ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on December 1, 2004 9:41 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Doom 3
Even the GeForce 6800 GT outperforms ATI’s new highest end $550 offering under Doom 3. The 7% performance lead the 6800 GT holds over the Radeon X850 XT PE is not insignificant. This OpenGL powered, shadow heavy, texture intensive game clearly favors NVIDIA’s architecture, even over all the brute strength ATI can pack into one of their ASICs.
Enabling 4xAA and 8xAF closes the gap between the X850 XT PE and the 6800 GT, as the more expensive card as more memory bandwidth to throw at the problem. It’s hard to keep framerates above a playable 30fps under Doom 3 with these settings, but many of the cards on this list can handle it.
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IdahoB - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I just hope that the large increase in the variety of cards means that a couple of them which actually be available to buy. It seems that they have more model numbers than physical stock these days. I would have loved a X800 of some description but couldn't find one anywhere in the UK so settled for the still slightly unreliable 6800GT.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#7: At least it's less confusing than intel's new numbering system. yeesh.StrangerGuy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
X800SE,X800,
X800 Pro,
X800 XL,
X800 XT,
X800 XT PE,
X850 Pro,
X850 XT
and X850 XT PE
9 models of high-end ATI cards? Oh man that is really confusing even for enthusiasts and geeks...
Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#4 The 'video processing unit' isn't for playback, it's for encode, and as far as I'm aware, ATI's non-AIW cards don't have hardware encode either.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I guess my 9700 Pro is safe for another 8-12 months...hopefully.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
No-one is mentioning the one thing ATI almost certainly has in its favor: video playback. The GeForce 68xx's "video processing unit" still does not have drivers that take advantage of it, whyever the case may be. ATI has always had a strong tradition of video playback performance. I'd really like to see Anandtech bench CPU usage with these cards with 1080 HD .WMV files, as well as with MPEG-2/MPEG-4. This would be truly useful for enthusiasts and help round out our buying decisions.gibhunter - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Ati is looking desperate with this release. Their fastest part is what, 3% faster then their previous champ. On top of that, you still can't find these fastest cards. If they were trying to confuse the customer, they might as well consider it mission accomplished.Personally, I'd just stick with 6800GT and have an upgrade path with an SLI Nforce4 board and another 6800GT in the future.
segagenesis - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
The X850 Pro is somewhat disappointing vs. its competition, does nVidia even have refresh parts planned for winter? I was looking at the $400 price range myself :(Cat - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
If it means more cards are available for less cost, than I'm all for this. It's still kinda disappointing, though.