Anands X850 Article is up

[ElFenix]

x800 xl is interesting. the article doesn't look like it does an overclocking test, and only says that ati isn't getting great speeds out of it. sounds more like sandbagging to me.

 

[JackBurton]

That card took a beating in Doom 3 vs the 6800 Ultra, but it did really well in Battlefield Vietnam and HL2.

 

[Compddd]

Yeah but who plays Doom III after they beat it anyway? HL2 with CS Source and now DM is where its at.

 

[TStep]

Although I too think it is idiotic to have this many cards at this price point, I like it The more choices, the merrier, and I like the highend moving to .11.

 

[Concillian]

BFV is the biggest ATI whore game out there, even bigger than HL2. I can vouch for that as I play the game quite a bit and do signficant FRAPS testing. When I got my 9700, I could run 4xAA and 8xAF and STILL get higher frame rates than with my 5900XT (which beats the 9700 in some benchmarks). The 6800 series does better, but for whatever reason, the ATI cards just dominate at BFV. I keep wondering if BF2 will be the same way.

The x800 XL card is potentially "THE" next big card. I see no reason at all for the x800 Pro or x850 Pro to exist if they can provide the x800 XL in significant quantities. Unless of course they drop the price of the Pros significantly. If it can overclock even a little, it will kick the crap out of even highly overclocked x800/x850 Pros.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Compddd
Yeah but who plays Doom III after they beat it anyway? HL2 with CS Source and now DM is where its at.

It's not just the game. That engine will be in future games.

 

[CaiNaM]

X800SE, X800, X800 Pro, X800 XL, X800 XT, X800 XT PE, X850 Pro, X850 XT and X850 XT PE. toss iin all the parts from the ati "partners", seems they're trying to confuse the consumers in hopes that they buy something ati branded

 

[SonicIce]

Then 5 months later, all existing cards are rendered obsolete by next gen

 

[Avalon]

The X800XL will be a nice card. If it can overclock nicely, it will be a superb buy. It comes with a rather dinky HSF, though, so I imagine there is vast ammounts of room for cooling improvement.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Spamdini
the fact that that same core is competitive goes to show u something though dont u think?

Take a 486 processor, and run it at 3.6GHz (if you could). It would run just as fast as a 3.6 Northy, but all the bells and whistles would not be there. (Netburst, MMX,SSE123m HT, other crap).

So, it goes to show me that ATI utilized ArtX's blowout design two years ago, and barely did anything since except add pipes and ramp up clocks. It is a good architecture no doubt, but that can only go so far.

 

[Genx87]

Wow they have as many models in the market as they have shipped X800XT PEs

 

[RussianSensation]

What else is new?

7 months have passed and still the best bang for the buck is 6800GT @ Ultra speeds for $380.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
That card took a beating in Doom 3 vs the 6800 Ultra, but it did really well in Battlefield Vietnam and HL2.

It's the exact same architecture as before so it has the exact same weaknesses and strengths as before. Weak in Doom3, strong in BF:V, strong in Source games and pretty similar to Nvidia's cards in everything else.

Originally posted by: SonicIce
Then 5 months later, all existing cards are rendered obsolete by next gen

Yup. That's the sad fact of today's video card market.

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Spamdini
the fact that that same core is competitive goes to show u something though dont u think?

Take a 486 processor, and run it at 3.6GHz (if you could). It would run just as fast as a 3.6 Northy, but all the bells and whistles would not be there. (

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Spamdini
the fact that that same core is competitive goes to show u something though dont u think?

Take a 486 processor, and run it at 3.6GHz (if you could). It would run just as fast as a 3.6 Northy, but all the bells and whistles would not be there. (Netburst, MMX,SSE123m HT, other crap).

So, it goes to show me that ATI utilized ArtX's blowout design two years ago, and barely did anything since except add pipes and ramp up clocks. It is a good architecture no doubt, but that can only go so far.

).

So, it goes to show me that ATI utilized ArtX's blowout design two years ago, and barely did anything since except add pipes and ramp up clocks. It is a good architecture no doubt, but that can only go so far.

You need to get off the Troll ATI Bandwaggon with your ridiculuos analogies. Comparing ATI's lack of SM 3.0 support to a 486 at today's processor speeds is inane, stupid and wrong. Even Northwood has a better IPC than a 486 and most certainly every other modern CPU architecture (Pentium M, Athlon64, Athlon XP, etc) would absolutely crush the 486. The 486 would be severely hampered by it's lack of L2 cache, it's lack of MMX and SSE1/2 support (which pretty much all games support now), it's slow FSB speeds, it's lack of supporting anything beyond EDO memory, etc.

Or should we change the definition to be "a 3.6 Ghz 486 with modern DDR dual channel memory, including SSE1/2 support, now including a full-speed on-die cache, vastly improved branch prediction, with support for higher FSB's." Kind of doesn't make it a 486 anymore, don't you think?

Your argument is also nonsense by labelling "Netburst, MMX,SSE123m HT, other crap" mere "bells and whistles," and by just making a vague claim that this hypothetical 3.6 GHz 486 would be as fast as a 3.6 Ghz Northwood. As fast at doing what, exactly? In Video encoding the P4 would kill the 3.6 GHz 486 because of SSE 1 and 2. In games the faster FSB and memory bandwidth of the P4 as well as SSE1/2, etc would allow it to destroy the 486.


You and Rollo have this idea that ATI essentially pilfered the entire 9700 Pro design from ArtX (despite the fact that they bought the company) and that anything good that has ever come out of ATI wasn't even their doing, but from ArtX. For some reason you begrudge ATI any credit whatsoever, as if this personally offends you. You neglect to mention any headway ATI made with the original Radeon cards and their slow but steady progress in making competitive GPU's, and their progress in writing non-sh!t drivers.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Wow they have as many models in the market as they have shipped X800XT PEs

Ba-zing!

Funny thing though, last I heard the X800XT PE's that had been sold were in the low thousands, or around a thousand. The 6800 Ultra Extremes shipped were in the low hundreds, if that.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024You and Rollo have this idea that ATI essentially pilfered the entire 9700 Pro design from ArtX (despite the fact that they bought the company) and that anything good that has ever come out of ATI wasn't even their doing, but from ArtX. For some reason you begrudge ATI any credit whatsoever, as if this personally offends you. You neglect to mention any headway ATI made with the original Radeon cards and their slow but steady progress in making competitive GPU's, and their progress in writing non-sh!t drivers.

well, package it however you like, but isn't that essentially what happened?

they bought artx and their technology, which led to the r3xx. they used this same design for 2 years (and still led; it was THAT good), and the following gen cards were essentially the same core with some modifications. sure, they ramped up clockspeeds, retooled the memory architecture, and added some additional processing power, but it's still essentially the same tech which put ati on the map with r3xx.

the earlier radeons, while a step forward from their rage series, couldn't seriously compete vs the competition; it's all r3xx which put ati in the position they are in as far as the "enthusiast" market is concerned (can't argue that they'd done very well in oem/mobile markets prior to that).

nvidia certainly played their part, bungling gforce 5 in both technology and manufacturing, and apparently not having a clue as to how good ati's product was going to be.

as far as drivers, what does that have to do with anything? could be argued artx is largely behind that as well.

still, what was once artx IS now part of ati, so the entire argument is rather irrelevant, but it seems to me that it's hard to argue against the conclusion that ati's purchase of artx is certainly the single biggest reason they are where they are now.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
well, package it however you like, but isn't that essentially what happened?

they bought artx and their technology, which led to the r3xx.

Right, they bought ArtX and their technology - they didn't buy the R3xx. They implemented some ArtX technology and features in the R3xx. But ATI designed the R3xx, and the newly acquired engineers from ArtX helped. Rollo and co. make it sound like ATI bought a final R3xx board from them and rolled out production from there. They neglect to mention all of the ATI technology in there as well.

 

[imported_ewright]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Wow they have as many models in the market as they have shipped X800XT PEs

:laugh:

 

[Tab]

SWEET! Thats awesome that it makes that sound at startup, I could careless if it takes another slot away. As long as its quiet while its doing other things, like web surfing or my computer is on but no computer activity then I am fine with it.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
well, package it however you like, but isn't that essentially what happened?

they bought artx and their technology, which led to the r3xx.

Right, they bought ArtX and their technology - they didn't buy the R3xx. They implemented some ArtX technology and features in the R3xx. But ATI designed the R3xx, and the newly acquired engineers from ArtX helped. Rollo and co. make it sound like ATI bought a final R3xx board from them and rolled out production from there. They neglect to mention all of the ATI technology in there as well.

well, i don't think that's true at all, rather the other way around.

r3xx was a completely different direction for ati, and it was put to ati's west coast team which was comprised mainly of former artx personnel (many of which had come from sgi). this occured AFTER the reorganization and acquisition of artx, so while it's not entirely impossible some existing ati's tech may have been involved, it's doubtful there was a substantial amount.

the entire ideology of the way ati did things changed, again AFTER the acquisition of artx. you have to remember that before r3xx development started, ati's concept was "we have to provide a product at this pricepoint, so do the best you can with this amount of die space". ati's thinking (or perhpas more accurately, dave orton, who was behind most of the reorganization) was that low volume, "high end" parts drove the sale of the high volume, low end parts, and told the west coast team to do whatever it took; no contstraints.

we weren't there, so it's hard to say, but it's alot more plausible that some ati tech may have made it into r3xx rather than the other way around. ati bought artx at a time when many things were changing, and what they did after that was a completely different way of thinking than that of the "old" ati.

 

[Kalessian]

I think the best thing for NV to do now is to wait things out a little bit, and put all of their effort on their current line-up. Once things become easy enough, make some price cuts that ATI couldn't possibly keep up with. Let ATI sit at the top by itself, let some companies overclock the ultra like they've been doing, it's the midrange that determines who wins.

Maybe they learned their lesson with 6800 UE, but ehhhh, that's not likely.

430/1.15 6900 Mecha-Ultra-Star awaits!

As for Intel pioneering super hot CPUs..... eh? And while AMD often takes the tech. from Intel, what about HyperTransport and x86-64?

I watched NVidia destroy what we all thought before that time was the best company ever - 3DFX. Wherever they got it, the only tech. ATi has ever released that actually put out was the R3xx. They're a one-core-wonder as it stands. I remember making predictions on another forum about who would win this generation, the GF6 or the X800, and my bet was on GF6 merely because I knew ATi only ever made that one great core. I never imagined they could just tape it up and get this far with it.

That said, if the X800XL can overclock at all, or the new $300 (I ALREADY forgot the damned model) 12-pipe model can be unlocked to 16, I'll be getting one of them. If not, a 6800GT.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: KalessianAnd while AMD often takes the tech. from Intel, what about HyperTransport and x86-64?

x86-64 is mostly x86 (just an extension), which is of course came from intel. also, the entire direction which amd has followed since athlon came from dec-alpha.

 

[Mikeyflan]

Ati crazy I like'em but they crazy.

A good thing may come from these new models is that when they do come out the x800 models prices will go down hopfully.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: Mikeyflan
Ati crazy I like'em but they crazy.

A good thing may come from these new models is that when they do come out the x800 models prices will go down hopfully.

I doubt that, all these new models are pcie, while the older x800 cards are agp. They're catering to two markets, so theres no reason for ati to cut prices.

 

[carldon]

I was looking at the SLI benches and the 6600GT in SLI has almost the same performance as the X800XL, X850Pro and of course the X800. The 6800GT SLI rules even the high end Ati offerings. The SLI option is great for people who want to upgrade later and also want the SM3.0 option. You could get a 6600 GT for $190 and throw one on later for about $170 six months down or go for a 6800GT and SLI it for another $300 later on when Ati offer their version of SLI. But what I was wondering was whether any of the current Ati cards will be capable of the Sli option when its introduced or will we have to buy entirely new cards. If the present cards from Ati cannot be used in their upcoming SLI then I think the Nvidia SLI seems to be the best upgrade path for the next two years since most games are going be using some variant or modification of the Doom3/HL2/Crytek engine. But the cost of Nforce4 motherboards, if its too high, could tip the scales in Ati's favour. This is going to an interesting price war over the next month.

CD.

 

[Sylvanas]

wow i cant wait to get my hands on that XL, all it may need is a little overclcoking and you have yourself a X850-XT.