HardOCP review up

[galperi1]

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjEx

damn.. pro and XT seem consistantly to have at least one resolution higher setting than the 6800U at the same rates, sometimes even 2

 

[Joe DeFuria]

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjEx

damn.. pro and XT seem consistantly to have at least one resolution higher setting than the 6800U at the same rates, sometimes even 2

Yeah...the Pro in particular is looking more and more like a great deal I was also pleased to see that [H] did BOTH their new "best settings" method, and a bit of "apples to apples" as well.

 

[Atomahawk]

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjEx

damn.. pro and XT seem consistantly to have at least one resolution higher setting than the 6800U at the same rates, sometimes even 2

Yeah...the Pro in particular is looking more and more like a great deal I was also pleased to see that [H] did BOTH their new "best settings" method, and a bit of "apples to apples" as well.

I'll second that, the pro on par with the 6800U is nothing to scoff at, and the XT raised the bar beyond what I thought could be done.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Damn, I'm waiting for the local PC stores to open to see if anyone has 'em!

Great review by Brent, I really liked it. Well balanced and it showed a lot, and I WANNA BUY THE CARD AFTER READING IT!!!!!!

The Pro looks to be a pretty decent OCer too:

]The X800Pro shows us the most promise in terms of overclocking, and is probably the card you will be most interested in overclocking.

<image of clockspeeds on powerstrip>

The default clock speeds indicated by Powerstrip is exactly 472.5MHz core and 445.5MHz memory.

<image of impressive overclockspeeds on powerstrip>

These are the highest overclocks we were able to achieve, 513MHz core and 560.25MHz memory. That is a 40.5MHz increase on the core and a whopping 114MHz memory increase! If we went any higher on the core, 520MHz core for example, any game would freeze, and VPU recover kicked in. Going any higher on the memory resulted in flashing polygons in games. With the memory at 1.12GHz it now has the memory bandwidth of its bigger brother, the X800XT.

MUST UPGRADE NOW!!!

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yes I am surprised, given all these 50/50 benchmark results we are getting, that [H] (of all places) puts both the X800XT and X800Pro above the 6800U when it comes to actually playing games.

 

[PatrickL]

For now i just read Dave preview and need more aspirin before read more reviews

 

[DeathKnight]

Damn, the Pro is looking like a pretty sweet buy If the price falls to somewhere near $300 soon I'm going to definately think about buying it.

 

[Sabastian]

Yes that was a fine review. Well done. They took pains for actual simultaneous performance/IQ testing. A greater challenge indeed but really gives us a better idea of how well these cards work outside of straight benchmarks. Another thing I thought was admirable was the fact they did not use the drivers NV sent them that cause a lot of problems with the graphics.

That said, NVIDIA gave us a newer set of drivers that were outlined to improve FarCry frames per second by 20% by working out some Z culling issues according to NVIDIA. These new v61.11 drivers also were saddled with IQ bugs and we did not feel comfortable testing with them as we would not have suggested them for your gaming experience.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjExLDEw

I think it would be best if all reviews ignored buggy drivers in the same manner. Kudos to [H] for that.

 

[martrox]

Kudos Brent, a fine job!

 

[MuFu]

Ah... was looking forward to this review the most (sorry Dave!). A "playability"-centered assessment always looked like it would be the best way of showing off what the XT PE is really capable of in relation to NV4x. The Pro memory overclock, in particular, is very encouraging.

Great reviews from both B3D and [H].

 

[fallguy]

Great review. Im glad they listened to their readers, and did an apples to apples comparison. I think that will make everyone happy. Its good to know its not "my way or the highway". One of the best reviews out, in my opinion.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Great review. Im glad they listened to their readers, and did an apples to apples comparison. I think that will make everyone happy. Its good to know its not "my way or the highway". One of the best reviews out, in my opinion.

Yeah, I really liked that too. Brent stayed true to the way he wanted to start reviewing cards and expanded on it (I liked the chart on the last page, nice perspective/wrap-up!), and at the same time listened to what people said about his last review and included that apples to apples comparison.

If he would have run them head-to-head on 3dm2k3 & 3dm2k1se I'd have called it absolutely perfect, but as it was it was the best I've read this morning.

(Sorry Dave, yours is great but it's too much above my head at times for me to honestly say it was better. It was more in-depth and I'll be digesting it over the next few weeks trying to figure it out, which is a big plus; but Brent's seemed to give me a better feel for what the card can do a lot easier and I left the review wanting to run out and buy a card. )

 

[Florin]

There's great stuff in all the reviews I've seen so far, but I personally just need to know one single thing: Will I be able to start Flight Sim 2004, select 2048 x 768 or some such double wide resolution, and get full screen 3D accelerated video on two monitors? Or will it just be 2*1024x768 again, like it was with my 9800 Pro? Nvidia can do both types of dualhead gaming, and the horizontal spanning support is the one reason I'm still using their cards.

 

[nelg]

Great reviews from both B3D and [H].

Agreed.[H]’s style of reviewing is best suited for ATI this round.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Agreed.[H]’s style of reviewing is best suited for ATI this round.

Yeah, but we'll all be going back to Dave's later as the new features are exposed to understand what they all are.

Between the two of them, I really felt like I got to know this new card in a hurry. Great job and thanks to both.

 

[mondoterrifico]

So it looks like to me at least it breaks down like this:

Nvidia: Bulkier, slightly noisier, consumes more power, offers slightly worse IQ, and is a little slower.

ATI: Doesn't support pixel shader 3.0.

I think ATI's marketing team will have an easier time again this round.

 

[Sabastian]

Something I found odd is that most review sites did not use much testing that was greater then 4XAA. With higher AA it seems ATi really gains teh upper hand. I think that reviewers should use these higher settings considering these are enthusiast cards. Anyhow it seems perplexing that very few used more then 4XAA. Hexus braved the idea..

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03NTgmdXJsX3BhZ2U9MTc=

 

[Bjorn]

Ah... was looking forward to this review the most (sorry Dave!). A "playability"-centered assessment always looked like it would be the best way of showing off what the XT PE is really capable of in relation to NV4x.

I found this type of review to be VERY annoying. Especially since best resolution/FSAA and so forth is so very different from person to person. Some people like higher res and lower FSAA, some people have LCD's and have to use the native res and so forth.

Annoying is perhaps not the right word though, they are after all pretty much the only site doing this type of reviews and some people seem to like them

 

[Atomahawk]

Brent did a great job on that review, one of the best non overly technical reviews out there. Of course Daves always the best in that arena, just wish I could understand more of it, but then again you can't know everything right

 

[AOS]

Brent did a great job on the review. However, I am quite disappointed that the forums over there have been down for quite sometime.