this christmas, i am in the market for a new videocard to replace my ati radeon x800 xt pci-express. my current system specs P4 3.4ghz 1GB ddr2-400 radeon x800 xt pci-e w/ati silencer 4 yada yada yada anyhow i am tired of laginess in FEAR (running at all medium settings, 1024x768, 2xAA 4xAF) and sometimes its just unbearable (sometimes its not). i am looking at two cards eVGA GeForce 7800GT or ATI Radeon X1800XL and i cannot decide. i mean, both cards have their ups and downs. the 7800gt has more pipelines, the radeon handles AA better, etc. please post your opinions. *i will note that the evga 7800gt is overclocked to 470/1100 rather than 400/1000, and in benchmarks for instance it performs a few FPS behind the GTX which is great.
7800GTs have been about $280 or so with free COD2. I'd try overclocking a bit to see how far you might be able to go (perhaps quite a bit)
I'd go for the 7800GT. There's probably still some headroom in the core and for similar performance the X1800 probably isn't worth the extra money at the moment.
An OVERCLOCKED 7800GT? I'd go for that. Shame on ATi for not getting onto the overclocking bus sooner; we won't be seeing any "OC" models until at least later this month. A 7800GT is already a very fair and worthy opponent for the X1800XL, but if you overclock it, particularly by that much...
If I was getting an XL, I'd factor in the price of a decent cooler too - the cooler on it is inadequate IMHO.
thanks guys. the 7800GT it will be. besides, its only $299 on newegg! the msrp is 399... what do you guys think of the R580 coming out soon
Lag with your X800XT? I've played FEAR in 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 4xAF and I did not really experience lag as unplayable lag? Sometimes I grew some mushrooms on my keyboard due loadtime but hey.. the game is cool. I'd go for the 7800GT if you like games like FEAR.
Wait, I just noted that you say you're going from an X800XT; I thought you said X800. Just to note, the jump up to even an OC'ed 7800GT may be significant, but it's not going to be massive, and far from the 80-100% you're probably envisioning; You can take a look at the benchmarks like this one and perhaps notice that in general, the 7800GT is definitely superior, but perhaps not by enough to justify such a massive outlay. However, when it comes to F.E.A.R., it is a different picture. Then again, that's largely due to the use of their soft shadows, and they use a method which I seriously frown upon; it looks ugly, and in most cases, it doesn't work with anti-aliasing. I just play with "hard line" shadows, and mourn that they couldn't have taken a more sane approach.
