burningrave101 said:IMO though, the 6800U is still the superior card because it is based off new technology instead of old and has more room to grow with driver updates. Its also superior to the XT in OpenGL and Linux and using the latest beta drivers its winning in the majority of D3D games at 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 16xAF. The 6800U also almost always wins when AA/AF isn't enabled no matter what the resolution is.
What majority of D3D games is it winning? Last I checked it is still LOSING in the majority of popular D3D games, especially when it comes down to games like BF:V, BF1942, JO, UT2004 etc. In CS:S its ahead by a few fps atm according to FS results but that can and will likely easily change--not to mention the delta between the cards was never big at all in CS:S so I don't know why everyone is so surprised that the 6800U is edging out the XT PE in this port.
The 6800U also has alot of cool driver features the ATI cards dont have such as digital vibrance
I was a fan of this from the Ti4600 series when I had my old 17" monitor. So I had fond memories of it until I bought a 6800 GT on my 21" and realized its overrated crap.
application profiles, coolbits, a plethora of legacy AA modes, 8xS which is superior to the AA modes ATI supports, better full Trilinear filtering support, a little better AF quality from what i've gathered, fewer game bugs, and new beta drivers which are constantly being leaked.
I'll agree about the supersampling modes, those are definitely nice for legacy games and its a shame ATi doesn't support it for the PC (I think they do have it for Macs). As for filtering quality, the shimmering issue is a big problem with the nVidia 6800 cards and it has not been fixed. The optimized AF doesn't match ATi's and now the filtering with opts off suffers from the same problem.
And lets not forget support for SM 3.0 and USII Technology.
By the time SM3 is even remotely useful these cards will be too dated/slow to matter. We're all enthusiasts here that tend to upgrade frequently, most of us will have moved on to newer gen. cards. This feature may be ok for guys that upgrade every 2 yrs and want full compatibility so I agree that much but for enthusiasts its a moot pt.
So IMHO the cards are pretty much a draw at this point, both have their ups and downs. There is no clear winner at the top end but I will say that nVidia did win the mainstream market because it clearly has a better priced lineup. Specifically the 6800 GT, its priced well and available in most stores. ATi has released the X800XT but its too late and still priced too high to be an effective competitor. nVidia also wins with the 6600GT in the lower segment as well. So of course, overall the round goes to nVidia for availability and price competitiveness at the mid and low segments. I'm sure ATi has learned their lesson and the next gen. will be here very soon.