X1800XL v 7800GTX: My personal review

[5150Joker]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: ChrisRay
Joker is right. ATI does not offer a Level of Detail clamp. WOW makes considerable use of negative LoDs. And yes its unfortunate that both ATI/Nvidia dont seem to handle negative level of details well when running anisotropic filtering.

WOW shimmers on every hardware I have run. Including the Geforce FX in HQ mode and my 9800 Pro. The best combat is to push the global LoD up a positive notch or two and you'll be fine.

So, how does one push the global LoD up a positive notch or two in WoW with a 7-series card? I'd love to give that a try.

With RivaTuner.

 

[Matt2]

I didnt bother reading all 75 posts, but I thought I should interject...

My X800XL has exhibited shimmering in every game I have played. HL2, BF2, Far Cry, etc....

I know I have said his many times before, but texture shimmering is not an Nvidia exlusive problem.

 

[Sc4freak]

We need videos showing the same situation on a 7800GTX and an X1800XL. Then, we can make a comparison.

 

[Zstream]

Yes I own two x1800Xl's I post on the futuremark forums. I do not believe this guy when the says the x1800XL has shimmering. I play WoW so does my nephew both using the XL and nothing of the sort even occurs.

Default 3dmark score is 7300 with stock speeds on the XL and Venice 3200+ @ 2350 MHZ

Nothing wrong with that, and they have a new tool which allows me to overclock to 580 core and 624 memory. I get the score of 8100. I can imagine I could reach the 9k mark very easy with a different CPU as this is all it will go to.

If you think I am a noobie look on the futuremark forums under the same userid.

Ohh and if you do not belive me I can actually post screens unlike this other guy who I think is full of crap.

 

[SKoprowski]

I had both a X1800XL and a 7800GT. I took back the X1800XL for some of the same reasons as the previous poster. The real deal breaker for me was the fan noise- it is loud when it speeds up under load. Not quite 5800 Ultra loud- but close. I could easily hear it over the 5 case fans I have. Both are good cards and I may have kept the X1800XL if it had quieter cooling and ATI allowed Crossfire over Nforce4 SLI chipsets. The ATI card did have a bit better IQ to me, but I returned the X1800XL and got another 7800GT. My current 7800GT SLI setup is still quieter than one X1800XL.

Scott

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Pete
Thanks for the great post, Madellga.

FYI, AFAIK shimmering is caused by MIP-map (read: bri/try-linear) or LOD (lower makes textures appear sharper in screenshots but shimmers in motion) shortcuts, not necessarily AF shortcuts (which is just the obvious angle-dependency, simply less AF at some angles [resulting in blurrier textures, which usually means less shimmer]).

OT: C++G, trolling is bad enough, but preemptive trolling? Let's not fan the flames in such a helpful thread.

If it were this simple, I am sure there would have been a fix for it already... I think it is much more complicated than this, since we have not received a fix.

I was curious that no one has mentioned (or seemed too, since I skimmed this) that perhaps the card was defective? Someone had already opened it and returned it and perhaps for the same reason? Maybe the card is faulty?

Be interesting to do another test... However, I do have a lot of confidence in the OP, due to the fact that he has an ATI bias (or did) from his other posts.

Thanks for the great research OP :thumbsup:

Edit ** Removed the smiley face... I HATE that thing, it looks like a taunt more than a smile.

 

[Ackmed]

Angel, you missed this post;

Originally posted by: ChrisRay

WOW shimmers on every hardware I have run. Including the Geforce FX in HQ mode and my 9800 Pro. The best combat is to push the global LoD up a positive notch or two and you'll be fine.

Seems WoW is the problem, as all cards shimmer on it.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: Pete
Thanks for the great post, Madellga.

FYI, AFAIK shimmering is caused by MIP-map (read: bri/try-linear) or LOD (lower makes textures appear sharper in screenshots but shimmers in motion) shortcuts, not necessarily AF shortcuts (which is just the obvious angle-dependency, simply less AF at some angles [resulting in blurrier textures, which usually means less shimmer]).

OT: C++G, trolling is bad enough, but preemptive trolling? Let's not fan the flames in such a helpful thread.

If it were this simple, I am sure there would have been a fix for it already... I think it is much more complicated than this, since we have not received a fix.

I was curious that no one has mentioned (or seemed too, since I skimmed this) that perhaps the card was defective? Someone had already opened it and returned it and perhaps for the same reason? Maybe the card is faulty?

Be interesting to do another test... However, I do have a lot of confidence in the OP, due to the fact that he has an ATI bias (or did) from his other posts.

Thanks for the great research OP :thumbsup:

Edit ** Removed the smiley face... I HATE that thing, it looks like a taunt more than a smile.

It might have to do with that but that makes no sense because not everyone gets shimmering. Yes you could say it is the settings in the game or driver such as LOD but I believe alot more people would have the issue with ALL cards. This issue would not come across only a select few. So I take this as a grain of salt, until my card starts shimmering I cannot believe this. I have pictures of my card and several screenshots in multiple games. I am tempted when I come back from work to start taking WoW screenshots to just prove my point.

For example if it was a AF issue or LOD then ALL graphics cards would be doing it. Not just several people with various cards or people that claim all there cards have done it which seems to me it is more of a driver conflict or some sort of motherboard issue.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Zstream

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: Pete
Thanks for the great post, Madellga.

FYI, AFAIK shimmering is caused by MIP-map (read: bri/try-linear) or LOD (lower makes textures appear sharper in screenshots but shimmers in motion) shortcuts, not necessarily AF shortcuts (which is just the obvious angle-dependency, simply less AF at some angles [resulting in blurrier textures, which usually means less shimmer]).

OT: C++G, trolling is bad enough, but preemptive trolling? Let's not fan the flames in such a helpful thread.

If it were this simple, I am sure there would have been a fix for it already... I think it is much more complicated than this, since we have not received a fix.

I was curious that no one has mentioned (or seemed too, since I skimmed this) that perhaps the card was defective? Someone had already opened it and returned it and perhaps for the same reason? Maybe the card is faulty?

Be interesting to do another test... However, I do have a lot of confidence in the OP, due to the fact that he has an ATI bias (or did) from his other posts.

Thanks for the great research OP :thumbsup:

Edit ** Removed the smiley face... I HATE that thing, it looks like a taunt more than a smile.

It might have to do with that but that makes no sense because not everyone gets shimmering. Yes you could say it is the settings in the game or driver such as LOD but I believe alot more people would have the issue with ALL cards. This issue would not come across only a select few. So I take this as a grain of salt, until my card starts shimmering I cannot believe this. I have pictures of my card and several screenshots in multiple games. I am tempted when I come back from work to start taking WoW screenshots to just prove my point.

For example if it was a AF issue or LOD then ALL graphics cards would be doing it. Not just several people with various cards or people that claim all there cards have done it which seems to me it is more of a driver conflict or some sort of motherboard issue.

Yeah, I guess it is "to each their own". I don't bother with it too much, I just try and enjoy my games the way they are. If X1000 series has problems, it really doesn't affect me in any way. If the X1000 still does not have problems, guess what? Thats right, it still doesn't affect me in any way, at least directly. So, many people here that already own the current gen cards are just here out of curiosity, rather than trolling. I guess we are openly looking for the truth, wherever that leads us...

Just for testing though, I am going to download nHancer and modify some thing visual settings to see if I can indeed eliminate the shimmering in WoW. Be interesting to find out...

 

[RampantAndroid]

the XL is made to compete with the GT...not the GTX....eother you got it wrong, or you're comparing migets to gods.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: Madellga

Originally posted by: Pete
Madellga, if you still have the XL, would you mind trying it in WoW, but with Catalyst AI disabled? If that doesn't fix the shimmering, could you download ATI Tray Tools from Guru3D and see if disabling Trilinear Optimizations does anything? Finally, you could try disabling Aniso Optimizations.

DC, AFAIK, shimmering (aka sparkling, aka pixel popping) is due to under-filtered textures. So, when you move the camera and the texture under a screen pixel changes, if the underlying texture is too contrasty or under-filtered, the pixel may shimmer/sparkle/pop from, say, a white color to a black one, rather than from a light to a dark gray. Less filtering means faster performance because it requires less memory access. (I hope I'm not too wrong on this point.)

Pete, I will return the card on Saturday morning. It is bed time for me now. I will try it tomorrow.
I used a special version from Atitool, made for the X1K - my focus was to watch and control the fan/speed/temperature. But I didn't tweak the settings there.

I am pretty sure I disabled everything in the driver, as mentioned before I first tried Default settings (application controlled) and maxed out the quality at World of Warcraft.

I also tried later using all HQ options, similar results.

I will also try on different places. The ones that I find worse are: Sepulcher and Mulgore.

Any other suggestions? I will try to accomodate if possible/feasible.

The reason is because up above, Catalyst AI must be disabled for any game that you use or ATI will use shortcuts when loading textures and LOD and AF. For instance if you go into Battlefield 2 with the AI enabled press the ` button and the screen comes up and the text is all nice and even, this also bypassed any AF or AA settings that you have set in the CC panel. If you turn it off the text is icky again but the AF and AA are what you set it to.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
the XL is made to compete with the GT...not the GTX....eother you got it wrong, or you're comparing migets to gods.

Wow, I have never seen such a pretext in my life! Actually, I have seen something worse, but this is pretty bad, though not unusual considering the users in this forum that post FUD.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
the XL is made to compete with the GT...not the GTX....eother you got it wrong, or you're comparing migets to gods.

Um... The possibility of diffenerent qualities on the same settings between the XL and XT is almost nill since they both use the same core just at different speeds. In fact with a higher clocked core you take the chance of artifacts and such as you get close to the physical limitation of the core. There is nothing wrong with comparing the XL to the GTX in a quality comparisons for this reason and the fact that you can't get a XT anyways forces people to only compare these 2.

On another note I think the whole shimmering thing is kind of funny, I have never noticed shimmering in any game with my GTX and I tried to figure out why. I watched the video of the midget with the hat in wow and finally saw it. And i got to thinking why haven't I noticed it before in another game. The reason I came up with is you really really have to be looking for it and I had not been. I think Shimmering is like a hairline scratch on a new car, can't really see it unless you look closely but some people once they see it, every time they see it even if they are ten feet away that scratch looks like a front end collision.

Hopefully for everyone that is stuck in the scratch/collision mode that these problems are resolved by either the game company or the respective card manufacturers get this resolved through driver updates and or readily available firmware updates.

 

[Madellga]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
the XL is made to compete with the GT...not the GTX....eother you got it wrong, or you're comparing migets to gods.

You missed it. Go back to the first post and read it. This thread is not about speed.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
the XL is made to compete with the GT...not the GTX....eother you got it wrong, or you're comparing migets to gods.

Well considering I get 7300 in 3dmark on stock settings and a pretty gimpy CPU I do compare it often to the gtx, infact with 8100 on a 2.3ghz 235+ fsb venice I think it is a pretty dang fine score. I can compete with GT in opengl games but eventually like everyone know opengl will eventually run out of funds because only a select few use it and will be forced to make there own changes to opengl.

 

[Madellga]

Originally posted by: Zstream
Yes I own two x1800Xl's I post on the futuremark forums. I do not believe this guy when the says the x1800XL has shimmering. I play WoW so does my nephew both using the XL and nothing of the sort even occurs.

Default 3dmark score is 7300 with stock speeds on the XL and Venice 3200+ @ 2350 MHZ

Nothing wrong with that, and they have a new tool which allows me to overclock to 580 core and 624 memory. I get the score of 8100. I can imagine I could reach the 9k mark very easy with a different CPU as this is all it will go to.

If you think I am a noobie look on the futuremark forums under the same userid.

Ohh and if you do not belive me I can actually post screens unlike this other guy who I think is full of crap.

Oh please don't do that. You don't know me.

As I said before, I wish things were different. I had high hopes for the X1800. And I will be very happy if someone proves I did something wrong.

I will not post screenshots because you can't see shimmering on them.

I am not a web wizard also and I wanted to provide the lads here with some information, but I am not willing to spend hours to do this. I leave this to professional reviewers. I just wanted to raise the issue.

 

[Madellga]

I just came back from work.

I will put the X1800XL back and play WoW again, following Pete's advice.

I will post again later tonight.

If someone has any tips or suggestions, please let me know. I will keep an eye on the thread.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Zstream
Yes I own two x1800Xl's I post on the futuremark forums. I do not believe this guy when the says the x1800XL has shimmering. I play WoW so does my nephew both using the XL and nothing of the sort even occurs.

Default 3dmark score is 7300 with stock speeds on the XL and Venice 3200+ @ 2350 MHZ

Nothing wrong with that, and they have a new tool which allows me to overclock to 580 core and 624 memory. I get the score of 8100. I can imagine I could reach the 9k mark very easy with a different CPU as this is all it will go to.

If you think I am a noobie look on the futuremark forums under the same userid.

Ohh and if you do not belive me I can actually post screens unlike this other guy who I think is full of crap.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't have shimmering on my 7800GTX either, but people swear up, down and sideways that theirs do. Every person's results may vary and that's something nobody can dispute.

 

[Ackmed]

You do have it. In certain games its more noticable than others. You simply dont notice it, which is good for you.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
You do have it. In certain games its more noticable than others. You simply dont notice it, which is good for you.

Pretty certain you would have it too. As Ackmed said, it depends on the game and whether or not you are looking for it. Honestly, I noticed the shimmering long before I knew it was something that wasn't supposed to be there... In WoW the shimmer is bad in only a few areas, but it is noticable in all areas.

It might be a lot more noticable for me, since I am running a pretty large display, I imagine any small artifact gets multiplied by the size of the screen, which is why I notice the shimmering quite a bit. Because, now that I think about it, when I got my new display is when I noticed it more. Going from 19" to 30" is nearly double the screen size dimensions.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
You do have it. In certain games its more noticable than others. You simply dont notice it, which is good for you.

Hmm.

You didn't post "the other side of the story". (that nVidia has already reduced or eliminated the shimmer in some games and is working on this bug)

I guess you only expect me to do that. (as noted in the 512MB GTX thread)

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
It might be a lot more noticable for me, since I am running a pretty large display, I imagine any small artifact gets multiplied by the size of the screen, which is why I notice the shimmering quite a bit. Because, now that I think about it, when I got my new display is when I noticed it more. Going from 19" to 30" is nearly double the screen size dimensions.

I never thought about that. Thats probably the key reason why I notice it so much. For people who play on a much smaller display, its probably not as noticable.

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Ackmed
You do have it. In certain games its more noticable than others. You simply dont notice it, which is good for you.

Hmm.

You didn't post "the other side of the story". (that nVidia has already reduced or eliminated the shimmer in some games and is working on this bug)

I guess you only expect me to do that. (as noted in the 512MB GTX thread)

Shimmering is still there, and not everyone plays at HQ. Its still VERY much there in Quality, as they have shown no effort in reducing it at all. I do applaud them for reducing it in HQ, its still there, and not even reduced in Q.

Its only reduced in HQ, which you forgot to mention. 😉

 

[Madellga]

Short update.
X1800XL installed again, now running with the case closed (Antec P160, 2x120mm Fans).
More on that later.

It seems Pete was right. I never used CCC before, I prefered always the vanilla Cat.
But the Cat. 5.10a available is the CCC version and I somehow managed to leave AI ON during my "test drive" on Monday 😱

Now with AI off and quality maxed out, there is a good improvement at 1920x1200, 4AA 8AF. It is good news but needless to say, the shimmering is still there.

It is much closer to the GTX, funny is that they shimmer in different places.

I will post more details later.

 

[Madellga]

Yes, it is not so bad as I thought.

With AI OFF, it is very close to the GTX. AF16 doesn't do much better than AF8 either.

The best place to see the shimmering in WoW is Mulgore (imo) - Tauren land. You have the grass, foliage, trees, mountain hills and some buildings to look at.

I learned today that the shimmering is more noticeable during the game's daytime. I wanted to swap back to the GTX for a comparison, but it is dark now in the game and I can't really do a good comparison.

My impression is that the XL is better to show things like grass, mountain hills, road paths - large surfaces. But some foliage on the ground, tree branches and leaves, some building features (like pillars or rails) and tapestry don't look good: they shimmer.

As a preview, I would say on the shimmering issue:
GTX (78.03 HQ) similar to XL (Cat. 5.10a AI OFF),
XL (Cat. 5.10a AI OFF) better than GTX (81.85 HQ)

I will try to compare also the GTX normal quality to the XL AI ON.

I will finish this tomorrow. I am very tired now, had a hard day today, I have a cold (so do my family), I feel like crap right now. I will start again with the XL and after 30 minutes stop and swap to the GTX.
I will list the driver settings also, for both cards.

Regarding the cooling, it does go to 80C with the side case cover closed. While playing, the fan goes from 31% to 72% speed. It is the noisiest component on the computer. My case has excellent airflow (Antec P160). As I mentioned yesterday, in warmer cases the noise would be even higher.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
You do have it. In certain games its more noticable than others. You simply dont notice it, which is good for you.

Not true. I go out of my way to look for it. If you're telling me I have something that I can never see or notice even when I'm looking for it, sounds like it should not have even been a concern to begin with.