Need help understanding this......

[monster.under.thebed]

From searching for a new video card, i see that the

7800gt has
core: 400-450 (depending on manufacturer)
mem: 1000-1050 (depending on manufacturer)

and the..

x850xt has...
core: 520
mem: 1080

when the prices are about the same, but poeple i still see people prefer the 7800....yet it has lower clocks? help?

 

[NinjaGnat]

The simple explanation is that you can't compare two different cores based on their clock speeds, as they do different amounts of work per cycle. This is most obvious when comparing P4's to A64's, they have comperable performance despite varying clocks. Comparing through benchmarks, it is easier to see that a 7800gt is more cost effective than the x850xt.

 

[{NG}Fidel]

Clock Speed is a hard thing for most new Computer Users to grasp, and if explaining why Clock Speeds dont mean anything wasnt enough now Pipelilnes are so vastly diffrent that you cant compare them any more. I mean the 16pipe X1800XT could be faster than the 7800GTX or vice versa in both cases some people may be confused.
Asking things like, if the GTX has more pipes why isnt it faster?
Or...
If the X1800XT has higher clocks and more memoy, why isnt it faster?
Time and Experience is all you need.

 

[laxmiddi44]

7800 is the latest card and has the most features, i think it runs BF2 better than the x850 anyway

 

[BBA]

It runs everything better than the X850, damn near twice as good.

 

[takimbe]

hell yeah it does. ive tried my friends x850 in my machine and then swapped it with my 7800GT and it runs way better! of course my card is OCed to GTX speeds but still...

 

[geekcomputing]

the 7800 is a much faster card for a variety of reasons but on a side note it has 24 pipe lines as opposed to ati's 16.

clock speed is no longer the deciding factor.
much like a slower mhz AMD processor can smoke a higher clocked pentium4 b/c the amd does more work per clock.

 

[Banko]

the 7800 is a much faster card for a variety of reasons but on a side note it has 24 pipe lines as opposed to ati's 16.

clock speed is no longer the deciding factor.
much like a slower mhz AMD processor can smoke a higher clocked pentium4 b/c the amd does more work per clock.

7800GT has only 20 pipelines. But basically take 16 * 520 which equals 8320 (that is rougly the X850XT Fillrate) The 7800GT fill rate is 20 * 450 which equals 9000. So just from this calculations the 7800GT is faster. Though clock for clock the NV4x generation (6800/7800)'s pipeline does more work per clock. So think of it as it runs 1.5 meters per second while ATi's is 1 meter per second. Due to fillrate the 7800GT shouldn't be much faster but due to it being different cores and the NV4x pipeline being more efficient it's as close to as 2x faster sometimes.

 

[monster.under.thebed]

wow thnks guys for the help, i guess ill be switching over to nvidia and hit up the 7800gt.....



but instead of starting a new thread..... are the new ati cards x1800 or whatever all going to be over $350ish? becuase if thats so then ill definitely go with the 7800gt

 

[Old_Way]

I suspect the new ATI cards will all come out fairly high priced at first. If there's enough availablility, their costs should come down after just a couple of weeks though. Hopefully they'll quickly end up in the same range as the nVidia cards so we can have some good price wars.