XTasy Radeon X800 Pro Impressions

[Seth Brundle]

Just got mine today, overnight from Outpost.com.

Tried it out on Far Cry and UT2K4.

UT2K4:
Not all that much difference between this and my Radeon 9700 (3.2GHZ
P4, 1GB DDR). With the 9700 I could run 1280x1024, all video settings
highest, worked fine. With the X800 I can jack up AA/AF as well,
although in this game I cant say it makes that much of a difference.

Because Onslaught is so CPU-intensive, dont look for 70+ FPS even at
lower settings, but do expect to see a consistant 50-60 regardless of
the AA/AF/Resolution. There was some signifcant shearing at 1600+
until I turned on vsync on the card properties.

Far Cry:
Now heres a game which can be tweaked with this card. I had the card
settings jacked up to highest quality, and high quality in the game at
1280x I think, and it was just beautiful.

Looked great on the Radeon also, but the big difference was the detail
of the jungle and especially the enemy models - holy cow! I mean you
could see the sweat reflecting off their biceps.

In general, though, this is a card waiting for Doom 3 and HL2.

 

[jeff b]

What is the max clock GPU/mem you have achieved?

Jeff B

 

[Pluvious]

Just got mine today, overnight from Outpost.com.

Tried it out on Far Cry and UT2K4.

UT2K4:
Not all that much difference between this and my Radeon 9700 (3.2GHZ
P4, 1GB DDR). With the 9700 I could run 1280x1024, all video settings
highest, worked fine. With the X800 I can jack up AA/AF as well,
although in this game I cant say it makes that much of a difference.

Because Onslaught is so CPU-intensive, dont look for 70+ FPS even at
lower settings, but do expect to see a consistant 50-60 regardless of
the AA/AF/Resolution. There was some signifcant shearing at 1600+
until I turned on vsync on the card properties.

Far Cry:
Now heres a game which can be tweaked with this card. I had the card
settings jacked up to highest quality, and high quality in the game at
1280x I think, and it was just beautiful.

Looked great on the Radeon also, but the big difference was the detail
of the jungle and especially the enemy models - holy cow! I mean you
could see the sweat reflecting off their biceps.

In general, though, this is a card waiting for Doom 3 and HL2.

My friend just got one as well, and its AMAZING. He's seeing over 200
frames a second with 1280x 4xAA and 4 anio and Holy SHIT settings!!
It's a sight to behold I tell ya.

However,


Heads up with FarCry .. don't freak out when you get to the BOAT level
and see "issues" with the trees. It's not the card or your system,
it's a known bug and will be addressed in the future.

Pictures:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI4LDM=

Discussion:

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47559



Pluvious

 

[Seth Brundle]

What is the max clock GPU/mem you have achieved?

Jeff B

I dont overclock.
Ever.

 

[jeff b]

I dont overclock.
Ever.

I would advise everyone to go to the trouble of adjusting the x800pro
clocks to run at full speed, especially
if you play Far Cry, it makes a big difference. The x800pro is woefully
underclocked out of the box, I know because I've had mine for a week now.

Jeff B

 

[jeff b]

Well, that was a worthless review....HardOCP tests the
ATI cards at 1280x1024, and the nvidia 6800u at 1024x768.
How the heck are we suppose to make a buying decision based
on a comparison of these framerates?? LAME!

Jeff B

 

[Pluvious]

Well, that was a worthless review....HardOCP tests the
ATI cards at 1280x1024, and the nvidia 6800u at 1024x768.
How the heck are we suppose to make a buying decision based
on a comparison of these framerates?? LAME!

Jeff B

Not sure if you read about the controversial method of new testing but
I for one think its fair.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI4LDI=

"Please be aware we test our video cards a bit different from what is
the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that
each video card provides. Gameplay includes performance and image
quality evaluation. We have two sections, “Highest Playable” and
“Apples to Apples”. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image
Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. Following the Highest
Playable section we have a brief Apples to Apples performance section
for those that find benefit of framerates with matching IQ. More
background on our reasoning behind our evaluation can be found in our
Cheating the Cheaters editorial. <--->this is a link so check the
website<

Simply though, we feel that finding the Highest Playable quality
settings benefit gamers the most as compared to synthetic and canned
benchmarks that often do not represent true gaming at all. We use a
high performance system, with a very fast CPU in order to remove CPU
bottlenecking. "


Pluvious

 

[jeff b]

Not sure if you read about the controversial method of new testing but
I for one think its fair.

I did.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI4LDI=

"Please be aware we test our video cards a bit different from what is
the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that
each video card provides. Gameplay includes performance and image
quality evaluation. We have two sections, “Highest Playable” and
“Apples to Apples”. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image
Quality delivered at a playable frame rate.

Here, they are claiming that in Highest Playable,
they normalize (make the same) to framerate and compare IQ.
Problem is, in practice, this is impossible to do.
You can't adjust settings on each card so that each is running at the
same fps, then compare IQ, and their own tests bare this out,
the 6800U is running faster. So in this section, they come to the
conclsion that if the 6800u is set to deliver inferior IQ,
it runs at a higher fps. So what have we learned? Absolutely nothing.

Following the Highest

Playable section we have a brief Apples to Apples performance section
for those that find benefit of framerates with matching IQ.

Here they go the other way. They normalize to IQ and compare
framerate. This is how all reviews are conducted because it makes
sense and is possible to do. That's because it's easy to set IQ the same,
you simply set the resolution and aa/anio to the same values. With
IQ the same, you can look at the fps and make an evaluation.

Jeff B

 

[Darthy]

Just got mine today, overnight from Outpost.com.

Tried it out on Far Cry and UT2K4.

UT2K4:
Not all that much difference between this and my Radeon 9700 (3.2GHZ
P4, 1GB DDR). With the 9700 I could run 1280x1024, all video settings
highest, worked fine. With the X800 I can jack up AA/AF as well,
although in this game I cant say it makes that much of a difference.

Because Onslaught is so CPU-intensive, dont look for 70+ FPS even at
lower settings, but do expect to see a consistant 50-60 regardless of
the AA/AF/Resolution. There was some signifcant shearing at 1600+
until I turned on vsync on the card properties.

Your X800 is CPU limited...

Try a 64bit CPU in the future.


PS: Remember that the 6800 series was "released" before the X800...
the folks in Nvidia were saying it would take a long time before the
X800 will come out...

Looks like X800 is on the market first


- - - - -
Remember: In the USA - it is dangeroud to draw or write about Heir Bush in a negative way. The police or SS are called, people threaten to kill you. (What country is this again?)

- 15yr old boy in Washington was disciplined for drawing such images.
- White House blows cover of an undercover agent because her husband said there were no WMD (before the USA started the war) - her job was finding terrorist. (This makes sense?)
God bless the land of the free. Where you can burn the Constitution... Ashcroft does it every day.