X1800 Reviews

Give this man a pat on the back.

I'd love to see some HDR+AA scores..

But nah, I never saw any. I really want too.

 

HEXUS' review was simply outstanding, a really nice job there Rys and the best of the reviews I've read this morning.

 

Affirmative. The only review where I'd get the performance figures from.

 

Yup, and the picture on the conclusion page was priceless and took some cojones....kudos again Rys, I was extremely impressed all around by your review.

Even having someone else write up the bit about the delay was a nice touch, keeping it totally seperate from the reviewer was refreshing.

 

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/592-1/ati-radeon-x1800-xt-xl.html

 

Yep!



LMAO.

 

A competitor for 3D Quincy!

 

Jason Cross's article was also good.

 

Rys, please tell me you're going to go all out (PSU-test style) with the IQ comparisons? HQ, all Cat AI settings, etc.? Games and just AF testers? Comparisons to NV cards? So many AA comparisons John Reynolds would become aroused?

 

Sorry, but Rys' picture already has me, mmm, er. . .aroused.

 

Hexus's review was well written. The only gripe I have is why he chose to use Nvidia's 78.03 drivers instead of the newer beta drivers. It gives a somewhat one-sided interpretation if the review only uses ATI Beta catalyst drivers and not the newest Nvidia beta drivers.

ATI CATALYST Beta - 8.173.1-050921
NVIDIA ForceWare Release 75 - 78.03

After all, a video card review is best when perceived as a "apples to apples" comparison.
Pharma

 

ATI's adaptive AA looks nice...except for the fact that you cant turn it on and still play at high fps...

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=734

Farcry 1280x1024

no FSAA 107fps
4x FSAA 98fps
4x adaptive FSAA 55fps........WTF?????

Farcry 1600x1200
no FSAA 98fps
4x FSAA 75fps
4x adaptive FSAA 41fps........WTF??????

 

I doubt it's fair to compare beta drivers to beta drivers when one is a prerelease card and the other has been on the market for four months.

Re: the Far Cry adaptive AA complaint. guess how much of the screen is getting antialiased via supersampling--a huge percentage. of course performance is going to be killed.

 

Pharma.

IIRC the beta drviers are the first Cat's to "offically" support the x1800. Besides the Cat5.10 should be out very soon going by their monthly release schedule where as we have no idea when NVs next offical drivers will be ready.

 

I think it's quite relevant when you are comparing performance using "beta" drivers that will be available over the next week or so -- really doesn't matter if the card is pre-release or not. The fact that drivers continue to evolve and improve performance is the reason enough for using them ... similar to ATI chosing to provide "beta drivers" for the reviewer's use instead of the "official" Cats.

 

Well, for one thing, nVidia has a history of releasing betas to reviewers on ATi launch day and then not releasing anything official for months.

edit:
And ATi has official releases every month.

 

41fps isn't exactly a stutter fest.
What did you expect?
As my thoughts on the X1800.
For todays game it compares nicely to the 7800gtx overall however I believe in tomorrows games it will truely excell
X1800xl is less then impressive however.
It reminds exactly of the x800xt and x800 pro- huge performance difference between them.
Ati for ultra high end and nvidia for mid high end atm, although perhaps in the future the x1800xl will rip the 7800gt a new one.
The new fsaa and af modes are very nice, however.
For rpg gamers ati is easily the better card.. even with the x1800xl since they have the HQ AF mode which rules.
Their video tech is however less than impressive, which is dissapointing given the time they've had to develop it and the ammount of transisters the R520 has.
I'm rather perplexed by the 3dmark pixel shader and shadermark tests.
But atleast it rips nvidia a new one with the flow control benchmark.

 

Official Cats for X1800 cards don't exist yet; official drivers for G70 do. How is that difficult? Do you really think that there will be magical performance increases for the X1800 in the course of a week? Do you really think NV has improved performance by 20% in the latest beta Dets (which came out yesterday, I might add)?

 

Understood, JB. Until they are "official" I'm was just looking for a more meaningful comparison between "beta" drivers. I believe the next NV drivers are due prior to the release of "Black & White 2" - about 1 week.