HL2 and Doom3 weeks away - new graphics card discussion

[SawTooTH]

Whats the difference between XT and XT PE?

 

[Jonty]

Whats the difference between XT and XT PE?

Hi SawTooTH

Last I checked, there isn't much between the XT and XT PE (Platinum Edition). The latter is usually clocked ever so slightly higher, but nothing worth the extra. Sometimes the PE comes with a better bundle, being at the forefront of the range, but in essence, it seems like a bit of a marketing ploy.

Kind Regards

 

[SawTooTH]

Hi SawTooTH

Last I checked, there isn't much between the XT and XT PE. The latter is usually clocked ever so slightly higher, but nothing worth the extra. Sometimes the PE comes with a better bundle, being at the forefront of the range, but in essence, it seems like a bit of a marketing ploy.

Kind Regards

I guess they look for something to hang an additional £40 on.

Im still a bit confused about the ATI vs the NVidia. I found one review of a half life 2 beta showing the NVidia card slightly better than the ATI XT card.
I imagine some of the perceived differences are only a matter of 4-5 fps at the end of the day. Im slightly swayed by this to get the NVidia card as Im looking forward to Doom3. I did read somewhere though that the nvidia card has some sort of volumetric shadows or shading thats quite unique to Doom 3 and Im wondering still whether the XT will be more versatile in the long run.

 

[SawTooTH]

Oh the misery of it all

 

[Jonty]

I guess they look for something to hang an additional £40 on.

Im still a bit confused about the ATI vs the NVidia. I found one review of a half life 2 beta showing the NVidia card slightly better than the ATI XT card.
I imagine some of the perceived differences are only a matter of 4-5 fps at the end of the day. Im slightly swayed by this to get the NVidia card as Im looking forward to Doom3. I did read somewhere though that the nvidia card has some sort of volumetric shadows or shading thats quite unique to Doom 3 and Im wondering still whether the XT will be more versatile in the long run.

Hi SawTooTH

As much as I love nVidia, both their and ATi's cards are excellent performers. As you rightly say, often the performance differences (Doom 3 withstanding) are only slight, and you'd have to be benchmarking to really notice in most cases (and Doom 3 is capped to 60fps when not recording demos). As for those HL2 results, they did make me chuckle, given ATi's ~$8M special relationship with Valve. That said, I believe the cards used were early review samples, not final retail boards, and HL2 was obviously unoptimised, as were the drivers. So, interesting as the results were, I wouldn't put too much weight on them as yet (and the difference was, again, only very slight).

With regards UltraShadow II and Doom 3, yes, such features require specific implementation by developers ('The Way It's Meant to be Played') but even when these enhancements aren't present, nVidia is still a strong performer with regards 'standard' features (shader models etc.). I wouldn't worry too much about this, however, as it applies to all developers, ATi included, where they want to go beyond the norm.

As for versatility, you could argue nVidia's cards will be just as versatile as ATi's, featuring Shader Model 3.0 support etc. That said, some of Far Cry's fancy SM3.0 effects are possible using ATi's Shader Model 2.0b support, so it's swings and roundabouts.

As far as I know, the XT/XT PE has a slight edge over the 6800 Ultra, but usually only slight. The 6800 GT often outperforms the x800 Pro, but again only by a small margin. The 6800 non-Ultra doesn't really have a modern parallel, as there is no x800 non-Pro as yet, but we do know the 6800 non-Ultra performs at around 70% of a 6800 GT, and outperforms 9800XTs/5950 Ultras.

ATi's cards are physically smaller than nVidia's, often slightly quieter and require less power under load. nVidia's tend to ship with Dual-DVI and other niceties, and require less power when idle or not under heavy load. nVidia's image optimisations can also be disabled in the drivers, which is nice, but I'm sure ATi will offer this soon.

Anyway, as all this rambling hopefully illustrates, the cards are very evenly matched. I'm an nVidia fanboy, so I'm a tad biassed, but honestly, buy either nVidia or ATi and I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Kind Regards

 

[old.user4556]

Oh the misery of it all

I know

The X800 XT looks lovely, but it's quite a fair whack more than 6800 GT which looks like a better performer under Doom3, but perhaps the X800 XT will be better (slightly) under HL2.

My personal feeling at this moment is that an X800 Pro wouldn't be the best choice over the 6800 GT because of the 12 pixel pipeline - turning on AA and cranking up AF seems to stress the card and doesn't perform as well as the XT, 6800 Ultra/GT.

The potential to overclock the GT to Ultra really rings in my ears - i keep hearing "6800 Ultra for £290", a good £100 cheaper than the X800 XT, better performer in Doom3 and supporting PS3 - albeit only about 5 fps difference.

I'm basing this on preliminary benchies, although I'd bank on HL2 performance being a lot more accurate now than it was 1 year ago where ATi were made out to be a golden nugget, fueling a rush to pickup a 9800 Pro (i was one of them!) a year on, and we still don't have the f'king game!

You know what they say about benchmarks; lies, damn lies and benchmarks.

G

 

[SawTooTH]

Thanks Jonty (as always), Ive ordered a Sparkle Geforce 6800 Ultra from OC so thats that part over with. Now the wait (as its 4-7days apparently)
Still I think the rest of my system should do nicely to play Doom3 on High settings (though probably not ultra high- other than for a slide show)

I agree that the half life 2 demo wasnt really optimised for either card but it gave me a degree of optimism about the 6800 s performance with HL2 as they arent really going to exclude 50% of the PC playing public no matter what alliances they claim to have.

 

[old.user4556]

Oh don't say that, i have the money burning a hole and now that you've buckled, i might do the same .

Still, Doom3 is weeks away and i'm really looking forward to being able to play it at more than a crawl - my 9800 Pro is dead anyway, memory doesn't run at full steam so it'll be even worse.

G

 

[old.user4556]

Another set of farcry benchmarks, also detailing the 2.0b on the ATi that Jonty mentioned previously.

Interestingly, the X800 Pro and 6800 GT are fairly equal at 1024*768, but the gap opens up and the 6800 GT takes off at the higher resolutions.

G

 

[Jonty]

I agree, SawTooTH, HL2 performance on nVidia's cards cannot be dire, it simply wouldn't make sense. Even though ATi may be behind nVidia in Doom 3, the performance is still very playable and will improve. You may want to grab Forceware 61.77 drivers which were released moments ago. They officially add support for Shader Model 3/DirectX9c (the latter of which is now also available for separate download).

Big G, overclocking a GT to an Ultra certainly seems possible. And that PNY one (sadly out of stock) for £265 is a good deal, especially with Far Cry which is seems to ship with (so some have said). Bare in mind ATi may be releasing an x800 GT to match the 16 pipelines of the GT, but this product hasn't been announced, let alone be close to release.

Kind Regards

 

[old.user4556]

Very true Jonty, i've seen the "X800 GT" rumours being banded about on the web for the past couple of weeks but as you say it's going to be a good while yet - hell, might even have duke nukem forever by then

G

 

[Jonty]

Hi Big G

Have you seen the BFG 6800 GT OC? In stock, 6800 GT oveclocked out of the box to 370Mhz core/1000Mhz memory, bespoke cooling solution, £278. Seems nice Not to mention BFG's lifetime warranty and 24/7 tech support. I know the company has only just moved outside the US, but still, it seems like a nice deal.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. That's almost the same clock as your Ultra, SawTooTH! Mind you, you can overclock your Ultra beyond that (I hear ~450Mhz core, ~1.2Ghz memory).

 

[old.user4556]

Yeah Jonty, that's been getting great write ups and overclockers have been singing it's praises as they can get up to ultra speeds without any problem.

The lifetime warranty shows, imo, the confidence they must have in the architecture and the cooling solution.

G

 

[Jonty]

Yeah Jonty, that's been getting great write ups and overclockers have been singing it's praises as they can get up to ultra speeds without any problem.

The lifetime warranty shows, imo, the confidence they must have in the architecture and the cooling solution.

G

I agree, it's a good deal Their reputation in the U.S. certainly seems well established. I'm not saying buy it, but it's certainly worth considering, I believe.

Kind Regards

 

[smurkin]

Thers some really interesting heresay at this site:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2750

essentially, saying that the d3 engine is cappped at 60 fps....so even if you have a gfx card that will do 100 fps, many (40 per sec?) of those frames will simply be duplications and provide no extra data for the eye (debatable crt theory tho). Another point discussed, is the d3 "ultra" detail setting and texture memory usage being in the order of 500 Mb total for a map ....technically requiring a 512 Mb card for fluidity

 

[Yaka]

Hi Big G

Have you seen the BFG 6800 GT OC? In stock, 6800 GT oveclocked out of the box to 370Mhz core/1000Mhz memory, bespoke cooling solution, £278. Seems nice Not to mention BFG's lifetime warranty and 24/7 tech support. I know the company has only just moved outside the US, but still, it seems like a nice deal.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. That's almost the same clock as your Ultra, SawTooTH! Mind you, you can overclock your Ultra beyond that (I hear ~450Mhz core, ~1.2Ghz memory).

hmmm tempting but it will prolly blow me shuttle SS51g up :/

 

[Jonty]

Thers some really interesting heresay at this site:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2750

essentially, saying that the d3 engine is cappped at 60 fps....so even if you have a gfx card that will do 100 fps, many (40 per sec?) of those frames will simply be duplications and provide no extra data for the eye (debatable crt theory tho). Another point discussed, is the d3 "ultra" detail setting and texture memory usage being in the order of 500 Mb total for a map ....technically requiring a 512 Mb card for fluidity

Hi smurkin

Yes, the Doom 3 engine is currently capped to 60fps, this has been confirmed by Robert Duffy of id software. However, id seem sure this will have no impact on the end experience. When benchmarking, however, the cap is removed to allow the differences in card performance to be more readily apparent.

As for Doom 3's 'Ultra' settings, yes, it will require a 512MB graphics card as nothing is compressed. These cards will be available later this year. However, Robert Duffy has said that the difference between high quality and ultra quality is only very slight in practical terms

Kind Regards

Jonty ... currently looking forward to Doom 3

P.S. Robert Duffy's .plan update.
P.P.S. It seems Activision have just confirmed Doom 3 will not run on anything below Windows 2000/XP.

 

[RandomBastard]

Just bought a msi 6800 (non-ultra) from savastore, very pleased with the service so far, should arrive tommorow then i'll have to wait to go back to sheffeild to test it :/

 

[Jonty]

Just bought a msi 6800 (non-ultra) from savastore, very pleased with the service so far, should arrive tommorow then i'll have to wait to go back to sheffeild to test it :/

Hope you're happy with it, RandomBastard At that price it's a very good deal. Try downloading nVidia's Nalu demo (http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/nZone/demos/nvidia/nalu.exe), that really shows off the card (beware, it takes a fairly powerful system to run it).

Kind Regards

 

[RandomBastard]

Woo it arrived, in a hugggeeee box, so huge I thought they'd sent me a motherboard or maybe an entire pc by mistake

Now I just have to take it up north with me to plug it into my pc :/ In a few weeks time :/ :/

 

[Jonty]

Hope it suits your needs And yes, the box is huge to accommodate all the goodies

Kind Regards

 

[Clown]

Dildos?

 

[Jonty]

Drag your mind out of the gutter, young man Accessories == 13 CDs, 1 DVD, cables and such.

Kind Regards

 

[Stimpy]

I'm gonna jump in here with a little question see if anyone can shed some light on this.

I recently bought a Abit KD7A because my old MB died, anyway my processor is on it last legs so I'm going to upgrade to the best CPU this MB can handle before DoomIII.

However thats where the problem is on this chart showing which CPU's my board can handle it says AMD SocketA AthlonXP up to 2800+ but then right underneath on the next board it says AMD SocketA AthlonXP(Barton core) up to 3000+, but most places I look at such as OC's, ebuyer and so on all class the AMD as a AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2800+ 333FSB, have they stopped making normal Athlon XP+ now or have they always been classed as Barton?

 

[Jonty]

Hi Stimpy

Barton is the codename of the updated AthlonXP cores which comes with slightly more cache and a few updated instruction sets. Barton cores, based around 333Mhz front side bus (FSB) tended to replace the older versions of the chips which were based around 266Mhz FSB.

By the looks of that chart, your board can handle the older chips up to 2800+ speeds (I personally though they stopped production around 2600+, but I guess not) and the Barton chip at 3000+ only. This seems a little odd, as the Barton design is available from around 2400+ upwards, so why only the 3000+ would work I don't know.

Your best bet may be to email Overclockers UK technical sales team and ask them if a Barton CPU, of any speed, would work in your motherboard. If they say yes, then fine, hopefully it will work. If they say yes and you end up ordering from them and it doesn't work, at least you'll have some comeback.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. I only say OcUK as their tech. sales support come to mind, but I'm sure other stores could advise too.

EDIT! Actually, if you look at the other entries in the list, they all say (for Bartons)

AMD SocketA AthlonXP(Barton core) up to 3000+

The key words being 'up to'. This would make sense, as above 3000+ the FSB changes to 400Mhz, which many motherboards didn't like without being specifically produced to handle such speeds. So, I believe it would be safe to go with any speed Barton CPU and just assume the chart is incorrectly filled in with regards your motherboard. You may want to update your motherboard's BIOS too.

 

[Stimpy]

Thanks Jonty I've sent an email along to OcUK to see what they say.
I found it a little odd that for my motherboard it says Barton 3000+ but for the others it would say AMD SocketA AthlonXP(Barton core) up to 3000+
I was thinking maybe there was another AMD chip just entitled Barton 3000+ or something hopefully it's just a mistake and I can stick a XP 3000+ in.

 

[SawTooTH]

I did a lot of digging around with my MoBoard, a 7NJS Zenith from chaintech. That supports up to +3000. They then released the so called Zenith 7NJS ultra with a different breakout box for the front that supports fsb of 400 so you could put a 3200+ in that board. It turned out that the Ultra and the vanilla MoBo were identical, and the only difference was the break out box of tricks. So I Dled the Bios for the "Ultra" and Bobs your Uncle I now have a 3200+ with DDR at 400.

I used the AMDforums as they have MoBos broken down by make etc and they are a very friendly bunch. Maybe you should look into it.

 

[SawTooTH]

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

Hardware guide for Doom 3

Im looking good

 

[Cask]

Hmm nice comparison between the low, medium and high by putting the high quality screenshots in a higher resolution. Probably to stop the people who are swimming in loan payment demands from recent PC upgrades going into a psychotic rampage and murdering their families because they can't afford the game itself anymore.

Ho ho.

 

[SawTooTH]

The interesting comment in the guide is that it is better to increase image resolution than use AA as the majority of the game is in shadows, in doors, so you dont notice jaggies. Still I might try 2XAA as my system should run a higher resolution than my TFT supports with good performance.