ATI launches the X1000 series!

But does it beat the Geforce 7800?

Thursday, October 13, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News

At IT ChannelVision ATI was demonstrating its new set of video adapters.  The new flagship one, the ATI X1800 claims to be significantly faster than nVidia's Geforce 7800 top of the line card.  But is it?

The answer is, well, probably.  Or at the very least, it's a bit faster than the Geforce 7800 GTX.  The difference depends on the game.  Half-Life 2 at 1600x1200 with full antialiasing gets over 100 frames per second with the X1800XT.  But even with the 7800GTX, it's still nearly 90fps.  Anything over 40 to 50 fps and the human eye really can't tell the difference.

For WinCustomize users, the question comes down to desktop performance.  In our experience, the ATI cards currently have a significant edge with better acceleration of layered windows and other desktop drawing features that make skinning programs run faster.  That is mainly a driver issue.

I asked nVidia what they were going to do with Windows Vista given that nVidia cards have trouble with beta 1.  Their representative told me that they would be holding out for Beta 2 which is due later this year.  In that version, we are assured that nVidia cards will start to really shine.

7 Reply 6 Referrals
Yarlen
Reply #1 Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:36 PM
Alas the X1800XT will cost upwards of $550 and is only PCI-Express. The next lower in the series - the X1600XT just doesn't appear to be a good gaming card at all.

Xiozan
Reply #2 Thursday, October 13, 2005 4:07 PM
I wouldn't expect their XT card to go cheap since its the 512mb DDR3 behemoth...but its lesser brother the 256mb is tagged at $499. I am more interested in seeing some benchmarks of an X1800XT Crossfire setup, since that setup will have 1gb of DDR3 at its disposal. Granted benchmarks should improve as they do on nVidia cards since once the card is released its just a matter of squeezing out the most of the drivers and adapting them to the latest games. Still the most interesting prospect is not the r520 (X1800) but its brother slated to come out in spring timeframe, the r580 with values on paper of 32 pipes. Also by that time we should see the shift from shader 3.0 to shader 4.0 with the release of DirectX 9.0L.

George Rogers Jr
Reply #3 Friday, October 14, 2005 1:56 AM
Hope others comment here as the first X1000 article only got 4 ...two of them mine...I'd really like to hear from anyone here who has one of these X1000 series cards....even the X1800XL! It's getting rave reviews over at Newegg! THX!

Yarlen
Reply #4 Friday, October 14, 2005 9:08 AM
I'm pretty much going to upgrade to a X850XT from a Radeon 9800 Pro. I'd have to upgrade my entire system to get PCI-Express to do better and that's not gonna happen for a few years yet.

Cory McLester
Reply #5 Sunday, October 16, 2005 4:48 PM
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/atix1800xt/index.php

nice review there comparing the nVidia 7800GTX and the ATI X1800XT 512MB

George Rogers Jr
Reply #6 Sunday, October 16, 2005 8:38 PM
Cory McLester, Thx for the "link" - very interesting!

ravage888
Reply #7 Saturday, October 22, 2005 9:42 AM
"Anything over 40 to 50 fps and the human eye really can't tell the difference."

That's a myth... anyone that has played an FPS with relatively old and new video cards can tell you that.

http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

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