First X800 review

[Topha]

It's in German

But ATI wins

And they only need a small fan and one extra power plug to do so

[Guru]

Nvidia was faster in more test then the ati!

[Topha]

Only if 2 out of 9 is more

And those were Q3A and serious Sam, so they dont really matter that much.

In all the other tests, they are either even or ATI wins (espescially at higher resolutions)

[DGhost]

woohoo. MORE marketing bullshit.

i love the way they market their graphics cards.

ah well, we will see what NVidia can do with their drivers. the beauty of their architecture is that it is far more flexible than ATI's, and optimizations will have far more of a benefit on performance.

add to that the fact that ATI is already running mostly optimized drivers because of the reusing of the architecture.

oh yeah, and word is from reliable sources that the 6800U is getting a speed bump.

[DGhost]

oh yeah, and other reviews are out now too.

there are more, just too lazy to post links.

[knirfie]

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r420_x800/

ah, DGhost had already posted this one

[Topha]

Just follow this link , there is a review list

[[GDI]Raptor]

No DualDVI on the ATi cards, not good, and no suport for Shadder Model 3.0 is also bad... Especialy if you don't buy video-cards twice a year. It also seems that ATi's OpenGL preformance is behind nVidia's

Looks like I will get a nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra or GT to replace my Parhelia this summer!

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I don't understand this anymore... one review says that ATI is faster while the other says that NV is faster.

I read the TechReport review with the benchies, it seems like NV is a bit faster.

What I don't get is 3DMark03 Mother Nature. ATI is faster than NVIDIA in this scene. But When you go and do 3DMark's Pixel Shaders test, NV is quite a bit faster than ATI, while ATI is faster in Vertex Shaders.

Is Mother Nature very dependent on Vertex Shaders or something? Or was it a lot of triangles and need a lot of fill rate that ATI could provide.

The picture is very odd. It seems like ATI went the "brute force" path NV used to take.

X800XT runs at 520MHz, while NV6 6800 GT runs at 350; NV6 6800 U runs at 400. I think NV now has a better architecture. If NV decided to use low-K black diamond process, they can probably clook the thing quite a bit higher. I am guessing the secret faster NV card will be manufecteured at TSMC. Probably that's why the current NV dies are made at IBM's fabs.

NV has a better arcitecture this time IMO. PS3.0/VS3.0, more transistors (for better or for worse), more programability, faster Pixel Shaders speed.

Meanwhile ATI can probably achieve higher clock.

Again, I think its a trade off between clockspeed (faster) and complexity (i.e. programmibility and functions)

NV will have a harder time to clock these puppies because it has a larger die size. (lower yield!)

I say both companies did very well, and they are equalilly as good (because ATI's chip consumes less power because of smaller die size)

[Wombat]

X800XT runs at 520MHz, while NV6 6800 GT runs at 350; NV6 6800 U runs at 400.

Clock speed means nothing when comparing different architectures, and never has.

[Ribbit]

Read Chrono's post again. That's half his point.

[KvHagedorn]

Well, since NV's performance is so killer in 3dmark particularly, why are you assuming their architecture is better? They have most likely optimised for the test (or had the test optimised for them.)

[bsdgeek]

Futuremark approved their 6800 drivers, I don't think they'e cheating (yet).

[Chrono_Wanderer]

KvH: I do not agree. If they are only focusing on 3DMark Score, I bet NV will perform better in Mother Nature than ATI's. ATI has like a full 20fps higher than NV in this scene. I don't think they are cheating. In fact, read most of the benchies again, and you will find NV is doing very well in many games, not only in 3DMark.

And IQ wise, I don't see any difference between the two products anymore. Even in Pixel Shaders quality.

I don't understand why people are randomly bashing 6800. OK, 5x00 was no good, sure, but i don't think 6800 is half as bad.

Why is NV4X a better architecture? Speed wise, let's compare the performance NV4X vs. R420. And then let's compare clockspeed. Their performance is almost the same in most games, but remember, R420 is clocked like at least 120MHz more than NV's offerings.

Unless you think clockspeed is everything (in another words, lower clock-per-fps) forms a better arcitecture, then NV is better in this case.

And let's not forget support for the DX 9c model, better OGL performance, real Linux drivers. I don't see why NV is inferior than ATI.

They even do some degree of Trilinear Filtering, hahaha!

edit: I don't give a sh*t about Futuremark approved this and that. I was just wondering what makes a graphics card perform better in Mother Nature. And then from that I think we can draw conclusions about the strength/weekness of each GPU.

I was thinking if Mother Nature requires greater fill rate or not, thus higher clock speed, so maybe that's why ATI performs better in that case.

[GNEP]

I think we've got some pretty evenly matched hardware out there now.

Which is only good for us as consumers as prices should be competitive - but we wait to see what models actually turn up in stores, and when and for what price.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the ultra-high-end cards from both companies are essentially "reviewers-only" cards - and that very few of us mere consumers will actually (be able to) buy one. So the low-high end and high mid-end are the interesting parts to see reviewed.