Confused... X1800 vs. 7800

[jpinard]

I'm really confused lately. I'd set aside some money to upgrade my video card. I have the ATI X800 XT right now, and my mobo is AGP.

I need to get a new mobo (PCIe) and was looking at the ATI X1800XT or one of the 7800's.

Now what is making the decision difficult comes down to this:

1. Only wanted to spend a max of $560 on the vid card.

2. I really wanted the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

3. I thought I wanted the ATI card more, because I like their FSAA and AF better... but maybe NVidia's is indecipherable to ATI's now?

4. Not sure if I should plan for SLI or not. SLI seems to be a mammoth power drain on systems. I have a 550 Watt Power supply now... but I have 4 hard drives.

5. I've really loved my ATI X800XT, and am leery of going back to NVidia. I've never had any issues running any of my games... and that's never happened before.

Thanks for the help and advice.

 

[hans030390]

I'd get the mobo and the 7800gtx. It's about equal to the x1800xt (about 50/50 in most tests). The 7800gtx is much cheaper, and you wont be getting a justifiable amount of performance for the extra cost of the x1800xt.

In the future, you could go SLI with it too, just a matter of getting it to run on your PSU (which it probably would if you cut down the harddrives).

You shouldn't be "leery" about going back to nvidia...really. The 7800gtx is a great card.

 

[Munky]

I'd say get the x1800xt since it can be found now for $500-550, but with all the rumors of the r580 coming out in January, I wouldnt rush to buy it at this point. I'm sure you can suffer with a "lowly" x800xt for another month or two?

 

[jpinard]

Originally posted by: munky
I'd say get the x1800xt since it can be found now for $500-550, but with all the rumors of the r580 coming out in January, I wouldnt rush to buy it at this point. I'm sure you can suffer with a "lowly" x800xt for another month or two?

The R580 is coming out? What is that? A cheaper version of the X1800, or an even better video card? Sorry if that's a dumb question. I really appreciate ther help from both of you.

 

[Munky]

The r580 is supposed to be a new high end card, significantly faster the the r520.

 

[Elfear]

I'd also say either wait for the R580 benchmarks to decide or grab the X1800XT. It's faster overall than the 256MB 7800GTX and it's almost the same price.

 

[Slitherythesnake]

The R580 is even rumored to be faster than 2 SLI 7800 GTX, hopefully it won't launch some absurd price like the 7800 GTX 512 MB have.

 

[jpinard]

Originally posted by: Slitherythesnake
The R580 is even rumored to be faster than 2 SLI 7800 GTX, hopefully it won't launch some absurd price like the 7800 GTX 512 MB have.

Will it be another paper launch? Has there been any comments on it not being $700 or more?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: Slitherythesnake
The R580 is even rumored to be faster than 2 SLI 7800 GTX, hopefully it won't launch some absurd price like the 7800 GTX 512 MB have.

If that was true, it would be one hell of a card.

The question is jpinard are you willing to spend now? or are you willing to wait for 2 more months?

If you are willing to spend now, just go grab the A8N32SLi and a 7800GTX. By the time the R580 is released, you can probably go buy a cheaper GTX and SLi them, which might see similiar performace with the R580 if not 5% slower.

Anyhow, you can enjoy gaming to MAX detail for 2 months, and enjoy next gen performance by adding in another GTX which would be defitnely cheaper by 2 months time.

Power could be a issue, but GTXs have low power consumption. You could grab a beefier PSU, but grab it later on.

Do you have an LCD or a CRT?

 

[Demoth]

Wait. Not for January. A few weeks, 3 weeks tops is when we should see the first tests for the R580 posted on various tech sites. If the 150% increase over 7800 GTx performance is for real, many people who recently bought this gens high end will kick themselves. Even if it dosen't live up to the hype, prices will still plummet regarding the 7800/X1800 series as they will no longer be the high end.

Also, if your shooting for the $560 range, your not going to get a R580 or the Nvidia equivalent (if they can get theirs out as quickly) till probably March. Expect prices to start around $700 and then taper down to $550 by March. But also expect X1800XT and 512 7800 GTx prices to get around $450 in January.

The rated power of your PSU has less bearing on whether your system can handle 4 HDs and 2 high end SLI cards. You need to look at how much power it supplies on the 12V rail and most importantly, the quality of the PSU. A high quality 350 watt PSU could probably handle that kind of system whereas a crap 600 watter would not.

ATI's methods of design make their cards almost identicle to NVIDIA counterparts but with FSAA and AF, they tend not to lose much FPS where NVIDIA cards always take a big hit. A lot of people also think ATI cards do a much better job rendering 2D and sharper text for web browsing. NVIDIA tends to have better and less buggy drivers and their hardware seems to be less problematic.

As far as planning for SLI, I personally don't like it too much. More power drain, more heat, more parts to go wrong, more possible driver issues. I'd rather run 1 7800 GT then 2 6800 GTs despite the faster speed for the SLI. If I had gone with a 6800GT last year for $350, planning to SLI a cheaper 6800GT now when next gen is established, I'd still be looking at $280 to get another 6800GT while I could pick up a 7800GT for $290. Now, getting 2 6800GSs now to SLI for under $400 would make sense and is a good option, but again, too many potential problems for me to go that route.

Finally, what games do you play now and how much FPS are you getting? Do you need to upgrade right now or do you just want bragging rights for having a fast system? Your current card is still considered top end by a lot of people and most would not justify having to jump right away into buying top end when the next gen is a little more then a month away. If you had a vanilla 6600 or lower, I could see plunging in now. But, if I was in your boat, I'd wait and in the meanwhile be happy your getting that much extra life out of a no longer top end but still awesome vid card.

 

[TSS]

if to choose between the GTX 256 or the xt1800, i'd pick the GTX. similar performance, only much cheaper.

though i'd wait a month orso if i where you. see the christmas rush go by, and prices should drop al little more after the R580 gets released. if you really need to upgrade at all since that card you have will definatly last you untill the next generation comes out (G80 and R600 chips) speculated around fall/winter 2006.

as for SLI or not: SLI still isnt recommended, but it would be good to buy a SLI board and only 1 graphics card. say the 7800GTX. then next time you feel like upgrading (another generation later) you can just buy another 7800gtx for like 250-300 then instead of buying another 500$ card. and the PSU, as long as you got a recognized brand, or a PSU that you know can keep up the amps, 550 will do just fine for 4 HDD and 2 graphic cards.

but personally, i'd say you dont "need" to go PCI-E just yet. keep that card you have and the board you have and you'll be just fine till the geforce 8xxx and ati x2xxx series.

 

[Pete]

Three weeks until we see R580 numbers--namely, until reviewers get their hands on some? Pretty optimistic, no? And pretty close to R520's launch?

 

[Nextman916]

Originally posted by: Slitherythesnake
The R580 is even rumored to be faster than 2 SLI 7800 GTX, hopefully it won't launch some absurd price like the 7800 GTX 512 MB have.

Well considering the 7800gtx 512mb isnt even close to as powerful as two 256mb gtx's in sli and is around $750 if the R580 were to be the same price and outperform sli gtx's it would be a helluva deal. 2x256mb gtx's=somewhere in $900 range, so do teh math

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Slitherythesnake
The R580 is even rumored to be faster than 2 SLI 7800 GTX, hopefully it won't launch some absurd price like the 7800 GTX 512 MB have.

Ill tell you right now that is utter BS. I would be suprised if it significantly outperforms the GTX 512 (it probably will outperform but not significantly).

Not only that i cannot believe you guys are advising him to wait for a card, that:

A. ATI hasn't even confirmed a January release, and AT thinks it will launch well after CEBIT
B. A card we have no solid fact on!!

RIght now you must decide:

No AA+AF, Less Power/Less Heat, Better Deinterlacing, $100 cheaper - GTX 256
AA+AF, Video Encoding assist, better AA+AF IQ (Programmable)- XT
Endless wallet that dominates everything out- GTX 512

For your setup i would tend to lean towards the GTX, simply because your mothboard. It would be utterly pointless to get an Nforce based SLI motherboard and then slap an ATI card in.

As for Power Consumption, SLI on a fairly powerful system (AT Article) uses just over 320Watt. Add in ~60 Watt for your additional HDD (ballparking this, not accurate), and you total out at 380Watt Max load. I would probably invest in a good quality 500 Watt. No real reason to go on a buying spree and waste money on huge 600 Watt behemoths.

-Kevin

 

[hytek369]

too rich for my blood

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: Demoth
Wait. Not for January. A few weeks, 3 weeks tops is when we should see the first tests for the R580 posted on various tech sites. If the 150% increase over 7800 GTx performance is for real, many people who recently bought this gens high end will kick themselves. Even if it dosen't live up to the hype, prices will still plummet regarding the 7800/X1800 series as they will no longer be the high end.

Which is exactly why I don't expect ATI to provide the 'tech sites' with anything other than marketing rumors, if that. ATI and their partners need to recoup some of their R&D dollars invested into the X1800 line.

There is no way they'll cannibalize their existing product by introducing the next generation after only a month of having the X1800XT on the market. Hell, the X1600, feeble as it is, isn't truly in the channel yet.

Don't hold your breath for an R580 with availability < March of next year.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Your best bet IMO is to get a 7800GT or X1800XL, which are both in the $300-350 range currently. By January/February, when the R580 cards come out, you can decide to either sell your card and upgrade or wait for prices to drop.

IMO you won't be satisfied with just an X800 or what have you, and a 7800GT or X1800XL gives you most of the performance of their (more expensive) brothers.

 

[Topweasel]

Buy the best card you can for the price. Also remember that no one has yet done a review of the normally overclocked 780GTXs like the BFG at 460 the XFX at 470 and the EVGA at 490 against a X1800XT. Asus has luanched the only oc'ed X1800XT, but their is no telling the price or when and how much it will be available. If you find SLI Interesting then I would suggest getting the a 7800GTX for a hundred dollars less then your limit (you can get the m for ~$450) and spend the other $100 on a good 520W (like the powerstream from OCZ) which puts out over 30W on the 12v line. If yours already does that then you should be fine. If no PSU then just save it, and save up and get another 7800GTX when the refresh comes out (Probably named 7900) and the price drops on the 7800GTX, you can probably save another $100 then.

 

[jpinard]

My PSU is the Antec Truepower 550.

The main games that I need the extra power for are:

Rome Total War, City of Villains, FEAR, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.

I really hate running anything lower than 4x FSAA and 16X AF at 1280x960.

I have a 22" CRT, and as long as it doens't blow up, I'll be staying with it and not switching to LCD.

 

[VIAN]

Originally posted by: jpinard
I'm really confused lately. I'd set aside some money to upgrade my video card. I have the ATI X800 XT right now, and my mobo is AGP.

I need to get a new mobo (PCIe) and was looking at the ATI X1800XT or one of the 7800's.

Now what is making the decision difficult comes down to this:

1. Only wanted to spend a max of $560 on the vid card.

2. I really wanted the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

3. I thought I wanted the ATI card more, because I like their FSAA and AF better... but maybe NVidia's is indecipherable to ATI's now?

4. Not sure if I should plan for SLI or not. SLI seems to be a mammoth power drain on systems. I have a 550 Watt Power supply now... but I have 4 hard drives.

5. I've really loved my ATI X800XT, and am leery of going back to NVidia. I've never had any issues running any of my games... and that's never happened before.

Thanks for the help and advice.

I prefer MSI mobos because they have better documentation, but it's up to you.

ATI still pawns Nv in AA & AF.

I also don't like SLI either. I wouldn't buy it if I had the money because of compatability problems, which would annoy me spending all that money.

If you like ATI, why then consider going with Nvidia. I prefer ATI, but if ATI is 5% more expensive than a similar performing Nv card, then I would get Nv.

 

[mrkun]

You can buy two 7800 GTs at Newegg for $558 right now.

 

[Doc Snuggles]

Dec. 3rd news: "New 90nm graphics processor units (GPUs) from ATI Technologies and Nvidia, with ATI's flagship R580 chip and two 7xxx series from Nvidia, are expected to enter mass shipments by the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to Taiwan-based graphics card makers."

So if you can wait until march/april 06 you should wait for the R580 cards and MoBos with the new ATI SB650 and the M2 socket. Dont expect to pay less for the R580 than you have to pay for a 512MB GTX right now ($600-700+).