I thought the ATI X850 was the best.... Why is it not?

[McManCSU]

I must have missed something last spring when I built my new computer because I got an Asus ATI X850 thinking that it was the sh*t! From what I have been reading, it sounds like this is not the case. Which is the best then and why. I spent a good $500 on the card so its gotta be at least near the top right? Another question is why the huge price tag for a card that is not the primo? Also, I have been thinking about SLIing it up and was rechecking some prices. Some are 400-500, and others are like 150. Why the price discrepency?

Thanks!

 

[moonboy403]

eh? r u serious?

 

[Bibble]

The X850 is outdated highend tech. If you spent $500 on it 6 months ago....well, you got ripped off. Also, you can't do SLI with ATI cards. ATI uses a system called crossfire to utilize two video cards simultaneously. I don't think you can run 2 X850s in crossfire, but i'm not 100% on that.

 

[Munky]

It was the best like 2 years ago, but you've missed a whole generation of cards since then. The x850 now performs on par with new midrange cards like the 7600gt, and there are a whole bunch of faster cards available. The card should be selling for about $150 these days, anything more and you're overpaying. Also, if you need more performance, it's better to just buy a new single card than add a second older card. To complicate things even further, the use of dual x850's requires a Crossfire motherboard (not SLI), and one of the cards has to be a Crossfire master card, which are rare and expensive for the x850 series.

 

[acegazda]

You have missed the last 6 months of tech, that's what what you missed
Everything you're seeing is correct, you are now experiencing what it's like to realize your card's obselete.

EDIT: Welcome to the forums!

 

[Noema]

The card is two years old and GPU technology moves so fast that video cards are obsolete by the time you get them out of the box. What did you expect?

 

[Corporate Thug]

I spent a good $500 on the card so its gotta be at least near the top right?

I hope this is shens

 

[moonboy403]

he has to be joking!!!

 

[Dkcode]

Go easy on him.

Anyway where did you buy the card from?

 

[otispunkmeyer]

you have missed out man

X850 is old hat now, and dare i say it was kinda old hat when it came out because nvidia's offerings had alot more features to offer. the X850 did have some good raw speed though.

but since then theres been the almost still birth (because it was so late) X1800 which brought ATi into the SM3 arena and a very few short months later came the current daddy of single GPU cards.... the X1900 series (lately just refreshed as the X1950)

all you gotta do is compare the specs

X850XTX

*16 pipe lines with 16 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders running at 540Mhz
* 256bit memory using GDDR3 (1100Mhz?)
* extended Shader Model 2 capabilities
* the usual ATi impeccable Image quality
* cross fire . though it was limited to 1600x1200

the X1900XTX

* 16 pipe card, but with 3 pixel shaders per pipe giving 48 pixel shaders. 8 (or is it 10?) vertex shaders running at 650Mhz
* 256bit GDDR3 memory running 1550Mhz
* shader model 3 support (some claimed not full since vertex texture fetch was missing....like it mattered) along with the ability to use FSAA with FP16 HDR lighting effects
* even better IQ

the x1900 is way way way faster than the x850 and its got more features.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html

check that link out, toms hard ware guide, although not very popular at times, do have a good graphics round up. it should show you how your X850 compares. when you use the charts be sure to select a higher resolution and AA and AF settings to get a better picture of jus how much better the x1900 is

and they had your eyes out if you paid $500 6 months ago.



goood example

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/...elx=33&model1=565&model2=548&chart=199

HL2 episode 1 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF the X1900 is over 2x as fast as the X850

 

[Xcobra]

500 for an X850XT? i remember when i bought my x800xl for 250 like a year and half ago. and now ive seen them go as low as $100...pretty amazing how technology advances in a blink of an eye....anyways you probably got ripped off if you bought that card 6 months ago at that price...might wanna do some more reading on whats up with video cards...

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: munky
It was the best like 2 years ago, but you've missed a whole generation of cards since then. The x850 now performs on par with new midrange cards like the 7600gt, and there are a whole bunch of faster cards available. The card should be selling for about $150 these days, anything more and you're overpaying. Also, if you need more performance, it's better to just buy a new single card than add a second older card. To complicate things even further, the use of dual x850's requires a Crossfire motherboard (not SLI), and one of the cards has to be a Crossfire master card, which are rare and expensive for the x850 series.

The X850XT PE outperforms in most games the 7800 GS standard, the one with 16 pipelines, and trade blows with the 7800GT, so probably the fastest AGP card could be the 7900GT disguised as the 7800GS found only in U.K. or the X850XT PE, but if your card is the X850XT probably is gonna be like 2 to 5 % slower at most, not big deal. More info go also to Tom''s Hardware VGA Charts, you will see the X800XTPE and X850XT PE outperforming the 6800 Ultra in SLI, X1800XL and other newer cards in many games, quite strange eh? About the technology, the only new thing brought with the new generation is the Open EX HDR, a more accurated HDR than the one supported by Microsoft in SM 2.0 cards, more performance when Anti Aliasing is used, better AF. Because the SM 3.0 is just a performance bump over SM 2.0, cause what would require multiple passes to do with 2.0 will only require 1 to SM 3.0 (Except with SM 2.0b supported by X8X0 series that is basically a SM 3.0 without Dynamic Branching)

The Hothardware website states the following:

Performance Summary: The only video card we tested to have a clear performance advantage over the new GeForce 7800 GT was NVIDIA's own flagship GeForce 7800 GTX. ATI's current top-of-the-line Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition ran right alongside the GeForce 7800 GT in a handful of tests, like FarCry and Half Life 2 for example, but in games like Doom 3 and The Chronicles of Riddick the 7800 GT had a huge advantage in performance over the Radeons.

Link: http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=9&articleid=715&cid=2

 

[tuteja1986]

more than a year back i bought a 7800GTX for $500 ... ohh the irony

I really feel sorry for you

 

[McManCSU]

Well F*** me man... I actually bought the card off of newegg (cant imagine they would rip me off though) for prolly like $400. Anyway, I apologize for opening a huge can of worms because I really am not the noob I sound like here; I guess had some bad information. Thanks anyway .

 

[tuteja1986]

OKay you may not be a Tech noob :! but damn ... you really got missinformed ;(

Okay for $330 you could have botten ATI X1900XTX 512MB which would totally ulterly destroy an X850XT

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: munky
It was the best like 2 years ago, but you've missed a whole generation of cards since then. The x850 now performs on par with new midrange cards like the 7600gt, and there are a whole bunch of faster cards available. The card should be selling for about $150 these days, anything more and you're overpaying. Also, if you need more performance, it's better to just buy a new single card than add a second older card. To complicate things even further, the use of dual x850's requires a Crossfire motherboard (not SLI), and one of the cards has to be a Crossfire master card, which are rare and expensive for the x850 series.

The X850XT PE outperforms in most games the 7800 GS standard, the one with 16 pipelines, and trade blows with the 7800GT, so probably the fastest AGP card could be the 7900GT disguised as the 7800GS found only in U.K. or the X850XT PE, but if your card is the X850XT probably is gonna be like 2 to 5 % slower at most, not big deal. More info go also to Tom''s Hardware VGA Charts, will see may X800XTPE and X850XT PE outperforming the 6800 Ultra in SLI in many games, quite strange eh?

The Hothardware website states the following:

Performance Summary: The only video card we tested to have a clear performance advantage over the new GeForce 7800 GT was NVIDIA's own flagship GeForce 7800 GTX. ATI's current top-of-the-line Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition ran right alongside the GeForce 7800 GT in a handful of tests, like FarCry and Half Life 2 for example, but in games like Doom 3 and The Chronicles of Riddick the 7800 GT had a huge advantage in performance over the Radeons.

Link: http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=9&articleid=715&cid=2

I'm well aware that the x850xt pe can keep up with the 7800gt in some games, and that it's also faster than any of the 6-series cards. Last year I had a 16 pipe gto at 560/560, and it ran FEAR about as fast as my friend's 7800gt. However, from the benches I've seen, such as this one, the x850xt pe, the 7600gt and the 7800gs are closely matched, and the 7800gt is overall faster. Also, note that these benches were run with HQ driver settings for Nvidia cards, so these guys know how to do a proper benchmark.

 

[McManCSU]

How much do you think I could sell it for on ebay? 150? Then I would pay $xxx for a <insert latest kill card here>?

 

[moonboy403]

wait for G80 or R600

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

You might be able to get $200 for it on eBay if you're lucky. A 6800GT will generally go for $120-$150 on eBay.

 

[McManCSU]

So really, its a little out of date (~1 yr or so); nothing terrible right? If this is really the case, then I dont feel so Fing pissed.

 

[moonboy403]

under ATI

the performance ladder goes something like this:

x1950 xtx > x1900xtx > x1900xt 512mb > x1900xt 256mb > x1800xt 512mb > x1800xt 256mb > x1950 pro > x1900 gt > x850xt

 

[McManCSU]

But ati dont use SLI therefore for my mobo Id have to get a non-ATI card, correct?

 

[dreddfunk]

I bought an X850XT earlier this year (four months ago or so) and I'm happy with it. Then again, I got it for $165 from newegg.com. It will perform on a par with the 7600gt, a little better, a little worse, depending on the game. It's by no means a crappy card, even for current games. It's just that for $500 you could have gotten a whole lot more card (if you're PCIe-based). Which leads me to my next question:

Do you have an AGP interface or PCIe?

PCIe parts are a lot cheaper than the AGP parts.

If you got a PCIe X850 series, even X850XTPE, I'd say that you were way, way overcharged (though the X850XT PE for PCIe was hovering around $250 when I bought my X850XT).

If you bought an AGP X850XTPE, I'd say you were overcharged (certainly in terms of value--cheaper & better performance could be had with a new PCIe motherboard & PCIe GPU) but not nearly as badly overcharged as if you got a PCIe part.

 

[McManCSU]

Ya I have a PCIe. I think I really bought more like 9 months ago for around $400, so, whatever. Anyway, if the newer cards arent way better than what I have now, I can live through it for a year or more.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: moonboy403
wait for G80 or R600

yeah jus stick with it for now G80 is oh so close