Far too many blanket statements, with zero facts to back them up. You mention all the positives (in your mind), and none of the negatives. Good job.
Far too many blanket statements, with zero facts to back them up. You mention all the positives (in your mind), and none of the negatives. Good job.
Actually, everything except for the cooler running part of the post is subjective.
The cheapest XT is also $100+ cheaper than the cheapest GTX on newegg, last I looked. Not just $50.
I disagree. Power usage with the X1900XT is very poor compared to nVidia cards:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/geforce-7950-gx2/power-load.gif
And SLI has been around much longer than Crossfire, thus making it a more mature option.
Last, since the nVidia cards run cooler and use less power it's obvious that they would better overclockers (Many 7900 users will attest to this).
schneiderguy
Lifer
- Jun 26, 2006
- 10,801
- 91
- 91
so you think that a lifetime warranty from EVGA, XFX, etc. is worse than a 1 year warranty from sapphire
Very debatable for a card that costs more.
That is true.
Subjective and since most play with 4xAA anyway, there is no difference. (minus the fact that Nvidia's AA is handicaped when it comes to coupling it with HDR
)Yeah, 6.6 is such a poor perfoming driver increase compared to the 91.xx's :roll:
I admit, EVGA is rrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy nice.
Pugnate, in the future it's best not to start these kinds of threads. Doing so is like lighting a cigarette at a gas station while everyone is fueling up there cars in July at noon.
Only problem I have with the 6.6 Cats is that ATI Tool won't work right and my overclock gets all messed up...
Unfortunately am living overseas so Newegg is a no no.
Any preferences between BFG or XFX? My 7800GTX was BFG and it was great, and I hear XFX have some issues.
Also there are various XFX 7900s out there with different clock speeds and prices. Is it worth going for the higherclocked ones or shall I go low and OC later myself? Is the heatsink+fan combo the same in all their cards?
hahaha...
Sorry man. I really needed opinions and still haven't made up my mind. Am leaning towards the X1900xt cause I love my Oblivion, but then I think of my experience with the 9800.
Any preferences between BFG or XFX? My 7800GTX was BFG and it was great, and I hear XFX have some issues.
Also there are various XFX 7900s out there with different clock speeds and prices. Is it worth going for the higherclocked ones or shall I go low and OC later myself? Is the heatsink+fan combo the same in all their cards?
hahaha...
Sorry man. I really needed opinions and still haven't made up my mind. Am leaning towards the X1900xt cause I love my Oblivion, but then I think of my experience with the 9800.
Hm..that doesn't happen to me.
I was talking in the context of the driver itself and how it is better for the hardware. ATI Tool is an overclocking utility that is seperate from ATI and gets updated after a while. I don't think its going to be too long before another revision comes out that is even better. Besides, I'd rather have a driver that messes up a third-party utility than one that messes up my picture.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
For what it's worth... I personally buy video cards for what I get on the screen, not for the temperature that it runs at. The 7900GTX isn't exactly a "cool" running card either. Also, the way the HSF is designed on the GTX it dumps all the hot air back into the case, whereas the (noisier) XT HSF exhausts the heat out the back.
Yeah, you disagree, which makes it subjective. Thanks for proving my point.
Being around longer, doesnt make anything more mature.
You do not have any facts to support your better overclocking claims, its just more subjectiveness from you. Which further proves my point. Again, thanks.
Originally posted by: schneiderguy
so you think that a lifetime warranty from EVGA, XFX, etc. is worse than a 1 year warranty from sapphire
Way to pick one part of the post, and ignore the rest. You can get a lifetime warranty from ATi too you know. Overall, I think NV cards offer better warranties, but thats not what he said. Both offer lifetime warranties.
Bingo, spot on munky.
No they aren't being phased out. And even if they were, it wouldn't matter. Its not like driver support is going to disapear soon.
Define better AA.
Overall better picture quality with generally unplayable frame rates? (nVidia)
Excellect edge smoothing with playable frame rates? (ATI)
Thanks, but I'll take the latter.
Better H.264 support?
Now that really is a subjective opinion.
Better OpenGL?
Let me guess.....you havn't looked at any OpenGL benches recently (Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey). If you had you would know that with 4xAA enabled, ATI outguns the competion (obviously we are comparing comparble cards here).
Better performing drivers?
Sigh, yet ANOTHER subjective opinion. If you wan't to talk about control panels...yes ATI's CCC does leave something to be desired. Now, if you want to talk about performance in GAMES, then I'd say that ATI holds the upper hand.
Better warranties available?
Powercolor now offers a lifetime warrenty on their cards.....but I'd agree that some nVidia venders offer nice warrenty packages.
Originally posted by: schneiderguy
so you think that a lifetime warranty from EVGA, XFX, etc. is worse than a 1 year warranty from sapphire
Sapphire offers a two (2) year warrenty.
My vote: go for the X1900XT
I am probably going for the X1900XT, as it does a lot better in all the benchmarks and is cheaper. According to Newegg users, it is running really hot though and noisy. Also Ackmed, where did you see the card for $325?
Ah ok, now I see overseas, because 336US seems a bit steep selling a 7800 GTX when can get a 7900 GT for 260US or so in the US.
It's hard to say while the 7900 GTX will have the thermal advantage still, it does lack OpenEXR FP16 HDR + MSAA, if that is a big issue with you.
You can't go wrong either way, if you had a bad experience with ATI, you could stick with Nvidia and just ustilize Bloom + AA or HDR alone in Oblivion. Both products offer a great gaming experience.
No need to get all worked up. I provided a link that shows how the XTX uses about 60 more watts of power than the GTX which is more that subjective information I think.
I?m not sure what context you referring to ?mature? as, but SLI has been around longer? mature is a synonym to older? makes sense to me.
If you don't want to take my word about X1900XT overclocking here's what Xbitlabs says:
"As a result we managed to increase the GPU frequency to 710MHz but the system began to hang up after running tests for an hour and we had to lower this frequency to 705MHz. The memory chips were stable at 815 (1630) MHz. So, our results suggest that the R580 chip works almost at the limit of its capabilities. It is virtually impossible to use the card when its fan works at the maximum speed because of unbearable noise. The increase in the voltages of the graphics card didn?t improve its overclockability."
Both XFX and BFG are great companies. BFG has a very fast turn around time if you every have any need for a RMA. My personal favorite is Evga because they include 3rd party heatsink and software overclocking in their warranty.
Who said Im worked up? It is subjective, the cards use power differently. The XT using more, doesnt mean is not as efficient. If both the GTX and XT had the same "engine", it would. Yet they do not, they are vastly different. What does it really matter anyways. You should be running a PCIe PSU anyways, and its very unlikely the extra power needed would be a problem.
I said "mature", because you did."More mature multi-card support " is what you said. And I said thats subjective.
705/815 is far from a bad overclock. I run both of my XT's at 700/800 when gaming. Using that as proof that GTX's overclock better than XT's is pretty silly. Once again, its subjective. You supplied no link with the quote either. Im sure if I tried, I could find some overclocking results that were "only" 50Mhz over stock for the GTX as well.
Dont be upset, because the points you said were facts, are not.
A main reason I went with the ATI card after t rying one out (previously had GTX OC) is because, and this is important IMO,
ATI has a better quality signal broadcast to my monitor. Details which were not present on the Nvidia GTX are on my XTX.
This is NOT just a driver issue. In my bios I can see each pixel making up the lettering where with nvidia it was just a white blurry letter/number. In-game, this means I can see details in games and in 2-D pictures which were not there on the GTX
The difference was like getting a little better LCD panel then the one I had before, and all other factors combined (HDR+AA, HQ AF, software voltmodding, expelling heat instead of dumping it in the case like the GX2) is why I went with the XTX even when the GX2 was available.
Its a pretty serious issue for me, that nvidia's signal quality or whatever you wish to call it is lower, for a card of these prices, that's total bullshit
Wreckage
Banned
- Jul 1, 2005
- 5,529
- 0
- 0
That may be so for the XTX and GTX, but not for the XT.
Sorry, I thought posting like you would help you to understand better.
Not debatable at all. The GTX is faster than the XT and in many cases the XTX.
I was referring to the driver bloat of the Cat's + .net
ATI's H.264 is only supported by buying the additional Cyberlink codec & player, while using the purevideo codec you can use it in Nero, Cyberlink, WMP, Quicktime, etc.
Here are the results from Rage3d (ATI fan site) that show the GTX as the second fastest single card in Prey (the 7950 is the fastest).
http://www.rage3d.com/articles/preydemoperf/
I was referring to Cats + .net
Yes overall NVIDIA products come with better warranties, like double lifetime and support for aftermarket HSF. Built by ATI offer a year or two as does sapphire, which starts to limit who you can buy from since they are the 2 major suppliers.
............
As you can see from the latest tests by Xbit, the GTX is faster than the XT in just about every becnhmark and is as fast or faster than the XTX in most benchmarks.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/asus-eax1900xtx_7.html
Add to it the better AA, warranties, reduced noise, reduced power consumption, better drivers, h.264 support, OpenGL support, etc. It's an easy choice.
This is probably the most important point of the day:
When both cards are set to "High Quality," a GTX oced even to 700/1800mhz cannot beat a stock XTX, and often gets trounced by more than 30%
A fact that is missed by most reviewers who allow nvidia to get away with lower quality settings vs. ATI's higher quality settings
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/310/5/
"Please note that for all tests, excluding 3D Mark 2006, Nvidia image quality settings were set from "Quality" to "High Quality." ATI image quality settings were left at "High Quality" with "High Quality Anisotropic Filtering" enabled in Catalyst Control Panel."
When both cards are set to "High Quality," a GTX oced even to 700/1800mhz cannot beat a stock XTX, and often gets trounced by more than 30%
A fact that is missed by most reviewers who allow nvidia to get away with lower quality settings vs. ATI's higher quality settings
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/310/5/
"Please note that for all tests, excluding 3D Mark 2006, Nvidia image quality settings were set from "Quality" to "High Quality." ATI image quality settings were left at "High Quality" with "High Quality Anisotropic Filtering" enabled in Catalyst Control Panel."
"as fast or faster than the XTX in most benchmarks" isn't a very accurate characterization. Perhaps I was a bit harsh and I apologize Wreckage, that wasn't a fair thing to call you
The legit-reviews benchmarks are important though.
In the XBit benchies, Anistropic Filtering Optimization and Mipmap Optimazaition are OFF in ATI, ON in nvidia
They turn DOWN the image quality settings for ATI to meet nvidia's... why? Who buys a top end card to turn DOWN image quality?
LegitReviews does the opposite, turns UP nvidia's image quality settings to match ATI's already high quality settings and the 7900GTX gets trounced, plain and simple. Not even a substantial overclock for the GTX changes that fact
The legit-reviews benchmarks are important though.
In the XBit benchies, Anistropic Filtering Optimization and Mipmap Optimazaition are OFF in ATI, ON in nvidia
They turn DOWN the image quality settings for ATI to meet nvidia's... why? Who buys a top end card to turn DOWN image quality?
LegitReviews does the opposite, turns UP nvidia's image quality settings to match ATI's already high quality settings and the 7900GTX gets trounced, plain and simple. Not even a substantial overclock for the GTX changes that fact
The bench numbers from Rage3D have the ATi card set to the highest quality within the drivers (default), and second highest for NV (again default. In simple terms, ATI and NV both have four settings for quality in the drivers. ATi defaults to the highest of four, NV defaults to the highest of 3. Rage3D used the defaults, meaning ATi was running at a higher quality settings. A lof of reviews use the default settings, which mean ATi is running with higher IQ driver settings.
As shown above, when NV is running HQ, it takes a serious performance hit, because ops are turned off.
Did you even look at the numbers? In two of the biggest games right now, the XT has the clear advantage. In GRAW, the XT has a minimum of 30fps, the GTX has one of 16. In Oblivion, the XT has a minimum of 35fps, and the GTX has one of 25. Which would you rather be playing with?
Once again, you post your opinion as facts in most of these, when its far from that. And no I dont do that, stop lying about it. Read my posts, and show me once where I do that. What I did, was refute some claims made by people as facts, when they are not. What I did, was tell the OP to look at the games he plays now, and will play to get a better idea on which is "better" for him. You posted opinionated blanket statements. All pro for NV, nothing negative. Imagine that.
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