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sHape oF gReY

Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2003
Location
On the firing line.
Time to upgrade the graphics card. I was hoping to delay this by doing a volt mod on my 9800Pro but that only bought me extra 31Mhz topping out at 463/381. So now I'm using that as an excuise to get a new toy (and the 9800P will go into my wife's PC :p ) .

I havent really been paying much attention to video card market lately so I was hoping you guys could help me out with this one. What would be a better choice at this point ATI's X800Pro or NVidia's 6800GT (or some other card)?

Looking forward to your feedback, positive or not :)

PS My current budget is $450-$500

~cheers
 
GT hands down on vs the Pro, it has 4 more pipelines.

As for XT/Ultra, well thats anyones guess :) they seem to be equal, with ATi with potentially more power because of thier (poor) drivers.

~t0m
 
aNTiChRisT said:
GT hands down on vs the Pro, it has 4 more pipelines.

As for XT/Ultra, well thats anyones guess :) they seem to be equal, with ATi with potentially more power because of thier (poor) drivers.

~t0m

What about the X800Pro being able to be modded(flashed) into X800XT-PEs? Or is it rare to find a modde-able one?
 
I guess the x800pro being moddabele is equal to the GT overclocking to Ultra speeds so its pretty much a wash there. I think most of the VIVO x800's are modable from most of the sites I visit.
 
Nandro said:
I guess the x800pro being moddabele is equal to the GT overclocking to Ultra speeds so its pretty much a wash there. I think most of the VIVO x800's are modable from most of the sites I visit.

I think it's easyer to OC a 6800gt to 6800u speeds, then it is to reliably mod even the vivo x800pro cards.

yet people who talk about pipelines(like in this thread) have no idea just how the GPUs they are talking about...work.

my OCed x800pro card, with it's missing pipes, has the same memory bandwith as a x800xt(pe) and a faster core speed as well.
my 6 vertex engines are running faster then the stock x800xt, and I'm not in any way memory bandwith limited like the x800xt(pe) cards.
my only down fall is the missing pipes, so the x800xt(pe) will crush me in pixel shader instructions.

all in all, I've even beaten a moded x800pro, in some of the 3dmark03 tests when the moded card was running at stock (475/450) speeds...so much for the added pipes.

my point is that even a non moded x800pro is far from a weak card, and has great IQ too.
in more and more games, people are noticing poorer AA and AF in nVidia cards lately....even when the optimizations are turned off.
AA even looks like it stops working half way down the image, with the new 6800 cards.
(I wonder why, most sites don't ever speak about it?)

here are four latest posts that speak about shimmering(cralling)/texture alizing, and poor AA.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16196

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=35592&page=1&pp=15

http://www.mitrax.de/?cont=artikel&aid=24&page=14

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=809448&page=1&pp=20



and some pics and some AVIs as well.

4xAA and 16xAF, and a 6800gt
cocprob1.jpg



6800 ultra
6800.png


ATI
9800.png



also, take a look at the videos on this page.....http://www.oc-zone.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=conteudo&id=87&page=9


notice the banding they are talking about?
this is with max IQ on the nVidia cards, all optimizations turned off. :eek:
and I heared nVidia has gotten better....for shame.

anyway, I've gone way off topic here, and I'm sorry.
if you must, a standard OCed x800pro or a moded card will be far faster then anything you've played on, and give you IQ that in most cases is outstanding.
while I still feel that the 6800gt and ulta cards are great, I'm getting skeptical again about nVidia.


mica
 
Last edited:
I'll be sure to take a look at those links although I cant say I have see any evidence myself. i figured I would have read about it after the extensive reviews on the X700 against the 6600 cards where the x700 had very bad IQ probs and on one site (I'm sure you've seen) the x700 had little dots all over. I wonder why they picked up the x700's IQ and not the 6800's? Surely they ran the same tests. If this is so I have lost respect for many review sites. Fansites have no place reviewing things we spend our hard earned cash on.
 
Nandro said:
I'll be sure to take a look at those links although I cant say I have see any evidence myself. i figured I would have read about it after the extensive reviews on the X700 against the 6600 cards where the x700 had very bad IQ probs and on one site (I'm sure you've seen) the x700 had little dots all over. I wonder why they picked up the x700's IQ and not the 6800's? Surely they ran the same tests. If this is so I have lost respect for many review sites. Fansites have no place reviewing things we spend our hard earned cash on.

one of the reasons I like reviews from the [H] is because they tell it like it is....
I'm speaking about the x700 card (as well as other cards) review.

I too think the x700 cards stink, and if the poor IQ problems are not just from bad drivers, then I would never recamend them.

as for review sites in general, more and more are not being honest in IQ comparisons.....
and many don't even understand or know what to look for.
some are even being soooo dishonest with the public and for that, I dispise some of them.

that's why I prefer feedback from real world owners of the cards.

when a person with a good set of eyes, tells us what he or she is getting with a card, only then do I realise what the true IQ and framerate is like.
I've been getting feedback from many 6800gt and 6800u card users, and most of them are telling me the same things that I've posted here.
in fact, I've been wanting to say something for a long time on this topic.
(yet I also relise that not everone will notice the differance if you put IQ pics head to head, or realy care if there is a differance too.)

yet, after reading the links, looking at the pics, and even watching the 4 videos from the last link.....
why not just send me a PM about your results in many games.
in fact, I might just start a thread on this topic in the nVidia section to get better feedback from users here.

mica
 
I will surely run some tests for you if you let me know what to look for. I probably have one of the highest cllocked GT's areound although I am CPU limited. I would love to get an X800, but I cant find an even trade to swap.
 
Nandro said:
I will surely run some tests for you if you let me know what to look for. I probably have one of the highest cllocked GT's areound although I am CPU limited. I would love to get an X800, but I cant find an even trade to swap.

a reminder, that I'll start a new thread on this in the nVidia section later...I have a few things to do right now.


as for what to look for,
start reading the links that I have up above....
look for what I call AA fall off (you should look for nice pure lines that at the bottom to mid section of the image, then from the mid to upper image it looks like there are some jaggies.).
I gave some good examples of pics above as to wat I'm talking about.
you can't call them FSAA, as they don't do it in the whole pic.


look also for texture crall, shimering, and moreing....
use the movies as a guide as for what to look for.

use any games you like, yet driving games and flight sims will highten the AA problem.
UT2k4 seems to highten the shimering problem too.
you could also try painkiller as it was noted too.
madden or other football games are a great place to look for true FSAA.

mica
 
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