x1800 vs 7800 eval

compgeek89

Golden Member
Dec 11, 2004
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I've had a 7800 GTX 256mb, a 7800 GTX 512mb, and now an x1800 XT 512mb.

I have to say, after everyone claiming ati had far superior IQ i am extremely disappointed.

The shimmering in COD2 is an eyesore with the x1800 XT... there was little to none with my GTX. This is with high IQ settings enabled.

The performance in some games is downright pathetic compared to the nVidia counterpart (AOE III, Stubbs the Zombie). People keep saying this will be fixed with newer drivers.. I'll be waiting.

The drivers are the biggest pain in the butt ever. With my GTXs I used to minimize games all the time, with ATi drivers every time I minimize a game it gives me an "Unrecoverable DirectX Error" when I try to re-enter. OCing is a royal pain in the rear.


Now for the good parts ;)
I'm impressed that the minimum FPS rate in COD2 is just as good as it was on my GTX512, and the AA quality seems better. It sure as heck was a better deal, but it has some very major annoyances.
 

Matt2

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2001
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I've said this many times, but no one seemed to believe me or care. My ATI RADEON X800XL shimmered worst than my GTs.

Congrats on the new card though.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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hmm, I've heard this from more than one person now. I guess all the cards have crappy AF these days. How does the shimmering with its high quality AF mode (or whatever it's called) compare to the Nvidia HQ / LOD clamp mode? The reportedly less shimmering was one of the main reasons an X1900 card looked appealing to me, so if it's just as bad then it's more of a reason for me to just wait for the G71.
 

compgeek89

Golden Member
Dec 11, 2004
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Its worse on the x1800 with high quality AF than it is on the 7800 with no extra IQ settings.

Also Im getting all types of flickering shadows and textures....
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
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In CoD2, the ground shimmers, or are talking about the flickering shadows and textures you mentioned? A friend just got a XTX, and there wasnt any problems that I saw. I tried CoD2, BF2, F.E.A.R. and NFS. Games looked really good, didnt have any of the problems you mentioned.

How is overclocking a pain? If anything, its easier than NV cards, because its built into the drivers.

Originally posted by: Matt2
I've said this many times, but no one seemed to believe me or care. My ATI RADEON X800XL shimmered worst than my GTs.

Congrats on the new card though.

Wasnt that in WoW (forget the game you made a post about)? All cards have that problem, even FX cards, with have no optimizations.
 

compgeek89

Golden Member
Dec 11, 2004
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Originally posted by: Ackmed
In CoD2, the ground shimmers, or are talking about the flickering shadows and textures you mentioned? A friend just got a XTX, and there wasnt any problems that I saw. I tried CoD2, BF2, F.E.A.R. and NFS. Games looked really good, didnt have any of the problems you mentioned.

How is overclocking a pain? If anything, its easier than NV cards, because its built into the drivers.

Originally posted by: Matt2
I've said this many times, but no one seemed to believe me or care. My ATI RADEON X800XL shimmered worst than my GTs.

Congrats on the new card though.

Wasnt that in WoW (forget the game you made a post about)? All cards have that problem, even FX cards, with have no optimizations.
Everything i mentioned was in COD2

OCing is built itno nv drivers 10x better. If I want to OC past a certain lame point i CANT use the ATi drivers, and the utilities that I have to use dont work well at all, they OC 2D Mode as well and I get freezing and all sorts of crap.
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
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NV drivers dont have anything built into them. Perhaps you are not using the right tools, there are many good ones that work well on NV and ATi cards.

Again though, is it the ground that had the problems, or building, guns, etc?
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
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NV drivers have Coolbits/overclocking API built in to them, you just have to enable it on the interface through a registry hack. Just like cars have an engine built-in to them, even if you can't see it in plain sight. I don't see how overclocking NV cards is any harder? The last ATI 9500 PRO I had artifacted within 5 Mhz of core while I've also had great luck OC'ing my old 6800NU over 200 MHz on the mem if I remember correctly. Not that that has anything to do with the interface but I've had better o/c luck on NV cards in general. Back to the point...

Flickering? Hmm. May be a driver problem. Do you mean 'z-fighting', where two textures collide on one surface, flickering between one another? Or do you mean spontaneously disappearing objects?

Shimmering is just the typical crappy AF on today's cards, if you mean the migrating pixels in one area effect.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
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Originally posted by: Ackmed
NV drivers dont have anything built into them. Perhaps you are not using the right tools, there are many good ones that work well on NV and ATi cards.

Again though, is it the ground that had the problems, or building, guns, etc?

They dont?

All it takes to let these show up is a 1/4 of a second to apply coolbits.reg.
It doesn't add this applet to the Nvidia driver, just lets them be displayed.

 

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
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My experience with ocing was exactly the opposite of yours. You can only oc to a certain point with the Nvidia cards because there are no software voltage adjustments (except for a minor core bump with 7800GTs through a bios flash). I had to resort to expensive/tricky hardware mods to get my 7800GTs to clock ok. My X1900XTX, on the other hand, required no voltmods since voltage can be adjusted through ATI Tool. My brother's X1800XL got a monster overclock (668/702 with a minor voltage bump) and he didn't have to go through near the hassle I did with my 7800GTs for a mediocre oc (550/650). Using the X1800 series overclocker tool with ATI Tool was a little tricky at first, but after spending 2 minutes working with it, it was a cinch.

I'm curious about the shimmering in COD2 since you mentioned that. I'll have to go check it out.
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
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Upon a driver install, no there is not any overclocking part of the drivers CP. Im well aware you can enable overclocking, with coolbits. However, its not there by default, which is what I was saying. If you're going to nitpick, then thats up to you. Ive said for many years I dont know why NV doesnt have them there by default.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
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Originally posted by: Ackmed
Upon a driver install, no there is not any overclocking part of the drivers CP. Im well aware you can enable overclocking, with coolbits. However, its not there by default, which is what I was saying. If you're going to nitpick, then thats up to you. Ive said for many years I dont know why NV doesnt have them there by default.

And what happens when you do not install the CCC and install the ATI driver only?
And many people don't install the CCC because they do not want the .NET framework installed AND/OR they don't want all that bloatware that comes with the CCC.
ATI tool here I come? This was not a nitpick. The overclocking applet is present albeit hidden in the NV driver CP. Hidden for obvious reasons. To complain that this applet is not visible upon default installation and requires but a single mouse click and less than a second of your day to make it visible, is what I would define as, a "nitpick".

 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
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Ok, enough. OP, any other games you have tried that exhibit problems, or do anything better than your GTX's?
 

compgeek89

Golden Member
Dec 11, 2004
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I don't even wanna trw B&W2 at this point... ah, no not really. Havent played anything else since I got it.
 

nRollo

Banned
Jan 11, 2002
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I've got worse news for you Compgeek89:

The money you MADE selling your 512 GTX? You're going to LOSE it selling your X1800XT because it's been discontinued and the price of better X1900XTs is going to continue it's plunge toward $400..

IMO ATI only released the X1800XTs to recoup as much of the three re-spins as they could. :(
 

Ackmed

Diamond Member
Oct 1, 2003
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Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Originally posted by: Ackmed
Upon a driver install, no there is not any overclocking part of the drivers CP. Im well aware you can enable overclocking, with coolbits. However, its not there by default, which is what I was saying. If you're going to nitpick, then thats up to you. Ive said for many years I dont know why NV doesnt have them there by default.

And what happens when you do not install the CCC and install the ATI driver only?
And many people don't install the CCC because they do not want the .NET framework installed AND/OR they don't want all that bloatware that comes with the CCC.
ATI tool here I come? This was not a nitpick. The overclocking applet is present albeit hidden in the NV driver CP. Hidden for obvious reasons. To complain that this applet is not visible upon default installation and requires but a single mouse click and less than a second of your day to make it visible, is what I would define as, a "nitpick".


Do you just try and start arguments? Yes, I think so. CCC is the control panel, you cant adjust anything without it. So of course overdrive wont be there. Its not the same thing. NV doesnt have a seperate package, and the simple fact is, overclocking is not there via default driver installation. I didnt understand why he said it was 10x better to overclock on with the NV drivers.

What obvious reason is it hidden? I wasnt complaining about it, just mentioning that its not there upon default. Its more than a single mouse click, or a single second, but yes it doesnt take long. However, I have recently found out that when I install coolbits, it takes away some SLI rendering options. So its either overclocking with the drivers, or SLI rendering options. I cant have both, or at least have not found out a way to. Coolbits set its to 3, which enabled overclocking. It needs to be at 8 for all the SLI options. So now I have to use rivatuner to overclock, which doesnt bother me much anyways.
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
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Originally posted by: Ackmed
What obvious reason is it hidden? I wasnt complaining about it, just mentioning that its not there upon default. Its more than a single mouse click, or a single second, but yes it doesnt take long. However, I have recently found out that when I install coolbits, it takes away some SLI rendering options. So its either overclocking with the drivers, or SLI rendering options. I cant have both, or at least have not found out a way to. Coolbits set its to 3, which enabled overclocking. It needs to be at 8 for all the SLI options. So now I have to use rivatuner to overclock, which doesnt bother me much anyways.

Usually those things are bit masks. Try setting it to 11 maybe?
 

compgeek89

Golden Member
Dec 11, 2004
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Originally posted by: Rollo
I've got worse news for you Compgeek89:

The money you MADE selling your 512 GTX? You're going to LOSE it selling your X1800XT because it's been discontinued and the price of better X1900XTs is going to continue it's plunge toward $400..

IMO ATI only released the X1800XTs to recoup as much of the three re-spins as they could. :(

I only paid $489 though.
 

M0RPH

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
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Compgeek, have you considered posting a video to show us some of this shimmering? Although a few people on this forum have complained about ATI shimmering, nobody has posted any videos. 5150Joker posted a video that clearly showed the shimmering on a Nv card. I don't know, it just seems that from the get go you were looking for reasons not to like the ATI card.
 

compgeek89

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Dec 11, 2004
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Originally posted by: M0RPHIt just seems that from the get go you were looking for reasons not to like the ATI card.

MORPH, that is total BS you ATi fanboy, I was looking forward to these so called IQ enhancements, they simply dont exist.

I was thinking ATi drivers wouldnt be all that bad like people say they are, I was wrong.

I was looking FOR reasons to like ATi.


Sure I'll post a vid if i get around to it.