I'm satisfied with X800 XL card for playing the game America's Army, very smooth graphics even with 3D settings cranked up to the highest level at 1024x768 resolution. With my previous ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 XT AGP card the game was unplayable, I was "stuck in the matrix" so to speak even when no network lag present. I replaced with ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XL PCI-E, and now I get amazing results, great fun!
I'm disappointed with the TV Tuner, ATI screwed things up big time. With my old 9600 AGP card I could repeatedly press the arrow up or arrow down keys on my keyboard to switch channels instantly with no problem. Now with my new X800 XL PCI-E card I press the arrow key and it takes 1 second before changing to next channel, then once it switched channel I lose sound for 1 second and then it come back to normal. Problem persists whether activating onboard audio or installing PCI Sound Blaster card.
With the X800 XL card I have to reboot my computer every time I want to open the TV Tuner, otherwise I get dangerously loud white noise in my headphones, around 110 dB I think. Considering the earing damage limit is 85 dB, are ATI trying to make my ears bleed or something?
While watching TV the image freeze frequently, the TV Tuner won't respond anymore so I have to reboot my computer. Also I must point out that I'm not dealing with a cheap no-name motherboard here. I'm using the ASUS A8R-MVP with the ATI CrossFire chip integrated onboard, this motherboard was supposedly designed specifically for ATI video cards, one would think they figured how to build stable drivers on their own hardware.
Don't bother with X800 XL if you plan on watching TV on your computer, this card is pure crap. Sure it does works fine for gaming, but this makes no sense, for a comparable price why not buy a better standalone graphic card specially for that.
Perhaps the $299 price is correct. It may be a matter of supply and demand. Resellers could be making a huge profit on the cards they do have, and within a few months the prices will deflate to the correct MSRP. That's how it always goes. Or, maybe ATI changed their mind...
When are these flagrent B/S articles going to stop. I am tired of reading reviews on both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware based on mis-information and hear say. Lets get the research done properly before going to press!!...$299 my butt!!...at a minimum be more objective in your expectations concerning pre-release misinformation that these graphics card developers always love to pump you guys up with just to get you to hype there products....grrrrr
How did you guys measure the wattage of these cards?
You guys did a review before : http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... and the wattage numbers on both of the reviews don't look right at all... after all, the AMD processor case could only dissapate just below 200 watts.
That HL2 runs slowly on FX cards doesn't necessarily mean that Valve intentionally wanted it to. I think it has to do with the failures in the FX design. I see no reason why Valve should optimize the game for DX8.1 graphics processors.
Half-Life 2 should not be used for benchmarking. There is growing evidence that Valve crippled NVIDIA cards to make ATI cards to run faster[1]. Although this affects more to GeForce FX cards, the extra bandwidth incurred for using 32-bit shaders vs 16-bit could make a difference on frame rates. Regardless of who is at fault, unless the situation is resolved, Half Life 2 is deemed unsuitable for benchmarking purposes.
Good review. I'm particularly grateful for the inclusion of non-standard games like Bloodlines and Pirates. Most of the games I play do not have Doom or Half-Life or Unreal in their name, and its nice to be able to gauge the performance of a card in games that Nvidia and ATI have not bothered to optimize their drivers for.
im yet to see an ATI/Nvidia high end card on the shelf or online for the 499.99 to 599.99 if at all, this paper lauch crap needs to stop its misleading and LUDACRIS.
who cares about doom 3, i care more about real games like Far Cry, HL2 and EQ2, doom3 was to me nothing more than just a demo, besides i have not see any companies picking that engine for next gen. games, i have see people talking more about HL2 and the unreal 3 engine than D3.
6800nu and 6800LE are excellent choices for those AMD users that want to wait for PCI-e motherboards for AMD, without wasting $400+ in a card that will after be obsolete (AGP 6800GT/ULTRA and AGP X800PRO/XT).
Those users will also have a good choice of being able to unlock their cards to 16/6(pipelines/vertex) in a Vanilla or 12/5 in a LE (some get 16/6 also in LE).
Those that cant unlock, will generally be able to do some good overclock, unless they're extremly unlucky and got a very bugged "ULTRA" core!!!!!
isn't the 6800nu more a competitor to the X800 than the X800XL? The 6800nu is usually just slightly faster than a 6600GT, ans since the X800 beats the 6600GT, it ought to be a close call performance wise (other than doom3). IIRC the 6800nu is downgraded compared to 6800GT pretty much the same as the X800 compared to X800XL is (128MB instead of 256MB ram, ~70% memory clock, ~3/4 pixel fill rate).
As per the vanilla 6800, we had not been able to find a PCI Express 12 pipe card either from a vendor or on the street until now.
This week we noticed one on newegg from MSI for $339. That's the only one we've seen, and we haven't gotten any in our labs yet. Last week, there weren't any to be had in the USA for as much digging as we did.
With the new pricing and knowing the performance of the 6800 GT vs. the 6800, one can extrapolate that the X800 XL will certainly out perform the 12-pipe 6800 part in price and performance. Our recommendation (if the X800 XL sees the light of day) will be with the ATI part at $299 if the standard PCIe 6800 cards available today stick at $40 more.
On the AGP side, ATI won't talk about what they are and aren't bridgeing back until they finish their bridge. We won't know if the vanilla 6800 AGP is safe at it's $275 street price until we hear more on that front.
#20, they can't compare it to a 6800NU because they don't have a PCIe 6800NU, it doesn't exist yet. This is a PCIe-only test, so everything tested needs to come in a PCIe variety.
>>>
Unfortunately, we could not test the overclockability of our X800 XL sample as none of the available tools would recognize, much less allow us to adjust the clock speed of the GPU
>>>
>>>
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
>>>
i might agree with you there !
This reviewsing of non-existant products ALSO will greatly contribute to the price-hiking which we see right now. X800XT PE card for $899, anyone ?
Also...recent reviews (eg: Nforce 4) VARIOUS sites, not only AT, reviewed it based on Beta bios which did NOT even yield information about
STABILITY
OVERCLOCKABILITY
PCI-LOCK YES/NO
all these reviews were based on such early products that for the enthusiasts it still remains to guess whether these products actually meet their expectations.
IRONOCIALLY, people seem to be willing to spend $350 on MSRP $180 boards (say: ASUS NF4 SLI)....not even knowing whether these boards, for example, would even be capable of providing a stable FSB/HTT over 217. (If you want these boards to overclock).
From this point of view these reviews are really *worthless*. I could get the same information off a nvidia press-release, just reading the advertized specs.
These friggin' paper launches are killing me. I want to build a nForce4 SLI with twin 6800GT's. I was hoping to have some of my wishlist of parts 'Christmased' to me, but looks like that ain't gonna happen. The only silicon parts available for my system are the AMD 3500+ and OCZ Platinum memory. What's the point of there's nothing to plug them into?
My other question on this is how are these companies keeping on track for their fiscal projections if they have no available new products?
Has ATi ever given a reason as to why their cards are in such short supply? Is it really just a matter of, "the demand far exceeded our production schedule!"? It's not like they, or nVidia, are new to the whole phenomenon of people like us clammering for their product.
It just seems as if this time around, both companies have completely dropped the proverbial ball when it comes to making GPU's available to us. Susan, back over to you in the studio. :)
Note that the "famous hardware site" that took the stand is reviewing the same ATI products today...and like Anandtech, they left the vanilla nVidia 6800 off the benchmarks.
It seems that everyone who wishes to "take a stand" does so with words...but their actions fail to back them up.
Anand,
Congrats on your intro. It's ABOUT TIME you took a stand against paper launches. But then, you didn't take a stand, did you? You still did the review on a non-existent product, with bugs everywhere (couldn't overclock). This does the buyer absolutely no good.
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
X800 at $200/£170-200. killer. specially GF6600GT killer... be prepared to watch 9800 Pro/XT prices skydive when AGP X800 comes out in Jan (a few other sites stated that fact). most are still near £160-200. oh, yeah, I bet nvidia panic price drops as a response if they _did_ cancel NV48. If they didn't, well.... gotta love compettition ;)
#3 nvidias response is rumoured cancellations of NV48 and NV50(GF7?), its NV40-NV44 refresh. then again noone else has said anything about that other than The Inquirer..... *rolls eyes* nvidia has a knack for surprising though.
An X800 XL for $299 and an X800 for $199...once the cards actually hit the shelves, it appears that ATI will have the mid-range in their grasp. The only thing worth going up against them is gambling on a $250 softmoddable 6800NU (which I had no problem doing, and am quite happy).
finally i hear some "official" rant regarding the recent delays/misleadings/paper launches and all that. I totally agree with all you said there. This was a horrible year.
But also realize that you as "famous" hardware
reviewers are probably still in the best possible situation - because (even with shortages without an end) the vendors probably beg you to send you their stuff...eg. nForce 4 boards and all the nice things.
Imagine "us", the common people...we can only dream of getting ahold of pre-releases. All "we" have is your pre/reviews because noone sends us the nice stuff to review :)
Page 1, Table: Add the X800 XT to the list, please.
Page 1, Table: Change price of the X800 XL to $299.
Page 1, Table: Change the "memc" for the X800 to 0.700 (instead of 700).
Page 1, last paragraph: Change the "$50" to "$100" to reflect the change in price of the card.
I think all other references to price in the article are correct. I only noticed the two spots on the front page which referred to the original $349 price.
P.S. To #6, I agree that the 6800NU is the price point ATI is truly competeing against, and it costs less than $299 easily, so ATI should think hard on their pricing scheme. Though I've seen perhaps a 50-50 success rate on unlocking them so far, so I wouldn't tout that as a feature. Mine didn't unlock, but I'm okay with that.
>Despite all of the issues with availability, about >a week ago, ATI fired us off an email saying that >we should expect a Radeon X800 XL at our doorsteps.
Perhaps you should have sent a note back saying "You should expect a review right around the time this card is available to the public."
Problem with paper launches is, they still get press. Hardware sites still publish reviews of hardware not available to the public because they're afraid someone else will scoop them on it, which perpetuates more paper launches. I'd love to see an alliance of the major hardware sites on the net join together and send a note to ATI and nVidia stating that "If you cannot make a product available in reasonable quantity to consumers, we will not review it".
"If you are looking for an AGP card, your only option at this price point is really the 6800GT. There are cheaper alternatives, but not better performing AGP alternatives at $400 or less."
Umm.. how about the 6800NU? I've seen some sold at 200 dollars. Throw on a arctic cooling heatsing for 25-30 bucks, unlock those pipelines - and you've got yourself a 6800GT, minus the extra memory bandwidth and 128 MB of ram. For 200 to 250 dollars less than the GT, I think that is the AGP deal here. At least until ATI comes out with an AGP version of the X800 XL.
X850 Pro will probably have more value to the enthusiast crowd as I presume it might have some form of overdrive and will scale better in terms of overclocking.
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45 Comments
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Some Guy - Monday, February 13, 2006 - link
I'm satisfied with X800 XL card for playing the game America's Army, very smooth graphics even with 3D settings cranked up to the highest level at 1024x768 resolution. With my previous ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 XT AGP card the game was unplayable, I was "stuck in the matrix" so to speak even when no network lag present. I replaced with ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XL PCI-E, and now I get amazing results, great fun!I'm disappointed with the TV Tuner, ATI screwed things up big time. With my old 9600 AGP card I could repeatedly press the arrow up or arrow down keys on my keyboard to switch channels instantly with no problem. Now with my new X800 XL PCI-E card I press the arrow key and it takes 1 second before changing to next channel, then once it switched channel I lose sound for 1 second and then it come back to normal. Problem persists whether activating onboard audio or installing PCI Sound Blaster card.
With the X800 XL card I have to reboot my computer every time I want to open the TV Tuner, otherwise I get dangerously loud white noise in my headphones, around 110 dB I think. Considering the earing damage limit is 85 dB, are ATI trying to make my ears bleed or something?
While watching TV the image freeze frequently, the TV Tuner won't respond anymore so I have to reboot my computer. Also I must point out that I'm not dealing with a cheap no-name motherboard here. I'm using the ASUS A8R-MVP with the ATI CrossFire chip integrated onboard, this motherboard was supposedly designed specifically for ATI video cards, one would think they figured how to build stable drivers on their own hardware.
Don't bother with X800 XL if you plan on watching TV on your computer, this card is pure crap. Sure it does works fine for gaming, but this makes no sense, for a comparable price why not buy a better standalone graphic card specially for that.
Gerbil333 - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
Perhaps the $299 price is correct. It may be a matter of supply and demand. Resellers could be making a huge profit on the cards they do have, and within a few months the prices will deflate to the correct MSRP. That's how it always goes. Or, maybe ATI changed their mind...deathwalker - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link
When are these flagrent B/S articles going to stop. I am tired of reading reviews on both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware based on mis-information and hear say. Lets get the research done properly before going to press!!...$299 my butt!!...at a minimum be more objective in your expectations concerning pre-release misinformation that these graphics card developers always love to pump you guys up with just to get you to hype there products....grrrrrbupkus - Thursday, January 20, 2005 - link
Here it is January 20th and the only store that lists the X800XL is Allstarshop.com for $449.Puuulease.
coolme - Sunday, January 9, 2005 - link
How did you guys measure the wattage of these cards?You guys did a review before : http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
and the wattage numbers on both of the reviews don't look right at all... after all, the AMD processor case could only dissapate just below 200 watts.
T8000 - Saturday, December 18, 2004 - link
How about the 6800GT 128MB? That AGP card does sell for about $300 today and it seems to perform close to the 256MB version in todays games.So the available 6800GT 128MB should perform about the same as the unavailable X800XL.
TinyTeeth - Friday, December 17, 2004 - link
That HL2 runs slowly on FX cards doesn't necessarily mean that Valve intentionally wanted it to. I think it has to do with the failures in the FX design. I see no reason why Valve should optimize the game for DX8.1 graphics processors.GTMan - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
The graphs show the ATI part using more power but in the text you say ATI has the advantage in power consumption???quanta - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
Half-Life 2 should not be used for benchmarking. There is growing evidence that Valve crippled NVIDIA cards to make ATI cards to run faster[1]. Although this affects more to GeForce FX cards, the extra bandwidth incurred for using 32-bit shaders vs 16-bit could make a difference on frame rates. Regardless of who is at fault, unless the situation is resolved, Half Life 2 is deemed unsuitable for benchmarking purposes.[1] http://www.punkassfraggers.com/cgi-bin/datacgi/dat...
Executor6 - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
Good review. I'm particularly grateful for the inclusion of non-standard games like Bloodlines and Pirates. Most of the games I play do not have Doom or Half-Life or Unreal in their name, and its nice to be able to gauge the performance of a card in games that Nvidia and ATI have not bothered to optimize their drivers for.Keyser0804 - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
I just thought the 6800nu should be compared because of the pricing, even if it is a weaker card. Nividia will probably drop prices to compete, right?DS Delaroca - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
im yet to see an ATI/Nvidia high end card on the shelf or online for the 499.99 to 599.99 if at all, this paper lauch crap needs to stop its misleading and LUDACRIS.DS Delaroca - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
who cares about doom 3, i care more about real games like Far Cry, HL2 and EQ2, doom3 was to me nothing more than just a demo, besides i have not see any companies picking that engine for next gen. games, i have see people talking more about HL2 and the unreal 3 engine than D3.Filibuster - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
>Anand, thanks for the great review.... Do you have any knowledge or hints as to when the pci-e 6800gts are going to start showing up in more volume?I second that!
Please look into this!
If its something you can't say then at least say that you can't say. :)
Thanks.
Gaia Hunter - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
6800nu and 6800LE are excellent choices for those AMD users that want to wait for PCI-e motherboards for AMD, without wasting $400+ in a card that will after be obsolete (AGP 6800GT/ULTRA and AGP X800PRO/XT).Those users will also have a good choice of being able to unlock their cards to 16/6(pipelines/vertex) in a Vanilla or 12/5 in a LE (some get 16/6 also in LE).
Those that cant unlock, will generally be able to do some good overclock, unless they're extremly unlucky and got a very bugged "ULTRA" core!!!!!
mczak - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
isn't the 6800nu more a competitor to the X800 than the X800XL? The 6800nu is usually just slightly faster than a 6600GT, ans since the X800 beats the 6600GT, it ought to be a close call performance wise (other than doom3). IIRC the 6800nu is downgraded compared to 6800GT pretty much the same as the X800 compared to X800XL is (128MB instead of 256MB ram, ~70% memory clock, ~3/4 pixel fill rate).DerekWilson - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
As per the vanilla 6800, we had not been able to find a PCI Express 12 pipe card either from a vendor or on the street until now.This week we noticed one on newegg from MSI for $339. That's the only one we've seen, and we haven't gotten any in our labs yet. Last week, there weren't any to be had in the USA for as much digging as we did.
With the new pricing and knowing the performance of the 6800 GT vs. the 6800, one can extrapolate that the X800 XL will certainly out perform the 12-pipe 6800 part in price and performance. Our recommendation (if the X800 XL sees the light of day) will be with the ATI part at $299 if the standard PCIe 6800 cards available today stick at $40 more.
On the AGP side, ATI won't talk about what they are and aren't bridgeing back until they finish their bridge. We won't know if the vanilla 6800 AGP is safe at it's $275 street price until we hear more on that front.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
ViRGE - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#20, they can't compare it to a 6800NU because they don't have a PCIe 6800NU, it doesn't exist yet. This is a PCIe-only test, so everything tested needs to come in a PCIe variety.shabby - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Very nice, but pci express my ass, the x800 is agp based sp why did they switch to pci-e?Questar - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
>>>Unfortunately, we could not test the overclockability of our X800 XL sample as none of the available tools would recognize, much less allow us to adjust the clock speed of the GPU
>>>
Didn't have a copy of Powerstrip around eh?
Questar - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Hey nVidia fanboys that want to compare this card to a 6800NU.How bad do you want to lose? That's a 12 pipe card.
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
21:>>>
The only silicon parts available for my system are the AMD 3500+ and OCZ Platinum memory.
>>>
same here :)
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#16:>>>
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
>>>
i might agree with you there !
This reviewsing of non-existant products ALSO will greatly contribute to the price-hiking which we see right now. X800XT PE card for $899, anyone ?
Also...recent reviews (eg: Nforce 4) VARIOUS sites, not only AT, reviewed it based on Beta bios which did NOT even yield information about
STABILITY
OVERCLOCKABILITY
PCI-LOCK YES/NO
all these reviews were based on such early products that for the enthusiasts it still remains to guess whether these products actually meet their expectations.
IRONOCIALLY, people seem to be willing to spend $350 on MSRP $180 boards (say: ASUS NF4 SLI)....not even knowing whether these boards, for example, would even be capable of providing a stable FSB/HTT over 217. (If you want these boards to overclock).
From this point of view these reviews are really *worthless*. I could get the same information off a nvidia press-release, just reading the advertized specs.
Aquila76 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
These friggin' paper launches are killing me. I want to build a nForce4 SLI with twin 6800GT's. I was hoping to have some of my wishlist of parts 'Christmased' to me, but looks like that ain't gonna happen. The only silicon parts available for my system are the AMD 3500+ and OCZ Platinum memory. What's the point of there's nothing to plug them into?My other question on this is how are these companies keeping on track for their fiscal projections if they have no available new products?
Keyser0804 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
How come they did not compare it against the 6800 vanilla? Isn't that the competitor or am I missing something?Momental - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Has ATi ever given a reason as to why their cards are in such short supply? Is it really just a matter of, "the demand far exceeded our production schedule!"? It's not like they, or nVidia, are new to the whole phenomenon of people like us clammering for their product.It just seems as if this time around, both companies have completely dropped the proverbial ball when it comes to making GPU's available to us. Susan, back over to you in the studio. :)
cnq - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Yeah, you're right. But the tom folks at least kept their original stand, which was not to review the nvidia 6200 when it was paper launched.LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Note that the "famous hardware site" that took the stand is reviewing the same ATI products today...and like Anandtech, they left the vanilla nVidia 6800 off the benchmarks.It seems that everyone who wishes to "take a stand" does so with words...but their actions fail to back them up.
cnq - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Anand,Congrats on your intro. It's ABOUT TIME you took a stand against paper launches. But then, you didn't take a stand, did you? You still did the review on a non-existent product, with bugs everywhere (couldn't overclock). This does the buyer absolutely no good.
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
DeathByDuke - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
X800 at $200/£170-200. killer. specially GF6600GT killer... be prepared to watch 9800 Pro/XT prices skydive when AGP X800 comes out in Jan (a few other sites stated that fact). most are still near £160-200. oh, yeah, I bet nvidia panic price drops as a response if they _did_ cancel NV48. If they didn't, well.... gotta love compettition ;)DeathByDuke - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#3 nvidias response is rumoured cancellations of NV48 and NV50(GF7?), its NV40-NV44 refresh. then again noone else has said anything about that other than The Inquirer..... *rolls eyes* nvidia has a knack for surprising though.Avalon - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
An X800 XL for $299 and an X800 for $199...once the cards actually hit the shelves, it appears that ATI will have the mid-range in their grasp. The only thing worth going up against them is gambling on a $250 softmoddable 6800NU (which I had no problem doing, and am quite happy).:P
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
finally i hear some "official" rant regarding the recent delays/misleadings/paper launches and all that. I totally agree with all you said there. This was a horrible year.But also realize that you as "famous" hardware
reviewers are probably still in the best possible situation - because (even with shortages without an end) the vendors probably beg you to send you their stuff...eg. nForce 4 boards and all the nice things.
Imagine "us", the common people...we can only dream of getting ahold of pre-releases. All "we" have is your pre/reviews because noone sends us the nice stuff to review :)
Phantronius - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
I'll stick with my eVGA 6800GT for awhile, maybe next time ATi.eRAZOR2007 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
For gods sake stop reviewing (graphics) hardware that is not available like THG does.Houdani - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Some minor corrections...Page 1, Table: Add the X800 XT to the list, please.
Page 1, Table: Change price of the X800 XL to $299.
Page 1, Table: Change the "memc" for the X800 to 0.700 (instead of 700).
Page 1, last paragraph: Change the "$50" to "$100" to reflect the change in price of the card.
I think all other references to price in the article are correct. I only noticed the two spots on the front page which referred to the original $349 price.
Much obliged. Thanks for the review. Good read.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
P.S. To #6, I agree that the 6800NU is the price point ATI is truly competeing against, and it costs less than $299 easily, so ATI should think hard on their pricing scheme. Though I've seen perhaps a 50-50 success rate on unlocking them so far, so I wouldn't tout that as a feature. Mine didn't unlock, but I'm okay with that.LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Quote:>Despite all of the issues with availability, about >a week ago, ATI fired us off an email saying that >we should expect a Radeon X800 XL at our doorsteps.
Perhaps you should have sent a note back saying "You should expect a review right around the time this card is available to the public."
Problem with paper launches is, they still get press. Hardware sites still publish reviews of hardware not available to the public because they're afraid someone else will scoop them on it, which perpetuates more paper launches. I'd love to see an alliance of the major hardware sites on the net join together and send a note to ATI and nVidia stating that "If you cannot make a product available in reasonable quantity to consumers, we will not review it".
mongoosesRawesome - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
"If you are looking for an AGP card, your only option at this price point is really the 6800GT. There are cheaper alternatives, but not better performing AGP alternatives at $400 or less."Umm.. how about the 6800NU? I've seen some sold at 200 dollars. Throw on a arctic cooling heatsing for 25-30 bucks, unlock those pipelines - and you've got yourself a 6800GT, minus the extra memory bandwidth and 128 MB of ram. For 200 to 250 dollars less than the GT, I think that is the AGP deal here. At least until ATI comes out with an AGP version of the X800 XL.
davidos - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Anand, thanks for the great review.... Do you have any knowledge or hints as to when the pci-e 6800gts are going to start showing up in more volume?R3MF - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
indeed, we can but hope for £300 GT's to show up.Chuckles - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Die Size:Pro > XL
Now it does.
It will be interesting to see nVidia's response.
gordon151 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
X850 Pro will probably have more value to the enthusiast crowd as I presume it might have some form of overdrive and will scale better in terms of overclocking.tfranzese - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Performance:XL > Pro
Price:
Pro > XL
Makes sense, right?
Thatguy97 - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
I'M FROM THE FUTURE THERE ARE STREAM PROCESSORS NOW