http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy
About freaking time. Supposedly they’ll be in stores (well the x1800 parts anyway) today or tommorrow (6th). Hopefully this drives down the prices of the x800 stuff so I can buy one around February. It’s on par with an nvidia 7800, give or take some fps or so. No power connector either (dunno if the 7800 series needed it or not).
I guess “finally releasing” a new vid card these days has no correlation with the fact that it’s actually available for purchase. The high-end X1800 parts might be an option to, y’know, actually buy and install in your PC, by the end of November. Whether that’s in quantity, who knows.
The 1800xl is shipping immediately and will be available to consumers on the 11th or 12th. The XT will probably be mid to late november. Of course as brand new hardware they won’t be reasonably priced until early 2006.
the x800xt and x850xt are still extremely hard to find at all, other than from big PC manufacturers, even though the x800xt theoretically “came out” 18 months ago.
Given the comments about noise, I’m not sold… I will continue limping along with the x800xt.
I’m really tired of noisy machines.
Probably the best write-up of the bunch I’ve read today.
One thing I do want to see is some fp16 HDR + AA testing in a game. That performance hit is going to be ugly, but just how ugly is what I want to know. Maybe Lost Coast will be available soon.
Something I’d like to see as well
Really, the aiw x800 xt is everywhere i look, at least online. In fact i just bought a refurb at newegg.
It looks like they’re trying to clean out the x800 AGP inventory though; the same is happening with the 6800 GT AGP. The latter used to be everywhere; now there are only a few brands still available. The BFG branded 6800 GT has all but vanished.
Over at zipzoomfly they have the Saphire x800 xt listed at 219$us, but it’ll probably be on back order till the end of the world.
The AGP versions are hard to find. The PCIe versions are in stock all over the place. They never did ship good quantities of the AGP versions.
Valve’s HDR implementation doesn’t use FP16 render targets, which is the sticking point for AA and HDR (FP16 or FP32 render targets, or multiple render targets, are where nvidia hardware and older ATI hardware can’t do AA). You can get valve’s HDR now in Day of Defeat: Source. The method they’ve chosen to go with is a somewhat lower quality than using FP16 render targets, but you suffer less of a performance hit so mid-range hardware can turn it on, and you can use AA at the same time.
Long story short: because of Valve’s particular HDR method, you can enable AA+HDR on all graphics cards, but their HDR isn’t quite as nice as using real FP16 render targets (ala Unreal Engine 3, or Far Cry’s upcoming HDR stuff).
The AGP versions are hard to find. The PCIe versions are in stock all over the place. They never did ship good quantities of the AGP versions…[/quote]
Yeah, I meant the AGP versions – I also meant the “platinum edition” ones, with the higher clock speed, not the lower clocked xt versions.
Nice article, Jason.
That’s the non-PE version. Saphire also produced a PE version (I actually picked one up), but like all PE parts, they were never commonly available. The ATI retail ones were essentially a no-show
When will the G72 and the R580 make it to market?
I believe the G72 chips are middle-rung parts; not sure on the fab process for them, though I’d guess at 90nm. R580 is the oft-rumored R520 high-end refresh, rumored to be using the 80nm optical shrink and sporting the hard-to-believe 3x shader processing power over R520.
Yes that is an excellent article. We’ll see how this AIW x800 XT holds up and whether it’s worth sending back or not :).
The one thing i’ve found with “0 day” hardware purchases is that prices are set by perceived performance. So even if it were possible to pick up one of the mid ranged x1600’s it would cost more than the boards it’s replacing anyway. Not too long after that you get pricing set by actual performance; either pushing it’s own price up or forcing other cards to lower their prices in response.
Those HardOCP reviews have become worthless since their “max playable” religion took hold. They devote most of their tables to what could be derived from a glance at meaningful results like you’ll find everywhere else, making it really hard to find anything useful for your particular setup, and ignoring the entire concept of native resolution that defines the gaming experience on modern monitors.
I’m rather let down by the X1000. Bearly faster than the 7800, no agp part, and noise and possible heat issues. They are making the choice to switch back to nvidia easier. Yes I know there is no 7800 agp either but if I must replace my motherboard, I’m more likely to pick nvidia.