~Sander

Very well written, I couldn't imagine a better written article, No Bias, and still the Bad news that this series won't be up to par But I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. I look forward to the coming months to see what ATI can do, But I feel NVIDIA will have another one of those " Oh my God we found out how to get 15% more performance with a driver update" NVIDIA is great at doing this when ATI release's new Tech... As we have seen and heard rumors of this already. Just remember history repeats itself often in the Graphics Market.

Thanks
Sledgehammer70
http://www.mandmcr.com
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AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe stock Bios If it ain't broke why fix it?
Corsair XMS Plat. 2 x 1Gig PC3200 DDR400
2 x Nvidia EVGA 7800GT 256MB at 474Mhz/ 1.22Ghz
Anetec 550W PSU
2 x 250GB Maxtor Diamond drives
Creative Audigy 2 ZS Plt.
Creative 5.1 Surround 250Watts
Zalman 7700 CPU Cooler
and some nice fans and lights.......

Well...do I sense desperation from ATI to try and bring out something to compete with NVidia's 7800x SLI? Well...my suggestion to ATI...keep trying guys, keep up the hard work...some day...maybe someday, you'll be able to bring out something that might prosper in the market ahead of Nvidia. As for NVIDIA, I feel they're in their own league..no more comments.

While I agree that healthy competition is a good thing, ATI has been put in a situation where if they are hasty, it will burn them bad.

BTW Sander, good write-up on ATI. It was very professionally done.

Nice one Sander. I actually thought you hated ATI after what they did to you, hence I thought you were now biased with Nvidia. I was wrong. On the bright side I really like this write-up, I myself will be purchasing a X1800XT or even a X1800XT PE when availible OEM. The future looks outstanding for ATI:

1) Radeon X1000 line up.
2) Crossfire for old and new series.
3) Xbox 360
4) R580 already taped out. (True...?)

Oh, sorry for the double post. How confident are you on the availability of the Radeon X1800 shipping in November? Is it possible October 5th is when they all come? I hear they are available on launch date.

Nicely written article that dealt with the facts that are available and the issues that matter. Thank you Sander, you shared information that has been difficult to obtain and used restraint in regards to conjecture and comparisons that it is too soon to make.

EB

As for those here that note a sense of desperation or struggle from ATI I think the facts point towards just the oposite. ATI could have easily released the X1000 series or X1800 back in early August, had they been desperate to compete with Nvidia, instead they chose to spin up the silicon on the 520 one more time making sure they had things running as smooth as possible.

As for ATI continually playing catch up, this is hardly the case as the 9800 series consistently beat the Nvidia 5800 and 5900 series in bench marks and sales and the X800 series did equally well against the 6800 series until Nvidia convinced thousands of gamers that if one 6800 couldn't whip the ATI GPUs then two could and SLI became the latest fad.

I'm sure ATI was just as surprised as I was that so many people would be willing to double thier video card investment and be forced to buy a new motherboard and commit to a specific video card but Nvidia did a hell of a job at marketing, ie. bulls**tting, the consumers. Nvidia has always been good at marketing and it is probably thier strongest suit.

ATI is getting better at marketing but I hope they can compete by simply continuing to build the best video card. We shall see what matters more.

EB

Karl Carroll,
I'm not sure where the BSing by Nvidia comes into play. 2 X 6600GTs beat a single card by either ATI or Nvidia, period. The fact that you're surprised that people will go that route shows that you're not the most informed person on the block. And don't kid yourself that ATI isn't looking into their own version of SLI. Of course they are. Are you suggesting that because people choose to go the SLI route that they are getting less for their money than you are when buying a new ATI card? Because if so, it could be argued that anyone buying a top performance card is getting less bang for the buck than a mid range card by either manufacturer. Bang for the buck is determined by each individual. Personally, I wouldn't sacrifice the performance of SLI to go to a single card by either manufacturer at this point, but that's just me.

I've owned most of them (9600 Pro ((1st decent ATI card IMO)), 9800XT, X600XT, X800XT on the ATI side and more Nvidias than I can count, currently 2 X 6800U). I also owned one of the original ATI All-In-Wonders, which was a driver nightmare. ATI has come light years in technology to what they started out as. However, they've been overpriced and subpar performers until the last few years IMO. Lately they have the performance under control, but they're still overpriced.

Also, as I remember it the 9800 series was the first time ATI had anything better/faster than Nvidia. The new trend continued with the X800/X850 for a short while. Now Nvidia is back on top with the 7800, a position that they're used to being in.

I'm all for competition and hope the X1800 can compete with the 7800. Competition helps to keep prices down and invoke new technology, which we all benefit from. We'll have to see how they actually perform when they hit the market. According to this article, I don't expect much competition to the 7800 though.

BTW Sander, I thought that was a well written article.

i dont know where you come off with 9600 Pro being first decent card, but ATI had the R300 Cores before the R350 which is 9600-Pro& 9800-Pro 256 then the R360 which is 9600XT&9800XT, but to tell you one thing the Radeon 9500 Pro and 9700 Pro left the 9600 Series in the Dust, the 9800 Pro Series is just a more fine tuned 9700 Pro, One thing for sure its a Legendary Series as its hard to find 9500s and 9700s even their Pro models.

In responce to John...

"Oh, sorry for the double post. How confident are you on the availability of the Radeon X1800 shipping in November? Is it possible October 5th is when they all come? I hear they are available on launch date."

I have no idea what that counter means on ATi's site. Whether it's the press release of the card, or everything is available to the public in mass quantities. I am not very clear on the details myself. Hopefully for ATi they do release it on October the 5th, nVidia set the standard pretty high introducing and releasing the 7800 on the same day. ATi should do the same.

I have no idea whether the card will be available to the public on October the 5th, or late October/early November. I guess we will just have to wait and see

Sander,

"beat 7800GTX in all games" ALL GAMES?!?!
"some by as much as 80%"
I find that hard to believe.
PONG optimized for the R520?!
640x480 res?

It remains that though it appears that ATI has given you additional information, the lack of the thourough benchmarking usually prevelent in your articals, that they still haven't made one of these cards available.

IF this is true, 'tis sad as you are left trumpetting a great architecture without the capability to prove the implementation.

Gerritt

ATI has just launched their new line of products 10/05/05

Hey you should look at the visuals of the X1800 on the Ati website. Nice.

well it looks like Sander and many reviewers of the X1k series were wrong about their quality and performance.