GeForce 6600 GT or ATI X800 (Regular)?

[xtknight]

I've heard the X800 regular edition is expected to retail for about $250 and benchmarks show it's slightly faster than the $200 GeForce 6600 GT, but still doesn't support SM3.0. On the Anandtech benchmarks, it also seems to beat out the GeForce 6600 GT at Wolfenstein, the primary game I will be playing (OpenGL even!) What do you guys think? Which card should I buy? Will SM3.0 be REQUIRED on games or will it just make the visual quality a little better? And, will the X800 regular edition have 256 MB of memory?

 

[Todd33]

You should wait for the cards to hit the street, then check the real prices and benchmarks. If you cannot wait, then the 6600GT is a good buy <$220.

 

[xtknight]

Thanks for the quick reply. Right now I have a 9500 pro rated at 62.5 million triangles/sec. The X800 is rated at 600 mtris/sec. In reality, will this offer 10x the geometric performance since this is the main limitating factor in Wolfenstein for me?

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Thanks for the quick reply. Right now I have a 9500 pro rated at 62.5 million triangles/sec. The X800 is rated at 600 mtris/sec. In reality, will this offer 10x the geometric performance since this is the main limitating factor in Wolfenstein for me?

No. Compare benchmarks, not specifications. I would guess the card would be 2-3 times faster than what you're using now, in a best-case scenario.

 

[Todd33]

Assuming you are not CPU limited, you would probably see 2-3X the boost at high res with AA/AF.

See these charts:

http://graphics.tomshardware.c...004/vga_charts-07.html

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Right now I have a 9500 pro...

You will need a PCIe motherboard to use the x800, it is PCIe only at this time.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r480/

With both the new chips being based on R423, not R420, all of these new parts will only natively support PCI Express based systems. ATI have previously talked of a bridge, rumoured to be called RIALTO, in order to allow PCI Express chips to operate on AGP busses, however we have heard no commitment for the eventual production of the bridge and whether either of these new parts will use it in order to create AGP compatible versions.

 

[xtknight]

Yes, I am getting a PCIe board, most likely an ASUS nForce4-based. From what I can tell, Wolfenstein: ET is mostly CPU-bound looking at a lot of benchmarks for the past hour. I will also be playing Half-Life 2, and I know ATI has an edge in Direct3D games thus the ATI X800 will probably be better for me. Looks like nVidia will have some trouble in the mid-range if ATI pulls this off!

Geforce 6600 GT vs. ATI X800

One more question: Will games in the future require a graphics card to have Pixel/Vertex Shader 3.0, or is it really up to the person who codes the shaders? In other words, will they have SM2.0 for compatibility as well as the newer SM3.0 for people with cards that support it? I'm afraid that if I get the X800 I won't be able to play future games, which is essentially my intent for buying this graphics card. I intend to keep it for a while (2+ years), unless something for $100 outperforms it by 2x by next xmas.

Thanks, you guys are a big help.
xtknight

 

[Sc4freak]

I don't think games that REQUIRE SM3.0 will appear within the next few years.

 

[batmanuel]

I'd say a lot of games will have SM3.0 compatability, but won't require it. To sell lots of copies to the masses, you need to support old hardware because not everyone who buys PC games has the cash to stay on the video card upgrade treadmill. With this in mind, most games are coded so they can fall back on a less complex rendering path if they encounter older hardware.

Heck, even Half Life 2 has a DX7-compatible rendering path that sacrifices visual quality to allow even an older GF4MX card to run a at playable frame rate.

 

[housecat]

i'd never recommend buying old technology, no matter how pretty the new wrapping or the bow on top.
if your favorite games are opengl its hands down Nvidia.. so 6600gt.

if your favorite games are dx or a combination.. its still Nvidia but you'd have reason to look around at ATIs current stuff. but stilll... 6600gt.. its available today in box pcie and agp forms. sli possiblity for pcie form. SM3.0, useless or not on a 6600 is still there..

x800 pcie is still on paper, and agp might not ever come out.
most ppl agree if you are looking for a card from the current offerings, you can pretty much take a Nvidia card from top to bottom and have a great card with no regrets.
there are possible regrettable qualities to current ati cards.. no sli possibility, no sm3.0, worse OGL support (sounds like this one might be important to you), historically lower quality drivers... to put this in a positive light instead: nvidia has had a great track record of game compatibility and performance between OGL/D3D within their drivers even when their cards sucked (FX series), and driver "hacks" were needed to keep up.

To sum it up, take any card from NV these days from 6200-6800 and you cant go wrong.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: housecat
i'd never recommend buying old technology, no matter how pretty the new wrapping or the bow on top.
if your favorite games are opengl its hands down Nvidia.. so 6600gt.

Or if it's 5 times faster.

According to this logic, a year ago you would have advocated buying a Geforce FX 5200 over a Radeon 8500 or GeForce4 Ti4600.

Newer isn't always better.

To sum it up, take any card from NV these days from 6200-6800 and you cant go wrong.

So you'd recommend a GF 6200 over an X800XT PE then?

'Old technology' often has it's perks: CRT's are better for the best colour representation in graphics work (and arguably better in games, and the first generation of LCD's were certainly worse gamers than CRT's).

DDR1 is often a much smarter choice for a new system then DDR2 (ie shelling out extra cash needlessly on a new Intel setup).

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: housecat
i'd never recommend buying old technology, no matter how pretty the new wrapping or the bow on top.
if your favorite games are opengl its hands down Nvidia.. so 6600gt.

if your favorite games are dx or a combination.. its still Nvidia but you'd have reason to look around at ATIs current stuff. but stilll... 6600gt.. its available today in box pcie and agp forms. sli possiblity for pcie form. SM3.0, useless or not on a 6600 is still there..

x800 pcie is still on paper, and agp might not ever come out.
most ppl agree if you are looking for a card from the current offerings, you can pretty much take a Nvidia card from top to bottom and have a great card with no regrets.
there are possible regrettable qualities to current ati cards.. no sli possibility, no sm3.0, worse OGL support (sounds like this one might be important to you), historically lower quality drivers... to put this in a positive light instead: nvidia has had a great track record of game compatibility and performance between OGL/D3D within their drivers even when their cards sucked (FX series), and driver "hacks" were needed to keep up.

To sum it up, take any card from NV these days from 6200-6800 and you cant go wrong.

So if the ATI cards were 2x faster than the Nvidia couterparts, but were still based off the R300 core, you wouldn't buy an ATI card? I'm tired of this "old technology" argument. The card performs. Does it matter that it's based off an old core? I'm sure if the latest gen ATI GPUs had SM3.0, we wouldn't hear much of this old technology griping. As it stands, you either want SM3.0, or you don't.

Now, let's address the OP's question.
SM3.0 will not be required for gameplay. If you're going for a two year upgrade, you can be pretty certain that no game in 2 years will require SM3.0, as there will need to be backwards compatibility for older hardware to run the games. It also will not improve image quality at all. SM3.0 is meant to be more efficient, so as games start incorporating SM3.0, cards that can use it may enjoy a small performance boost. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that currently does this is Farcry, on a limited scale. I think there are some old Anandtech articles on this, so check them out. ATI is still pretty much competitive with SM3.0 enabled Nvidia cards in that game. You'll have to determine yourself whether or not you believe games will come out within the next year or two that will make more heavy use of SM3.0, and decide if that will be beneficial to you and something you'll want for the long run. To me personally, SM3.0 was a non issue in determining which card I wanted to buy, but I still ended up with an eVGA 6800NU anyway

[e-penis]Got it for $200, and it softmods perfectly. The memory OCs to 900mhz, so I'm running pretty close to a 128MB 6800GT, and saved >$100 in the process. Now the only question is longevity [/e-penis]
That was a very pleasant purchase for me.

Anywho...I did a quick check on Newegg for PCI-e prices for the 6600GT. It seems that there is a Gigabyte model going for around $185 shipped. Not bad. It will probably take the x800 a couple weeks after hitting shelf to stabilize down to its MSRP price of $250. I figure if you overclock the x800, it will start to pull away from an overclocked 6600GT, due to the extra bandwidth. I'm not sure if the x800 will have a 256MB model right off the bat. I'm pretty sure it's only 128MB for now, like the 6600GTs.

Anandtech is showing the x800 having a 1-19% advantage over the 6600GT, with the lone exception of Doom3 with a 22% disadvantage. Use this to determine if the ~$70 price delta is worth it for you. I'd say it's not, and to go with the 6600GT.

 

[xtknight]

From what I understand, the 4 less pixel pipelines on the 6600 GT won't impair me if I keep the texture quality down a little. What about the new 6800 PCIe (NV41) which 1 more vertex pipeline (5 vp) and 4 more pixel pipelines (12)? This doesn't allow softmodding for more pipelines because it's on a new core (but neither does the 6600 GT). However, this costs $100 ($150?) more than the 6600 GT (which I can afford). I guess I'd rather be safe with nVidia on SM3.0 support, better OpenGL and Linux support, and better Windows XP 64-bit drivers (which I will certainly need). And you really can't go wrong with SLI upgradeability (both cards support it providing that card will be available next year or so for a little cheaper). On the benchmarks of 6600 GT vs 6800 standard, the 6600 GT even has the advantage some of the time, according to some Chinese website (however much you can trust those...) Anandtech says they haven't even gotten samples of the 6800 PCI-e (NV41) yet; maybe I'll wait until then. I hope if I spend the $100 more I will get more pipelines and be better in the long run. I think they may be selling 256 MB models as well which I would like. Who knows about the video processor inside them, I don't really care. I guess it's really ATI X800 XL (16 pipelines) vs. GeForce 6800 PCIe standard (12 pipelines) at the $350 price point for me. Any recommendations for that? Is one twice as faster as the other or something, or are they both about equal and should go with nVidia for future-proofness (a word?) I know, I ask a lot of questions.:evil: I don't plan on playing Doom 3, basically Wolfenstein and Counter-Strike Source (one GL and one DX game.) I hope this thread will be useful to everyone in this situation.

Thanks again,
xtknight