ATi X800 Pro or XT?

[Dark Auro]

Well, after seeing the benchmarks between the nVidia 6800 and ATi X800 I'm planning on getting the ATi X800, but I can't decide if I show get the Pro or XT? What do you guys think? Is the XT worth the extra $100?

 

[blahblahblah]

I would wait a little bit. I don't think the dust has quite settled yet. Nvidia is preparing the 6850. Plus, we have no idea how this ATI beating Nvidia will affect prices. So I would wait a month or two before deciding on anything.

 

[Death.Trap]

I saw some benchmarks someone posted on the UT2k4 forums that showed the 6800 Ultra EXT beating the x800XT in almost every game. I've never heard of the 6800 ultra extreme edition though...hmmm

Here is the linkage: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=378050

 

[Death.Trap]

Also I think that anandtech.com already has a 6850 on hand. They just got the drivers installed and working yesterday, so we should be seeing some benchmarks from them pretty soon.

You know I was thinking. If I went off and founded my own little tech review site, does that mean nvidia and ati and other computer hardware companies are gonna send me versions of their hardware so I can benchmark it? That seems..odd. But if so... mwhahaha

 

[ComradeBadger]

Only if it was a big site, with lots of hits..

I wouldn't buy an XT version of any ATi card

 

[Death.Trap]

I wouldn't buy an XT version of any ATi card

Why not? Ugh, I don't know what card I want to get. There both good..bloody hell.

 

[Skullhair]

Eh, I'm sticking with my AIW 9800Pro for now. I'll wait til the next gen cards come out after these.

 

[thehunter1320]

honestly.. i would get a 6800 Ultra if i were you... i know about the image quality and AA problems... but, PS 3.0!!

 

[Gorgon]

XT is the best so far. I am waiting for the E3 to decide which card to get.

 

[kickass2009]

I am waiting for the E3 to decide which card to get.

Wait untill you see come benchmarks of games that supports the cards features befor you single out any one card company. But at the moment I would but the x800 xt-pe. PS 3.0 might not be much of a use untill dx10 comes out in 2006 or whenever longhorn is released.

 

[torso boy]

I'm waiting for X880

 

[palindrome]

I'm waiting for X10322159

 

[G.Freeman]

I'm waiting for a graphic card I can plug into my eyes!!!!111

 

[ailevation]

Sheesh, we all know you're all rich bastards... purchase BOTH the ATi X800 XT and the Geforce 6800 Ultra just to be safe!

Hmmm if the X800 Pro is $449 does this mean the X800 XT is going to be $549 or $600? If that is the case **** THAT SHIT!

 

[Death.Trap]

Sheesh, we all know you're all rich bastards... purchase BOTH the ATi X800 XT and the Geforce 6800 Ultra just to be safe!

Hmmm if the X800 Pro is $449 does this mean the X800 XT is going to be $549 or $600? If that is the case **** THAT SHIT!

To bad you can't use two video cards at the same time, kinda like running dual CPU's. Man that would me sweet.


I believe the x800 Pro is 399 USD

 

[gulo]

X800 Pro is $399 X800 XT is $499 retail
I will buy X800 myself at cost for $320 at CompUSA as employee
we got nice pre-order boxes today
X800 XT is about $410 at cost btw

 

[gulo]

btw I am using geforce4 TI4200 64 MB , so I am expecting quite a jump in performance

 

[ailevation]

Yeah, sory about the misconceptions, the ATi site is having a "special" online offer where the X800 Pro is $449

https://apps.ati.com/specialpromotion/

Also, the cool thing is ATi's supposedly being released at retail immediately.

"The RADEON X800 PRO, with a suggested retail price of $399, will be powered by a 12-pipe pixel processing engine clocked at 475MHz. A 256-bit memory interface and GDDR3 memory with a 900MHz data rate will deliver unmatched performance in its price category. The RADEON X800 PRO is shipping immediately and customers can purchase it online through major retailers in North America starting today. Customers can also purchase the RADEON X800 PRO at ATI’s online store at www.ati.com."

http://press.releases.filefront.com/130

 

[$pazmatazz]

honestly.. i would get a 6800 Ultra if i were you... i know about the image quality and AA problems... but, PS 3.0!!

I think it's been pretty much confirmed that PS 3.0 is more hype than anything.

 

[Death.Trap]

[SARCASM]My MX420 64MB pwns the x800 and the 6800 ULTRA EXT. Nothin can beat the choppy frames as I play RvS with 4x AA and AF. It's really sad that nVidia and ATi weren't able to top a nearly 3 year old video card. *sigh*[/SARCASM]

 

[Asus]

X800 Pro is $399 X800 XT is $499 retail
I will buy X800 myself at cost for $320 at CompUSA as employee
we got nice pre-order boxes today
X800 XT is about $410 at cost btw

I second that!

cought*Replacement Plan*cough

 

[hyenolie]

youed be a moron if you didnt buy the xt.

 

[Asus]

hyenolie, that's a little harsh and nave.
Some people value what their money can do for them else where in life rather than all in their graphics cards.
I agree the XT is leaps above the pro in some tests and it may be worth waiting for the price to drop like the 9800pro did. But for those who want to save, the X800pro is a good choice now.

Besides, if he got a replacement plan on the card he could just replace it when they don't have the x800pro anymore with the 399$ card that is on the market at that time and can always pay the difference if he wanted to get the top end card.

 

[Axyon]

Only if it was a big site, with lots of hits..

I wouldn't buy an XT version of any ATi card

Uh, yeah, except in this case there's more than clock and memory speeds that differ from the SE, Pro and XT versions of the x800 series. We're talking more pipelines, which are much more important than a simple overclock (also present as well, of course).

Put simply, the x800XT is far superior to its little Pro brother compared to the XT and Pro 9800 versions.

 

[ComradeBadger]

You mean the XT actually is more than a cynical overclock.

Nice

Still overpriced though :/

 

[Maxi]

Yeah, they are always overpriced sadly

Im thinking of upgrading my graphics card this summer and I think i'll get the X800 XT, but i'll ge the pro if I can softmod it to an XT. Since according to techreport (or was it some other site?) the pro version has all the 16 pipes but 4 are just turned off.

 

[ComradeBadger]

I think I'll be sticking with my 9800 until I get my lappy

 

[Maxi]

I don't like laptops personally, they are too underpowered.

 

[Vigilante]

the x800 pro is going at $399 and the XT at $499...read the gamespot hands on exclusive...and by their benchmarks the x800 xt beats the 6800 in everything except 3dmark..and we all know how that is

personally....i'm not going to buy either until PCI express graphics are the norm

maxi-now the alienware area 51 m...that thing is teh shitz

 

[ComradeBadger]

If I bought a lappy, t'would be an Alienware one.

 

[Death.Trap]

I think I'll be sticking with my 9800 until I get my lappy

When you decide to get rid of that 9800, you can ship it my way. =D

 

[ComradeBadger]

Won't get rid of it :E

Will be thrumming away in my desktop at Uni

 

[gulo]

asus: TAP all the way
(almost) free upgrades every year :naughty:

 

[Asus]

asus: TAP all the way
(almost) free upgrades every year :naughty:

:thumbs:
:cheers:

 

[TVR_Fan]

I was planning on a 9800 XT but it could chance to X800 XT for me, also he is info that made me think I want that new breed of card.

ATI launches next-gen graphics

ATI is claiming it has eclipsed rival Nvidia with its latest visual processor, the Radeon X800.
Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President Marketing, General Manager, Desktop, ATI, said: 'With the RADEON X800, the design team has accomplished something that no one thought was possible. Not only have they developed the highest-performing and most efficient graphics architecture in the world, they have done so while maintaining high levels of stability, reliability and manufacturability.'

There are certainly mind-boggling numbers to back up the claims: 16 parallel pixel pipes, six vertex pipes processing more than 8bn pixels and almost 800mn vertices per second.

ATI's board partners, including the likes of Creative, MSI, Sapphire and ASUS, will start rolling out the X800 immediately, as will gaming PC system builders such as VoodooPC and AlienWare.

There will be two RADEON X800 products, the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition and the RADEON X800 PRO, at $499 and $399 SRP respectively.

The former will ship later this month with the 16 pipe chip clocked at 520MHz, coupled to 1.12GHz GDDR3 memory and a 256-bit memory interface. The latter is cut back to 12 pipes running at 475MHz with a 256-bit memory interface and 900MHz GDDR3 memory. It is available immediately.

-----

This is from the offical ATI web site.

To the delight of gamers everywhere, ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today launched its RADEON™ X800 Visual Processing Unit (VPU) which will deliver the industry’s most awesome gaming experience possible on a PC. With the introduction of the RADEON X800, ATI continues its two year reign as the industry leader in high-end graphics for gaming and ushers in a new era, High Definition Gaming. Worldwide system integrators, original equipment manufacturers and board partners are excited to deliver RADEON X800 powered systems and boards beginning immediately.

Gamers using computers powered by RADEON X800 will enjoy a higher performance, immersive gaming experience that looks better than ever before. This High Definition Gaming experience is the PC equivalent to watching a sporting event on an HDTV. This is made possible by the highly scalable and efficient architecture of the RADEON X800 that uses 16 parallel pixel pipes and 6 vertex pipes to process more than 8 billion pixels and almost 800 million vertices per second.

“The RADEON X800 builds on the great success of the RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9800, the most sought-after high-end visual processors in the world," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President Marketing, General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. “With the RADEON X800, the design team has accomplished something that no one thought was possible. Not only have they developed the highest-performing and most efficient graphics architecture in the world, they have done so while maintaining high levels of stability, reliability and manufacturability.”

ATI has used the most advanced technologies available to design and manufacture its new RADEON X800 graphics chips. Using the successful low k .13 micron semiconductor process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., ATI created a scalable, highly parallel and powerful visual processor that is twice as fast as today’s performance leader, the RADEON™ 9800 XT. The advanced fabrication process and leading-edge GDDR3 memory have also enabled ATI and its board partners to deliver high-performance, user-friendly graphics card solutions which will work in customer’s existing PCs without requiring radical and costly power supply or cooling upgrades.

“RADEON X800 is awesome! The speed it can run shaders at high resolutions with all the features turned on allows us to bring Battlefield 2 to life like never before. ATI has done a great job again,” said Torbjorn Laedre and Torbjorn Söderman, Lead Render Programmers, Digital Illusions CE.

The RADEON X800 includes innovative new features that will enhance a gamer’s experience immediately and will help game developers deliver great games for the future. For example, ATI’s new compression technology 3Dc™, will easily allow game developers to create better-looking games by using high-resolution normal maps. Normal maps are used to give characters and scenes high levels of detail without the performance hit that would normally be associated with using high-polygon models. For gamers this means that their games will look better than ever without impacting performance, which is of utmost importance in high definition gaming.

“As soon as we began working with normal mapping in our games, we quickly realized that one of our biggest bottlenecks was going to be the memory usage of un-compressed normal map textures. Up until now, our only options have been to use some kind of low-quality compression, or to cut back on the number and size of normal mapped assets,” said Rowan Wyborn, Irrational Games. “With 3Dc, we finally have a high-quality compression solution that gives almost perfect results, with 4:1 savings in texture memory. This will allow us to put much finer detail into objects than we could previously and increase the number of normal mapped assets we can put in our games without blowing our texture budget.”

“Ritual Entertainment will use ATI’s new 3Dc normal map compression technology to double the detail in our next generation game environments,” said Doug Service, Director of Technology Development, Ritual Entertainment. “Thanks to ATI, we can now create normal maps with twice the amount of detail that use the same amount of memory as our original uncompressed normal maps. This will lead to an outstanding increase in visual fidelity for the characters and the entire scene. Ultimately, what ATI’s 3Dc normal map compression technology means to gamers is more highly detailed game worlds and a more immersive game play experience.”

The RADEON X800 builds upon ATI’s success delivering visual processors for the high-end gaming and computer enthusiast market. "Currently nearly 80% of high-performance DirectX® 9 graphics cards shipping are powered by ATI's visual processors," said Dean McCarron, Mercury Research. "The new RADEON X800 series visual processors demonstrate ATI’s continued focus on the high-end segment of the PC graphics market."

ATI and its worldwide board partners will offer several configurations of graphics boards based on the RADEON X800 chips. Board partners that will be shipping RADEON X800 products include ABIT, ASUS, Celestica, Club 3D, Connect 3D, Creative, Diamond, Elsa, FIC, Gigabyte, Hightech Information Systems, Info-Tek, MSI, Sapphire, Tul, VisionTek, Xpertvision and Yuan.

System Integrators including ABS, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Velocity Micro, VoodooPC and ZT Group will include the RADEON X800 in their systems for customers who want the ultimate gaming PC.

ATI will offer two RADEON X800 products, the RADEON™ X800 XT Platinum Edition and the RADEON™ X800 PRO through retail, system integrator and OEM partners.

For the competitive gamers who demand the best performance bar-none, the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition will be powered by a 16-pipe pixel processing engine clocked at 520MHz. To take advantage of the massive pixel processing power of the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition the product has been paired with high-speed 1.12GHz data rate GDDR3 memory and a 256-bit memory interface. The RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition will ship later this month with a suggested retail price of $499.

The RADEON X800 PRO, with a suggested retail price of $399, will be powered by a 12-pipe pixel processing engine clocked at 475MHz. A 256-bit memory interface and GDDR3 memory with a 900MHz data rate will deliver unmatched performance in its price category. The RADEON X800 PRO is shipping immediately and customers can purchase it online through major retailers in North America starting today. Customers can also purchase the RADEON X800 PRO at ATI’s online store at www.ati.com.

 

[hyenolie]

hmm. my post sounded to personal, it was ment to be general.

cmon, remember how we thought 9800xt would run hl2 without problems. it seems the x800xt will run hl2 twice as better as the 9800xt. hell with the 9800xt, im getting x800xt.

 

[gulo]

here we go

 

[oD1Nz]

Im thinking of upgrading my graphics card this summer and I think i'll get the X800 XT, but i'll ge the pro if I can softmod it to an XT. Since according to techreport (or was it some other site?) the pro version has all the 16 pipes but 4 are just turned off.

I've already asked an ATI employee about this - apparently, they're now using a different method of disabling pipelines.

You can see for yourselves, here.