• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

6800 v x800, info please..

J

jack9800XT

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
98
As I have started threads in the past I would like to start out saying that I am not at all familiar with new video hardware but here is my question,

What exactly is the diference in the 6800 series and the x800 series? I have been aiming to buy an x800 card for a while now but all the talk of the 6800's have me confused and reading the forums makes me even more confused as people fire back and forth with random facts.

What is the difference in the hardware/real performance in these cards?

Could someone in the know help me in considering which to buy? :confused:
 
Well the 6800 (and its variations) is Nvidia's latest offering and the x800 (with all its variations) is ATi's latest one. From what I've seen and heard, the x800 seems to be better, but I'm not concrete on that, so don't take my word. I'll be going for an x800 XT as soon as they're out here though :)
 
you know, its funny, because i have been following this closely and i have read tons of articles and junk on these two cards (specifically the 6800GT and the X800 Pro), and after each article or topic or answer i get, i only become more confused and unsure of which one to buy.

I had my heart set on an X800 Pro, but now that time has passed and nVidia's drivers have apparently improved, i am just waiting for the first one i can get that is around $350 or less, because i just don't know if one is actually even "better" than the other anymore.
 
Basically, with the latest drivers (NV61.45, ATI4.7) they are pretty similar in speed (except at the $399 price point the 6800GT is significantly ahead of the x800pro in many tests, likely because the 6800GT is 16x1 and the x800 pro is 12x1.) When the cards first came out the X800 series looked faster, but it appears that this was due both to ATI using Brilinear filtering instead of Full Trilinear when trilinear was requested, and due to driver immaturity in the Nvidia cards. Now performance is on-par for the high end cards (though the 6800GT looks like the good deal of this generation.) Nvidia can now do FP32 at a similar speed ATI does FP24, but FP16 is still available on the 6800 if additional speed is preferred by the developer.

They are however quite different in featuresets and board configuration:

ATI
--
Shader Model 2.0b
96-bit/FP24 precision
Bilinear, Brilinear filtering available via control panel
3DC - improves quality of textures (ati's technology, but open)
Temporal AA - Doubles the AA quality as long as framerate remains above 60 (artifacts at low framerates)
AA modes: 2x, 4x, 6x RGMS
AF modes: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
X800XTPE: Single Slot, Single Molex, DVI/VGA, quiet, 16x1, (520/1120), 256-bit mem bus, 256mb gddr3 ram, $499
X800PRO: Single Slot, Single Molex, DVI/VGA, quiet, 12x1 (475/900), 256-bit mem bus, 256mb gddr3 ram, $399

Nvidia
--
Shader Model 3.0 (looks like this will primarily be used to improve perf at first)
128-bit/FP32 precision (full), 64-bit/FP16 precision (partial)
Bilinear, Brilinear, Trilinear filtering available via control panel
FP blending for HDR (OpenEXR based) - for better looking and more efficient HDR lighting
Onboard full hardware video encoder/decoder chip (doesnt work in drivers yet)
Ultrashadow II - Make shadow rendering more efficient
AA modes: 2x, 4x RGMS, 8x OGSS/RGMS (1x2 SS/4x RGMS)
AF modes: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
6800 Ultra: Dual slot, dual molex (for OCing), Dual DVI, quiet, 16x1 (400/1100), 256-bit, 256mb gddr3 ram, $499
6800 GT: Single slot, single molex, DVI/VGA, quiet, 16x1 (350/1000), 256-bit mem bus, 256mb gddr3 ram, $399
6800: Single slot, single molex, DVI/VGA, quiet, 12x1 (325/700), 256-bit mem bus, 128mb ddr1 ram, $299

**
Games that support the various graphic features:

Slated to use 3DC (ATI)
--
Half Life 2
Serious Sam 2

Slated to use Shader Model 3.0 (Nvidia)
--
FarCry (v1.2)
Lord of the Rings, Battle For Middle-earth
STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl
Vampire: Bloodlines
Splinter Cell 3
Tiger Woods 2005
Madden 2005
Driver 3
Grafan
Painkiller (via patch)

Slated to use FP blending for HDR (Nvidia)
--
Far Cry (v1.3 patch)

Slated to use UltraShadow II (Nvidia)
--
Doom 3
 
What does FP** (ie 32, 24) mean exactly?

What is "Brilinear" as apposed to trilinear or bilinear?

All this seems to me as if the 6800 series seems to be far above the x800 series.

Am I missing something or can someone explain to me why its not?

wow tranCendZ thats impressive, thanks for the info !
 
jack9800XT said:
What does FP** (ie 32, 24) mean exactly?
Click to expand...

FP** means the shader precision the card supports. A lower precision means that you may see visual artifacting as precision errors accumulate (especially on very long shaders), while a higher precision allows you to achieve a higher level of detail. Higher, therefore, is better - but high precision is not always needed, hence the ability of the 6800 to use a faster fp16/64-bit precision.

What is "Brilinear" as apposed to trilinear or bilinear?
Click to expand...

"Brilinear" is a term used to describe an optimized trilinear filtering mode that uses a mixture of bilinear and trilinear filtering. This gives higher performance but could cause visual artifacting.

wow tranCendZ thats impressive, thanks for the info !
Click to expand...

No problem.
 
jack9800XT said:
What does FP** (ie 32, 24) mean exactly?
Click to expand...
For us typical engineers it had to do with floating point numerical accuracy - EXAMPLE. Hardware guys like me, we normally used half, full, and double precision. Occasionally we would hacked the job with 3/5 or 2/5 precision.

What is "Brilinear" as apposed to trilinear or bilinear?
Click to expand...
Ever heard of Quakilinear? or Quakitropic?

Quakilinear = Brilinear.
Quakitropic = Star-square-triangular-polygonal mipmap lines instead of ARCS.

All this seems to me as if the 6800 series seems to be far above the x800 series.

Am I missing something or can someone explain to me why its not?

wow tranCendZ thats impressive, thanks for the info !
Click to expand...
Is the simplified examples above good enough? :D
 
Either one will make you cream your pants with the speed, so just buy the cheaper one or whatever has a better software bundle.
 
tristam said:
you know, its funny, because i have been following this closely and i have read tons of articles and junk on these two cards (specifically the 6800GT and the X800 Pro), and after each article or topic or answer i get, i only become more confused and unsure of which one to buy.

I had my heart set on an X800 Pro, but now that time has passed and nVidia's drivers have apparently improved, i am just waiting for the first one i can get that is around $350 or less, because i just don't know if one is actually even "better" than the other anymore.
Click to expand...

Funny, after all the research and articles I've read the same exact thing happened to me. Basicly I feel that no matter what card you buy, you're going to be happy with it for quite some time. Yesterday I ordered my BFG 6800 Ultra knowing that the X800 XT PE is faster. Don't get me wrong I love ATi and what they've done but I feel that nVidia has the upside when it comes to drivers.

Anyways, again. Pick what you like, and no matter what you pic I'm sure you'll be happy with it.
 
I'd say your choice should be based on how you plan on using the card. If you want it to last an extra long time, I'd probably suggest the 6800 series. Otherwise, either card will do you fine...go with the one that is more practical for your setup and has the most attractive bundle.
 
actually ATi is not using the same "Brilinear" that nVidia has used. ATi actually does analasys of the mip mpas being used, and if they are too different then it uses full trilinear. I have done some pretty extensive analasys of full trilinear vs ATi's optimized trilinear and only after about 10-15 minutes of carefull scrutinizing both images, and using a little script to switch between the two images at varying speeds, have I been able to find any differences in the images. The Radeon 9600 has been using this techinque since it's launch and noone even noticed because it really does look good enough. Also, ATi has stated that if people can find actual IQ degradation then they will put in an option in their drivers to force full trilinear all of the time.

Now then, the main differences...

VS 3.0
FP blending


VS 3.0 may end up being important because it has geometry instancing and vertex reads in the VS. geometry instanceing can end up with some pretty major speedups in DX because it eliminates a lot of the overhead from drawing simple polygons. DX is pretty inefficient for drawing lots of small poly's and geometry instanceing is made to help counteract that. Vertex reads in the VS will allow for real displacement mapping done in the VS, which will mean dynamic updates of displacement maps will be possible- you can do some cool things (like nVidia's water demo) by rendering to texture, then reading that texture in the VS to use as a displacement map. However, the problem is we still don't have any way of generating more vertices on the GPU, meaning you're going to have to start with a high-poly object to displace. That will make it slow. I'm not expecting widespread use of it, although there will certainly be other things of using texture reads for I don't expect there to be anything really fantastic to come along.

FP blending.. yeah, it's neat, it's important for the future, but how useful is it, today, really? I would say not very.



for the record, I'm going to buy a 6800GT. but that's not really for games, it's because I use Maya and Softimage XSI, neither of which get along particularly well with ATi.
 
I was originally set on the x800 but have since changed my mind because of the latest speed gains nvidia has received from drivers. I forsee in a 6month time period for nvidia to be the clear better performer. Anyways I currently own a 9800pro Im just going to sit it out and wait a tad longer before I make my purchase. As others have said, either x800 or 6800 series will put a smile on your face :)
 
A lot of talk on speed, so I understand the speed on either will make me happy....but what about quality?

Will Farcry(example) look as good on the nVidia card as it will on the ATI?
 
After the Farcry v1.3 patch comes out Nvidia will have the upperhand on IQ for Farcry, mainly becasue of HDR and SM3
 
DaMaDo said:
Will Farcry(example) look as good on the nVidia card as it will on the ATI?
Click to expand...

FarCry 1.2 should look similar, but when the Far Cry HDR Lighting patch comes out (1.3), the 6800 should theoretically look noticably better with its FP blending/OpenEXR based HDR lighting.
 
Ok, I'm leaning a little more towards the 6800u oc, is it right to assume that other games will be taking advantage of similar features that will put nvidia on top more often b/c of its incorporation of more future-proofing features?
 
Just make sure you have or get a good quality 350+watt powersupply with either of these cards, as its most likely going to need it. Powersupplies (the capacitors in them) tend to slowly degrade with time just like rechargable batteries, so an old powersupply may not work where a new one will.

Estimates have the 6800ultra using 110watts and the X800XT at a little less than 80watts, thats not even counting any other part in the computer.

I've seen enough of Radeon 9800pros (not the cooler running XT) with ~300 watt powersupplies and off the shelf CPU's running stock speeds not being stable when running a stability test of RHTDRBL, a background of Prime95, and/or a memory tester at the same time. If it doesn't run that stably for two hours, imagine how pissed you would be if in a game it locked up on you in the middle of a game due to low power/overheating.
 
DaMaDo said:
Ok, I'm leaning a little more towards the 6800u oc, is it right to assume that other games will be taking advantage of similar features that will put nvidia on top more often b/c of its incorporation of more future-proofing features?
Click to expand...

Another major reason to get the 6800 is OpenGL. There has been alot of talk about the 6800u beaing like 50% faster then the X800XT PE in Doom 3 because of the fact its OpenGL. Call of Duty is OpenGL and the 6800u kicks ass in it against the X800's.

Using the new nVidia drivers the 6800u is faster then the X800XT PE by around 5-10 fps without AA + AF enabled and the cards are pretty much tied when it is enabled. The 6800 also handles AA better then the X800XT PE. The X800XT PE handles AF better though.

Both cards are great but the X800XT PE really doesn't support anything the 9800XT didn't have so IMO if your going to throw down $500 on a video card it ought to support at least one new feature.
 
It really seems like so far that the 6800 series is the favorite by a lot.

So, essentially, there is no reason to buy an x800 when you could get a 6800 card for roughly the same price?

Also, the GT has one molex while the U has two but will work with only one connected and this can run off of a 350 psu right? The second connector is for overclocking?

One more factor is the availability. I live in Newfoundland and so far no local store (future shop, etc) has any 6800 cards but DO have x800 series. How long will it take for these cards to come on the market in large quantities?
 
tranCendenZ said:
Slated to use 3DC (ATI)
--
Half Life 2
Serious Sam 2
Click to expand...

not disagreeing with you bro. but you missed a few titles ;)

Half Life 2
Serious Sam 2
Tribes Vengence
Sid Meier's Pirates
Darksector
unannounced title (Ritual)
Crash Demo (dunno what this is lol)

source:



ati.jpg
 
jack9800XT said:
Also, the GT has one molex while the U has two but will work with only one connected and this can run off of a 350 psu right? The second connector is for overclocking?

One more factor is the availability. I live in Newfoundland and so far no local store (future shop, etc) has any 6800 cards but DO have x800 series. How long will it take for these cards to come on the market in large quantities?
Click to expand...

You need at least a 400w name brand PSU for the 6800u. A name brand 350w should be enough for the 6800GT but i dont know that for sure.

And as far as availability i have no idea about Newfoundland but the 6800's should start showing up alot more readily in the first part of July. The 6800GT's are suppost to start shipping the end of this month on like the 28th.
 
Bad_Boy said:
not disagreeing with you bro. but you missed a few titles ;)
unannounced title (Ritual)
Crash Demo (dunno what this is lol)
Click to expand...

Damn these are really important ones I missed ;)
 
the thing about 3dc is that everything that can be done with 3dc can and almost certanly will have a DXT5 fallback at minimal performance/ IQ difference. They are just forms of Normal Map compression, and If a developer is including 3dc normal maps they will almost certainly include DXT5 ones for all the cards that don't support 3DC. ATI was pushing for DXT5 compressed normal maps last year, before they Anounced 3DC. (they published a paper on the topic last fall) Besides, despite the fact that the idea has been around for a while, no one has made a game with DXT5 compressed normal maps, 3DC, a rather small improvement over DXT5, fills the same role and requires about the same amount of work by the developer and outputs similar results, so I don't see what will make developers any more likely to adopt it over DXT5.
 
burningrave101 said:
You need at least a 400w name brand PSU for the 6800u. A name brand 350w should be enough for the 6800GT but i dont know that for sure.
.
Click to expand...
IIRC it was a 350W brand name PSU for the Ultra and 300W brand name for the GT, those translate to about a 480 and 430 if a generic PSU is used.
 
Merlin45 said:
IIRC it was a 350W brand name PSU for the Ultra and 300W brand name for the GT, those translate to about a 480 and 430 if a generic PSU is used.
Click to expand...

Where did you read that at? If thats true i'm going to start SLAMMING ATI fanboys every fricking time they even mention the PSU requirements on the 6800u as a reason not to buy it. Anyone thats not running a name brand PSU needs to be slapped to start with.
 
burningrave101 said:
Where did you read that at? If thats true i'm going to start SLAMMING ATI fanboys every fricking time they even mention the PSU requirements on the 6800u as a reason not to buy it. Anyone thats not running a name brand PSU needs to be slapped to start with.
Click to expand...
I read it on an AIB makers product description
 
uB3rn00b3r said:
I have a 330 wat psu with one combo drive and one hd. Could I run an ultra?
Click to expand...

Very doubtful. If you've got the cash for an ultra though then you can stand a $50 PSU upgrade.
 
No need to slam.. Currently the X800XT is faster than the 6800ultra in DX 8/9 games with High resolution high AA and AF, so much so that even Tom gave the X800XT the crown (at least for now) I don't know how he could give the X800XT a win, and yet have given the 5800ultra (arguably a really bad chip) an award too. With no AA and AF, the 6800ultra is slightly faster.

Shader model 3.0. It is OK to mention that a game based on SM 3.0 will likely not show up any faster than 2.0. A 2 year guesstimate is probably not too far out of the ballpark, and by then its possible the card will still not be all that fast in DX9.0c 128-bitFP floating point calculations - Nalu the mermaid runs at >30fps, but she has no background, no game physics, just a heck of a lot of hair ;) I'm going out on a limb here, but 96-bitFP DX9.0 may actually end up being in ATi's favor early on as it is slightly less computationally intensive (I could write a whole thread about this). Ruby at least has a full background and some shadows, etc... Otherwise being very close to what a game would/should look like.

What will probably happen is that there will be just a few hack and slash additions to existing DX/OGL engines, sort of like how UT2004 is DX 7 a handful of DX8/8.1 effects thrown in, and absolutely no DX9 Shader model 2.0 effects at all < Straight from Daniel Vogels mouth off the Beyond3d boards, i thought there might be one or two because things looked different, but it was just a glitch.

BTW: I challenge anyone to find the difference between ATi's (96) 24-bitFP and NVidias (128) 32-bitFP. I mean its pretty damn good at 32INT as is now, and we are talking precision that is like more a thousand times more accurate than integers...
 
Power is a big concern, cause I'm the guy who always ends up fixing it when the powersupply and half the computer blows up. And I'm not just knocking NVidia, ATi has had problems too.

It all started with the AIW9700pro, which was taking so much peak power at startup it was refusing to cold boot on even some 400 watt computers (a power supply of that wattage was extremely rare two years ago BTW) People would have to wait on a failed boot, and then press the powerbutton again or do a warm boot. It ran perfectly stable once it was going though.

The 9800pro consumes quite a bit of power, and if you check ATi's website they do recommend a 300-watt powersupply for this *old* board http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/specs.html Its right on the FIRST LINE of the requirements. Even so, I don't think ATi was thinking that the Northwoods, Opterons and Prescotts would be dipping into the 100watt range. Even so, I've had quite a few generic 350 watters pop and burn (and they do pop with a godawful stench of chemical electrolyte.)

Now I'm sure there are horror stories with the NV30 line too (typically even more amps than ATi's lines ), but I personally haven't had much dealing with it because I rarely recommended them in the first place.

Just giving people judicious warning before they blow up their entire computer by leaving in a not adequate powersupply.

BTW: Can anyone tell that I'm bored as $#%^ today... I haven't written some essays this long.
 
Just a thought: ATI has been relatively known for their "spotty" drivers, and it may be true that, in time, they may make a few optimizations just like nvidia did. You have to get the sense that both companies pushed these cards out absolutely as fast as possible, and as such, I think both have some potential left to unlock with some driver refinements. Nvidia seems to have done an excellent job cleaning things up a bit, but perhaps ATI's driver team is going to smooth the catalyst drivers over and tweak out some more performance too... if they make any strides like they did with the transition from the 9800s to the X800s, we luckily have alot to look forward to.
 
jack9800XT said:
It really seems like so far that the 6800 series is the favorite by a lot.

So, essentially, there is no reason to buy an x800 when you could get a 6800 card for roughly the same price?

Also, the GT has one molex while the U has two but will work with only one connected and this can run off of a 350 psu right? The second connector is for overclocking?

One more factor is the availability. I live in Newfoundland and so far no local store (future shop, etc) has any 6800 cards but DO have x800 series. How long will it take for these cards to come on the market in large quantities?
Click to expand...

The 6800 series and X800 are more or less equal, as far as I'm concerned. I'm going for the X800 mainly due to power concerns, but also because the 9800 Pro has been the best card I have ever owned or worked with...period.

I was disappointed with nVidia's previous generation of cards, and I'm not so certain about their 3.0 support being critical for me. I buy the top card every 12-15 months, so my viewpoint may be different than yours. Beyond that, I'm not too keen on nVidia's methods of securing their spot in the marketplace. Namely, they act like Intel, but without the same market share.

If you're getting a 6800U, you will be using both molex connectors...trust me. If you plan on getting it only to use one, you're barking up the wrong tree.

These cards will be, to quote a million hardware scholars, available "when they're ready," which is to say...whenever they're here. It's currently quite difficult to make any conclusions when it comes to availability. The main limiting factor in that respect affects both companies equally, so ultimately you should merely select the card that best fits your system.
 
Maxx said:
If you're getting a 6800U, you will be using both molex connectors...trust me. If you plan on getting it only to use one, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Click to expand...

And why is that? The 6800u will run 450/1200 i believe with just ONE molex connector lol. Why would you HAVE TO HAVE both plugged in for default speeds? And the cards come with a 4-pin y-splitter in case any of you bums are too cheap to buy a $.50 piece of hardware when your buying a $500 card.

And ZenOps that was an old review using old drivers at Tomshardware. ALL the reviews that use the 60.72 drivers dont count as anything. Find some using the new 61.34 or higher. nVidia made a huge performance leap in the 61.34 drivers and the X800XT PE is not in the lead any more. The cards are tied in the majority of games with high AA + AF enabled and the 6800u performs better usually in 1600x1200. Its a trade-off with alot of games. There is rarely more then a 1-5 fps performance difference between these two cards at 1600x1200 with high AA + AF and the 6800 supports alot of new technology while the X800XT PE supports almost nothing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top