ello ello ello what's this then?

[TdC]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/13/review_sapphire_x850_xt_pe/

though it's waaay over my budget atm (the pci thing will force cpu/mobo upgrades), it's good to fantasize. someone tell me about this card please. well, perhaps I should tell you about my setup:

TdC has this:

19" iiyama vm pro
athlon 2800+ (barton core)
1GB kingston ram
radeon 9700pro
a7n8x deluxe mobo (nforce 2)
80gb wd 7200rpm / 8MB buffer
107 dvd/cd burner

TdC wants this:

that 20" widescreen Dell *fap*
some gfx card that vastly outperforms the 9700pro but won't cost a kidney
faster cpu maybe. not really needed imo.
budget: eh? munneh? what's that? *do tricks on street corners*

advise meh please!!

 

[Jonty]

Hi TdC

Just a quickie to say that the X850 XT PE is about the fastest card available bar none at the moment. However, the performance jump from the X800 XT PE isn't all that noticeable, and you're lumbered (if it bothers you) with a dual-slot cooling unit on the newer card, not to mention a price premium on the newer kit.

Your best bet for a new card really depends on your budget. A Radeon 9800 Pro/XT or GeForce 59xx can be picked up fairly cheaply now (~€150-199+ which isn't cheap, but isn't bad).

If you want newer cards, then the Radeon X700 and GeForce 6600 (I forget the suffixes, but the Pro/GT etc. variants offer better performance) are good mainstream choices. A lot of the newer cards (particularly ATI) will be PCI-Express based, but AGP variants are coming through (A 6600GT AGP costs around €210). I forget how they stack up with yesteryear's high-end cards, but I'd guess they'd offer similar performance to a Radeon 9800/GeForce 59xx (this is a complete guess, however).

Then you have the newest performance cards, the Radeon X800 and GeForce 6800. These start from around €285 upwards and offer the best bang for buck. Again, PCI-Express is popular, but AGP variants (particularly of nVidia's cards) do exist.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. What could be interesting is Gigabyte and ASUS's dual-GPU GeForce 6600 cards. They are PCI-Express, admittedly, but performance indications show they can take on high-end cards with ease, without a performance price tag, and the possibility of running two of these cards in SLI mode could permit a 4 GPU core system It's all a bit up in the air at the mo, but it still looks interesting

Also, the prices about are from Komplett.nl, so I'm not sure if they're reasonable. Here in the UK, Komplett can often be undercut.

 

[TdC]

Hi Jonts!
looking about after reading your post, I find that X800's aren't as harshly priced as I initially thought. I can get an sapphire X800pro with dvi (iirc) for about 377eur (265 squids)

 

[Clown]

Those X800XL PCI-E things will be about £200. What's the difference between them and an AGP X800Pro?

Edit: Ahah. I just saw the 3D Marks benchies for that X850. I got about the same with my 6800GT and AMD Barton 2500+

 

[fatbusinessman]

Hi TdC

Just a quickie...

<thesis />

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. <thesis />

Interesting definition of 'quick' there, Jonty...

 

[TdC]

Those X800XL PCI-E things will be about £200. What's the difference between them and an AGP X800Pro?

Edit: Ahah. I just saw the 3D Marks benchies for that X850. I got about the same with my 6800GT and AMD Barton 2500+

yeah, but it seems that there was a driver fuxor in place there. gogo ati eh? iirc a regualr x800 scored more than the 850 with those naff drivers in place :/ oh well.

 

[Escape]

From that system spec, the only thing which can be upgraded is the graphics card(AGP). For an A64 CPU or PCI-E graphics card, you'd need a new motherboard.

I wouldn't buy an X800Pro if you can find a 6800GT for a similar price. For something cheaper, the 6600GT's are good(better than 9800Pro).

The X800XL cards will be nicely priced(£235 at OCUK) and they perform almost as good as a 6800GT. imo the only reason to buy a x850XT-PE is if you run games at 1600x1200 with full AA/AF. For lower resolutions that card will be wasted.

 

[TdC]

aye, I've heard good things about the 6600GT tbh. as I can get both a 9800pro or a 9600GT for round about the same price (=200eur) I'm slightly tempted to go back to the nvidia product. not through any badness on behalf of Ati, just that I can get a newer, faster card for the same prive. me = thrifty at times

 

[Cask]

I think if you wanted to spend a little more a GeForce 6800 might be better as they have quite a performance gain over the 6600 GT. Also you can try and unlock the 4 extra piplines which should be a simple procedure with the Rivatuner software, but this won't work on all 6800s.

I don't think you'd see a massive increase in performance from a 9700 Pro to a 6600GT.

 

[TdC]

well let's see. I'm not particularly wanting to run games at 1600x1200 or whatnot. I'd be well pleased to run at 1024x768, or that bastardized 11somethingx8somthing, 1200x1024, as long as I can get some good AA and filtering going while still having a decent framerate. the 9700pro, while imo a pretty decent card even today, really starts to shine in high rez as long as you don't lay on the AA and filtering to the max.

how about a regular 6800 compared to a 9700pro?

 

[Clown]

6800 all the way. They can be flashed to 6800GT speeds.

 

[TdC]

and they won't explode afterwards? how about extra cooling?

 

[Clown]

Extra cooling would help
I can't remember if people did it on stock cooling or not... Erm, have a look at the Overclockers forums

 

[Escape]

afaik only the 6800LE have the potential of being unlocked and overclocked to 6800GT. Chances of 100% success are slim, as you'd need to unlock each pipeline and some shader gimmicks individually. If any of them produce artifacts, find the offending pipeline and close it. You might get some extra speed out of the card, but it's unreal to expect a full unlocking(this is the impression I get from reading forums).

 

[Clown]

I was under the impression that any 6800 non-ultra could be modded.

 

[TdC]

so an 6800LE is actually a 6800GT that failed to enable all of it's pipelines in testing? so it's basiclly a dodgy chip yeh?

 

[smurkin]

Its not that simple. On testing, it seems it can go three ways

passes >

Thermal Failure > card is down rated and the clock speed reduced plus 12x pipes & reduced vp

Pipe/vp failure > card is down rated and the clock speed reduced plus 12x pipes & reduced vp

So, broadly speaking, about 50% of standard 6800s (remember the LE is further down the pecking order) can be modded to the full pipeline set - this 50 % mostly wont clock to a GT level

The other 50% overclock nicely to GT (or above), but have faulty pipes and have to be set at 12x

It also depends on how good the cooling on your card is as to how it clocks. The LE is also physically different - there are some resistor bridges that differ (although I think the softmod can circumvent this in some cases)

My 6800 was moddable, but had faulty pipes - it does however overclock stably to 400/933 from 324/702 (although I did change the fan on it for a silent one). There are reports of fully hrd-moddable 6800LEs.

These alot of discussion on this at guru3d.com