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need opinions, should I keep a $220 X800XL or sell?

S

spazo

Senior member
So I ordered one from ATI.com and to my surprise, it actually shipped...

Now I'm debating on whether I should keep it or sell it. I plan to build a pc before I go off to college in about 6 months and I will definately be gaming. I'm not the most picky person when it comes to frame rates and I am perfectly happy playing fps @ ~40fps so long as it stays above 25 fps for any extended period of time and there is at least some AA going on with a minimun of 800x600 video resolution.

Now this is the part where I need some help on. I guess I would like to know if it would be more cost effective to keep the X800Xl or sell it and buy a 6600GT and upgrade video cards later on. I know that the X800Xl is a killer card for the price and I'm not too concerned with spending this kind of money on a graphics card but it is approaching the limit where enough is enough. I can't justify paying $300 just to play a game for 2 years and then have it out of date when another game comes out and just obliterates it to the point that the game is unplayable.

I would also like to ask how often ATI/Nvidia reveal new GPU architechures(generally speaking) as it seems whenever this happens, the new midstream cards will outperform the then current high end cards...
 
As a warning from someone who's been around the block, don't expect any video card to last on the cutting edge for two years. Take the Radeon 9700Pro...top of the line in 03, greatly surpassed in 05. With games like Quake 4, and Spliter Cell 3: Chaos Theory, I would strongly suggest you save a little money for future GPUs. In the meantime, that XL will keep you happy for quite a while. I would reccomend some light OCing as well 🙂.
 
Keep it.

Reality is look at 9800xt, 9800pro and 9700pro and 9600xt and 9600pro. (not to mention FX line of cards). Look at Tom's VGA Graphics Charts 4. You'll see none of those cards can play any of the new generation games past 1024x768 4AA/8AF. They are about all equally slow. X800XL will be just as "slow" in 2 years as X850XT PE. Considering you got a sweet deal on it for $220, just upgrade in 2 year to another $200 card that'll blow today's $500 cards out of the water. Also i dont know why you were thinking of downgrading to a 6600gT?
 
You can make money on the X800 XL now, which would drop a PCIe 6600GT to a great value. Depending on your rig, it could make sense...but I certainly wouldn't do it.
 
If I were to sell, I figure I'd make ~$80 so a 6600GT would cost me about 120.

Anyone think there will be any significant changes within 6 months in regards with video cards?
 
I'm only guessing, but I would say only if nVidia revamps their 6800 line to be PCIe native like the 6600 line. Other than that I would expect we're waiting on the next major chip release from both players.

I'm sure anandtech and/or Tom's have roadmap articles outlining where these companies are heading.
 
With the prices coming down and microcenter selling them for 300 I think you will have a hard time making 80 bucks. Keep the card you will not miss the few bucks now versus a MUCH better card.
 
Think of it this way: a X800XL is almost twice as fast as a 6600GT, and it comes with twice as much memory. So, $120 for a GT or $220 for a XL? I'd keep the XL. It'll be faster now and should look good and play well a lot longer, especially with its 256MB of memory. It's a steal for only $30 more than most 6600GTs.
 
Originally posted by: spazo
If I were to sell, I figure I'd make ~$80 so a 6600GT would cost me about 120.

Anyone think there will be any significant changes within 6 months in regards with video cards?
Click to expand...

Keep the X800XL unnless you are addicted to all the newest titles, it all depends on what games you play. Right now I am back to a 64mb 8500 @295/295MHz from a 6800U and it plays the games I do most (BF1942, VietCong and a few others) 2xperf AA/2xAF 1024x768 pretty well. Though I still have'nt finnished FarCry yet and that's not going to happen on this 8500, LOL.

It's just temporary 😉
 
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