repaired link

Bummer I was planning on buying a x1800xl or x1800xt, but I mean AoE3 isn't the only game I play and 45+ FPS is still pretty healthy for that resolution and AFx16.

Read their conclusion at all?

"The R5x0 pleased us particularly due to the new graphics features included. It doesn't exceed the nVidia competition but only comes close to matching it, however we'll gladly sacrifice a little speed in order to be able to play with a much better image quality. Besides, this surely will not be the end of the race for the Radeon X1k-Series, and its speed will only improve with future software driver releases. We are already strained on the final product solutions of the manufacturers!"

A few other points:
1) The ATI cards didn't have the Catalyst 5.10a driver installed, which bumps the speed considerably.
2) Their test was ran with THE DEMO, not the game.
3) Only anisotropic filtering was tested. Which, as everyone knows, highly biases the test to Nvidia cards. If AA and HDR (an additional 10-15% overhead each) were turned on the numbers would have leaned instead to ATI. Which is why Far Cry performance is usually superior for ATI.

1)the new cats for the most part only increase performance in doom3 and only with 4x AA
2)the demo will still give you performance numbers that are still in the ballpark
3)you can't have AA and HDR

the aoe3 section is the most relevant part of the article as most people here are most interested in aoe3 and not as much in other games...

[This message has been edited by Chris27 (edited 11-02-2005 @ 08:25 PM).]

Quote:

You mean nVidia can't.

LOL ATI better then Nvidia? LOL

It's like buying a PC333 RAM instead of PC400 RAM, new technology which ATI doesn't have and they cannot compete whatsoever with anything better then a 6800 Ultra.

Sorry, but there's no such thing as PC333 or PC400. There's only PC2700 DDR333 and PC3200 DDR400.

Next, the difference between them isn't "newer technology", it's just a speed difference. There's hardly any groundbreaking difference between those two types of memory modules. Now, a proper example of difference in technology among RAM modules is between DDR and DDR2. Even then, most users and reviewers will tell you that there's not a lot of difference to be seen 99% of the time.

Also, please be kind enough as to enlighten me, which key graphics texturing technology is the ATi X1 series lacking in? I'm really very misinformed, sorry.

well for the most part, their whole new lineup is non existent. so you can say they lack all the new stuff like sm3.0

-edit
anyway the x1800xt is already beat before it is even released
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27428

if a regular 430/1200 256mb gtx already beat the xt in most things... what do you think this will do?

[This message has been edited by Chris27 (edited 11-03-2005 @ 09:02 AM).]

I don't think anyone is stupid enough to buy a video card just to run a single game!!! AOE3 is not the only game is it? It was a botu time Nvidia came out with something good! They got their butts kicked with almost every AGP generation by ATi.

I'm not a fan boy of any brand, so I will buy the best card there is when I'm in the market for one, since I don't have PCI-E i just bought a X850 XT PE, which is the fastes AGP card that will ever exists. When I upograde my PC with a new one, then I will buy the best card there is at the time, it won't matter if it's Nvidia or Ati.

And are you actually quoting the Inquirer as a source???

[This message has been edited by pablovi (edited 11-03-2005 @ 01:07 PM).]

Quote:

6200>x300
6600>x600
6600gt>x700
6800>x800
7800>x850
7800>x1800

when you take into account availability and price, nvidia has really beat ATI for the past two years. sure ATI releases an xtpe that will beat what nvidia has, but in reallity their top end cards just turn out to be vaporware.

(edit) btw the above is talking about at release, for example the 6800gt>x800pro, although the x800xt did take the performance crown, you could not get it anywhere or had to pay $800+ (although the 6800 ultra was not that available either, availability was considerably better compared to the xt) to snatch one if a store got limited quantities.

[This message has been edited by Chris27 (edited 11-03-2005 @ 05:50 PM).]

Chris27 is a TOTAL fanboy.

Don't bother asking him questions. You already know his answer to everything is Nvidia.

In fact, he's now kinda going over from being a fanboy to a marketting shill.

Isn't Nvidia selling enough graphics cards that they don't need to send out marketting guys to all the game discussion boards to shill for their company? Can't they let people make up their minds for themselves instead of having to shill, shill shill all day? Maybe if they lowered their prices they wouldn't have such a hard time selling their cards that they need to shill to people on the internet this way...

[This message has been edited by Innovan (edited 11-03-2005 @ 03:14 PM).]

I don't know from where you get your numbers, and I'm not an ATi fan, i just simply bought the 9800 XT becase it was the best card at that time.

http://pablovillegas.com/varios/image004.jpg

http://pablovillegas.com/varios/image005.jpg

http://pablovillegas.com/varios/image008.jpg

And I just bought a X850 XT PE because thast the best AGP card ever. And no one can deny that.

http://www.3dxtreme.net/index.php?id=atix800xtpevsevga6800ultra8

If when I decide to upgrade my system, the best card at the time is nVidia I will buy it, but so far it has not been the case.

[This message has been edited by pablovi (edited 11-03-2005 @ 03:58 PM).]

Guys, its not about DX8 performance, or OpenGL, it's AOE3.

Remember Doom 3? Made for one card brand, said brand mops floor with competition when demo'ing Doom 3.

Same deal.

If you have a wide variety of games in mind you intend or have to play, there is certainly reason to include ATI as a potential upgrade.

For this game (and Doom 3), you are not going to beat Nvidia.

ATI has something like twice the bandwith or something for SM3 and HDR, and it can run HDR and AA at the same time, unlike Nvidia. Also, Nvidia is running on updated, revised and optimized drivers, there aren't even any legit drivers created specifically for the x1K series. Also, the X1K series OC very nicely, and when the BIOS are updated, you will be able to push it a little further. And I'm not a fanboy of either company, those are bare facts. Virtually, the only topics Nvidia wins in is price (which will surely change over time). Those benchmarks are biased and rediculous.

I have to admit that Chris is an expert in............humour rofl. Have u seen ANY benchie of x1800xt and 7800gtx? With HDR and AA nvidia is nowhere to be seen, while the x1800 family tops 7800 series. Ati doesnt have technology? The only thing that ati doesnt have is good driver support. The have 512bit memory bandwidth, higher corespeeds, and the lack of 8pipes isnt hurting them at all. I saw a 7800gtx sli, and i wonder what will a 1800xt crossfire do? Unfortunately, there arent that big monitors to strain such a combo.

yes I have seen the benches. the 7800 beats the x1800 in all opengl games. It also beats the x1800 in most other cases except when a lot of AA is applied where the x1800xt will come on top. the 7800gt beats the x1800xl in the majority of the tests. you can buy a 7800gt for $300 but an x1800xl is $390. you can get a 7800gtx for $400 while the xt is just starting to trickle into stores at $600+.

Quote:

yes it is a plus that ATI can do HDR and AA, and also that they have the higher quality AF, but then again their cards also fall under the "nowhere to be seen" category if you know what I mean

I think you are the one that hasn't been reading reviews. Several well respected review sites have actually gotten really pissed off at ATI because of their paper launches and the crossfire fiasco. ATI may claim to have the fastest card right now the x1800xt, but it is 3 months late and ATI is having problems producing them in enough quantities.

I am hardly a fanboy. I want both ATI and Nvidia to perform well as competition is good for the market. I am hoping that ATI will fix their problems with the r580 and give nvidia a run for their money, but as of right now ATI is hurting.

Even if ATI is able to flood the market with x1800xt's, they will have this to deal with http://www.theinq.com/?article=27428. That should force ATI to lower the prices on the x18xx lineup to stay competitive (which is good for us but bad for them ) and ATI will not make much of a profit from the higher end r520's. Nvidia's 7800gtx on the other hand, has gone 5 months w/o any competition and has given them a lot of market share and lots of $$$. ATI may know how to make fast cards but Nvidia is pwning them in marketing.

Quote:

actually nvidia has been pretty good on their prices. there was no price gouging on the 7800's and they were available the day of launch. the gtx also fell in price pretty quickly, it dropped over $100 in just a couple of weeks. Nvidia could have kept the prices up if they wanted to as r520 was delayed and people would have still bought the cards.

if you won't take my word for what to buy then check out this thread at futuremark
http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=techdisplayadapters&Number=5670429&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1&vc=1
or do some research of your own

[This message has been edited by Chris27 (edited 11-03-2005 @ 06:12 PM).]

>For this game (and Doom 3), you are not going to beat Nvidia.

See, there I disagree with you. Every screenie I've seen with Bloom on with nVidia cards just looks like someone smeared vaseline all over the screen. I'm holding out hoping that ATI's version of HDR doesn't look quite so... vaseline saturated.

But I'm also holding out because my year end bonus that will be purchasing my next system doesn't come until... year end. :-)

Innovan:

It's funny you mentioned that, actually the bloom effect in HDR is just like when you use a diffusion filter in Photography, and before such filters existed they smeared vaseline infront of the lens to get that effect. I don't think it looks bad at all, but I would hate it if that's the way every game will look. Every game should have a different atmosphere, so HDR is not for every game, just like movies have different aprochoes in cinematography.

Game designers and speically the ones in charge of lighting please don't include an option for HDR in every game!!! THe lighting in Doom3 was magnificent and it didn't needed the Bloom effect, Doom 3 was supposed to be a dark game with effective lighting and the bloom distroys that.

[This message has been edited by pablovi (edited 11-03-2005 @ 10:09 PM).]

well everyone is entitled their own opinion, but I like the oversaturated look of aoe3

Quote:

I'm afraid that's not true, especially the comparison between the 7800 and the X850, which isn't a fair comparison. They're from totally different generations.

I don't know about the others, but I'm not saying that nVidia isn't good. The fact is, they are. Their recent announcement of a new killer, the 7800GTX512, will totally own the X1800XT with its ~580MHz core and ~1800MHz memory clocks. They're also on the ball and don't have a lot of delays, and I like that.

However, I cannot stand it when people downplay ATi's quality to show how great nVidia is. ATi is not lacking in anything except punctuality. =/ Their delays are making me fed up. Other than that, I see no problem with it, and I think it'll still stand as a powerful competitor for nVidia. No way we're going to let the latter form a graphics card monopoly.

Quote:

fair or not that was the best ATI had for a long time when the gtx came out. and btw the x850 series was a refresh of the x800's. nvidia did not have a refresh. according to your logic the 6800 series should not compete against the x850 series? street price and availibity is what determines what competes against what, not what its "supposed" to compete against.

[This message has been edited by Chris27 (edited 11-05-2005 @ 10:54 AM).]

I was saying that a comparison between the 7800 and the x850 is unfair. Pick on someone of your own size, they always say. Let me quote you again:

Quote:

7800 > X1800 isn't really true. You're just making a sweeping statement. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Same for your statement of the 6800 being better than the X800. 7800 > X850 isn't a valid comparison as I said, and it's darned obvious to everyone that the 7800 will easily beat the X850. What's the point of telling us this?

Next, it's not as if the X1 cards are never going to come out, so stop the ATi-bashing. Your arguments are all solely based on the lateness in arrival of their X1 cards. It's plain silly to compare two things of vastly different quality. Obviously the X850 can't stand up to the 7800. As I said, the X1 cards will come soon. Let's see you argue again then.

Silly nvidia supporter, just be objective, altho for the next 2-3 months 7800gt/gtx will be more price competitive.

yes as soon as the x1xxx cards drop down in price and are widely available (especially the xt) things will change, but as of now that isnt the case (I am talking about the present as that is what counts now). why nvidia is on top right now is because the r520 cards were delayed and the yield problems ATI had. I am not saying that they are bad cards, just that nvidia's on time hard launch really screwed ATI up this round. If ATI was able to launch these cards late July like they first planned, things would be a lot different now.

There was a short sale on newegg for the x1800xl for $349, but now it's $369. Still, better than the old price of $389. The x1800xt has been sold out since minutes after it went up for sale, newegg restocked, and the same thing happened.