X800XL for $250 or X850XT for $350?

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RibSpreader

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Feb 9, 2005
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What would you folks do with my current system? Still not ready to drop the $ for an A64 rig so I'm planning on hanging on to this system for another 12-18 months. For the extra $100 (40%), I'm not sure I'll get 40% more performance if I paired the X850XT with my xp3000.

I'm not terribly picky about high resolution but I'd like to run BF2 at 1280x1024 at more than the 17 fps that my 9600pro is groaning to crank out.

Someone push me off the fence and tell me which makes more sense.
 
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Budarow

Golden Member
Dec 16, 2001
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Here's some info. regarding my PC and Doom 3. You can ignore whatever portions you wish (i.e., the info. below was not written for your question). You can see the jump in performance I got from going from a 9800 Pro to an X800XT PE though with my modest CPU, RAM, etc.


Timedemo Demo1" at "high settings" and resolution of "800x600" using the older ATI drivers (dated Oct 04....I think V5.1) and got ~68 FPS (ran 3 times in row).

With the newer drivers 5.7 or 5.8, my FPS dropped by 1/3 to 48 FPS.

What's the deal with the newer drivers? At least with Doom3...they seem to suck.

I experienced the same kind of drop with my 9800 Pro (went down to 32 FPS with 5.8 drivers from 47 FPS with 5.1 drivers and Doom 3 with same settings. So it's not the change from 9800 Pro to X800XT PE.

Also, for all those peeps with the "don't bother buying a faster graphics card...your CPU will severly bottleneck it...blah, blah, blah" stuff, getting 15-20 FPS more on average is GREAT in my opinion!
 
ddogg

ddogg

Golden Member
May 4, 2005
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depends how heavy a gamer you are, but getting the X850XTPE for $350 is a really good deal.
 
n7

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
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Originally posted by: hans030390
X800XL since we all know SM 3.0 isn't all that important for the next couple years.
Click to expand...


Fixed :)
 
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RibSpreader

Member
Feb 9, 2005
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It's not the PE version, just X850XT. Now I've lost the $250 tag on the XL - I swear that was the deal at CompUSSR yesterday, and it said the deal ran through 9-1, hmmm. Should have struck yesterday as soon as I saw it.

Guess I'll still go with the XL - it seems to be in high favor now, and have $80 for more ram or a better psu.

Nobody has mentioned potential bottlenecks so I guess I'm good?
 
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Beef Taco

Senior member
Jul 26, 2005
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I don't think you would bottleneck it that much, you'll be fine.

And i got mine when it was $250 at comp usa :)
 
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Spacecomber

Senior member
Apr 21, 2000
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I'd just watch the prices on all the potential, good upgrade, AGP cards, such as the 6800GT, X800XL, X800Pro (maybe), and X800XT and jump on which ever one shows up with a big price cut.

I picked up a refurbished 6800GT for a good price and I'm running it with a Athlon XP (mobile Barton) at 2.3GHz. BF2 is really tough on video cards. I'm running at 1024x768 with mostly high settings (Dynamic Shadows MED and AA OFF). You'll want more memory for BF2 when you upgrade to to a 256MB video card; or, you can run Textures at MED.

Running a demo recording of single player action and using FRAPS, I get 62.8 fps average and a range of 28-90 fps with the above mentioned settings. At 1280x768 and the same video options, I get 56.6 fps average and 15-89 fps range.

(I'm using 1GB + 512MB memory in single channel mode, since I couldn't fill all three slots and run in single channel mode. I previously was running 2 X 512MB with dual channel, but the memory I have is no longer readily available. I didn't really want to buy 2 1GB modules at this time, just so I could run in dual channel mode. Getting what I needed to play BF2 was expensive enough already.)

Space
 
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bobsmith1492

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2004
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The ATI cards cost a good bit more for the AGP version over PCI-E; I'd go with the 6800GT or 6800 regular since they'd perform a lot better than the AGP ATI card of similar pricing.
 
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orangat

Golden Member
Jun 7, 2004
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Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
The ATI cards cost a good bit more for the AGP version over PCI-E; I'd go with the 6800GT or 6800 regular since they'd perform a lot better than the AGP ATI card of similar pricing.
Click to expand...

Thats totally wrong. The 6800gt is slightly slower than the x800xl and only abit faster than the x800pro; the GT and XL are at about the same price.

The 6800 is slightly more expensive than the x800np and both are comparable in benchmarks.

 
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Matt2

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2001
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Originally posted by: orangat
Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
The ATI cards cost a good bit more for the AGP version over PCI-E; I'd go with the 6800GT or 6800 regular since they'd perform a lot better than the AGP ATI card of similar pricing.
Click to expand...

Thats totally wrong. The 6800gt is slightly slower than the x800xl and only abit faster than the x800pro; the GT and XL are at about the same price.

The 6800 is slightly more expensive than the x800np and both are comparable in benchmarks.
Click to expand...


Can you link me to some benchmarks?? Cause I was under the strong impression it was just the opposite. 6800GT should be faster than X800XL with no AA/AF and the two cards should draw about even with AA/AF ON.

That is at stock speeds however.

The 6800GT OCs like beast and should hit ultra speeds fairly easily, while the X800XL is pretty much clocked to its limits out of the box.

With a little OC, the 6800GT is undoubtedly the better card.
 
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orangat

Golden Member
Jun 7, 2004
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Bob,
the cheapest 6800GT you linked is the Asus piece of crap GT ripoff which is not really a GT. It bears the same model name but has DDR instead of DDR3, 128-bit mem instead of 256-bit, 700mhz instead of 1000mhz, 128mb instead of 256mb. It is in fact a 6800 with 16 pipes.


Looking at the prices the x800xl is slighly cheaper at 285 shipped while the 6800GT is at 300ish. XFX has one at 250 MIR but its not a vendor I'd recommend by any means.
 
M

munchow2

Member
Aug 9, 2005
165
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You will not get 40% more performance. You might get approximately 10%. However that is an unfair assumption to make since you could compare the Ti4200 to the x800xl and ask if it delivers 10X more performance, which it does not.

However, you should get something in the x800xt or x850xt line when you see a promotional price cut on tigerdirect/newegg/zipzoomfly.
 
R

RibSpreader

Member
Feb 9, 2005
100
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By 40% more performance, I was speaking of the benchies from the Anand article on BF2. They typically showed the X850XT running at 130-140% of the marks of the X800XL.

Anyway, I went to check out what was on the shelf at CompUSSR and they did have the X800XL with a shelf tag at $250 so I jumped on it. It actually rang up at $300 but they cut it to the $249.99 when I pointed out the tag to them.

Anybody else in the market may want to check it out.
 
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nRollo

Banned
Jan 11, 2002
10,460
0
0
Originally posted by: orangat
Bob,
the cheapest 6800GT you linked is the Asus piece of crap GT ripoff which is not really a GT. It bears the same model name but has DDR instead of DDR3, 128-bit mem instead of 256-bit, 700mhz instead of 1000mhz, 128mb instead of 256mb. It is in fact a 6800 with 16 pipes.


Looking at the prices the x800xl is slighly cheaper at 285 shipped while the 6800GT is at 300ish. XFX has one at 250 MIR but its not a vendor I'd recommend by any means.
Click to expand...

You're wrong about what I highlighted, the rest is correct. All 6800NU> have 256 bit memory.
 
H

hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
7,326
2
76
Originally posted by: n7
Originally posted by: hans030390
X800XL since we all know SM 3.0 isn't all that important for the next couple years.
Click to expand...


Fixed :)
Click to expand...

haha you're funny. Too bad UE3 games will be out this year...too bad they use SM3 heavily.

but yeah, that is funny, i can take jokes about myself
 
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