A look at X800 and 6800 UK Availability

[digitalwanderer]

A+ for effort

Thanks, I'm nothing if not persistant.

 

[T2k]

This is a nice bonus for Ati users, my assumption is that they would have bought the X800 anyway, so this is just the icing on the cake, rather than would have got the XT, but risked the X800 and got the bonus, if this was the case then ATi are losing some money.

Would it not be possible for ATi to have a lower clocked 16 pipe XT at a price somewhere between the X800Pro and X800XT thus getting the most out of these pseudo 16 pipe cards ? This would then give the GT a good run for it's money ( to put it mildly )

FYI: there's a card, called X800 XT PCIe.

 

[Vortigern_red]

FYI: there's a card, called X800 XT PCIe.

FWIW, if ATI released this card for the AGP market, I would buy it even at the current asking price for the XTPE, providing it was AVAILABLE, 2-3 months of my time is worth a couple of quid.

I had ordered a Pro at first @ £300 but within a few days the XTPE was on pre-order for only £50 more so I ordered it instead. I was expecting the XTPE to be nearer £400, so if ATI had offered a 16 pipe 500/500 card at £350 I would have bought it. In fact I wish I had stuck with the Pro now but I don't want to swap back to the pro because the day I receive it the bloody XTPEs will turn up and I will be cursing for the next six months (and of course I would have had my Pro 6 weeks ago, so thats six weeks I've missed out on!!)

If you had not guessed I'm *really* annoyed about this launch. FWIW my supplier OCUK is now talking about 2-4 weeks for delivery whereas they had promised the first cards for this week.

 

[jvd]

I guess ati doesn't qualify for clock speeds only number of pipelines. So they might have been shipped as xt pes and they didn't run at rated speeds right ?

Anyway I still say we will see the x800pro (perhaps slower ram) as the 300$ card and the x800xt non pe come out at 400 . Perhaps a 450-475 mhz core clock and 475 mhz ram.. Esp if yields of the 16 pipeline cards are so good

 

[Vortigern_red]

Esp if yields of the 16 pipeline cards are so good

I know, its bloody ridiculous. I come down in the morning, eating my breakfast, almost break a tooth on a 16 pipe R420 thats fallen into my cereal. "Not again" I think. Well I'll just push off to work then, "Shit" Can't get out of the door the bloody postman has delivered a load of AOL 16 pipe R420's again and my hall is an empass. I attempt the back door. Open it to find 16 pipe R420s falling from the sky, the ground rapidly becoming a carpet of 16 pipe R420PCBs and heatsinks, the council round here has reacted quickly and got the snow ploughs out but its a losing battle!

Decide to go back to bed and hope to wake up in the world where ATI 16 pipe R420s are not so common.

 

[jvd]

I dunno .

Everyone of my friends that have ordered them have gotten them. Except the one poor smuck that ordered from cdw.

 

[Vortigern_red]

I'm not joking in the UK, you cannot buy a XTPE AT ALL.

And many places have huge preorders, OCUK have over 500 orders for the Sapphire XTPE alone and they are a smallish retailer.

The recent "softmoddable" Pros suggests to me that ATI could have released a 16 pipe card at 500/500 a month ago(in UK timescales) but perhaps the benchmarking battle encouraged them to overstretch themselves.

Where they have messed up, IMHO, is in having such a huge fill rate difference between the two top cards with the same or even less then the "normal" price difference. For instance, compare the price % and fillrate % of the 9700 non pro and pro at launch. There would not be such a huge backlog of orders now if ATI had released an AGP X800 (non pro) inbetween the current offerings which was producable in some sort of quantity or even priced the Pro lower and the XTPE higher. I would not have ordered an XTPE at £400 and I'm sure many others would not (of course we may have considered NV then!)

EDIT: added not after "I'm sure many other would"

 

[jvd]

I'm sure they made the pro thinking the 550mhz ram would be much harder to get than the 475mhz ram and perhaps ram inbetween like 500-520mhz ram is more abundant .

 

[dizietsma]

Well whatever the reason Ati should be selling a slower 16 pipe card somewhere between the top model and the 12 pipe card to maximise profit and win the benchmarks against the GT.

 

[Broken Hope]

Maybe these XT's were the original XT but then as ATI saw the 6800 Ultra they decided to increase clocks, so these original XT's no longer are good enough to be called XT's so they just bios lock them to pros and sell them.

This would explain the XT stickers, and the faster RAM.

I'm guessing at some point ATI will release an AGP XT at 500/560 or maybe 500/500 and those of us with these VIVO pros will be able to flash to that bios.

 

[Vortigern_red]

ATI have known the specs of the 6800 ultra for about 3 months though.

Are you suggesting that Club3D had *finished* cards *before* the launch of the 6800 that have taken over 2 months to reach retail?

 

[Broken Hope]

ATI have known the specs of the 6800 ultra for about 3 months though.

Are you suggesting that Club3D had *finished* cards *before* the launch of the 6800 that have taken over 2 months to reach retail?

It isn't just club3D though, almost every single company has released a VIVO card that softmods, I just find it odd that the club3D heatsink says XT on it, and there just happens to be a PCIe XT that runs at the clock speeds that most of these VIVO cards seem to do without issue.

I'm guessing that ATI changed the XT clock speeds at the last minute and these VIVO cards are the XT's they were planning on releasing.

 

[Vortigern_red]

Doh!

You know I'd not actually noticed that the club3D cards had just XT on them, I'd assumed it was XTPE.

I'm not sure it helps much though!

We are actually saying the same thing though, we both think these VIVO Pros were never originally intended to be sold as Pros and at some point after the cards manufacture they were turned into Pros.

 

[Vortigern_red]

Right, I've now swapped my order to a VIVO Pro, should be here tomorrow. I think the rest of you can now expect a flood of XTPEs in the UK next week!!!

 

[Briareus]

I'm guessing someone in manufacturing f'd up and either didn't do an xt speed grade or they mixed lower grade chips with the xt's and before they realized it they had built a bunch of cards. So instead of releasing the cards and having them get a reputation for defects etc they just slapped a new sticker on them and flashed the bios. That way even if there were problems it wouldn't be with their flagship card.

This would also explain the delay in shipping the XTs. Now if this is the case, I wonder if someone was fired. ..

 

[euan]

Ummmm, not location, but in the process!

<start crazy theory>I was thinking of some sort of back street sweat house in taiwan, where the ambient temperature is +35ºC. Thereby, when the cards arrive in the UK, they have a 20ºC safety margin (accounting for hottest day in summer, which is only a week long at best). Meaning better chances of sucessful unlocking, and overclock... .</start crazy theory>

 

[Vortigern_red]

Well i'm now the proud owner of a 16pipe X800 at XTPE speeds, So far it looks like the core has got some more headroom (tested at 550 briefly with no problems) but the RAM looks like its near the limit (1.6ns stuff too)

Have not fully tested yet but it looks pretty good so far.

It was a Sapphire X800 Pro VIVO if anyone is interested.