[NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series Updates]

[413xram]

I just love these forums. It is like someone that owns a Ferrari and a guy pulls up next to him in a Lamborghini and they tell each other that the car they own is a piece of SH*T! Instead of agreeing that both cars are awesome. Some people act like their lives depend on these video cards. I would probably understand your passions to some degree if you received a paycheck from the manufacturer. I would love to see some as*hole come up to me in PERSON after making a purchase and telling me that my purchase is a choice of an idiot. LOFL! It is amazing how tough people are on the internet. Some of you need a reality check.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Uninformed immature adults and kids. Leave them to their delusions. Without 'trylinear' and Ati's traditional 'underfiltering' for performance, they would not achieve some of the numbers that they do. I am even ignoring the 125mhz clock advantage.

Neither of ATI's cheating methods reduce IQ. And the clock advantage is irrelevant. If you want to compare overclockability, that can be done, but we need retail cards first.

The 6800 GT is going to be a great card to own for 399.

That is definitely true. The 6800 GT is probably the best price/performance card, depending on where you look it either falls slightly ahead or behind the XT. But the X800XT is definitely the fastest card on the market .

 

[Shamrock]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

Uninformed immature adults and kids. Leave them to their delusions. Without 'trylinear' and Ati's traditional 'underfiltering' for performance, they would not achieve some of the numbers that they do. I am even ignoring the 125mhz clock advantage.

Neither of ATI's cheating methods reduce IQ. And the clock advantage is irrelevant. If you want to compare overclockability, that can be done, but we need retail cards first.

The 6800 GT is going to be a great card to own for 399.

That is definitely true. The 6800 GT is probably the best price/performance card, depending on where you look it either falls slightly ahead or behind the XT. But the X800XT is definitely the fastest card on the market .

of course it doesnt, because you say so, and so do the fanATIcs over at rage3d and B3d also, right?

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/radeon_x800_texturen/

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/nv40-rx800-3.shtml

Now I'm sure I'll get attacked with something like "well the Russians and Germans dont know squat, and those reviews are tainted" etc, etc.

It IS degrading IQ

 

[Pete]

There are two ways of looking at angle-dependent AF and brilinear. One, that you're getting worse IQ than "full" AF or full trilinear, and thus worse IQ overall. Two, that you're getting some AF and some tri at a small performance hit, thus better IQ overall at a given framerate.

ATi and nV are probably cutting corners w/IQ "enhancements" like AF and tri b/c they achieve better performance on the games that sell new hardware, the brand-new Far Crys, Doom 3s, and Half-Life 2s of the gaming world. But the flip side of that is gamers are losing the ability to apply no-compromises IQ on older, less demanding--but no less entertaining--titles. It'd be nice if ATi allowed for full trilinear all the time via a semi-hidden switch, like nV. It'd also be nice if nV will enable full AF on the 6 series or full tri on the 5 series with a future driver update. They can default to the high-performance modes, but they should leave in high-quality modes for those in the know (likely those buying $300+ video cards).

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: YurDad

Originally posted by: CaiNaM


"The 6800u is an inferior card to the x800xt in all respects.."

Uninformed immature adults and kids. Leave them to their delusions. Without 'trylinear' and Ati's traditional 'underfiltering' for performance, they would not achieve some of the numbers that they do. I am even ignoring the 125mhz clock advantage.

The 6800 GT is going to be a great card to own for 399.

Talk about being quoted out of context.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
The Radeon Core is not that much more efficeint than the Nvidia core. Aside the fact that one uses a Low-K Dielectric. Yes its running at a higher clockspeed but still youre gettin an extra 4 pipes! That will make a difference somewhere along the line once Nvidia gets all the kinks worked out. Also ATI is already, for the most part, maxed out on terms of clockspeed. That core is running at just about as fast as its gonna be.

Also how do you guys know that the ATI caard is running so much cooler. Nvidia ALWAYS goes overobard iwth their cooling solutions why is there reason to belive that they haven't done that again. I would be really interested in seeing the temps benchmark on both cards.

-Kevin

many of you simply don't seem to understand how this works.. # of pipes don't mean anything without considerding the power within the pipes, just as clockspeed mean nothing by themselves. seems this wouldn't be so difficult to understand as athlons have been keeping up w/ intels with much lower clockspeeds. you have to consider the entire architechture.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

ATI is already, for the most part, maxed out on terms of clockspeed.

The XT is. The Pro is not. People have gotten Pros up to 600 mhz core.

Also how do you guys know that the ATI caard is running so much cooler.

Because, even with a larger cooling solution, the 6800s have many more transistors and produce much more heat.

considering the PRO uses the same core as the XT, if the PRO can hit 600mhz, so can the XT..

the only difference between the XT and PRO are # of enabled pipes (they have the same number of physical pipes), a rage theatre chip, and slightly faster memory.

i also wouldn't say my radeon runs much cooler... it runs over 70c under full load (38+/- @ idle)

 

[Gamingphreek]

Cainam I do know and care what goes on. I do consider the entire architecture. But Nvidias architecture isn't that bad. The only place where it really suffers is when AA and AF go nice and high.

-Kevin

 

[ChkSix]

And that's minus the filters/cheats ATi uses.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. (In other words j/k!!!)

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Cainam I do know and care what goes on. I do consider the entire architecture. But Nvidias architecture isn't that bad. The only place where it really suffers is when AA and AF go nice and high.

-Kevin

i never said nv's architecture was bad; in fact it's quite good

that wasn't the point.

as far as "it really suffers is when AA and AF go nice and high", that's not the case at all. nv40 handles aa just fine, but it takes a bit of a hit when af is applied. the reason seems to be that by design, nv40 shares ALU processing time when af is applied, taking away some texture processing time.

ati on the other hand handles it differently and does not share resources and doesn't "steal" any gpu time when af is applied.

in all fairness tho, "opt on" should be used on nv40 when comparing it against the r420...

 

[reever]

I just saying that THEORETICALLy the XT is pretty much maxed out in terms of clockspeed from what i understand. I

There is no way to determine the "maximum" clockspeed of any chip whatsoever, even from a theoretical standpoint

 

[Gamingphreek]

Yes there is. Go until you cant go anymore. Eventually voltage will fry the chip. You can only cool a chip so much. For the most part the Radeon X800XT is pretty much close to being maxed out.

-Kevin

 

[PrayForDeath]

Actually, the 6800 Ultra IS the card that is pretty much close to being maxed out, because of the 220 Millions trans, they couldn't even produce 450Mhz cards running with air cooling, they'll have to use watercooling.
So don't expect the GT to good as well.

 

[alexXx]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

Originally posted by: BFG10K

SM 3.0... displacement mapping could ad A LOT of realism to games

Displacement mapping doesn't require SM 3.0.

no, but sm3 provides a much more elegant solution...

sorta like how ATI has a more elegant solution to anistrophic filtering and yet they are cheating.

 

[hysperion]

If I was driving a ferrari and someone drove up next to me in a lambo I probably would say nice car cus that's the type of person I am but I would think in my mind his was a piece of crap cus of being able to keep that to myself, kinda like on the internet where noone knows you anyways, it's the same idea.....Besides ferrari has always been about performance, lamborghini has been about sticking a big engine in a boat...no handling and that's why ferrari always wins at the track.....I've driven both- personally I own a porsche, ferrari's are nice but you can't drive em' every day with the maintenance they require.....(I'd love to own one) just my .02........Dial 911

 

[reever]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Yes there is. Go until you cant go anymore. Eventually voltage will fry the chip. You can only cool a chip so much. For the most part the Radeon X800XT is pretty much close to being maxed out.

-Kevin

You can still raise the voltage on the card, get more clockspeed(a lot more in many cases), and cool it all without frying it(yes even aircool it, have you seen the stock coolers on these cards? do you think that's the max they could put on in one slot, or even fit within the confines of 2 1/2 slots like the competition did?). Where exactly is the documentation somewhere on the internet saying you can't do any of these things on the X800XT?

 

[Gamingphreek]

No one really KNOWS but through many educated guesses we can easily assume that the X800XT is very near to its peak clock

Yes eventually voltage will fry a chip no matter how much cooling you have. No matter how much cooling you have eventually voltage will fry it.

It would also be EXTREMELY interesting to see temperature benches. Previosuly Nvidia has always gone overboard with their cooling. There is no reason against it right now. As far as we know othe Radeons could be running hotter. I guess you could make a guess based on transistor count but still we dont have actual benchmarks.

-Kevin

 

[reever]

but through many educated guesses we can easily assume that the X800XT is very near to its peak clock

But how do you conclude what the max clock is? What are you basing this all on? Where is the detailed information you are guessing up like the volatge, max clock, and situations where the card starts having problems, and with different and better cooling solutions?

 

[Pete]

The XT PE may be at its peak clock for a certain power draw, yes. But Macci's OCed X800XT shows that R420 has a bit of headroom with sufficient cooling and power, just as that new 590MHz NV40 OC shows that the architecture itself may support higher clocks with a few tweaks.

I'd expect 6800Us to run cooler than X800XTPEs simply b/c they have a bigger HSF, as usual. A more interesting comparison may be between a reference 6800U and a HIS IceQ X800XTPE (whenever those will be available).

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Pete
Have we seen displacement mapping featured in any upcoming game? I'm curious now.

Far Cry "can" support it with a patch I believe. There's a video of a person playing Far Cry at what I think is an "nVidia booth" at some kind of store... so it is possible... but I don't think if you buy a 6800 right now it'll do displacement mapping in Far Cry. Far Cry needs a patch I believe, and possibly a new driver set for the 6800.

No, I think Far Cry's upcoming mod (demoed at the 6800U's launch) features parallax mapping or pseudo-DM or whatever, not true DM. It's an optical illusion (a pixel shader, IIRC), not actually displaced polys.

Edit: I think parallax mapping is also known as Offset Mapping.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: alexXx

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

Originally posted by: BFG10K

SM 3.0... displacement mapping could ad A LOT of realism to games

Displacement mapping doesn't require SM 3.0.

no, but sm3 provides a much more elegant solution...

sorta like how ATI has a more elegant solution to anistrophic filtering and yet they are cheating.

huh?

 

[reever]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

Originally posted by: alexXx

Originally posted by: CaiNaM

Originally posted by: BFG10K

SM 3.0... displacement mapping could ad A LOT of realism to games

Displacement mapping doesn't require SM 3.0.

no, but sm3 provides a much more elegant solution...

sorta like how ATI has a more elegant solution to anistrophic filtering and yet they are cheating.

huh?

People like using the word "elegant" when describing computer hardware

 

[Xenon14]

This is what I observed:

1) Not only are Shaders 3.0 not currently available but it is questionable whether there is significant increase in quality over shader 2.0... especially now.
2) Both x800 and 6800 flavors outperform the 9800xt and 5950 often times by 100%.
3) x800 pro can be modded to x800xt pipeline/speeds.
4) x800's don't have the same power demands as the 6800
5) x800's dont take up as much room as 6800
6) considering the mod of x800pro, it's much more competitively priced
7) by the time ps3.0 is a needed (and by needed i mean, not having 3.0 is crippling to a card's performance and/or quality) feature, 6800 will be less expensive, more revised, and chances are ati will have a solution.

Draw you're own conclusions, feel free to revise my list. It's a fact that both NVIDIA and ATI have powerful cards - no denying that whatever company you are loyal to. However, when considering the little things, from a personal standpoint I think ATI captured the big picture of an all-around good card with the x800.

 

[hysperion]

i like how people try to conceal their fanboism like the above post....."when considering the little things" you mean like ATI concealing it's filtering methods?, how about being based off a 2 year old core with little innovation?....anyone can play it either way with fanboism, i own a 9800xt and have owned ati for my last 2 cards....time to stop paying the canadiens for rebadging the same dam thing....IMO

 

[rbV5]

time to stop paying the canadiens for rebadging the same dam thing....IMO

So the new ATI cards are rebadged what?