A 6800GT owner comment on his X800XTPE

[iwbs]

I know theres no one who can remember me, but anyway let me tell you, i was a 6800GT owner b4 (xmasgrin). I sold it and get a 2nd X800XTPE (which is in fact a brand new one), and i would like to give my comment on both bards.

First of all, for pure speed, i can see that the PE is faster than the GT a bit, which i think that you guys expect it already.
However the driver and the IQ of the PE just don't live up its hype. I remember somebody have said ATI's 2D is better than nvidia's, well i can tell you 2D of both cards are just the same (i am using DVI output for both cards), you just can't tell the difference even if you stick eyes on the screen.

As i dun have much time to test i will only talk about the IQ in CS:S and focuz on AF quality. i can tell you that the AA/AF shimmering is THERE on PE if you turn on any optz. I was using 65.73 HQ with my GT and i didn't notice any of the shimmering, AA/AF whatsover. I can see them on my PE with default setting however. In the end i have to set everything to high quality, and the most importantly, disable the AI in order to get the same image quality as the GT, if you turn on AI you will notice theres some glitches on the the floor (16x quality AF), the quality is just the same as the 16x perf AF on GT.
If i set the AF quality to performance with AI disable, the near part the texture of the floor will becme crystal clear while the further part is blurry, in the end you will see a line dividing the floor when you are walking. I remember i saw them in some investigation of ATI's AF quality, the shots are in COD and UT2k4 if my memory serves. (rudolf)
The PE is better than GT in one more thing other than speed tho, stuttering
problem now no longer appear which it did on GT.


To conclude i am not very pleased with the PE....o yea, who say the driver of radeons is superb? Here is my NFS2UG on the Cat 4.11 official (or 4.12b omega? i forgot), not the mention the "missing gun" in CS:S. Both of them never happen on my GT. (xmassign)

[Knot3D]

But, what brand of GT did you have and at what clockspeeds ?

[useless nvidiot]

i get the exact same thing in need for speed 2 on my gt and well as my radeon. must be just the game then. thats why the gt has to go. the radeons IQ is better especially in half life 2

[iwbs]

But, what brand of GT did you have and at what clockspeeds ?
My GT was Winfast, and i usually run it @ 390/1100

[iwbs]

i get the exact same thing in need for speed 2 on my gt and well as my radeon. must be just the game then. thats why the gt has to go. the radeons IQ is better especially in half life 2
But i really didn't experience it with my GT....maybe i am lucky then...
and i am not saying the PE has that problem all the time too, it was ok b4 but now no matter how many restarts the game just act like that, gonna reinstall driver

[useless nvidiot]

anyway nvidia got me with their pixel shader 3 nonsense. i should have known that only farcry and lotr would support this. silly me

[iwbs]

anyway nvidia got me with their pixel shader 3 nonsense. i should have known that only farcry and lotr would support this. silly me
The SM3 will be useful, if not y ATI adopt it on R520? (xmasgrin) (Though somebody may argue it will only be useful with a fast chip like R520)

[useless nvidiot]

but far cry with sm3 is overbright and slow on my gt. i prefer the way the game looks normally anyway

[Lfctony]

i get the exact same thing in need for speed 2 on my gt and well as my radeon. must be just the game then. thats why the gt has to go. the radeons IQ is better especially in half life 2

It's funny because putting my X800 next to my 6800, I don't notice this amazing difference in IQ. Same as with my 9800 before that. Where do you get this huge IQ difference when no one else notices it?

[useless nvidiot]

must be just my eyes then

[OWA]

Must be. I don't see that much difference in IQ either (between the 6800U and X800 Pro). Also, NFSU2 renders correctly for me on the 6800U.

[nIghtorius]

Must be. I don't see that much difference in IQ either (between the 6800U and X800 Pro). Also, NFSU2 renders correctly for me on the 6800U.

I went from a 9800 pro to a 6800GT.. still the anti-aliasing quality of my 9800Pro was/is better compared to the 6800GT. also the 6800GT gives excellent AA though. but the radeon seems to choose the colors of the AA pixels better. but with Half-Life 2 4xAA both cards seeming to be on par on IQ.

[fivefeet8]

i get the exact same thing in need for speed 2 on my gt and well as my radeon. must be just the game then. thats why the gt has to go. the radeons IQ is better especially in half life 2

NFSU2 doesn't look like that on my 6800 ultra. The background lights don't come through the highway road/signs and I can't see through my car to it's neon lights. Probably driver bugs.

[MustangSVT]

I don't have those problems with NFS:U2. The only problems I've had was some stuttering in FarCry with 66.93 however, so I had to revert back to 65.73.

[Vagrant Zero]

I went from a 9800 pro to a 6800GT.. still the anti-aliasing quality of my 9800Pro was/is better compared to the 6800GT. also the 6800GT gives excellent AA though. but the radeon seems to choose the colors of the AA pixels better. but with Half-Life 2 4xAA both cards seeming to be on par on IQ.

That's Gamma corrected AA. I've heard rumours down the grapevine that Nvidia is implementing in their drivers soonish, much like they did with 3DC.

[RpPRO]

The SM3 will be useful, if not y ATI adopt it on R520? (xmasgrin) (Though somebody may argue it will only be useful with a fast chip like R520)

You hit the nail on the head, dude. Would you enable sm3 with your GT in Far Cry and get like 22 fps instead of 50 fps without HDR? You will need much more horsepower for that.

[MustangSVT]

What does SM3 have to do with HDR? Running in SM3 path is faster than SM2.0, and you don't have to enabled HDR if you're in SM3 path..

[evilchris]

i get the exact same thing in need for speed 2 on my gt and well as my radeon. must be just the game then. thats why the gt has to go. the radeons IQ is better especially in half life 2
HL2 IQ on a Radeon is not any better than on a GeForce. They are the same.

[Kojiro]

I had some studering im my GT, a new driver install and disabling v sync was all I needed
to virtualy eliminate it from my gaming. BTW, I got a 2500+ @2Ghz and 1GB of dual channeled memory running at DDR 333. I also defraged my C drive and my game partition, as well as disabling useless background services for good measure.

[Faster]

http://www.tcmagazine.info/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownloaddetails&lid=195&88550

Try these with your x800. They are by far the coolest drivers. :)

[Coz]

but far cry with sm3 is overbright and slow on my gt. i prefer the way the game looks normally anyway
You're thinking of HDR. HDR and SM3.0 aren't the same thing.

[Coz]

Would you enable sm3 with your GT in Far Cry and get like 22 fps instead of 50 fps without HDR? You will need much more horsepower for that.
You're thinking of HDR. HDR and SM3.0 aren't the same thing.

Whoah, talk about déjà vu....

HDR makey game run moh slowah. SM3.0 makey game run moh fastah!! See, it's simple really. (xmastong)

[Assi9]

I havn't used them yet, but 4.12 officials should fix the disappearing guns in HL2. This bug had previously existed on the 4.12betas, which your omega drivers are based on.

[Beng]

I had some studering im my GT, a new driver install and disabling v sync was all I needed to virtualy eliminate it from my gaming.

I have a GT (and X800Pro@XTPE too) but never managed to completely solved
stuttering. It's not annoying anymore, but on some occasions there is stil a hiccup. Popping in my X800 in the same system and it runs 200% smooth all the time.

About IQ difference's in my favourite online shooter; Joint Operations, the GT
shows some horrible shadow shimmering in the distance, something which not occur on my X800. I can't get rid of it, whatever setting or driver i use. (incl negative lod clamp)

In the end, there is only one occasion where i prefer the GT over the X800, and that is in Farcry with openexrHDR on, i love it. (xmasgrin) Big mistake from Ati for not having FP blending in R420. But for overall gaming, i love my X800 more.

[smallSHEEP]

To be fair there is very little between the two companies nowerdays, you'll be happy with any high end board you pick up.

Having gone from a 9800 pro to a 6800 Ultra, I would say that I really like both cards. The main differences to me would be:

A: The gamma corrected rotated sample AA on the 9800 pro looks much better than rotated sample on the nvidia card. Some people say they can't see a difference which is fair enough but I certainly can.

B: I could program a better OpenGL driver with my ass than ATI have managed with their driver team. About 20% of my games are OpenGL so it's nice to be able to run them all properly without resorting to hacking together old drivers etc.

appart from that i have found the differences negligable. I havn't come across any of the issues that other people hare having with their cards although mine is water cooled and running of a 500 watt power supply so I wouldn't really expect any problems.