Billy! Don't Be A Hero!

[Stewart]

"Doug specifically stated that the ATI x800 was the card of choice amongst many of the testers, as it ran roughly about 30% faster than Nvidia's best cards."

Doug 'Who Stolen My Code' Lombardi, moving his mouth and making sounds come out of it, on the subject of everyone's favourite multiple-release-date-breaking FPS; Half Life II.

Just thought I'd post it, as there seems to be a 'If you brought an ATi card you made the wrong choice' undercurrent amongst some Hexus peeps at the moment, as well as a 'Doom III is the only game being released in the next 5 years and the only game anyone's going to play on their new £300+ cards.'

With this statement, as well as a few early reviews of Doom III, which seem to be saying it’s a nice looking, but rather ordinary FPS, that view seems a little false.

I've been saying all along, as have the majority of people who are seeing the whole picture, that there probably won't be a right and wrong choice this generation, as both cards are blazingly fast, and will slice through anything.

Didn't stop some going a bit over the top on the side of Nvidia though. Of course this was all a knee jerk reaction - Doom III was (and still is) flavour of the month, and HardOCP had some nice pro-Nvidia numbers.

I think most of us realised that this meant the Nvida cards were a bit faster for Doom III and nothing more, but some might have been a bit blinkered and suggested that this was the first and last round of the ATi \ Nvidia scrap for this generation, and Nvidia had come out on top.

I suppose the same people will be saying that everyone who brought an Nvidia card was wrong, when Half Life II is flavour of the month, and the ATi cards have a slight advantage in speed – and they will be just as wrong then.

So, I say once more - see the bigger picture, realise that you'll be playing a lot of games on your new fancy GPU, not just Doom III, not just Half Life II. One will always be faster than the other in X game, but unless you only want to play X game for the rest of your life, this isn't your primary concern.

You can't proclaim one company or the other as 'teh winz0r!!111!!1' every time one of them gets an extra few FPS in whatever game happens to be hot at the time.

I don't think anyone is going to be sitting there thinking they made a mistake, with an X800pro, 6800GT, X800XT-PE or a 6800Ultra in their rig.

-- That Was A Public Service Announcement On Behalf Of The Common Sense Party --

Now, to start some discussion, what do we think of Doug’s comments? 30% is a decent sized chunk of frames per second; bigger than the difference between the competing cards in Doom III?

Will Nvidia sort it out with a few driver releases, or is it the standard and long predicted ATi advantage in DirectX and Nvidia advantage in OpenGL doing exactly what they say on the tin?

Discuss...

[Kezzer]

To be honest, like i've said, once ATi sort out their OGL drivers then they'll only be a few metres short of nVidia. They're both great cards which are going to make all games perform great. It's down to personal opinion on whether you'd go for nVidia or ATi.

[MAS]

Hopefully most people dont enjoy fighting over who makes the better cards for the sake of it. I think it's just that when you commit yourself to spending £300 which is, after all, an absurd amount of money, you want to feel that you've made the right choice and got the best value for money.

nVidia and ATI are both good choices at the moment; I think the days of one company being a long way ahead of the other are gone. There's too much at stake for either company to fall behind.

As for the quote - the developers are bound to pimp whichever company they favour. I'd rather read independent reviews and make my own mind up.

[Firebar]

We also cant forget that one of the reasons so many people are going with Nvidia, is the lack of ATI cards being available. I gave up on the wait for an X800XT and ordered an MSI 6800GT.

[Agent]

30% sounds like a lot. Id imagine its going to be a worse case scenario figure, on some obsecure setup and being totaly unrelated to Ati and Hl2's partnership . I doubt that the card is around a solid 30% better overall than Nv's offering.
Id put money on the actual difference between the 2 cards, being around the same as the current difference on Doom 3.
Both cards drivers have not yet matured, There is no winner, and never will be.
For every 10 benchmarks you can give me showing one of the cards beating the other, i can provide you with another 10 in the other cards favour.

As you said Vaul, both are great cards, you wont go wrong with either.
Im not bothered which make ends up in my system, the main factor for me is price. Im sure many of the fanboys would shut up if one of the companys was to undercut the other by £100, while offering very simlar performance.

You should stick this thread

[Grey M@a]

its never the end of the scrap for fx cards, both ati and nvidia already have updates of the x800xt and 6800 ultra in the works, granted though either card you buy they will last you a good 2 years with the state of current games, although the only niggle i have with ati is their poor OpenGL performance on the older games, its a nasty bug they need to sort.

[Lee H]

Its going to be good to see both cards fighting on an even field once all the niggles and "bugs" are ironed out

OT : Vaul - how come you named that topic as ^^ ...... I'm sat here now singing that 70's song of the same name now and getting some bizarre looks in the office

[Nomadd]

30% difference between an X800Pro and my 6800GT (lumped together on price) at 1280x1024 (or even 1024x768) with 4xAA and 8xAF? Sorry, Doug, but I'll believe it when I see it - especially if you've been hiding code from Nvidia to give ATI a 'head start'. :-)

Let's all come back a month or two from now when the games out and ATI and Nvidia have their best cut drivers out for it and 'see' that 30%. If it isn't there, we'll mail bomb Doug. :-)

Edit: Though I still think HL2 will be a much better game than Doom3. Because Doom3 plain sucks... Shame.

Nomadd

[Stewart]

Its going to be good to see both cards fighting on an even field once all the niggles and "bugs" are ironed out

OT : Vaul - how come you named that topic as ^^ ...... I'm sat here now singing that 70's song of the same name now and getting some bizarre looks in the office

Seemed an apt title somehow.

[funnelhead]

i think it comes down to who releases the cheapest full 16-pipe card that can be overclocked. i.e. I'd rather get an ATI card as nvidia cards are stupid (see: power requirements and silly cooler) , but if its a choice at £200 between 12 pipes and 16 pipes, i'm going 16 pipes......

[Nomadd]

re: "i think it comes down to who releases the cheapest full 16-pipe card that can be overclocked"

That would be a 6800GT, then. :-)

re: "I'd rather get an ATI card as nvidia cards are stupid (see: power requirements and silly cooler)..."

Nvidia:Stupid? Silly? I'd rather go ATI? That's mindless fanboyism. Check out Tom's for information on the REAL power consumption of these cards (and the high power draw of ATI's last gen. cards like the 9800 series.)

Silly cooler? Not on the GT: nice sweet single slot one. I have one that overclocks real well, doesn't suck much juice (i.e. no worse than a 9800 or X800 series card) and is quiet to boot. You need to do more research.

Nomadd

[Firebar]

I had a Gainward 6800GT, RMAed it to komplett. They couldnt get me a replacement for ages so I got a Sapphire X800 Pro VIVO, as soon as I changed and it was shipped, they miraculously had some Gainward 6800GT's in stock.

I hope I like my sapphire................. More like, I hope it mods to XT speeds.

[Nomadd]

re: "I had a Gainward" and then "RMAed it"

Seems to have been the Gainward story for the last few years! I avoided them for my GForce4, and I've avoided them again for my 6800GT. Both have been PNY. No problems in 3 years with that company so far...

Nomadd

[Firebar]

^ I had a Gainward Ti4600 GS and a Ti4200 GS and they were brilliant, overclocked very well and looked cool in a window.

Pity the 6800GT I got was;

1) Reference design
2) Couldnt reach the guaranteed speeds

Tosh basically.

[Mblaster]

I I think the 30% difference will be a worst case senario comparison between the 6800Ultra and the X800 XT. Worst case senario comparisons in Doom 3 between these two cards are over 40% (read the XBitLabs review).

I have a 6800GT and the main reasons for my purchase were not the Doom 3 benchmarks, but the rest of the reviews that said the 6800GT is a better choice than the X800 Pro at the moment, and i think they're right.

re: "I had a Gainward" and then "RMAed it"

Seems to have been the Gainward story for the last few years! I avoided them for my GForce4, and I've avoided them again for my 6800GT. Both have been PNY. No problems in 3 years with that company so far...

Nomadd

I was gonna order a Gainward 6800GT card until i heard of all the people recieving faulty cards, instead i got myself a BFG 6800GT, waiting for the CPU/mobo to come back from RMA