fyi, ATI released 13 driver updates last year--1 a month and then 2 in december.
IMO, bottom line is that someone (green or red) trumps the other company every 3-6 months so it really doesn't pay to purchase top of the line cards. this is why i stay happilly in the mid to upper range for video cards and look for deals on previous generation favorites for around $250 max.
fyi, ATI released 13 driver updates last year--1 a month and then 2 in december.
IMO, bottom line is that someone (green or red) trumps the other company every 3-6 months so it really doesn't pay to purchase top of the line cards. this is why i stay happilly in the mid to upper range for video cards and look for deals on previous generation favorites for around $250 max.
I should have specified post G70 release. ATI released twice as many driver updates as Nvidia did post G70 release...which is something I wasn't happy about but had no control over. All together I think we had 6 driver releases for Nvidia, with the last 2-3 coming post G70. Nvidia released the notorious Christmas driver for people who had 2 different manufactuers of G70 cards, which should have been enabled from the get go.
I fully expect the G71 to spank ATI, then watch ATI go back to the baord 3 times to redesign a new processor like before. Then, 5 months after that a new Nvidia chip will come back out and the spanking will ensue again. Sure, ATI's single cards may be winning a battle because it took them 3-4 months to get one out after G70....but I wouldn't call it a stratigic victory.
I do agree that ATI's drivers are definately better. Nvidia released 2 drivers total last year for Gforce cards...and thats really pathetic. ATI released like 3 or 4.
There really is no safe GPU investment as long as they are coming out with new ones.
The biggest + Nvidia has going for it is that when they say "Look! We made a new card!" you can guarentee that a store in your town has it that same day. Nvidia's ability to provide a card on announcement day is what gave them a nice slice of the market at G70 time. ATI's stance: "Were still working on our GPU, but we plan to have it ready around 4th quarter."
Your posts in this thread make you sound like such a big Nvidia fanboi, jradmin. What you have with Nvidia and ATI with the 7800 series (and most probably 7900 series too, but nobody knows for sure yet) and x1800/x1900 is that each company took a bit different route to get the performance they wanted. Neither is a bad choice for gaming and should provide hours of gaming with all the eye candy turned on too, with either companies card. As for whoever holds the 3DMark crown or whatever, that is cute too but has little to no relationship to us common overclockers because we aren't rich enough or crazy enough to be experimenting with hundreds or thousands of dollars of equipment cooling it with LN2 or dry ice and severely overvolting the crap out of everything. At the most, we might watercool it and do some simple volt mods but that's not going to win the 3DMark records. Neither card is a bad choice for gaming on your computer but the X1900XT gives you more value for your money right now that what a 7800GTX gives you for approximately the same price.
You are definitely right about the driver issue though, with the roles being reversed over the way it was 3 years ago. I think that ATI came out with something like 10 driver releases last year compared to 3 or 4 for Nvidia. Nvidia better get off their ass because that kind of thinking will get them behind, driver-wise.
About the reason that the x1800 was so late, that was a definite physical problem with the design of the gpu and sounds to me kind of like the problem that AMD had run into with the first version of the Tbred cores (which was also a die shrink too, like with the x1800). It worked, but didn't scale clock speed well, like the Tbred A procs. If you remember back then it took AMD some months to find and correct the problem, just like it took ATI with the X1800 series. But they did get it and finally got the X1800's out late, but they did get them out. I figure that they got a little too ambitious with coming out with both a new design gpu and doing a process shrink at the same time, instead of doing like Nvidia did by perfecting the gpu (with the 6800 series), then doing just minor mods to the gpu while doing a process shrink (7800 series). Now, from what I've been reading so far, it sounds like the 7900 series is mainly going to be another die shrink, but we won't find out for sure until next month at the earliest.
But the price of either's top offerings has gotten way out of hand, IMO. $500 for a single vid card is just too high for my blood. I've gone about $350 max in the past and I thought I was crazy then, but adding another Franklin plus a Grant to that pile is just way too much.:wow2:
Right now, my main rig has an x800xt-pe in it and the main reason it's an ATI gpu instead of Nvidia is that I ran into a bug or problem with using an Nvidia gpu in this nf3 ultra mobo. I originally had an old geforce2gts 64 card in it as it was a folding only rig at first and I ran into spontaneous reboots. After much reading at some forums, I ran across a few posts that mentioned this problem with the nf3 ultra chipset boards and some Nvidia vid cards. I then swapped out the vid card to another folding rig that had an ATI card and then had no more problems. So when I decided I'd buy an X2 proc and make my 9NDA3+ the basis for my main rig, I started looking for an ATI gpu vid card and ran across a great deal on my x800xt-pe for $229 delivered new and jumped on it. In my case, there's no real upgrade path that would make a noticable performance increase over my present vid card, since it's an AGP board and the cost/performance gain ratio just isn't there to go to a 7800GS card and I would still have to worry about the nasty reboot bug I had earlier with an Nvidia card plugged into the mobo. But I have no particular bias for either Nvidia or ATI based cards, just buy what is the best available for my needs at the time I'm looking. That also goes for my processors and Intel and AMD. It's nice not limiting yourself to just 1 company in that you aren't held hostage to whatever suits their fancy, price-wise. As long as there is fairly close competition, hopefully the prices won't get too crazy high for either company.
deicist, I think yous hould be very happy with your new video card choice. The performance of the X1900XT really looks great, but just too rich for my blood and gaming needs.
I've been having trouble getting to page 2 of this thread all day.
Omega I have the review at home I can email to you if you like. It's very impressive I think. It's such a never ending battle ...there are pics and details of the 7900gt at anandtech also.
The review I have was a was taken down as soon as it was put up. I was just yanking your chain!
I definately agree with Mudd that $500+ for a video card is ridiculous. :bang:
IMO you cant go wrong with the upper midrange cards from either company
ATI is going to release a X1800 GTO (12 pipes/shaders 500mhz) and a X1900XL (16pipes/48 shaders 500mhz?) in the next 2 months so the price of ATI SM3.0 hardware will be a little more reasonable soon
Nvidia will also be releasing an update to the 6600GT called (of course) the 7600GT. A 7900GT version with 24 pipes is also in the works.
Dailytech: 7900GT Specs and Pictures - 24 Pipes 450mhz
I've been having trouble getting to page 2 of this thread all day.
Omega I have the review at home I can email to you if you like. It's very impressive I think. It's such a never ending battle ...there are pics and details of the 7900gt at anandtech also.
The review I have was a was taken down as soon as it was put up. I was just yanking your chain!
yeah I'd like that. I'd read that the article was posted and then removed. The part tha was cached by Google said that the deluxe version of the new mobo was designed to OC to at least 300mhz as a standard. that was nice to know. Also all of it's 44 PCIe lanes are on the northbridge vs being split between the two chips like on the Nvidia X16 chipset. It's an exciting design.
My very first vid card was a an old Radeon PCI card I got at Best Buy like 6 years ago. I bought it to run in an old HP pavillion from back then, and it ran great! I think it had 64megs of RAM, and to this day it still works like a charm. My reason for siding with Nvidia over the years is that they have historicly ran the games I like better then ATI. Both cards really sit on fairly equal ground. Nvidia leads on pixle technology and ATI leads on vertex technology. This has been the way its always been. Different cards run different games better =) just like different mobo's OC different then others.
I love my GTX's. I never saw the reason to get the 512's because I'm waiting on that G80 core. I think the real winner of the vid card battle for now would be the one to incorperate/perfect dual core GPU's.
I was simply answering the question of why the 7800 512MB cost more than the X1900, since you said you were confused. I also didn't say nor admit anything about the future availablity of the cards. I simply said that since Supply was constrained (@ 110nm they can make plenty of 430mhz but very few 550mhz chips) and demand is high, the Price is high.
I guess you misunderstood me, then. I wasn't confused about why the 7800GTX is more expensive. I was confused about why there is even a question of whether or not one should buy an X1900XT over a 7800GTX at this point in time. More single card performance for less money is a no brainer.
It's general perception vs your own personal perception. Nvidia has an overall better reputation for speed than does ATI. The 7800GTX was the top dog for 6 months, then ATI comes out with the X1800 and Nvidia responded immediately with 7800GTX 512MB.
Now that the X1900XTX is out everyone is waiting to see what the 7900GTX is going to do.
Comments
fyi, ATI released 13 driver updates last year--1 a month and then 2 in december.
IMO, bottom line is that someone (green or red) trumps the other company every 3-6 months so it really doesn't pay to purchase top of the line cards. this is why i stay happilly in the mid to upper range for video cards and look for deals on previous generation favorites for around $250 max.
I should have specified post G70 release. ATI released twice as many driver updates as Nvidia did post G70 release...which is something I wasn't happy about but had no control over. All together I think we had 6 driver releases for Nvidia, with the last 2-3 coming post G70. Nvidia released the notorious Christmas driver for people who had 2 different manufactuers of G70 cards, which should have been enabled from the get go.
Your posts in this thread make you sound like such a big Nvidia fanboi, jradmin.
You are definitely right about the driver issue though, with the roles being reversed over the way it was 3 years ago. I think that ATI came out with something like 10 driver releases last year compared to 3 or 4 for Nvidia. Nvidia better get off their ass because that kind of thinking will get them behind, driver-wise.
About the reason that the x1800 was so late, that was a definite physical problem with the design of the gpu and sounds to me kind of like the problem that AMD had run into with the first version of the Tbred cores (which was also a die shrink too, like with the x1800). It worked, but didn't scale clock speed well, like the Tbred A procs. If you remember back then it took AMD some months to find and correct the problem, just like it took ATI with the X1800 series. But they did get it and finally got the X1800's out late, but they did get them out. I figure that they got a little too ambitious with coming out with both a new design gpu and doing a process shrink at the same time, instead of doing like Nvidia did by perfecting the gpu (with the 6800 series), then doing just minor mods to the gpu while doing a process shrink (7800 series). Now, from what I've been reading so far, it sounds like the 7900 series is mainly going to be another die shrink, but we won't find out for sure until next month at the earliest.
But the price of either's top offerings has gotten way out of hand, IMO. $500 for a single vid card is just too high for my blood. I've gone about $350 max in the past and I thought I was crazy then, but adding another Franklin plus a Grant to that pile is just way too much.:wow2:
Right now, my main rig has an x800xt-pe in it and the main reason it's an ATI gpu instead of Nvidia is that I ran into a bug or problem with using an Nvidia gpu in this nf3 ultra mobo. I originally had an old geforce2gts 64 card in it as it was a folding only rig at first and I ran into spontaneous reboots. After much reading at some forums, I ran across a few posts that mentioned this problem with the nf3 ultra chipset boards and some Nvidia vid cards. I then swapped out the vid card to another folding rig that had an ATI card and then had no more problems. So when I decided I'd buy an X2 proc and make my 9NDA3+ the basis for my main rig, I started looking for an ATI gpu vid card and ran across a great deal on my x800xt-pe for $229 delivered new and jumped on it. In my case, there's no real upgrade path that would make a noticable performance increase over my present vid card, since it's an AGP board and the cost/performance gain ratio just isn't there to go to a 7800GS card and I would still have to worry about the nasty reboot bug I had earlier with an Nvidia card plugged into the mobo. But I have no particular bias for either Nvidia or ATI based cards, just buy what is the best available for my needs at the time I'm looking. That also goes for my processors and Intel and AMD. It's nice not limiting yourself to just 1 company in that you aren't held hostage to whatever suits their fancy, price-wise. As long as there is fairly close competition, hopefully the prices won't get too crazy high for either company.
deicist, I think yous hould be very happy with your new video card choice. The performance of the X1900XT really looks great, but just too rich for my blood and gaming needs.
Omega I have the review at home I can email to you if you like. It's very impressive I think. It's such a never ending battle ...there are pics and details of the 7900gt at anandtech also.
The review I have was a was taken down as soon as it was put up. I was just yanking your chain!
IMO you cant go wrong with the upper midrange cards from either company
ATI is going to release a X1800 GTO (12 pipes/shaders 500mhz) and a X1900XL (16pipes/48 shaders 500mhz?) in the next 2 months so the price of ATI SM3.0 hardware will be a little more reasonable soon
Nvidia will also be releasing an update to the 6600GT called (of course) the 7600GT. A 7900GT version with 24 pipes is also in the works.
Dailytech: 7900GT Specs and Pictures - 24 Pipes 450mhz
Dailytech: 7600GT Specs and Pictures - 12 Pipes 560mhz 128Bit memory
You have a link, Chris?
I love my GTX's. I never saw the reason to get the 512's because I'm waiting on that G80 core. I think the real winner of the vid card battle for now would be the one to incorperate/perfect dual core GPU's.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=907
GF3 & GF4 > Radeon 7500 & 8500
Radeon 9700 & 9800 > GF4 & GF5
GF6 > 9800
X850 > GF6
GF7 > X850 & X1800
X1900 > GF7
And So on, and So on, and So on...
Just buy a card and be happy with it!
It's also up on the S-M News page/forum!
Anyway here is the A8R32-MVP anadtech review dload ...if it doesn't work as it hasn't for me today I can email it just drop me a pm with your addy.
Now that the X1900XTX is out everyone is waiting to see what the 7900GTX is going to do.