If you are at the stage of your computer's hardware evolution that it's time to buy a card NOW... you get the NVidia. That way you have PS3 when the games do start arriving on shelves which take advantage of PS3.

You also can watch for 'growth' of the 6800 as it matures.

If you can hold off on a card for now... you wait to see what these companies bring to the table for the next generation.

The ONLY logic that leads to buying the ATi card now is if you can toss top dollars at any given time for the best 'gem' on the market, and be prepared to do the same in a few months when a next step in tech is taken.

And all you gemologists out there... we don't care what's more rare or more expensive.... which gem is the FASTEST!?!

If you look at all the different reviews out there the spread between the X800 series and the 6800 series just isn't all that much and when you take into account that X800 does it in a single slot solution that only requires a modest 300 watt PSU then I think the obvious conclusion is the ATI card, especially if you are building something along the lines of a Shuttle.

Add to all this the fact that ATI has announced a higher clock speed for the X800XT and the slight lead the 6800 Ultra has may disappear.

I think it comes down to which ever company's product you prefer. Fortunately this time around you can get a top performing video card no matter which of the two companies you are a fan of. Personally after the disappointment I had with the NVidia 5800 I will probably stay with the ATI product line and upgrade my Radeon 9800 Pro to the X800XT.

Most of the games I play did better with the X800 any way, ie. Far Cry, X2, and Final Fantasy XI. For someone that is more into the Open GL games like Unreal 2004 or is just an NVidia fan the 6800 Ultra will do the trick if you have the room and enough power to support it.

There doesn't seem to be a clear choice that makes one chip or the other the obvious winner at this point. Now if NVidia is able to fine tune the 6800 series and can get similar numbers to the 6800 Ultra out of a single slot low power solution then obviously that will change the equation in favor of the NVidia.

EB

I see alot of Pro ATI fans in the house.
Sorry folks, wait till you need support for those ATI cards and you will go screaming back to Nvidia.
I will NEVER buy another ATI based, or Made anything again as the company SUCKS.
Do what ever it is you want to do but they have made a enemy here.
I have never had any trouble out of a NVidia Based card, NEVER!
When I did from the ATI card, they have the gual to want to charge me for support that is IN WARRANTY.
To H*** with that and them.

Does anybody know what advantages 512MB of ram on the graphics cards will have? As far as i can see in reviews the difference between 128MB and 256MB of ram is only the extra heat and about 4fps difference. The leap to DDR3 is good though, cutting down on heat and power consumption.
The only game i have found that needed 128MB+ of ram was Max Payne 2 - with all settings set to highest it wanted about 183Mb or something. It played anyway and it paged the extra data to my system ram and it ran smooth as anything.
Also there dont seem to be any speed increases for DDR3?, i saw a review on tomshardware for a NVidia 5700 useing DDR3 and there was no difference in speed.
( http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040405/index.html )

As for ATI or NVidia, i brought a Hercules 9700 pro 128MB version early last year when NVidia were still producing 10Kg vacuum cleaners. As for now, NVidia has produced some very nice cards and i remember my old Geforce 2 was amazing for its time. The only qualm i have is about the image quality of the new NVidia cards. Its not just microscope slides of pixels that are slightly out of line its a big problem. My sister has a NVidia FX5700 and in FarCry if you move the mouse left or right you get screen tearing. I have tried enabling AA and AsFiltering and also changing quality settings and i cant get rid of it. It gives me a headache whenever i watch it. I know a 5700 isnt top-of-the-range but the tearing / blurring that occurs is really annoying. There are also the occasional badly textured walls and artifacts appear along the edge of joining walls. As for my 9700 pro i get no problems at all.

As for buying a new card now, i think i'll wait until half-life 2 or doom III appears before i buy a new one, i spent £300 (538 USD) in March last year and i hoped to get at least 2 years out of it. Now i hope it will last until PCI express has matured a bit.. At the end of the day both rubies and diamonds are both damn expencive

No headroom huh?

http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2004/4752.html

Indeed, not much headroom, until you know exactly how they accomplished this score I think it is safe to say that this is just that, a score. It could be a system running with a 4GHz processor and/or a a handpicked card running at a higher than normal frequency. If that's the case, how many of these processors do you think they'll get out of a wafer? 2? 3? 5? Even then, they'd be priced so high that we wouldn't be able to afford the card that's based on it. We've seen these demos before, Intel likes to do one every IDF, having a processor run at some absurd clockspeed, probably cooled by vapor phase refrigeration or even liquid nitrogen cooling, unless they ship it with that card at that price it really doesn't mean anything.

Kind regards,

Ive seen many reviews and the good new is no matter what card u pick the ATI or the Nvidia are good cards ive even seen the X800-XT set the world record with a benchmarks in 3D03marks score of a 16,000 it was clocked to 715 core and mem.639*2(1278). u can read about that here http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/aticlaims3dmark200...cord.shtml
Both cards are great however ive also seen some reviews like Toms hardware that made me turn my head to ATI Once again because while 4samples of AA and 8 samples of AF are enabled the X800-XT beats the 6800Ultra by as much as 10-15% and thats pretty dang good. However the 6800Ultra has a lot of headroom for overclocking a newproduct and since their latest card can use up to 32bit Floating points why the ATI only 24bit and 3.0 pixle sharder while the ATI 2.0. The Nvidia could be in room for a good battle for the King of the Hill of GPUs.
How ever since ATI has made this new card and the XT version comes about to clock some people say to its peek while others like in the benchmark said "No" by getting the core from 525 to 715. This brings me to my next point could ATI have just released this card to show NVidia by using even their same but revised chip they can still compete with a 3.0 pixel shader and 32bitFP. while having a 2.0 with a 24bit and still beat the 6800U in more tests then it beat it. while Their new chip the 480 is well on its way by the end of the year rumors have it and that should have 3.0p and 32bitFP or even more. Or is Nvidia playing the game more and think their seat is just as good as ATI and has enough head room for more clock that can compete with the 480 when a new version comes out? well see. So my advice to buyers either wait till more reviced versions to come out.

other sorces for this info get acrobat reader to find out the "how it works" HAHA.
our home here at HardwareAnaysis.
tomshardware.
megagames.
peace

Somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to solve and argurment is seeing both perspectives"

My company switched from ATI to nVidia only because there are fewer software problems with them as opposed to ATI (mainly glitchy drivers). If people want ATI we offer it, but we warn them they might have some work ahead of them.

Thats a good question, Carith the ATI drivers are tricky if u want the most out of them.If u want the most out of ur ATI their isn't just one driver because of the Catalysic drivers and the pixels shaders that ATi had and Nvidia now Ironiclly has because of the new cool card they just produced the ATI drivers were not rocket science nor where they as easy as riding a bike lets just hope this gets fixed with their new stable drivers that will supposably fix these issues in the 350 series (9000) and the 420-480 series(Xmeaning 10).


Somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to solve and argurment is seeing both perspectives"

I have a genuine ATi card and it works great...I think a lot of problems come from people buying 3rd party cards or putting it in the Celeron with 250W PSU and 256MB Ram people dont realize you need a top of the line machine to handle a card like the 9800. or no x800

another good point well stated people who get just the bare minium like 350watt power supplie 1.5ghz and 256mb of Ram with a mobo that only supports up to 1G and complaining about the card gimme a break no said it anybetter than will

Somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to solve and argurment is seeing both perspectives"

My Voodoo 3 2000 PCI will pwn you all.

Although Nvidia says the card needs a 480 watt power supply, I remember reading somewhere that on a 400 watt it worked fine. Anyone know if this is confirmed and where? If so I may buy their card instead of ATI. Not willing to upgrade from a 420 power supply that I put in less than 2 months ago.

Well Geregoy it seems some 400watt power supplies will work aka the ones with good cooling mechanisms.
Nvidia was just trying to be on the safe side when they said that the 6800U will need a 480 but i and example would be when i had my 4200Ti and i had a 350 watt and it died within 3months or less however this was solved when i got a 420 with good cooling. So with a good cooling 420 that shouldnt be a problem. But as for me im getting the X800-XT it uses less power than the 9800XT and thats bad ace ive also seen it clocked to core of 715 and memory of 639*2. So if ur consered which one of these great cards you should get that while running a game u dont take the risk of a power shortage and ur electricity bill going sky high then the X800-XT in my opinion would be the best card. However either way u go u should see a good deal.


Somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to solve and argurment is seeing both perspectives"

The reason ATI's cards always seem to outperform Nvidia's is simple:
ATI has always rolls out their latest and greatest months after Nvidia has a press release for theirs. So, they beat them in both benchmarks and shelf releases. Strategically, ATI is brilliant. They wait for the opposition to reveal themselves and in turn, attack first. If this were a poker game, Nvidia would seriously be in the red. Nvidia should wait for ATI to show their hand for once.


The bottom line comes down to what type of user you are.

If you want killer benchmarks... go with ATI.

But if you want cinematic graphical quality, excellent DVD playback, a high overclock, and stability... go with Nvidia.

For professional users: definitely go with a Quadro.
The network rendering features built directly into the card are outstanding.




As far as the power supply issue goes... anything under 400w is unacceptable if you're running a P4 or AMD64 anyways.

The Geforce FX 59xx only used the 5v rail, not the 12v rail... and the same should apply for the 6800, because of the lower voltage on the memory and core.

I'm able to run my 5900 with a 350w generic PSU, so don't panic.

Well the statement about ATI and Nvidia is true and strategically ATi is very smart beating the bigger stronger more wealthy-er at the momment big brother.
However if you want good image quality and exellent DVD play back the card to get is also the ATi and i think you left that out only because they made a little card called the All in wonder. And a 420watt power supplie supports a althon 64 (2800+) quiet well considering conqesedentlly i have that CPU it only uses about 55-60watts of my power suppliy. and yes i have it clocked to 2.2Ghz and it runs as a 3200 64s speeds.

Somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to solve and argurment is seeing both perspectives"

Um, the AiW is a very risky venture. You're paying $100-$200 (and the first AiW was at least $250 more) more than just buying an ATI. You might reap a few benefits of having an onboard tuner, but what if something goes wrong? The first AiW had a lot of reports of failure, either due to the tuner or GPU giving out.
Granted, warranties will cover this, but the card shouldn't be failing in the first place.


You should've never mentioned it. Now I have to go off on you about how the video functions of the All In Wonder DONT AFFECT COMPUTER VIDEO RENDERING! The old models had an onboard MPEG2 encoder, and the new ones boast an MPEG4 encoder... but they absolutely do not help with DVD or any other video format's playback. The MPEG encoder is only for the coaxial/rca/svideo-INs, not out, and they are not used for video rendering, only processing.


At 4x-s aa/4x aniso, my card can match or beat a Radeon set to 6x aa/6x aniso.


You've obviously never owned an Nvidia card, and until you have don't write checks your @$$ can't cash.






One more thing to point out, but it's off topic: This is the first time I've seen a black person in a computer advertisement. I'm not certain ATI is representing the right demographic for their X800.

Well I have gone thru three All In Wonders and not one of them failed in any way. Never known of anyone that did have one fail. Not that I don't believe that there were failures, just that none of the people I installed them for had any problems, and that would amount to about a dozen different clients.

I personally have never had any trouble with a Radeon card of any type other than driver issues with the pre-catalyst drivers. As far as the hardware is concerned I have never had a failure. I can't say the same for all NVidias but the TI series were exceptionally stable and dependable. It wasn't until the 5800 that I heard of any major issues. I did have a GeForce 2 that fried but it was over-clocked on occasion so I don't fault the design.

As for company policies I think both NVidia and ATI have been guilty of less than honorable business practices. ATI has just learned from NVidia that you never release your card first. I remember how NVidia tweaked thier drivers to make the GeForce 3 look much better than the Radeon 8500 when in reality they were pretty comparable GPUs. Neither company earns any points for honorable business policies.

I think which ever card you get you can rest assured it will be twice as powerful as what you have now and if it's bragging rights you are looking for you can make a case for either card.

EB

Ignorant people like you need to go else where with your ignorant harsh language i happen to be black and i think thats fine that they put a black person on an advertisment, ur current comments just show me how imature and stupid you are. You commented on just MPEG encoders that have never gone wrong with my 9700pro AIW and the guy above me never seems to have any problems either.
You dip S@#$ your mom should have taught you more manners on how to approache a topic and not to be rude if your just discussing on a fourm. I happen to own a 4200Ti which seems to work just fine 4 now on my other pc. your ignorance is just bliss. go pary. and ask God for forgiveness. Ive really never talked to anyone as stupied at disscussing a topic as you I wonder if with your big mouth have you have owned an AIW since you talk so much about them. I should assume no since you assumed i never owned a Nvidia and No your 5900 can not compete with my speed of my new 9800 pro.

By the way i never had a problem with any drivers with my ATI however my Ti would freeze after a while in most D3D games oh wait i think think my statement almost maches the statement above by someone else do i see a trend??

somba.inc
nuffsaid
"the only way to slove an agurement is to see both points of view"

oh ya i almost 4 go too say my off topic "where are u from to tell ATI why thier represented by a black instead of a white nerd fag who has nothing else to do but to jack off to his Computer and get angry about not seeing his race on the adverts.

The power consumption thing is NVidia being safe. They suggest a 480 PSU because they expect people who buy the 6800 ultra to have their machines outfitted like crazy. If you have a 3.4 ghz cpu, 2 gigs of ram, 2 hard drives, 2 cdroms, a sound blaster audigy platinum 2, 50 case fans... I have 12 so =)... etc etc your going to need that power. Tally up the power consumption of your machine before you go buy a 480w. If you already have somewhere around a 420 or 440 you might not need a new one anyway. As for performance. Most of the benches where ATI leads it's usually under 10 frames. As for that 3dmark score, they were so overclocked out the rear it's not realistic to a consumer. When you get 60 frames vs 65 though that's about a 10% difference. Frame difference, hardly any, they just use percents to make it sound big. Nvidia already released drivers that kicked there FPS up a nice chunk. If it really is such an unpolished diamond who really knows what they'll actually wind up at. They've already learned to keep some information secret because ATI likes to wait till they've shown all their cards. I'd expect them to hide their latest and greatest drivers till the home stretch of the race. Driver wise, honestly, ATI hasn't had the best record. I admit they're better but for every person that has absolutely no issues there are plenty more that have to change drivers when they want to play different games. Tricky business practices by NVidia are way different than getting a $500 dollar product that makes you wanna pull your hair out. The FX line was a giant expensive paperweight though. I stuck with my TI4600, I love my GF4. May not be the fastest ,but it ain't the slowest and it never has any driver issues. I might upgrade this time. Kinda waiting to see what PCI Express does. Everyone has driver problems sometimes. ATI just tends to wind up with a nice chunk more. My hat is off to them for their great achievement but in the end NVidia will probably end up on top again just because of their sheer magnitude of resources to pull ideas from. They got lazy and ATI bushwhacked them. It was a good learning experience for them. Who knows. I didn't get an FX so maybe I'm not mad at NVidia because of it. *shrugs*