can get you 80-120 mhz on the core for a x800 pro/xt. The highest clock for a x800XT is ... I believe... 750-800 Mhz set by Macci, one of the best overclockers in the world at ATi's presentation of the x800XT to show the massive overclocking limits of their new card.

 

[Phatslugga]

You guys mentioned the HL2 bundle for ATI... it's void now? I can't get it for free when it comes out? If so... that pisses me off.

 

[Smith|]

Oh, if you have the free hl2 thing you can still get it, just they won't put anymore with their cards anymore.

 

[Tassadar]

I had heard it expired, could be wrong, check for an expiration date or something lol.

 

[Smith|]

They won't expire. ATi has just stopped shipping them with their cards due to HL2 being pushed back to eternity.

----------------

Also, some new news. nVidia has developed a connection between 2 6800 Ultra's of exact model so that one renders half the screen and the other renders the other half. This allows, theroetically, 2x the performance.

They ran a benchmark on 3dmark2003 with the linked 6800 Ultras and it scored 21k. 21k in 3dmark03 is unbelievable =0, but with the immense power requirements of just 1 6800 Ultra, 2 may be hard for a lot of people to hook up. Plus, you're looking at a thousand dollars for this performance.

 

[Soleyu]

Alienware is making an interface for their machines that will let them hook up two different cards together which will make each one render half the screen, the cool thing about this is that its not limited to only two, If I remeber corectly, you could hook up to 16 cards together. Talk about overkill.

Anyway, you also have to think for what will you be using the cards, if you are planning on doing video editing, then go with the ATI, if you just plan on playing games, then either one is fine, although I would get 6800 just because Im a Nvidia freak, and also because I dont plan on changing cards often, so with PS 3 and VS 3 I ca at least know that I will be able to play a year more or so.

But you should wait for the PCI Xpress cards, now those will be cool.

 

[GaZeeBo]

well look at what i did

i went to google and i put
"i installed my x800 and lost my fingers"
and
"i installed my 6800 and lost my fingers"

and for the x800 i got 114 hits.
for 6800 i got 486 hits...
so i guess ill go the for x800

hehe but seriously im more of an ati fan so im going for ati.
dont know much about geforce.

 

[Tassadar]

ATI may have the better hardware, but their driver support has consistently been in the toilet. For that reason alone, I'd always go with an NVidia.

As much of an nVidia fan I used to be, that's not true. ATi drivers have gotten better and better since people started *****ing.
If I had to choose between the 5950 and the 9800 Pro I would go with ATi, because the difference in FPS is worth me betraying my favorite company. However, in the case of the next gen cards a few frames isn't worth me backing out of the only American company in the market. I have the PSU for it, so I could careless.

*edit*
Just realized how old this thread is. Meh.

Alienware is making an interface for their machines that will let them hook up two different cards together which will make each one render half the screen, the cool thing about this is that its not limited to only two, If I remeber corectly, you could hook up to 16 cards together. Talk about overkill.

Anyway, you also have to think for what will you be using the cards, if you are planning on doing video editing, then go with the ATI, if you just plan on playing games, then either one is fine, although I would get 6800 just because Im a Nvidia freak, and also because I dont plan on changing cards often, so with PS 3 and VS 3 I ca at least know that I will be able to play a year more or so.

But you should wait for the PCI Xpress cards, now those will be cool.

16 Cards? Doubtful, very, very doubtful (can you say 2,000+ watt PSU? Yeah, that'll only cost seventeen million dollars, if they existed.). Dual GPUs is called SLI by nVidia, old news, as I've posted it above (one month ago).

Gaz: That was an old IRCSpy article.

 

[Soleyu]

According to Alienware you can hook up to 16 cards, of course this is all theory, I dunno how that would work and besides you would need a really big case in order to house all those cards, and power would also be one hell of a problem. What really caught my eye was the fact that you could connect two different cards together, so you can connect a 6800 amd a 9800.

And BTW, the term SLI was originally used by the Vodoo cards, so it is in fact REALLY old news. And It also is a ripoff by Nvidia to be using that term.

 

[Tassadar]

It's not a ripoff at all. It's not a bad idea. Look at Unreal 3. Just about nothing can run that game as is now. Multiple GPUs may be needed in the future of gaming, people are starting to measure models by millions of polygons, not thousands.
And since 3dFX is dead, it's completly legal to take the name. You'll also have to point me to the place that says you can hook up ATi/nVidia mix, it makes no sense whatsoever, I highly doubt either companies would agree to letting that happen. Through logic I can guess 16 cards is just not possible, that's a LOT OF POWER needed.

 

[GaZeeBo]

Tassadar what was an old IRCSpy article ?
if i just did something lame then dont get pissed or something lol because i just made this upmyself ... didnt know something like this had been done before lol.
thought it was kinda funny

 

[Soleyu]

Yeah I know its not a bad idea, many games now just cant run with one card, take
Doom 3 and Farcry for example (ever try to play Farcry on 1600 x 1200, my pc dies on me and its not exactly old). About the Sli comment, yeah well what the hell, as long as the cards work for me I dont have any complaints, ripped off or not. Just thought it might help ppl out on their anti-nvidia crusade.

And Gaz, lol.

 

[owa]

I've always prefered ATI... No real reason, I've just gotten better results on computers. All of my friends, including myself swear by ATI...

Just choose whichever you think is best. The poll clearly states that most of us rather ATI. It is all preference...

 

[Devion]

Soleyu it aint a rip off,

Nvidia bought 3DFX so its 100% legal

 

[Judge]

I would take ATI since i'm a bit of an ATI fanboy, however not that much that I would kick my PC if it has a GeForce, it's like 51% ATI and 49% Geforce. so it wouldnt matter at all for me if I didnt have a choice. however I do now and it's ATI

 

[Tassadar]

http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Eat that ATi. Heh. Goes to show you most of the people that play Steam have an nVidia card

Of course that doesn't make them better. Just pointing out that the poll of this thread doesn't make a difference.

 

[owa]

http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Eat that ATi. Heh. Goes to show you most of the people that play Steam have an nVidia card

Of course that doesn't make them better. Just pointing out that the poll of this thread doesn't make a difference.

That's like asking how many people use condoms... People use them, but they don't really want to.

 

[imported_Pemalite]

Well going by the doom III benchmarks the new NVIDIA Card seems to be out in front. for the time being. When Half Life 2 is released we may see another shift in the power struggle, but NVIDIA has one thing over ATI at the moment, and that thing is called SLI - the same technology that 3dfx used in their venerable Voodoo 2 Cards.

Alas even though the Geforce FX had crap-tastic Pixel Shader Performance, people still baught the cards. possible hoping for driver enhancements... and on another note, I refuse to turn over to ATI because, of their Ugly drives, and Nvidia have alot of alternatives that I would rather go for.

 

[The Cheese]

Not sure why but when I watch anime that I have "backed up", it looks better on my PC thats running an ATI 9800 Pro than my other PC with a Geforce 5700.

 

[Soulicro]

ya know what, until theres some drastic different between the two, it doesnt really matter since theyre that close to eachother. either one is a kickass card, and either one will last you 2-4 years. i chose ATI since the demands for the 6800 Ultra are a lot higher (cooling + power) plus ATI is cheaper... not that big of a deal.