ATI X600 and X300 officially announced?

[anaqer]

If it's running "current titles" at 100+ FPS, is that not good enough?

A 128bit card, doing 100+ FPS with 4xAA? I find that hard to believe. Of course, if that 0.11 GPU is late or can't run decent clocks, ATi will have to improvise - but I doubt they would be very happy with it. I can accept it as a likely emergency card, but I don't think it will come to this. Then again, what do I know...


jvd:
OK, it would be somewhat more future-proof (if we can say that about an SM2.0 part) - but at what cost? Can they charge enough for it even with a crippled memory bus, or will they have to make some hefty profit margin adjustments?

 

[jvd]

jvd:
OK, it would be somewhat more future-proof (if we can say that about an SM2.0 part) - but at what cost? Can they charge enough for it even with a crippled memory bus, or will they have to make some hefty profit margin adjustments

i think it would match up nicely against a 6800 in the 300$ range and they will need something in that range.

 

[anaqer]

i think it would match up nicely against a 6800 in the 300$ range and they will need something in that range.

Surely you don't say you would pay 300 bucks for a 128bit card?!

 

[jvd]

i think it would match up nicely against a 6800 in the 300$ range and they will need something in that range.

Surely you don't say you would pay 300 bucks for a 128bit card?!

Well. I already payed for the x800xt .But if my price range was 300$ and a 128 bit card fell between the 9800pro 256 meg (currently 200-250$) and the x800pro at 400$ then I would buy it. Wouldn't u ? Esp as the shader intense games come onto the market the diffrence between the two will be more visable ?

 

[anaqer]

But if my price range was 300$ and a 128 bit card fell between the 9800pro 256 meg (currently 200-250$) and the x800pro at 400$ then I would buy it.

I'd like to see a 128bit card beat, heck, even match the 9800Pro. Across the board, not just one test.

 

[jvd]

But if my price range was 300$ and a 128 bit card fell between the 9800pro 256 meg (currently 200-250$) and the x800pro at 400$ then I would buy it.

I'd like to see a 128bit card beat, heck, even match the 9800Pro. Across the board, not just one test.

you may see it yet

 

[Bjorn]

you may see it yet

I seriously doubt that also. In some shader limited games perhaps, but not across the board. Unless you add a possible Power VR S5 128 bit bus card into the equation

 

[AlphaWolf]

you may see it yet

I seriously doubt that also. In some shader limited games perhaps, but not across the board. Unless you add a possible Power VR S5 128 bit bus card into the equation

Actually, I would bet it will happen. Although I doubt it will be this year or even next. Once 800mhz gddr3 is as common as 300mhz ddr1 is now, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Bjorn]

Actually, I would bet it will happen. Although I doubt it will be this year or even next. Once 800mhz gddr3 is as common as 300mhz ddr1 is now, it shouldn't be a problem.

Sure, it probably will happen, but it'll take quite some time before 800 MHz memory is cheaper then going for slower RAM and a 256 bit bus. And we are talking about cards released this year.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I'd like to see a 128bit card beat, heck, even match the 9800Pro. Across the board, not just one test.

Why is it a requirement that the new card match or beat the 9800 pro across the board?

If it beats the 9800 pro in games where the performance increase is most noticable (Shader based games), then what's the problem?

 

[anaqer]

"Across the board" refers to "wherever it counts, and not just one specific benchmark".
I obviously don't give a damn about Q3 running 400FPs or 450FPS or similar differences.

 

[jvd]

"Across the board" refers to "wherever it counts, and not just one specific benchmark".
I obviously don't give a damn about Q3 running 400FPs or 450FPS or similar differences.

Personaly for all older games 9800pro lvl performance is fine. If i was just going to play those games I'd spend 200 or 100 even and get a 9500-9800pro lvl framerates.

But if I"m buying a video card now . I'm going to want to play half life 2 , doom 3 , everquest 2 and all the other sm 2.0 games coming out.

Those are the tests where I want my 100$ to come into play and a 12pipe lined 425mhz x800se with a 128 bit bus will out perform the 9800pro by enough to justify the price diffrence.

With 3dc and the ability for all those older games to use temporal aa then it may even be worth more than the price diffrence.

 

[anaqer]

Personaly for all older games 9800pro lvl performance is fine.

I beg to differ. By the time this supposed 128bit/3quad card is released, today's games will be the ones you'll be referring to as "older games", and will want to be able to run them at hi-res with AA and AF for your 300 bucks. Unless one has the "30FPS must be enough for everyone" mindset, I'm hard pressed to accept the idea that a 9800Pro could do this. Believe me, I have a softmodded 9800SE running 423/702, I game at a low, low 1024*768 resolution and still it's not that easy to find games younger than 6 months that can get me a solid 85+ FPS with decent AA and AF.

 

[jvd]

Personaly for all older games 9800pro lvl performance is fine.

I beg to differ. By the time this supposed 128bit/3quad card is released, today's games will be the ones you'll be referring to as "older games", and will want to be able to run them at hi-res with AA and AF for your 300 bucks. Unless one has the "30FPS must be enough for everyone" mindset, I'm hard pressed to accept the idea that a 9800Pro could do this. Believe me, I have a softmodded 9800SE running 423/702, I game at a low, low 1024*768 resolution and still it's not that easy to find games younger than 6 months that can get me a solid 85+ FPS with decent AA and AF.

Well considering this card will either come out now to go against a 300$ geforce 6800 or in fall and my 9700pro gets 30-60fps with 2x fsaa and 8x aniso on far cry the games i'm talking about are still months away (doom 3 , half life 2 , everquest 2)

we know from looking at scores on the 9800pro/xt it is shader limited and not bandwitdh and fillrate limited. So the higher shader performance will give a much needed boost for this

 

[Entropy]

I'm disappointed that reasonable quality AA will still require the top-of-the line cards. For that matter, that the new games will also require those cards. I own a 9600XT, and it definitely doesn't have the oomph required for, um, the as yet unreleased games. Unless of course you enjoy being torn to shreds because your survival in the game depends on being able to move and aim at the same time.

Forget about AA+AF or even decently high resolution without either AA or AF.

The market gap between the X800 and the X600 is wide enough to drive a truck through. I'd be happy if I could get a card with reasonable power draw that allowed me to play at 800x600 with 4xAA with decent texture filtering. The X600 (somewhat slower than my tweaked 9600XT) will definitely not allow that. Not even close. Shading performance is fine and dandy, but AA+AF is useful for all games, and requires bandwidth.

 

[jvd]

entropy why would u expect 6x fsaa with the latest tittles in the low end ?

I can play older games at 4xfsaa on games that have come out in the last year on my 9700pro and that is now almost low end.

You pay more money for better performance and that includes fsaa on new tittles. Its simple .

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I'm disappointed that reasonable quality AA will still require the top-of-the line cards.

It's all in the bandwidth. Until we get 20+ GB/sec into the lower end cards (via 256 bit bus, or faster ram on a 128 bit bus), it's likely to stay that way unfortunately.

 

[Entropy]

I'm disappointed that reasonable quality AA will still require the top-of-the line cards.

It's all in the bandwidth. Until we get 20+ GB/sec into the lower end cards (via 256 bit bus, or faster ram on a 128 bit bus), it's likely to stay that way unfortunately.

Indeed.
Don't get me wrong, I think the 9600 is a nice little chip. But for ATI to, almost a year and a half since the 9600 introduction, offer exactly the same chip with 25% higher clocks as their midrange offering for their new PCI-Express line-up is pretty limp. IMO, of course.

There is a hole in their (and nVidias) line-up underneath the top-of-the-line offerings. The highest priority feature I'd like to see added to this market segment is substantially improved AA performance.

 

[Mr. Travis]

hmmm... so what's the earliest Ati could put out a ps 3.0/ sm 3.0 card? next spring maybe? longer? I was a bit optimistic before that it would be within a year, but now I think it could be as bad as next fall.

I'm curious because I'm working on a Far Cry mod, and there's no real limit there to what we can do with shaders... but I have to settle on a target... which is probably 2.0 shaders right now... and I was looking into 3Dc support but it wouldnt be worth making the content if no one has it and it looks like they aren't even supporting it over their whole line, I'll look into this DX5 alpha channel trick though

 

[jvd]

hmmm... so what's the earliest Ati could put out a ps 3.0/ sm 3.0 card? next spring maybe? longer? I was a bit optimistic before that it would be within a year, but now I think it could be as bad as next fall.

Why would they want to put out a sm 3.0 card ?

I believe they are going to jump strait to sm 4.0

sm 3.0 will be as important as p.s 1.4 is .