I'm glad I got 6800 GT instead of X800 XL/XT after all

[UzairH]

I didn't really get my 6800 GT for the added ps3, I got it cause it had much better performance in shadowing games like Doom 3 and Riddick (benchmarks show 6800 GT faster than X850 XT PE even in Riddick). But now the two games I am waiting above all others for, Gothic 3 and TES IV, Oblivion will have ps3 and for their effects. Not to mention the upcoming games based on Doom3 engine like Quake 4 will run better on 6800 series than X800 series.

Unless someone plans on upgrading to G70/R520 this fall, the 6800 GT/Ultra appear to be the best cards for keeping a couple of years. Those who got X800 series cards won't even be able to run the next-gen games with full effects.

And according to the specs 7800 GTX doesn't appear to be that much faster than 6800 Ultra, 40% faster vertex processing and 60% faster pixel processing. So a 6800 GT overclocked won't do too bad at all.

Of course the real thing to look forward to is G80/nv50 based on 90nm process and having at least 32 pixel pipes / 10 vertex pipes, and clock speed of > 550 MHz. Now THAT would rock!

 

[The Green Bean]

werent you the guy from islamabad? Whered you get those corsairs, EVGA and OCZs?

 

[UzairH]

Heh yeah I'm the guy from Rawalpindi. I got the stuff from USA via a friend coming here. Where'd you get the XP90 from? Imported? How does it perform, how much does it lower temps?

 

[MedicalEntropy]

Not to mention the upcoming games based on Doom3 engine like Quake 4 will run better on 6800 series than X800 series

Technically, no.

You see, Doom 3 was Nvidia based because they wanted it to be Xbox optimized (paraphrased from Carmack)

Quake 4, will be ATI optimized, because it will be on the Xbox 360.

Will 6800s run better on Quake 4 than X800s? maybe, due to SM 3.0. But that's about it.

Also, in Riddick, do NOT put on Pixel Shader 2.0++ unless you want an improvement in Image quality at a SERIOUS (I'm not kidding) performance impact (some times down to 50%)

 

[imported_DaveA]

Originally posted by: MedicalEntropy

Not to mention the upcoming games based on Doom3 engine like Quake 4 will run better on 6800 series than X800 series

Technically, no.

You see, Doom 3 was Nvidia based because they wanted it to be Xbox optimized (paraphrased from Carmack)

Quake 4, will be ATI optimized, because it will be on the Xbox 360.

Will 6800s run better on Quake 4 than X800s? maybe, due to SM 3.0. But that's about it.

Also, in Riddick, do NOT put on Pixel Shader 2.0++ unless you want an improvement in Image quality at a SERIOUS (I'm not kidding) performance impact (some times down to 50%)

Shader Model 3.0 in an OpenGL game hmm...

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: MedicalEntropy

Not to mention the upcoming games based on Doom3 engine like Quake 4 will run better on 6800 series than X800 series

Technically, no.

You see, Doom 3 was Nvidia based because they wanted it to be Xbox optimized (paraphrased from Carmack)

Quake 4, will be ATI optimized, because it will be on the Xbox 360.

Will 6800s run better on Quake 4 than X800s? maybe, due to SM 3.0. But that's about it.

Also, in Riddick, do NOT put on Pixel Shader 2.0++ unless you want an improvement in Image quality at a SERIOUS (I'm not kidding) performance impact (some times down to 50%)

Doom 3 is OGL... so it doesnt follow the Direct Shader Model standard to begin with.

 

[pulsedrive]

Yeah, I am getting sick of the "ATI can't run next gen games" BS, complete and utter. Now if I want 200 Friggin FPS then yes I may want an Nvidia. But frankly as long as it LOOKS good, I don't care how many FPS I get. Neither do the VAST majority of people. Now admitedly not the people that surf these forums typically, but MOST people.

 

[Vernor]

Gothic 3 and TES IV, Oblivion will have ps3 and for their effects

Morrowind had one pretty DX8 effect for the water.

I wouldn't expect much more cutting edge from Oblivion.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Yeah, I am getting sick of the "ATI can't run next gen games" BS, complete and utter. Now if I want 200 Friggin FPS then yes I may want an Nvidia. But frankly as long as it LOOKS good, I don't care how many FPS I get. Neither do the VAST majority of people. Now admitedly not the people that surf these forums typically, but MOST people.

In some cases, ATI just runs them much slower. (e.g. Doom3, Riddick)

In other cases, ATI runs them at reduced image quality. (e.g. Far Cry, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory)

So I guess if you don't mind playing with the 2003 feature set, and running modern OpenGL games much slower, you're right.

A lot of us mind.

Fear not though- ATI will put out their real 2005 card this year, and get back in the game. There's just no reason whatsoever to buy their cards now.

 

[imported_humey]

Rollo. i love what you said there, but you know your gonna get flammed/trolled, even though its true facts what you said, LOL

BTW Rollo, my purevideo works for mpeg 2 dvds, halfed or more my cpu use but that new patch their all on about for wmv (it dont even state its for purevideo or the PvP) dont do anything for my WmvHD playback still 100% mostly.

Remember mines is a agp Ultra n40 broken PvP suppose to be.

 

[pulsedrive]

No it is not a true statement, because truth has FACTS to back it up. Show me one benchmark or review tha states that ATI isn't keeping up with Nvidia in any real way. I don't mean that Nvidia got 10 more FPS over the ATI, because frankly once you are in the 100's of FPS it is irrelavent, not to mention picture quality on equivilant cards for both brands are almost identical. Frankly I don't care if you use Nvidia, I am just sick of people bashin ATI when there is no foundation for it. Fine you LOVE nvidia, again, I don't care, just back up your claims about ATI sucking so much and I will shut up.

 

[Chode Messiah]

Chaarrrrgge!
BTW rollo is correct.

 

[imported_humey]

Yip he is correct and to the user above, sometimes its not Nvidia thats 10fps faster, ATI can be far faster as of clocks being higher, but as you said at 100fps 10fps makes no difference, so i take the dx9c / p.s 3.0 and hdr over the gain in some fps, so i bought a Nvidia 6800 Ultra instead of 2.5 year old Tech, there is benches here on this forum to show fps diff from p.s 2.0 to p.s 3.0 then ps 3.0 non hdr to p.s 3.0 with hdr, and its not very much a drop between them all i i notice no drop in gamming speed with my eyes in FarCry for example (HDR was only beta in this games 1.3 patch and newer patches add only muliplayer fixes and servers).

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Vernor
Gothic 3 and TES IV, Oblivion will have ps3 and for their effects

Morrowind had one pretty DX8 effect for the water.

I wouldn't expect much more cutting edge from Oblivion.

I'm not sure what that means...

 

[McArra]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
No it is not a true statement, because truth has FACTS to back it up. Show me one benchmark or review tha states that ATI isn't keeping up with Nvidia in any real way. I don't mean that Nvidia got 10 more FPS over the ATI, because frankly once you are in the 100's of FPS it is irrelavent, not to mention picture quality on equivilant cards for both brands are almost identical. Frankly I don't care if you use Nvidia, I am just sick of people bashin ATI when there is no foundation for it. Fine you LOVE nvidia, again, I don't care, just back up your claims about ATI sucking so much and I will shut up.

Full HDR+tone mapping, Parallax mapping... those make HUGE difference that you cannot see with your card. At the expense of performance for sure, but very playable IMO, in fact I use it in SP:CT and Farcry EVERYDAY with 8xAF@1280x1024....

That's a big IQ difference.

 

[Todd33]

Doom III sucks. Quake IV will be the same. Until a real game that is fun to play (ie. not a tech demo) comes out that shows all this hype, I'll stick with the best bang for the buck. New features never shine until the 2nd generation anyhow, it happens with everything, TnL, FSAA, etc.

 

[archcommus]

I got an X800 XL PCI-E because it was $180. That sure made that decision simple, didn't it?

But honestly, before I got that deal, I was comparing a $290 X800 XL to a $340 6800 GT. Even then, I'm sure I would've went with the XL. I highly doubt that the SM 3.0 support during the time I have this card will warrant that huge of a price difference. Games will support it, yes, but only a select few, and it would have to look SIGNIFICANTLY different to warrant $150 more out of my pocket.

 

[lavaheadache]

Yeah hdr is great in Far Cry! You get about 50% performance hit and no AA to boot. Also the 2.0++ mode in riddick(Only for geforce 6 Series) Really increases the gaming experience. Seriously guys, anyone with a 6600 is kidding themselves saying that hdr and sm 3.0 is a useful to them. Even Saps (like myself), Cant fully enjoy those features with a 6800 gt or Ultra. Only the 2%(probably less) of people with SLI Can reap the benefits of the 6XXX feature sets. For christs sake I cant even use pure video on my card. So tell me, how is an AGP 6600 or 6800(lack of SLI capability) better than say an x800xt or x850xt or even an x800 pro?

 

[ronnn]

Happy the op likes his card and hope he remains as satisfied in a "couple of years."

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Happy the op likes his card and hope he remains as satisfied in a "couple of years."

Well, he wouldn't be any less satisfied than if he had ATI thats for sure. IMHO

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: MedicalEntropy

Not to mention the upcoming games based on Doom3 engine like Quake 4 will run better on 6800 series than X800 series

Technically, no.

You see, Doom 3 was Nvidia based because they wanted it to be Xbox optimized (paraphrased from Carmack)

Quake 4, will be ATI optimized, because it will be on the Xbox 360.

Will 6800s run better on Quake 4 than X800s? maybe, due to SM 3.0. But that's about it.

Also, in Riddick, do NOT put on Pixel Shader 2.0++ unless you want an improvement in Image quality at a SERIOUS (I'm not kidding) performance impact (some times down to 50%)

Technically, No.

First of all, Doom 3 is an OpenGL based engine, meaning Nividia automatically has a large advantage due to their OGL driver support being MUCH better than ATi's (at least right now).

Second, the main reason NV cards have such a huge advantage in Doom 3 is because their architectures allow for almost double the pipelines when rendering stencil shadows. Remember the whole "NV30 was 4x2 or 8x0" controversy? Same thing here. When rendering stencil shadows (which are basically untextured polygons) the NV40 cards can act as a 16x1 architecture for normal textured pixels and a 32x0 architecture for shadows. This gives the Nv4x architecture a HUGE performance advantage in Doom 3, as there are stencil shadows all over the damned place, and in order to render them, ATi cards have to suck it up and send it down one of their regular pipes. In otherwords, NV4x can render stencil shadows roughly (depending on the situation) twice as fast as R3xx architecture can (and yes, I do consider the X800 series R3xx architecture because it IS).

And yes, Rollo is right about ATi vs. Nvidia right now - performance is at parity, in other words one card vs. the other, you won't miss the performance (excepting maybe NV's lead in D3), but since all other things are equal, it comes down to the feature set, which NV has a firm lead in right now (SLi, SM3.0 support, better OGL support, etc.).

So, performance being equal, you can pretty throw it out of the equation and go by features.

And please, no one crop up the ATi+Half-Life 2 vs. NV+Doom 3 argument. NV's lead in Doom 3 is far and away larger than ATi's Half-Life 2 advantage.

 

[BrokenVisage]

This is all moot, neither the 6800GT or X800XL/XT will be able to run games like Q4 and U3 smoothly. Hope you didn't need that extra cash you spent on a GT to overkill most of todays games and still desire another card when you can't play Quake 4 maxed out.. only paid $250 for my XL and it runs anything I throw at it (except for Deus Ex 2) nice and crisp, so I'm ready to make another investment when necessary.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
This is all moot, neither the 6800GT or X800XL/XT will be able to run games like Q4 and U3 smoothly. Hope you didn't need that extra cash you spent on a GT to overkill most of todays games and still desire another card when you can't play Quake 4 maxed out.. only paid $250 for my XL and it runs anything I throw at it (except for Deus Ex 2) nice and crisp, so I'm ready to make another investment when necessary.

Same reason I bought a 6600GT. I knew I'd need G70/R520 to play what I wanted to play, so in the interim I got a good performer that's inexpensive and easily disposable when the time comes.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
And please, no one crop up the ATi+Half-Life 2 vs. NV+Doom 3 argument. NV's lead in Doom 3 is far and away larger than ATi's Half-Life 2 advantage.

well, that used to be an accurate statement, but recent benchmarks show that ati has made up some significant ground (at least the xt, the xl is still 25% slower than gt):only 5ps slower 1600 4xaa.8xaf

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
This is all moot, neither the 6800GT or X800XL/XT will be able to run games like Q4 and U3 smoothly.

i'd agree on q4; it makes sense as it's based on doom3 tech, which ati has made significant strides in. i would however certainly like to know on what basis you back up your u3 claim. it will be ground up based on sm3, which shader instructions running in the 1000's (far cry's cool water shader is 80 inst.). while it's certianly a possibility, i'd say it's a bit too soon for such a statement.

 

[imported_humey]

Correct from the peep who said Doom was better on Nvidia as its open GL and Nvidia have always had great openl GL driver suport, which ATI is now trying to have also.
Its nothing to do with Doom being on Xbox.