1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Sapphire Radeon X1800XL

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 17 Oct 2005.

  1. Tim S

    Tim S OG

    Joined:
    8 Nov 2001
    Posts:
    18,882
    Likes Received:
    89
    when I get the time, I'll do something along those lines. I've got a general article planned in a couple of weeks - I'll look and see if I can include something in there at that time.
     
  2. skank

    skank What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    18 Oct 2005
    Posts:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
  3. Xen0phobiak

    Xen0phobiak SMEGHEADS!

    Joined:
    8 Aug 2002
    Posts:
    3,847
    Likes Received:
    18
    Thats not what the review was about, the review serves to compare that sample of ATI's best offering to Nvidia's best offering, if one didn't support DirectX 9, would it be fair to run only DirectX 8 tests? "No", I hear you say.

    This is the top end, all a reviewer can do is let them off the leash and see what the best they can acheive is. A second core does very little for a single threaded game anyway (99.99% are), all the second core does is take off the background load that system services are using.

    edit: oops I'm a bit late. :worried:
     
    Last edited: 18 Oct 2005
  4. skank

    skank What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    18 Oct 2005
    Posts:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
    You haven't read this thread have you? If you had you would see that I'm not talking about the game being multithreaded, it is the DRIVERS that are multithreaded. Also even though the DX8.0 vs DX9.0 example is rediculous, if you did do that you would still inform your readers that you were doing it and why, I just didn't like the complete lack of mentioning the fact that the nvidia drivers are multithreaded. http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8459
     
  5. MrWillyWonka

    MrWillyWonka Chocolate computers galore!

    Joined:
    25 Jul 2004
    Posts:
    5,892
    Likes Received:
    12
    I think I agree with bigz here, we are trying to reflect the game on best playable settings for a gaming rig, which everyone in this forum seem to have agreed that the X2 is the way to go for gaming now.

    I also think that the fact that ATI hasn't taken in the use of dual core processors means the 7800GT is more futureproof and, overall, better.
     
    Last edited: 18 Oct 2005
  6. Tim S

    Tim S OG

    Joined:
    8 Nov 2001
    Posts:
    18,882
    Likes Received:
    89
    I don't believe that either company are 'better' than the other - they both have their plus points. It will be interesting to see the way that games go over the next 12 months or so. If the Sapphire X1800XL came down in price, it'd be as good a purchase as the XFX or BFGTech cards, but we can only write a review based on its price at the time of publishing.
     
  7. MrWillyWonka

    MrWillyWonka Chocolate computers galore!

    Joined:
    25 Jul 2004
    Posts:
    5,892
    Likes Received:
    12
    I actually meant the GT being better (imo) than the x1800 - edited!
     
  8. Tim S

    Tim S OG

    Joined:
    8 Nov 2001
    Posts:
    18,882
    Likes Received:
    89
    That will all depend on the way that games go. I've said this to one of the graphics firms in an email exchange the other week - I don't particularly think that either solution is the 'Radeon 9700' of this generation. I don't think there is a Radeon 9700 this time around. The reason I mention Radeon 9700 is that when it came out (and until the launch of GeForce 6) there was no competition for the architecture that it was based around. GeForceFX was a poor architecture in comparison to the Radeon 9700 and it got spanked in just about every department, and rightly so.

    There is no doubt that the Radeon X1800XL has some nice features, including superior dynamic branching performance, better filtering quality, and the option for HDR+AA in all games that support HDR (and are patched to use hardware-based AA at the same time). The GeForce 7800 GT has a feature set that isn't too far off it and I'd say that NVIDIA have got the stronger multi-GPU platform at the moment by a long shot, but we'll have to wait and see how good CrossFire on X1800 series is when CrossFire cards are available.

    The reason that the GeForce 7800 GT (as a single card solution) is a better buy at the moment is because the price differential is huge (~25%) and you can buy a pre-overclocked GT that outperforms or matches the X1800XL in just about every situation for a lot lot less. NVIDIA have a well-refined architecture behind GeForce 7, but there are some things missing that only become apparent when you look at ATI's architecture.

    Admittedly, High Quality AF is not all that useable in the most demanding games out at the moment, and Adaptive AA isn't quite as efficient as Transparency SuperSampling from a real world gaming perspective. The time demos seem to show it up as quite useable though. Having said that, like HDR was on GeForce 6 hardware - it's good to have those features if the game is capable of using them without too much of a performance hit or, of course, you don't mind dropping the res/details to turn them on.

    It's back and forth all the way, neither is the performance leader or significantly 'better' than the other at this MSRP price point, so the one with the lowest price wins. Simple as. :)
     
  9. skank

    skank What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    18 Oct 2005
    Posts:
    13
    Likes Received:
    0
    I will say AGAIN I don't care about the use of the X2 really, as long as people are made aware of the fact that the nvidia drivers are multi-threaded and the ATi ones are not. As an example, whenever processors were benched on websites, ie P4 Vs Athlon XP or the non X2 64s, in tests that took advantage of the P4's HT capability like some video encoding, this is always stated in the results, ie something along the lines of "The P4 shows a performance advantage here and this is probably due to it's Hyperthreading capabilties which the software is taking advantage of".

    I don't understand why it is so hard for you guys to understand what I'm trying to say. :sigh:

    Also as a side, ATi will be introducing multithread capable drivers soon as well so that negates the whole "futureproof" idea.

    As it stands for the vast majority of gamers, drivers that support multithreading are a non-issue as they are still using single core cpus.
     
Tags: Add Tags

Share This Page