Great review, Sander! Unfortunate news, however. I was waiting for this update of the Radeon product line to come out and help me decide on buying a new card. My 9800XT has been serving me well in all the latest titles, so I didn't buy a new card this year. I don't really have to, I guess, since none of the games that I'll be playing in the next six months or so (at least) will be overly taxing to my current card. I just don't have a burring need to play Doom3 @ 1600x1200 w/ AA and AF.

And now that I see ATI has gone down the same road NVIDA did with the FX5800 with its loud cooler. There is no way I would buy one of those! The review made no mention of any other differences between the new flagship card and the old one, so I assume that the power requirements are still the same (i.e., reasonable, not like a 6800U, but like a 6800GT or X800XT). That means that my choices are the same as before. I think I'll wait until I come across a game that really makes me want to get a better card. At the prices these top-end parts are going for, I have to have a reason to upgrade beyond, "dood, ur gfx card sux0rs its +1yr old!" -- lol. I can wait. Problem is that I want to replace my P4 with an A64 system. I have also been waiting for nforce4 and K8T890 939 mobos but that is taking forever, and now I don't know if I even want a new graphics card (I don't need one), and that means AGP...

ATI ,s effort inthe x850 xt is a chance to off set Nvidia SLI system... all they did is squeeze 30mgz more out of the 800 and added better coolering .Nvidia this is not going to come out with another big card , that will come in the spring...they didnt want to desturb what they said they said that nv40 chip was great chip and it is and that smearing it with an extra 30 mgz more is useless, ATI is hard p[ressed right now cause the basically the x800 xtpe are just coming out and now there out with the x850 for what, --they had to do something to offset the SLI to give them some sort of chance to get there own out there. If ATI come out with there multi rendering to quickly it will be much more of a mess for them. Now youll have a harder chance of knowing what Nvidia is up to and how big of increase theree going to do, somew what of a statement i think. will see i guess

X 850 will be on shelves before chrismus, asthey claim

be better if it couldbe had in AGP, but since it's so similar to the 800, a little oc'ing would make it damn near equal. it's a mistake for ati to NOT have an AGP version

I think that the x850 is kind of a joke, i mean WOW 16 stage pipeline, up from 12, and a slight increase in clock speed OH NOO!!!!
I owned a 9600xt and now i have a 6600gt, so im not biased to either brand, but i would like to say shader model 3.0 is nowhere to be seen, all ATI have done is supercharge the existing shader model 2.0 core, and im sure ill get yeld at by all those ATI lovers out there but, until the X***** whatever has shader model 3.0 im not going back to one yet.

Hey,

I don't know what everyone's obsession for SLI is. It's no doubt going to flop big time. It's buggy as hell and doesn't support that many games. But most people don't realize that. It'll die just like it did for 3dfx (I know it's not the same thing as 3dfx did, so don't flame me!).

Hey K the x850 is even worse than u said, the only improvement is the speed bump, the 16 pipes were already available from x800 xt and up.

btw SLI? What you mean by games that dont work with it? SLI has nothing directly related to the game itself.

Uh, if you read anything about SLI you'd know what i was talking about. In order for both cards to work on a game that game must have a special profile specifically for SLI. Without the profile you're just running the game with a single card. Currently I think there's just a handful of games that have profiles for it, not to mention the consistent bugs with the setup.

MAn youre makin it sound so much worse than it is....

Everytime theres been a big tech push half of the engineering samples screw up. anyway..... and btw about your rpofile thing? its built into the driver and even with the beta there was already profiles for 50 games....

i think it needs more timt o mature....and any gfx cards that are pci express by nvidia better all be SLI or itll be a waste.....

Adam, its highly unlikely that nVidia would release an SLi that is only compatible with a handful of games...

where'd u get that info from?

where did you get all that stuff about SLI not being supported???? and like he said, everything new has hiccups to start. But even you ATI fans out there have to agree that the x850's are just ATI's way of trying to flood the market to A: try and take total control from Nvidia or B: to take the spotlight from SLI. either way I think ATI are kind of worried because they think Nvidia has something up their sleave or SLI will really take off, though ATI are having their own SLI being introduced Q1 next year i believe

Hey Mr. Albert original post, I think maybe you could look at a 6600gt, as they are pci-e, not too expensive,190US for the albatron, and play very well from what I hear. Of course, this is only if you are getting a new nforce4 mobo. I'm thinking about getting a new motherboard as well, and of course want an nforce4(ultra if I can) and faced buying new just about everything if I made the switch. I think the 6600gt is a good card with a reasonable price tag, and I think it will play any game you want to for a long time. Just a thought, good luck with the everchanging world of upgrading.

That's a fine looking Card.

Not a momnet goes by with out a "new" card.

This seams like a rehash of the X800 by clocking it that bit more (like the rest of us clocker) and improving the cooling for the 2nd time that I am aware withthe early releace of the cards having cooling issues, they must have hashed togeter this back then, which is why there was a delay on the cards...

I cant really see people going for this card there dosent seam to be any Massive imporvments and for 20Mhz woo haaa is all im going to say.

Point of interest :
the X800 VIVO card when unlocked to XT PE by the bios performed 17.6% better, and well clock speed went out the windows as most would have seen in the forum..

there priced about the same, so it make no difference really £325 and a due date in the UK in early Febuary.

What's an Ati Radeon ax800 xt/tvd doing compared to these newest models?

-Peter-


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Hummin and bumpin at 1,5 ghz