The X800 is here

[Chode]

why is everyone getting so worked up. they're just stupid videocards. use what you want. end of story, right?

Precisely.

Sometimes i wonder if they're trying to convince other people or convince themselves.

[BananaMan]

why is everyone getting so worked up. they're just stupid videocards. use what you want. end of story, right?

Amen brudda. :yes:

I don't plan on buying either of these cards, I'm very happy with my ATi Radeon 9800 Pro at the moment. I'm going to wait for the next generation of cards to come around, or at least a revision. However, if I was forced to buy one it would have to be the ATi, just because I'm still a bit burnt from bad nVidia experiences and ATi have pulled through so well with the Radeon 9500+ cards.

adamp2p: For goodness sakes, stop trolling and let it be! I'm as much as an ATi fan as anybody, but yeesh. And remember, a definition of a review is not a statement of pure facts and nothing else, a lot of personal opinion goes into the mix. The truth is both the nVidia offering and the ATi offering a very very good, and that neither would disappoint. By the way, Kyle Bennett has always been a bit biased towards ATi (and has admitted so, with good reason but nonetheless), so keep that in mind.

[adamp2p]

Amen brudda. :yes:

I don't plan on buying either of these cards, I'm very happy with my ATi Radeon 9800 Pro at the moment. I'm going to wait for the next generation of cards to come around, or at least a revision. However, if I was forced to buy one it would have to be the ATi, just because I'm still a bit burnt from bad nVidia experiences and ATi have pulled through so well with the Radeon 9500+ cards.

adamp2p: For goodness sakes, stop trolling and let it be! I'm as much as an ATi fan as anybody, but yeesh. And remember, a definition of a review is not a statement of pure facts and nothing else, a lot of personal opinion goes into the mix. The truth is both the nVidia offering and the ATi offering a very very good, and that neither would disappoint. By the way, Kyle Bennett has always been a bit biased towards ATi (and has admitted so, with good reason but nonetheless), so keep that in mind.

Last time I checked (this morning) THIS THREAD IS ABOUT VIDEOCARDS!!!

What else would you expect to find in a thread ABOUT VIDEOCARDS?

[adamp2p]

Precisely.

Sometimes i wonder if they're trying to convince other people or convince themselves.

@Chode: You just can't admit defeat, can you?

[BananaMan]

Last time I checked (this morning) THIS THREAD IS ABOUT VIDEOCARDS!!!

What else would you expect to find in a thread ABOUT VIDEOCARDS?

http://www.mcbriens.net/liam/img/smilies/wedgie.gif

You don't say. :rolleyes:

However, this thread is NOT about adamp2p nay-saying and shoving his opinion down everyone's throat. Go figure!

In answer to your question, in a thread about videocards, I would expect to find people expressing ther views (not enforcing them like you), and discussing the technology.

[adamp2p]

You don't say. :rolleyes:

However, this thread is NOT about adamp2p nay-saying and shoving his opinion down everyone's throat. Go figure!

In answer to your question, in a thread about videocards, I would expect to find people expressing ther views (not enforcing them like you), and discussing the technology.

Poor baby! :pinch:

[adamp2p]

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/6800x8.../conclusion.htm

Conclusion

Let?s start with the Geforce 6800 Ultra, its one hell of a fast card. There are some tests/game engines where the 6800 Ultra just streaks ahead of the X800 Pro at 1600 x 1200 ? such as Painkiller and Prince of Persia. Testing wasn?t without issue though, which was strange ? even for a reference design board. Zero Hour had the texture issues, Shadermark wouldn?t run and Max Payne wouldn?t work at maximum settings. In our opinion the Zero Hour bug will be easily fixed however in the case of Max Payne it may be that the maximum settings of 8xAA 16xAF will never work at 1600x1200. This does raise some concerns over using this mode in future games, will it become more un-useable as the use of video memory increases?or maybe you?ll require the 512mb 6800 Ultra to fully utilise it. If it?s a case of the later then the question of will it be useable from a playability point of view? Our ?Maxing it out? section showed that 8xAA and 16xAF just didn?t provide playable frame-rate?s on the games we tested. Looking at the AA/AF results overall shows that weak AA/AF performance may be an inherent design issue in the NV40. The hit taken when enabling 4xAA 8xAF really hampered our card when compared to the R420 card. Even in benchmarks where the 6800 Ultra was well ahead of the R420 without AA/AF enabling both allowed the R420 to match or pass the 6800 Ultra in performance. The move to rotated grid multi sampling is has however resulted in much improved IQ over the last generation of Geforce product and it?s now much harder to choose which brand of video card has the best IQ.

The X800 Pro was a surprise to us in terms of just how fast it was. Considering it has a four pipeline deficit over the 6800 Ultra the card still keeps up and in some cases surpasses the Geforce. Testing went really without issue, all games we tested ran with no display concerns and the card was completely stable. It seems that the drivers are mature enough , even at this stage, that you can go out and buy a R420 based product aWhere the NV40 core receives a major performance hit when enabling Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering the R420 core has no such issues. The performance penalty received on the R420 is minimal resulting in games which maintain playable frame-rates at higher image quality than even the top end NV40 model. The fact that the X800 Pro manages to outscore the 6800 Ultra with AA/AF enabled in most cases further enforces the excellent AA/AF performance. It was also nice to see the X800 Pro maintaining playability in Farcry, one of the most demanding games available even at 1600x1200 when 4xAA and 16xAF was enabled. Our sample was an excellent overclocker, and providing your cards manufacturer uses decent memory there is no reason why you couldn?t achieve the same levels of performance when overclocking, an additional bonus.clocking, an additional bonus.

There have been some rumours circulating around the past week over the core/clock speeds for the 6800 Ultra. We asked Nvidia about this and they confirmed that the 6800 Ultra reference speeds were still 400mhz core and 550mhz memory in 3d use however partner companies can choose to clock their boards higher if they wish. Based on our overclocking experience it would seem that a 50mhz increase on both core and memory will be about the maximum most partners will aim for. This will certainly improve results however it will only make the 6800 Ultra more competitive with the X800 Pro, the X800XT (read our review here) will still be a fair amount faster than the 6800 Ultra when AA/AF is used. This is the realYes both the X800 Pro and 6800 Ultra are fast, yes they give good image quality by default however with cards this fast you really need to enable at least 4xAA and 8xAF to get the full benefits of your purchase. At these settings thThe X800 Pro is a clear winner. 00 Pro is a clear winner. ro is a clear winner.

[adamp2p]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=22

Final Words

I don't think anyone thought the race would be this close after what has been going on over the past couple years with ATI and NVIDIA. Clearly, both camps have had their wins and losses, but it is safe to say that ATI comes out on top when it comes to DX9 and PS 2.0 performance, NVIDIA leads the way in OpenGL performance, and NV40 and R420 split the difference when it comes to DX8 (and older) style games. Even though we haven't yet seen the performance numbers from NVIDIA's 6850 Ultra part, it is likely that there will be a price premium that goes along with that performance. On top of that, the 6850 is really just an overclocked 6800 Ultra part. We will take a look at the issue further when we are finally able to run some numbers.

It is very clear that both NVIDIA and ATI have strong offerings. With better competition in the market place, and NVIDIA differentiating themselves by offering a richer feature set (that doesn't necessarily translate into value unless developers start producing games that use those features), consumers will be able to make a choice without needing to worry about sacrificing real performance. Hopefully we will be able to say the same about image quality when we get done with our testing in that area as well.

Of course, we are still trying to gather all the pieces that explain why we are seeing the numbers we are seeing. The problem is really the amount and level of information we are able to gather is based on how the API maps to the hardware rather than how the hardware does things.

The two rather large issues we have encountered when trying to talk about hardware from the software's perspective are the following: it is easy to get lost when looking at performing tasks from slightly different perspectives or angles of attack, and looking at two architectures that are designed to accomplish similar tasks obfuscates the characteristics of the underlying architectures. We are very happy that both NVIDIA and ATI have started opening up and sharing more about there architectures with us, and hopefully the next round of products will see even further development of this type of relationship.

There is one final dilemma we have on our hands: pricing. From the performance numbers from both this generation and the previous generation, it doesn't seem like prices can stay where they are. As we get a better feel for the coming market with the 12x1 NVIDIA offering, and other midrange and budget offerings from both NVIDIA and ATI, there will be so much overlap in price, performance, and generation without a very large gap in functionality that it might not make sense to spend more money to get something newer. Of course, we will have to wait and see what happens in that area, but depending on what the test results for our 6850 Ultra end up looking like, we may end up recommending that NVIDIA push their prices down slightly (or shift around a few specs) in order to keep the market balanced. With ATI's performance on par in older games and slightly ahead in newer games, the beefy power supply requirement, two slot solution, and sheer heat generated by NV40 may be too much for most people to take the NVIDIA plunge. The bottom line is the consumer here, and its good news all around.

[adamp2p]

http://www.gamers-depot.com/hardware/video...ti/x800/005.htm

Getting games to really push these cards can be quite a challenge, we had to start enabling a lot more features like Anisotropic filtering and Anti-Aliasing so the games wouldn?t be more CPU bound than GPU bound.

After looking at the benchmark results, it?s not hard to conclude which company has the faster GPU. What may be hard to decide, however, is whether or not you believe you?ll keep whatever video card you buy long enough to have SM3.0 be an issue or not. Even so, the NV40 inherently prohibits itself from many end-user PCs, especially the Small Form Factor owners.

Secondly, the cooler-running R420 is a lot more forgiving in a wide variety of hardware configurations - this issue alone will be a major reason why ATI has a greater potential of getting major design-wins from OEMs.

3Dc, while cool, is not enough of a breakthrough technology to get us ultra-excited about the X800. It?s the sheer, unadulterated power of these cards that fuels our lust for faster graphics, which amounts to more fluid games that turns our crank. Keep all the fancy, unused features if it means giving up horsepower. If ATI can prove it can build a high run-rate of X800XT cards, then the high-end will surely be clinched by them. The part that gets tricky for ATI is the mid-range; it?s where a lot more money is made and also where NVIDIA can be a extremely aggressive with cards like the 6800GT.

Only time will tell if leaving out SM3.0 was a poor choice by ATI in favor or raw power. Even though we?ve heard mixed reviews, You can be assured that if NVIDIA can sell enough NV40?s, publishers will start being more forceful in making sure games support it ? after all, both developers and publishers want their respective games looking and plIf you want a hotter card that requires more power and doesn't perform as well under most benchmarks, just for the sake of SM3.0 then go ahead and snag a 6800 Ultra - If, however, you want the most insanely powerful graphics solution for games of today, runs cooler, works with "normal" power supplies then ATI has your mealticket. mealticket. [/i]ticket. [/b]et. Q.E.De]

Q.E.D ;)

[adamp2p]

http://www.bjorn3d.com/_preview.php?articleID=457&pageID=725

Performance Conclusion

If you were a bit dissapointed in the leap from Radeon 9700 pro to Radeon 9800 Pro or Radeon 9800 Pro to Radeon 9800XT then you will be extremely happy with the performance leap of the x800 XT. The 8 extra rendering pipelines as well as increased VPU and memory speed really helps the x800 XT to simply crush the Radeon 9800XT. If you could play at 4x AA and 8xAF on the Radeon 9800XT and get good framerates you now can play at 6xAA and 16xAF and still get higher performance. Impressive? Definitely. Since I couldn't test the 12 pipeline x800 Pro in time for this preview I cannot say to much about its performance more than that in theory it will still perform really good compared to the Radeon 9800XT.

IQ at a minimal cost

Pixel and Texel fillrate of up to 8.4 Gigapixels/sec, up to 37 GB/sec of raw bandwidth and 12 or 16 pipeline architecture are the key features when it comes to X800 performance. Due to its sophisticated 0.13-micron Low-K dielectric process, very efficient GDDR3 memory interface and superior pixel shader architecture (12 or 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex units), RADEON X800 easily doubles (x800 XT Platinum Edition) the performance of its high-end predecessor ? RADEON 9800XT.

There is no doubt in our minds that the new RADEON X800 from ATI has just raised the image quality bar. By introducing Temporal Antialiasing, this technique brings in huge quality enhancements while keeping performance cost at zero. This is truly a step forward when it comes to programmable Antialiasing architecture. As with R3xx design, X800 offers full trilinear texture filtering by default along with up to 16x Anisotropic Filtering. When combined, the video output is phenomenal keeping the performance hit at minimal -- in some situations none-existent because of X800?s superior fillrate.[/quotConclusion

[With the x800 Pro and XT Platinum Edition ATI has brought up a pair of impressive products. If there is something one could complain about is that the cards really do not have any new exciting features and that they basically still are R300 on crack. I don't necessarily think that the lack of PS3.0 will affect this generation though and the performance increase itself is enough to have any serious gamer wanting it. Any price-concious gamers should take a closer look at the Radeon x800 Pro which should perform excellent while be a lot more affordable. [/i][/b]

The x800 pro should be out as you read this at a suggested retail price of $399 and the x800 XT Platinum Edition will be out on the 21st of May at a suggested retail price of $499.

ATI>

[jerry]

adamp2p, relax we all know the clear winner. Even the Nvidia fanboys know it deep down in the hearts and refuse to accept it no matter how hard you or anybody tries.

But you have to admit that competition is good for the consumer (us) so we dont want Nvidia getting its ass kicked sooo much that it goes down the 3dfx road. Lets just hope there is good competition and we get good performance cards such as these (R420 & NV40) rather than just overclocked cores + optimized drivers.

[Krudomanic]

I agree with you and understand what you?re saying... The day when 3DFX bowed out and handed the company over to nvidia we lost a great piece of the GPU market but, nvidia brought it back from the brink... ATI has always been in the background waiting for the right moment to pounce and kick nvidia up the butt. None of us want to see nvidia go down the same road as 3DFX but clearly ATI have produced one hell of a card...

Let just wait for the benchmarks results from 6800 and the X800... then we say who is going to be the best...

[adamp2p]

Let just wait for the benchmarks results from 6800 and the X800... then we say who is going to be the best...

The benchmark results are already available. That is the problem!

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

im still having a slight problem with the people who are saying the ATi X800 "ownz" the Nvidia 6800, and furthermore taking quotes from sources only showing the X800 favorably... so I am doing my own post, simply taking quotes from the Harware Analysis Website Article... my point is to take these quotes and screenshots and paint a different picture than what others are choosing to tell on here. i am not saying I agree with it or not, but showing how one can easily just take snippets of information and make one card look better than the other...

and please note, I am taking 1600*1200 screenshots and using them as reference because if i am going to spend more than 400$ on a video card, I damn well expect that card to be able to play games at a high resolution like 1600 * 1200

Unreal 2004

At a 1600x1200 resolution we see the GeForce 6800 Ultra pull ahead though, it is 11% faster than the Radeon X800 XT. When we enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering we see that both cards take a performance hit, at all resolutions. We also see that, for some reason, that at a 1280x1024 resolution the Radeon X800 XT suddenly leaps ahead by 6%, but then quickly loses ground at a 1600x1200 resolution where the GeForce 6800 Ultra leads by 15.6%.

Far Cry

Far Cry is without question the most demanding game available today. Don?t expect to play this game at high resolution with all graphics options turned up unless you have a very fast PC equipped with one of the latest graphics cards. Furthermore it is able to make full use of the new features found on both the GeForce 6800 Ultra and the Radeon X800 XT, which makes this game unique, as most games are programmed for a previous generation of cards, we can only hope Crytek started a trend. Far Cry shows us that the GeForce 6800 Ultra pulls slightly ahead, especially with the new 61.10 driver Nvidia just released, the old 60.72 driver had a bug which resulted in pretty bad anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering performanceIt goes without question that both cards are able to render up to 1600x1200 resolution with more than sufficient frame rates, only when we enable anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering performance drops with the GeForce 6800 Ultra taking the lead with a performance gap of 15.5% at 1600x1200.b>

Benchmarks Conculsionb>

As for the benchmarks those went over without a hitch, we didn?t run into any driver issues or anything nor did we see any image quality issues, or at least not something that?s clearly visible. As mentioned further analysis is needed to figure out whether both ATi and Nvidia render all scenes fully and without using shortcuts that adversely affect image quality. What is important to note though is the fact that the ATi drivers are more mature than Nvidia?s, simply because the R420 is based on an older architecture and thus the drivers don?t have to be rewritten from the ground up. We expect the performance for the ATi architecture to increase somewhat though when new drivers become abut we think Nvidia will be able to extract more performance from their drivers as they maturemature

have a good day all

[jerry]

We expect the performance for the ATi architecture to increase somewhat though when new drivers become available, but we think Nvidia will be able to extract more performance from their drivers as they mature.

have a good day all

You mean like this:

Thanks CarpeDiem for pointing this out.

:p Just meant to poke fun at Nvidia nothing else. :whistle:

[adamp2p]

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=517

Impressive... That one word sums up ATi's new Radeon X800 XT and Radeon X800 Pro Graphics Cards.? These new Radeons delivered on every marketing bullet ATi had in their slide-ware, and then some.? We were witness to 2X the performance of ATi's current generation product, which was historically the watermark to which all others were measured.? We were also witness to these new Radeons handing, NVIDIA's new equally as impressive GeForce 6800 Ultra a lesson in performance in leading edge game engines like Far Cry, Splinter Cell, and Halo.? At first glance, after running the GeForce 6800 Ultra through its paces, we weren't confident that ATi could pull if off quite frankly, but they have and in a big way.

The Radeon X800s are significantly lower profile and lower power that NVIDIA's top shelf 6800 Ultra card.? They require only one power source and don't require you to upgrade your power supply to a 480 Watt unit, like NVIDIA's 6800 Ultra product does.? NVIDIA's new 6800GT, with its single slot, single power connector design, that also doesn't require a beefier power supply, is a lot more compelling frankly and it could very well be NVIDIA's sleeper product of the year.? Regardless you've also got to hand it to ATi for overall design elegance allowing lower power along with 2X the performance of their previous generation.? Occasionally, it seems, you can have your cake and eat it to.

We would like to spend a bit more time with Temporal AA before we cast full judgment on it but it works and with what looks like zero performance impact, at twice the effective sample resolution.? We're more interested in seeing what Centroid sample AA can do in future DX9 releases but for now, this tides us over nicely as well.

And the Ruby demo... Holy mackerel what tech demo... And she's mighty easy on the eyes.? She's just polygons though -All told, this time around, things are bit more nip and tuck for ATi and NVIDIA but again, it looks like ATi comes out on top.? We'll save one caveat with respect to the X800's lack of PS3.0 support.? If PS3.0 becomes mainstream in game engines before ATi's next product launch, it could spell trouble.? On the flip side, if you can create a demo like Ruby and run it exclusively on PS2.0 hardware, we're left wondering how long the road ahead is for PS3.0 adoption.adoption.[/i]tion.[/b].

Regardless, in the end, ATi and NVIDIA will still most likely be hard at it, no matter where the road ahead takes us, driving cinematic quality rendering to We offering a hearty congratulations to ATi here on the launch of their X800 series products.? They've raised the performance and image quality bar once again and it's all good. all good.

I can't seem to find an article that declares Nvidia the leader! Please lead the way if you will...

[adamp2p]

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/revie...XJsX3BhZ2U9MjE=

R420 is what NV40 brought to the table in terms of performance, amplified, especially at its maximum AA mode. My 'ohmygod fast' exclamation on the second page really doesn't do X800 XT justice, it utterly obliterates anything that's gone before it when maximum respective AA modes are enabled, current 6800 Ultra included.

While NV40's 4X RGMS mode allows it to save some face, it's generally not enough face to matter. ATI's 6X mode is superior in quality and just as usable in performance, and on these newest generation accelerators, that absolutely matters.

It's the fastest and best looking graphics card on the planet, bar none.

Lack of support for Shader Model 3.0 is something we can't evaluate in any strict sense so the jury is still out, but my gut feeling says it doesn't matter. Only the inability to do vertex texturing is something I think will end up mattering in the future. In the here and now, at launch, Shader Model 3.0 is a marketroids checkbox at best.

Temporal anti-aliasing, while not the most usable feature in the world, has a lot of merit technically and has the potential to afford you never yet seen levels of AA image quality. The best news is that it can be enabled on R3x0 hardware too. I'm hoping for a functional driver interface for the feature, to enable it on a per resolution or per game basis.

While we didn't take a look at an X800 PRO, it looks like the card for the masses if you're impressed by X800 XT performance. This brings me on nicely to the scalable architecture ATI have designed with R420. The PRO is a 12 pixel pipe design, versus X800 XT's 16 pipes, with performance mostly comparable until it gets tough and resolutions get bumped up. NV40 has a similar design, a 12 pipe version of NV40 powering the non-Ultra, so the consumer wins when choosing a new accelerator at the high-end and mid-range price points.

Then we come on to its form factor. You simply cannot ignore small PCB size, lower than 9800 XT power draw, no need for two power connectors, single slot cooler profile and cool running. You can run an X800 XT or PRO in a Shuttle XPC and that's all the confirmation you need of its excellent engineering.

It's impressive in every respect, from performance to form factor and image quality in between.

Price and availability define things from now on, it's now a race for both ATI and NVIDIA to get cards to retail.

[letsmoo]

I beleive the reason that nvidia 6800 beat ati in unreal 2004 is that nvidia was working closely with the making of unreal 2004. So the game is more optimised for nvidia than ati. :unsure: I could be wrong

Anyway I dont care which video card is the fastest . I just want a card that most games can run at a descent rate. :happy:

[adamp2p]

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...preview/11.html

Conclusions

ATi dropped quite the bomb on the industry with the X800; their strategy is decidedly different than that of Nvidia's. The focus was one of refinement instead of ripping up the previous design and heading back to the drawing board. Refinement may be a bit of an understatement when looking at the performance of their new cards, especially the X800 XT. In many situations, performance is up nearly 100% over that of the 9800XT. This is a great boon to games like Halo and Far Cry that were desperately begging for more horsepower especially at higher resolutions and with must have on features such as AA and AF.

To be frank, the X800 does not bring a whole lot to the table as far as whiz bang features go. No, the X800s do not support Shader Model 3. The biggest feature for the X800 series is 3Dc and that is nothing to sneeze at by any means. Normal maps are here to stay and any technique to reduce the size of those textures will be important. Developer support for 3Dc seems to be fairly widespread judging by the quick implementation from the guys over at Croteam and Valve. From an end user perspective the difference in detail was dramatic to say the least.

Temporal AA is a nice bonus as well as the image is noticeably better with Temporal AA on. While it will work on the R3xx series of cards, it may not get a lot of use as it is dependent on a high framerate to achieve the effect and the 9800XT can have trouble pulling 60+ fps with any sort of AA on, especially in newer games.

ATI has shown the industry that it is not about to keel over and relinquish the performance lead without a huge scrap and has met Nvidia's NV40 charge head on. The X800 is an extremely attractive part that will pay dividends immediately as the focus is on now. It is clear even with the current crop of games that more computing horsepower is needed and ATI's focus is to deliver performance instead of spending silicon on features that will not be used as readily. The minimal amount of new features on the R420 is a testament to the foresight and planning that went on for the R3xx series. Gamers should be estatic by the improvements in speed from the X800. The last trick up ATi's sleeves is that the X800 Pro should be available almost immediately as it is shipping today. Look for it on shelves by late this week or early next week with a MSRP of 399$. The X800 XT Platinum Edition should be available in late May, the last date given to us was the 21st so it can conceivably beat out the 6800 to shelves. Start marking down the days till then and start saving the pennies because the XT will be going for 499$ and will be an item that every enthusiast will want.

[Arrowhead]

Adamp2p, your are getting far too worked up about this, if you like the ATI card better, tell someone else, this is not a forum about which card is "w00t 1337 kick ass"

Oh and nice post larry, pretty much points out the gap widens when the pressure is piled on the cards.

[adamp2p]

Adamp2p, your are getting far too worked up about this, if you like the ATI card better, tell someone else, this is not a forum about which card is "w00t 1337 kick ass"

I am just displaying the conclusions. This will simply negate the need for any argument!

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/r...0/index.x?pg=28

The Radeon X800 series cards perform best in some of our most intensive benchmarks based on newer games or requiring lots of pixel shading power, including Far Cry, Painkiller, UT2004, and 3DMark03's Mother Nature scene?especially at high resolutions with edge and texture antialiasing enabled. The X800s also have superior edge antialiasing. Their 6X multisampling mode reduces edge jaggies better than NVIDIA's 8xS mode, and the presence of temporal antialiasing only underscores ATI's leadership here. With a single-slot cooler, one power connector, and fairly reasonable power requirements, the Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition offers all its capability with less inconvenience than NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra. What's more, ATI's X800 series will be in stores first, with a more mature driver than NVIDIA currently has for the GeForce 6800 line.

The folks at ATI have improved mightily on the R300 design with the R420, successfully delivering the massive performance leap necessary to keep pace with NVIDIA's new GPUs. The achievement of ATI's demo team with the Ruby demo is a heckuva reminder that ATI knows what it's doing with DirectX 9-class graphics, and a very strong argument that the X800's new, longer shader instruction limits don't preclude much higher quality graphics in real time than anything we've seen from game developers yet.

However, NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 cards are no pushovers this time around. The GeForce 6 cards are faster in OpenGL, in many older games, and in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. ShaderMark 2.0 is very close, too, proving that NVIDIA's new pixel shaders are very capable, even with a distinct clock speed deficit. The GeForce 6800 GPUs have some natural advantages, including support for Shader Model 3.0 with longer shader programs, dynamic flow control, and FP16 framebuffer blending and texture filtering. Down the road, these capabilities could prove useful for creating advanced visual effects with the highest possible fidelity.

Right now, though, NVIDIA needs to concentrate on getting some basics right. The NV40 is a novel chip architecture, and its drivers are very much in the beta stages. We'd like to see better results in newer titles like Far Cry, antialiasing blends that account for display gamma, and a consistent means of banishing "brilinear" filtering optimizations. Ideally, NVIDIA would make "brilinear" an option but not the default; the GeForce 6800 series is too good and too fast to need this crutch. It's possible NVIDIA will have worked out all of these problems by the time GeForce 6800 cards arrive in stores. At present, ATI appears to be slightly ahead of NVIDIA, but its superiority isn't etched indelibly in silicon the way it was in the last generation of GPUs. The GeForce 6800 is an extremely capable graphics chip, and we don't know yet how good it may become. Whatever happens, you can see why I said this generation of GPUs presents us with a choice between better and best. These cards are all killer performers, and having seen Far Cry running on them fluidly, I can actually see the logic in parting with four or five hundred bucks in order to own one.? /b>

[Arrowhead]

I dont want an argument with you, i just want one of these cards!!! im sure you wouldnt turn down either of them! :p

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I dont want an argument with you, i just want one of these cards!!! im sure you wouldnt turn down either of them! :p

ditto my man (Y) at this point i would take either or and be damn happy with either...

[Arrowhead]

Hey larry hows it goin fella! :p

[jerry]

i just want one of these cards!!!

Just like you there a lot of people who would like to get any of these cards ASAP. This is where ATi has a slight lead with its cards hitting stores in this week. Moreover ATi "no nonsense" single slot design with single molex will be a huge hit with manufacturers like Dell etc.,