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
6800 ultra
ATI
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.
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