Is it worth spending 115.00 more for the X1800XL over the 7800 GT?

Actually, according to the Beyond3D article, ATi has not had very long to work on the driver due to many issues with the respins and etc.

HDR + MSAA is coming, its the feature, no one would use HDR over time if you couldnt have AA with it. Many games with HDR will have patches coming up to support it.

Vertex Texture Fetch is actually not a big deal at all, its not even required by SM3.0. Also, ATi can completely hide this by using a different route with a good driver.

A lot of mixed information is still coming out about the X1K cards, a lot of it due to major sites having no clue at all with real technical stuff, as it seems. I suggest many of you read the B3D article, its very informative.

 

Just thought it might be interesting to note, the Newegg price for the X1800XL has already dropped $10 off of suggest MSRP. I'd say that's a pretty good sign.

 

The X1800XL has very nice 3d. All games I have tried played smooth as butter. It really comes down to preferences.

 

While I agree from what I have seen, is this logical?

I thought the x1800xt was a respin b/c they were not getting the yields they wanted in that speedbin, and thus one would imagine that the new x1800xl would overclock better than the current incarnation.

 

Ahem, I thought we had this already?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=591468#post591468

 

Could you point out where this is stated? I cannot find it and I am quite sure that Dave Baumann said the opposite in the forum, suggesting that the stalls encountered in getting high volume production online had not (or should not) affect driver development.

PS. I tried searching for this particular post, but apparently I suck at searching. I think it was only a few days, perhaps a week or so, before the launch, but I could be wrong on that.

 

How about heat and noise? Do you have any idea if the Zalman VF-700 can be affixed to the X1800XL?

 

I couldnt find it in the article, but I did find where Dave posted it and said it was in the article!

His statement:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=591589&postcount=17

 

Thanks. I could have sworn Dave was making the opposite case earlier. Perhaps he didn't know and was speculating, but I am pretty sure he suggested that driver development needn't stall due to the lack of high volume production.

I guess it's a bit of a moot point though. The real grinding can only begin once the cards are out there in the real world. I am sure the drivers will get better, but I also think these drivers are a long way from being early scraps.

Now to find that post...or did I dream it?

 

All the better to wait, however there will be no way of knowing whether or not you get one of these newer cores or how long it will be before they start using them for XLs.

 

7800 GT.. nvidia drivers are more stable...

 

if he's referring to the interface, then arguably yes... CCC is still a bit meh at times due to the slowness of .NET.

 

It seems that its already happing - I found a message from Raja in my inbox today titled "OpenGL memory programming enhancement for Anti-Aliasing". Evidently its some new registry settings that tweaks the memory controller (evidently for OGL and AA situations, going by the title). Not had a chance to look at it yet, but they are saying it'll go into the drivers soon.

 

That's my experience too, but i have to admit that ATI did some big steps forward in the last two years while Nvidia's drivers have become a little bit worse.

 

If I absolutely positively had to build a rig right now (like the old one died or something), I'd stick the cheapest pos gpu in it I could find or borrow and wait three weeks to make final choices.

Frankly, it does not look to me like anyone who can spend north of $400 on a viddy card should be looking at anything less than 512mb unless they like changing their cards fairly regularly or aren't interested in max eyecandyness.

 

Agreed completely, I wouldn't recommend anybody put out that kind of cash now for a 256MB card. I just picked up 2GB of RAM so that should hold me over and take care of the stuttering I get in WoW, BF2, FEAR etc but it would have been nice to have 512MB on the card.

 

Hexus is up on the front page with a tool to do this, apparently intended to get folded into 5.11.

Yours above seems more generic tho, which is hopeful. Those kinds of gains in OGL AA, if more generic than just Doom3, would certainly turn down the volume on some criticism. And also assuming nothing else funky is going on here, which is always to be wished when eye-poppers show up, but must also always stay in the back of the mind as a possibility to be checked for.