ATi Launches X800

[CAG]

In two flavors: X800 Pro ($399) and X800 XT Platinum Edition ($499). The inevitable "ATi X800 vs. nVidia GeForce 6800" wars have begun and the enthusiast sites and fanboy forums will be flooded with comparisons. If any of you guys snag one of these powerhouse cards (ATi or nVidia), we'd like to hear about your "real world" impressions.

CAG

[Dark Man X]

I'm probably getting the 6800 Ultra in a few weeks... Well, I'll just have to see the reviews for both... Whichever is better, I'll probably end up getting the X800 XT though... Blah, I'll see!

Either will go great with my 2001FP that I'll recieve at the same time...

[firstadopter]

You are a lucky man Dark Man. :) Either card will be an awesome combination with the 2001Fp guaranteed. I wish I could get one too, but my budget doesn't allow it.

[TheAngryIntern]

cool, i was wondering when ati was going to announce their new card. I just got a 9800XT recently, when my 9700 pro died, so I think I'll keep that until PCI Express and BTX and DDR2 come out and are stable!! Thanks for the update, CAG

[Dark Man X]

Nevermind, I'm taking the X800 XT... Just finished reading the benchmarks... Damn that this is fast! Both are pretty even though, but since the X800 has a slight lead on upcoming games such as D3 and HL2 (as well as the current Far Cry, all the details on high at 1600x1200 at 50 something fps!!! OMG.).

So, the X800 it is. My system should be arriving in a few weeks hopefully. YIPPEE!

[firstadopter]

Good choice, it's the one would make. Here's a link to what the X800 can do. Real-time demos and pictures:

http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx800/subsite/index.html

The direct links to the real-time demos are also on the FirstAdopter main page.

[Low Roller]

I see the x800's having a small lead in benchmarks, espesially DX9 with hi-res and eye candy cranked.

Where the X800's shine is efficientcy. Taking up one pci slot, 1 molex connector, while using less power than the 9800XT, the x800XT is very impressive.

I think the 6800u will be faster with DOOM3 as it will be OpenGL. The benches where the 6800's out class the x800's are the OpenGL games. Ati says its a driver problem, not the card. We shall see.

LR

[CAG]

Wonder what ATi's going to do for its PCI-Express encore in a couple of months? You gotta figure that ATi will want its PCI-X offerings to perform as well as the X800 series cards.

[arogan]

Maybe they will add PS3.0 support. Very odd that they left that out while the 6800 has it.

Sure I understand the reasoning....there are no ps3.0 games for the foreseeable next year and by then ati/nvidia will be on the next generation part.

[CAG]

Originally posted by arogan
Maybe they will add PS3.0 support. Very odd that they left that out while the 6800 has it.

Sure I understand the reasoning....there are no ps3.0 games for the forseable next year and by then ati/nvidia will be on the next generation part.

This quote from Anand Tech's review of both X800 cards:

"The bottom line is that R420 has the potential to execute more PS 2.0 instructions per clock than NVIDIA in the pixel pipeline because of the way it handles texturing. Even though NVIDIA's scheduler can help to allow more math to be done in parallel with texturing, NV40's texture and math parallelism only approaches that of ATI. Combine that with the fact that R420 runs at a higher clock speed than NV40, and even more pixel shader work can get done in the same amount of time on R420 (which translates into the possibility for frames being rendered faster under the right conditions)."

Full review here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=1 , and

This quote from Beyond3D's review of the X800XT P-E:

"While the scalability speaks well of R300’s initial design, you might think the lack of Shader Model 3.0 support doesn’t speak so highly of ATI – seeing as the Shader 3.0 specification had resided, unchanged, in DirectX9 from its introduction you’d probably be forgiven for thinking it would be supported by ATI with R420. From the software perspective ATI’s position is that the vast majority of developers are hardly pushing the limits of Shader 2.0 yet, not for titles in 2004, and even many developers who are working to much longer timescales now, and hence they feel there is still a fair bit of headroom in both what can be done with Shader 2.0 and educating developers on shaders in general. Should developers be providing Shader 3.0 code in the short term, ATI feel confident that their ISV team will be able to provide Shader 2.0 alternatives that have the same output and without loss of performance – so they say."

Full review here http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r420_x800/

ATi is smart. It'll introduce Shader 3.0 if and when its necessary (can't wait to see what its PCI-X offering will be). Until then, it has a card that is overall at least as fast as nVidia's best, is smaller, consumes less energy and produces less heat than even its previous cards. I'll go with the smart folks every time.

EDIT: Just came across this @ driverheaven.net...an OC'd X800 XT P-E on a water-cooled OC'd P4 rig...check out these scores http://www.driverheaven.net/index.php?action=view&articleid=13239