The New X800's...

Hey there,

I am going to being building a new rig in say 3-4 weeks and am sorting out components at the moment. One of the problems that I am having at the moment is in the graphics card department. Originally I was thinking a (PCIE) 6600gt for 115 pounds because I have an agp 6600gt at home that I was happy with. However since then I have seen the new X800 cards which are looking very tasty. These are the ones that I have seen so far:

128mb DDR1 for 140

256 DDR3 for 160

Now these are awesome prices but I have a few questions about them. Now they are based on the .11 micron process like the X800xl and they have 12 pipes as opposed to the 16 pipes. Are they able to be unlocked to 16 pipes like the old X800 pro's?

Also is the extra 128mb of ram worth it? I would be playing games at 1280x1024 and the highest levels of detail and AF possible. Would a 12 pipe 256 bit card need the extra (256mb) ram to play at this level?

Thanks.

The card is powerfull enough to get a boost from the extra Ram, dont no about unlocking the pipes, but if it has been known to work, this is normally only a few cards.

I would say that yes, a 12-pipe 800x is powerful enough for the extra memory to be useful.

I have no idea if the new 11 micron, 12-pipe, X800 can be modded or not.

from what I have read the x800 really suffers without the extra 128MB.

What CPU are you using? You should really buy your graphics card based on your CPU. It does absolutely no good to run an X850 XT on an Athlon XP 3200+ for example.

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Originally Posted by StormPC

What CPU are you using? You should really buy your graphics card based on your CPU. It does absolutely no good to run an X850 XT on an Athlon XP 3200+ for example.

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I think I have pretty much settled on a cheap 6600gt until the next round of midrange cards are released with hopefully similar feature sets etc. It would be going with an A64 3200 on a NF4 Ultra board with 1gb Ballistix etc.

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Originally Posted by StormPC

What CPU are you using? You should really buy your graphics card based on your CPU. It does absolutely no good to run an X850 XT on an Athlon XP 3200+ for example.

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How bout a 3500+ with an x850xt pe?

i have the sapphire x800 with 256mb gddr3. The card is exactly the same as the sapphire x800xl, they both even use the same pcb and memory which is samsung 2.0ns.

The x800xl is clocked upto 400gpu and 980mhz memory.

My sapphire x800 does 430gpu and 1100mem easy.

here are some benchmarks with no tweaking what so ever

http://img10.echo.cx/img10/795/3dmark20018gi.jpg
http://img10.echo.cx/img10/2194/3dmark20036or.jpg
http://img10.echo.cx/img10/5498/3dmark20056hx.jpg

I will post some more benchmarks later on when i have fully tweaked everything out:D

I may be selling this card soon so if someone is interested they can add me to msn by clicking on the icon on the left<<<<:)

One more thing, the 4 extra pipes on these cards can not be unlocked even if you hardmod or softmod or flash. The owner of rivatuner has said that himself aswell. I cant remember properly but i think it was something to do with the pipes disabled on DIE not lasercut or anything. I'll post a link when i find the thread:)

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Originally Posted by OV3RCL0C3R

i have the sapphire x800 with 256mb gddr3. The card is exactly the same as the sapphire x800xl, they both even use the same pcb and memory which is samsung 2.0ns.

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I thought the X800 has less pipes (12?), whereas the X800XL has all 16 pipes?

yes, note he didnt say anything about the pipes ;)

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Originally Posted by OV3RCL0C3R

I may be selling this card soon so if someone is interested they can add me to msn by clicking on the icon on the left<<<<:)

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Post it on the for sale forums

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Originally Posted by nvening

Post it on the for sale forums

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i said SOON :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OV3RCL0C3R

One more thing, the 4 extra pipes on these cards can not be unlocked even if you hardmod or softmod or flash. The owner of rivatuner has said that himself aswell. I cant remember properly but i think it was something to do with the pipes disabled on DIE not lasercut or anything. I'll post a link when i find the thread:)

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I think the XL is a little faster. Here's mine with stock cooling on an A64 at 2399MHz:

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8540219

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Originally Posted by nvening

How bout a 3500+ with an x850xt pe?

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Only if you are overclocking to at least 2600MHz. A stock one will be a huge bottleneck.