MP4s and X800XL

[Blacklash]

I fired up an old MP4 of Call of Duty that gave me 100% CPU use with my Ultra on an AMD platform. Now it's giving me a range of 15-24%. It must be the rage theater chip. MP2s play well too, in the range of 8-12%. I love NVDvD and that works extremely well with the XL too. I didn't know this thing also could run HDTV. So in addition to being a great value as a gaming card it is also a first rate multi-media card.

[Buenamos]

Out of curiousity, why did you move from a Ultra to a XL? Do you see much of a performance decrease?

[Blacklash]

For the heck of it, and in actual game play? No. I will qualify that in a bit. The powercolor card does an easy 440 on the core. It was reporting about 5300 3dmarks in 05, since I installed the Zalman VF 700 cu I am at 465 on the core and the AS-5 has yet to set well. Now my score is around 5560. The best my Ultra ever got was 5792 at 440|1.15.

The X800XL is very good even at stock. I have a LCD with a native 1280x1024 res. Even with my former CRT I gamed that res because it is my favorite for MMORPGs which I play a lot. A stock XL is much like a stock GT it's a darn good card, however I am not running it stock. Right now it is closing with the performance of my former Ultra.

I have dual Dvi, like my Ultra had, a fully function video chip that does work with MP4 format, WMV acceleration and HDTV.

Honestly, I felt like trying ATi again, and I am one of the few fellows who actually does like both companies. I spread my dollars around. In the beginning way back when I wanted a card just like the XL from ATi. It has a killer price performance ratio.

I game a lot with 4xAA/8xAF-16xAF and ATi tends to do better/gain ground on nVidia, in D3D with that combo. Again, you need to consider the res I am playing as well.

It's shaping up to look more like a lateral move than anything with a few perks, like the excellent rage theater chip. I admit adopting PCI-E is for the heck of it, and I did what I did on a whim. The Ultra sale paid for my XL and my motherboard.

The Xpress 200 is floating around for about 84 dollars, and with A64 tweaker it works out fine. If you overclock your CPU I'd steer clear of it because it has zero OC options, however just tuning with A64 tweaker has brought me right in line with an nforce3 ultra performance wise.

So I was bored and wanted to try the new XL and the ATi chipset for fun, basically. Lord knows what I will do by the time fall arrives again. Also I wanted to add I requested this sort of card from ATi from the beginning and they delivered. So I am putting my money where my mouth is.

If folks want a decent OC motherboard that is PCI-E and not too expensive that new Soltek board with an X800XL would be very nice. I almost got it, and I don't OC my CPU, so I just went ATi/Msi instead.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-180-068&depa=0

Currently, any decrease is extremely conditional, as well as marginal, again, factor in the qualifiers in this reply. I see decreases in max frames, and not much in average/min. I'll be able to say something more concrete when I have had more time to evalute my changes. I can say I have much smoother game play in EQ 2 with the XL, 1280x 4xAA/16xAF.

Again it's a darn good 1280x card even stock:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/x800xl/Need%20For%20Speed%20U2.htm

I highly recommend the X800XL, particularly the Powercolor.

[Blacklash]

I remembered something valuable that would help answer your question. This thread:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=43866

Here I benched my 6800 Ultra(440|1.15) at 1280x1024, max details, 4xAA/8xAF, Quality driver image settings, with the advantage of the SM3.0 patch applied in Far Cry. The bench was "Ubisoft-Research". The end result was 75 FPS.

Here's the XL without SM 3.0 of course and under the same conditions, with quality driver image settings, Clocks are my current best of 465|1.12. It's still early yet.


http://img15.exs.cx/img15/8642/farx800xl4656bn.jpg