ATI Radeon X800 XL - A $299 6800GT Competitor
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 15, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
As a side note, before we talk about the comparison at hand, at $199, the Radeon X800 does a good job of competing with NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT. However, it lacks SLI support and isn't available today, so our mid-range recommendation is still firmly planted on the 6600GT if you're buying a card before the end of the year.Once it was launched, we knew that the X800 XL would be an interesting competitor to NVIDIA's GeForce 6800GT, and indeed it is. As we mentioned earlier in the review, ignoring Doom 3, the X800 XL is quite competitive with the 6800GT and should be $100 cheaper when it hits the streets. At a high level, the X800 XL is a more affordable alternative to the 6800GT that offers similar performance in most areas. Unfortunately for ATI, Doom 3 is a big deal and it somewhat complicates our recommendation.
If you are looking for an AGP card, your only option at this price point is really the 6800GT. There are cheaper alternatives, but not better performing AGP alternatives at $400 or less.
ATI informed us at the X850 launch that the X800 XL would be available sometime in January. If this is indeed true, then in January, we'd be foolish not to recommend the X800 XL, not because it offers a huge performance advantage over the 6800GT (which it does not), but because it holds a $100 price advantage over the 6800GT.
If ATI is able to bring out the X800 XL at its suggested street price of $299, then most users won't have a problem glancing over the lower Doom 3 performance, given that the X800 XL is quite competitive in other titles. If ATI can ensure that their only blemish is Doom 3, and should they continue to work hard to reduce that blemish through further driver optimizations, then the X800 XL won't only be the more affordable solution, but it would become the clear solution.
For now, ATI wins because of price, which is something that we're able to live with. Now, if this thing is actually available when it's suppose to be, then we'll be happy. However, if it's not, then ATI will have succeeded in delaying holiday sales of NVIDIA's GeForce 6800GT. If you are at all worried about ATI bringing out the X800 XL on time, then the 6800GT is still a good option, just a potentially more costly one. We can't predict the future, but for the sake of keeping competition cleaner, we're hoping that come January, we won't regret recommending the X800 XL today.
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Keyser0804 - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
I just thought the 6800nu should be compared because of the pricing, even if it is a weaker card. Nividia will probably drop prices to compete, right?DS Delaroca - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
im yet to see an ATI/Nvidia high end card on the shelf or online for the 499.99 to 599.99 if at all, this paper lauch crap needs to stop its misleading and LUDACRIS.DS Delaroca - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
who cares about doom 3, i care more about real games like Far Cry, HL2 and EQ2, doom3 was to me nothing more than just a demo, besides i have not see any companies picking that engine for next gen. games, i have see people talking more about HL2 and the unreal 3 engine than D3.Filibuster - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
>Anand, thanks for the great review.... Do you have any knowledge or hints as to when the pci-e 6800gts are going to start showing up in more volume?I second that!
Please look into this!
If its something you can't say then at least say that you can't say. :)
Thanks.
Gaia Hunter - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
6800nu and 6800LE are excellent choices for those AMD users that want to wait for PCI-e motherboards for AMD, without wasting $400+ in a card that will after be obsolete (AGP 6800GT/ULTRA and AGP X800PRO/XT).Those users will also have a good choice of being able to unlock their cards to 16/6(pipelines/vertex) in a Vanilla or 12/5 in a LE (some get 16/6 also in LE).
Those that cant unlock, will generally be able to do some good overclock, unless they're extremly unlucky and got a very bugged "ULTRA" core!!!!!
mczak - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
isn't the 6800nu more a competitor to the X800 than the X800XL? The 6800nu is usually just slightly faster than a 6600GT, ans since the X800 beats the 6600GT, it ought to be a close call performance wise (other than doom3). IIRC the 6800nu is downgraded compared to 6800GT pretty much the same as the X800 compared to X800XL is (128MB instead of 256MB ram, ~70% memory clock, ~3/4 pixel fill rate).DerekWilson - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
As per the vanilla 6800, we had not been able to find a PCI Express 12 pipe card either from a vendor or on the street until now.This week we noticed one on newegg from MSI for $339. That's the only one we've seen, and we haven't gotten any in our labs yet. Last week, there weren't any to be had in the USA for as much digging as we did.
With the new pricing and knowing the performance of the 6800 GT vs. the 6800, one can extrapolate that the X800 XL will certainly out perform the 12-pipe 6800 part in price and performance. Our recommendation (if the X800 XL sees the light of day) will be with the ATI part at $299 if the standard PCIe 6800 cards available today stick at $40 more.
On the AGP side, ATI won't talk about what they are and aren't bridgeing back until they finish their bridge. We won't know if the vanilla 6800 AGP is safe at it's $275 street price until we hear more on that front.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
ViRGE - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#20, they can't compare it to a 6800NU because they don't have a PCIe 6800NU, it doesn't exist yet. This is a PCIe-only test, so everything tested needs to come in a PCIe variety.shabby - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Very nice, but pci express my ass, the x800 is agp based sp why did they switch to pci-e?Questar - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
>>>Unfortunately, we could not test the overclockability of our X800 XL sample as none of the available tools would recognize, much less allow us to adjust the clock speed of the GPU
>>>
Didn't have a copy of Powerstrip around eh?