[01010]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Great. Just great. Jut as I was about to order a Radeon 9700 Pro.

Now what do I do? Wait for their prices to go down further and save, or get the best card I can for what I would have spent?

From what I've gathered about this card from reviews and such I'm tempted to save the extra money and spoil myself, twice as fast as the Radeon 9800XT at 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF in Call of Duty (something like 70 fps) is phenomenal in my eyes.

I'm really, really torn about what to do.

[Zuljin]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Great. Just great. Jut as I was about to order a Radeon 9700 Pro.

Now what do I do? Wait for their prices to go down further and save, or get the best card I can for what I would have spent?

Just wait a little while and get a Radeon 9800 pro instead

[Grey Wolf]

Get a 9800 Pro now. They were only about $220 before the 6800 Ultra was released.

[Admiral LSD]

USD$499 is way too much for a video card regardless of how fast it is. I won't be touching this (or the R420 for that matter) with a ten foot pole.

[Sandwich]

Has anyone got a link to a review comparing the 6800 Ultra with the plain-Jane, ~$250 6800? I'd like to see performance differences.

[Setekh]

Mike, wait it out. This is a generation jump, and it'll make prices drop significantly (as opposed to incremental improvements, which you can't wait out because they'll keep popping up). I say wait and watch.

[Ashrak]

that card wants a 480W supp minimum 2 seperate molex connectors (not on same cable) and anything lower than a 3200+ barton will be too slow to get optimal preformance 1 gig ram recommended ... so if you got the money ... wait for the radeon with 16 pipes

[Sandwich]

I plan to, Ed - I plan to.

Any more details on the upcoming ATI competitor card?

[J3Vr6]

Yeah, what's ATI scheming up...

[Zuljin]

has there been any news at all on the new ATI card?
I haven't heard anything about it spec wise.
Will only be a couple of days left though, until we will know for sure

[Admiral LSD]

Hopefully 12-16 pipes in the high-end will bring about a return to 8 pipes in the mid range meaning when the time comes (which won't be for a while, I have more important things to upgrade in my PC than the video card besides, the 9500 Pro is still no slouch) I'll finally have a decent upgrade from the 9500 Pro.

[ChronoReverse]

Hmmm, someone tried the 6800U with a 200W powersupply.

It seems to work



In any case, the r420 will also likely require a really fast cpu to perform its best since if both cards are powerful, then the cpu will be the limiting factor.


I'm personally hoping the rumours of a 600MHz clock for the x800xt are true since that'll mean (theoretically calculated) it should outperform the 6800U.  But some newer rumours are saying only 500MHz.


Oh and the 6800xt will have 8 pipes most likely.

[Grey Wolf]

The 480w thing is to prevent people from using **** power supplies with it.

3 rungs for each, and about the same clockspeed for both the ATI and nVidia. The x800 XT has 16 pipes, x800 Pro has 12, x800 has 8. Meanwhile, the 6800U has 16, 6800 has 12, 6800 XT will most likely have 8. Figure the prices to be 4-500, 250-300, and 150-200. About a 500 MHz clockspeed for both high ends at most. Similar performance. nVidia will have PS3.0, while the R420 has only PS2.0. ATI will still have the advantage of TruForm or whatever it is. Both high-end variants will require 2 molex connectors until the PEG variants come out, when they'll switch to 1. The performance mainstream and mainstream variants will have 1 molex connector, probably won't require that on the PEG variant.

And as always, never buy the bleeding edge card unless you're the kind of guy who would buy a Prometia or a TEC waterblock. The performance mainstream has a far better cost/performance ratio.

[ChronoReverse]

Actually, Truform as of the 9xxx series no longer is accelerated in hardware :O


That's right, your shiny 9800XT does Truform in software.


Luckily for us, PS2.0 and up does allow for displacement mapping which is good for making a flat surface look detailed.  But unlike bumpmapping, you can look at it from an angle and it'll still work properly.

[Liberator]

I kinda interested in how Nvidia is going to decrease this for Mainstream and Budget levels.

[Grey Wolf]

Let's see.....
Bleeding Edge: 6800U: 16x, 400/1100 (current specs)
Performance: 6800: 12x, probably 375/1000 (personal estimate for clock speeds here on down)
Performance Mainstream: 6800 XT: 8x, probably 350/900
Mainstream: probably 6500 (guesses on everything from here down): 8x, 300/700
Budget: 6200, 4x, 250/600

[ChronoReverse]

More likely they'll have a different core for the mainstream and budget cards.


That's what ATi's going to do and I don't see why nvidia will be any different.  It's also what both companies did in the past.

[Grey Wolf]

The cores are different, but they're just dumbed down derivatives. Did you miss that in the earlier generations?

[ChronoReverse]

You obvious didn't see the GF4mx and the Radeon 9200.

Both of those actually were based on an earlier core (9200 was based on the 8500 core and the GF4mx was based on the GF2 core).


The point is, sometimes they take an earlier core and sometimes they use a dumbed down core.

It's rumoured that the low end X500 Radeons might be using the R360 core instead of a r4xx core.

[Grey Wolf]

Forgot about the RV380, didn't I? That's going to be the midrange core. Think it's still 8 pipelines, might be 4.

Midrange is usually a dumbed down version though. 5600 was a dumbed down 5900, 9500 was a partially gelded 9700, etc.