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
ATI's Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition
Compared to the X800 XT:
Compared to ATI's previous flagship, the X850 XT PE offers a 0 - 10% increase in performance, with the biggest gains coming in Battlefield and Doom 3. The performance improvements aren't negligible, but definitely no reason to upgrade from a X800 XT. If you're stuck choosing between the two, what's another $50 when you're already spending $500 on a video card?
Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra:
Next up we have the X850 XT PE compared to NVIDIA's flagship, the GeForce 6800 Ultra, which is currently only available through OEMs in a PCI Express version.
ATI has always done better in Battlefield than NVIDIA has, so it's no surprise to see the X850 XT PE with a huge advantage there. The rest of the games are basically a wash with the exception of Doom 3 and Half Life 2. Under Doom 3, the X850 XT PE is about 15% slower than the GeForce 6800 Ultra, but the tables are turned as soon as you look at Half Life 2, where the X850 XT PE is almost 17% faster than the GeForce 6800 Ultra. So which card do you pick? Well, both happen to run every single game out on the market just fine at the highest resolutions/detail settings so you can't really go wrong either way. The issue here is predicting whether more developers will use Valve's Source engine or id's Doom 3 engine for future games, and at this point that's a tough prediction to make.
The Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition basically offers smoother playability at 1600 x 1200 in all of today's games (including Half Life 2 and Doom 3) than either of the previous reigning champions, the X800 XT and the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Now let's have a look at the rest of the X850 line...
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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.