x850 xt vs 6800 ultra

[user1453]

A friend of mine has an agp x800 pro which has been modded to an x850 xt and says it is slightly better than my pcie 6800 gt at ultra clocks, I have read some reviews and they don't agree on which card is better. Which do you guys think is better and why?

This is out of curiosity, not (completly) for ragging rights

[sawyen]

man.. this is one ancient poll..

Tbh, its pretty difficult to judge between them both... each has their strength and weaknesses, being OpenGL and DX9. The X850 series also have a stronger AA engine and a better AA execution protocol.

If u dun mind the jaggies then the 6 series cards are as good if not better than the X850s, If u see most of the games baseline you'll notice the ULTRA are often being at neck to neck, if not better than X850s... but when u throw in AA, the X850s come out ahead.. even a measly X850Pro at stock is better than an ULTRA at running AA in most games.

Im no ATI fanboy, I have 2 6800GTs, a 5600 Ultra and a 7800GT... But its pretty sad to say that the 6 series cards dun sound all that rad when u consider AA and AF quality.

But I will definitely give the ULTRA a vote, as both my 6800GTs hit 440/1200 pretty easily and it goes to good points on overclocking. Purespeed stuff also gets my ULTRA vote... The overall built quality of the architechture also gets my vote, irrelevant really.. but it always sounds cool to say.. hey! my 425Mhz core 6800 is jsut as good as ur 600MHz X850... Its like saying im giving u 175MHz free lead b4 I catch up to u... but thats just for ragging rights....

[Smokey21]

X850XT, and then some. Better AA/AF, better IQ.

[kalniel]

Both good for different things

For raw speed + IQ the ATI wins most of the time. But if you play a lot of openGL stuff the NVidia's probably better.

Then there's the PS stuff.. the who-ha about PS3 was generally rubbish because most of the good effects could be done in 2.0b or whatever, and most developers prefered this as it meant they got the ATI market, also however fast PS3 is, the ATI is so fast at PS2 it makes little difference. This coming generation of games is the only one likely to show much difference (and it'll be something like soft shadows for free on PS3 cards, and that's about it).

So very close there, but I have to say drivers push me over the line. I have a 6800gt and love it. But I HATE NVidia's driver bugs. I've not heard anything about ATI's current driver set, but the NVidia ones are as bugged as a very buggy thing and they have been for quite some time. They may produce drivers quickly, and they may generally be good for speed, but they're a real mess at the moment and for that reason I'd have to recommend the ATI.

[Sumanji]

They're neck and neck tbh, but I'd prefer the X850XT... just because the PCB is smaller

Suman