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ATI and DX9

P

PigCorpse

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 4, 2005
Messages
1,115
Hi

I have narrowed it down to:

ATI AIW X800XT

Connect3D X850Pro

The X800XT has 16 pipes, but I can flash the X850Pro to an X850XT PE.

The thing is, the person I'm buying it for wants to play the latest games, but the cards that are not in the X1xxx series don't have full DX9 support. Will that matter?
 
PigCorpse said:
The thing is, the person I'm buying it for wants to play the latest games, but the cards that are not in the X1xxx series don't have full DX9 support. Will that matter?
Click to expand...

Where did you hear that?

The X800/X850 series cards ALL have DirectX 9 support. They are, after all, DirectX 9 cards. The first ATI card to have DirectX 9 support was actually the 9700, which came out way before the cards in the X1K series (a good three years or so).
 
So those cards support Shader Model 3? I read one of the reviews that it only supported 2.0b.
 
PigCorpse said:
So those cards support Shader Model 3? I read one of the reviews that it only supported 2.0b.
Click to expand...

That's different than DirectX 9. That's a hardware feature set. You are correct that it only supports SM 2.0b, but that does not mean it does not have full DirectX 9 support.
 
Alright, thanks a lot for the info.

So this means the cards will play BF2, etc. fine?

Also, if I do not use the TV features, is the AIW the same as any other card? I heard somewhere that the AIWs were not as good as the plain types.
 
The X800XT AIW is actually pretty good compared to the regular X800XT (they even put faster memory in the AIW for some reason). Yes, these cards will play BF2 just fine. Shader Model 3.0 is only required for enabling a select few features in certain games released now and then. The X800XT AIW will play all current games.
 
Yes it should play BF2 just fine.
As far as the AIW not as good I believe they have the 1.6n memory which means they should be able to reach X800XTPE speeds which is about 3-5 fps slower than the X850XTPE. If I am wrong please some one correct me.
 
The X8xx series are DX9 compliant. What you may be thinking of is DX9.0c, which is what gave support to SM3.0, but is not required to be DX9 compliant. Just remember that SM3.0 has more to do with how shader functions are processed, and not so much about new features.

Also, the X1800XT is SM3.0 compliant, as are the X1900XT, so for $200 you can have a card that is quite fast and compliant with the new shader models. The major difference is that the X800XT AIW is usually found as an AGP part, and the X1800XT/X1900XT cards are PCI-e.

As for playing BF2, and any other games you listed, the X800XT AIW (which is what I have) will play them just fine. I play BF2 on a regular basis.
 
no games right now require SM3.0, and a very select few games has any sort of support for it as well
 
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