X1900XTX or 7950GX2

L

Liquid3D

n00b
Joined
Jul 15, 2002
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Even as a Reviewer I'm getting so burn't out trying to figure which card will benefit me in the long run with so little REAL info. Since most testers are running these cards on 590 or other nVidia chipset mobo's on the suported list how can we know what the card will do on the compatability list of a non-nVidia board? There's not one review testing this concept?

I rarely get the opportunity to have a high end card purchased for me and I simply want he best all around performance for the money? I try to think of the potential for QUADSLI but by the time that happens this card will be midrange, and my case will have melted from the heat.

While the 7950GX2 seems to be all things to all people, and uses both G71 VPUs to render I believe it was a brilliant marketing plan to save thousands of these cores that have been failing at 7900GTX speeds. Hey split the load between two and basically underclock them and you've got a potential save for a faulty GPU batch and a card which tugs on our 3DFx heart-strings which was the only company ever to to build a true multi-GPU single board solution.

Now the X1900XTX seems it should best the nVidia with twice the pipelines yet I'm confused as to how the few reviews out there on 7950GX2's are biased to allow them to lookas if their out-performing other cards.

Anyway I do know these dual core (ehmmm) cards are running 60C idle which has to be an issue, and the 7900GTX runs cooler but even that card seems to fail more then a Alcoholic attempting to stay clean and sober for 90-days while working 80-hours weekly in a College Bar.
Right now I have two bioards working a DFI (rev.1) LAN Party UT Nf4 (moddable to SLI) and a Asus P5WD2 Premium. I'm waiting on a AOpen i975Xa-YDG Socket 479 Intel 975X
I neeed some advice PLEASE
 
In the long run, neither. You'll be wanting a DX10 card next year.

The GX2 is blatently faster, the XTX has slightly superior image quality.
 
Regardless of ATi's IQ superiority, I think the GX2 has enough grunt to see you through any upcoming DX9 title at Hi-res with all bells whistles turned on -except HDR+AA- no matter how demanding its engine would be, even UT2007 shouldn't be a problem.

I think it is the safer choice currently, of course ATi has the R580+ coming and this should at least equal the GX2 somewhat.
 
I would suggest waiting until DX10 and Vista, unless its absolutely imperative that you get a new card, which it shouldnt be. ATI is also coming out with quad graphics boards like the 7950GX2 code named Gemini and Hellfire in the next few months. The cards will probably retail for half the cost of new computer, start saving now :rolleyes:
 
also the ati gemini has two 1600 on them,which i dont really think its really going to bother Nvidia. I am a lucky owner of a 7950 XXX and they are really good and you need a powerful CPU to run them but i do not how a decent CPU to run it at the mo , its a 3200 venice..

There is a lot of power in the 7950 and they aimed at high res so i the whole DX10 thing is not going to effect the 7950 a lot , not in the first year at least .

With every new product we have teething process and i dont see why DX10 will be immuned from that.
 
For some reason I've got a burning desire to replace 7800gtx 256MB sli. Can't do crossfire, so it seems to me it might make some sense to sell both of the 7800gtx boards and get a gx2.

Would be an improvement I suppose, and probably wouldn't cost me very much money, depending on how much I get for the 7800gtx boards.
 
east villager - i reckon you should wait , you have enough power
 
nooh said:
east villager - i reckon you should wait , you have enough power
Click to expand...

Couple games I can't play at 1920x1200 with max eyecandy at an acceptable framerate. It bugs me.
 
eastvillager said:
For some reason I've got a burning desire to replace 7800gtx 256MB sli. Can't do crossfire, so it seems to me it might make some sense to sell both of the 7800gtx boards and get a gx2.

Would be an improvement I suppose, and probably wouldn't cost me very much money, depending on how much I get for the 7800gtx boards.
Click to expand...

You can do Crossfire... you just dont want to. :)

I dont know that a GX2 would be much, if any faster than a 7800GTX SLI setup. From what I have read, a GX2 is a little slower than a7900GT SLI setup, and thats a little faster than a 7800GTX SLI setup. Putting the GX2 and 7800GTX SLI setup about par to each other.
 
Liquid3D said:
Even as a Reviewer I'm getting so burn't out trying to figure which card will benefit me in the long run with so little REAL info. Since most testers are running these cards on 590 or other nVidia chipset mobo's on the suported list how can we know what the card will do on the compatability list of a non-nVidia board? There's not one review testing this concept?

I rarely get the opportunity to have a high end card purchased for me and I simply want he best all around performance for the money? I try to think of the potential for QUADSLI but by the time that happens this card will be midrange, and my case will have melted from the heat.

While the 7950GX2 seems to be all things to all people, and uses both G71 VPUs to render I believe it was a brilliant marketing plan to save thousands of these cores that have been failing at 7900GTX speeds. Hey split the load between two and basically underclock them and you've got a potential save for a faulty GPU batch and a card which tugs on our 3DFx heart-strings which was the only company ever to to build a true multi-GPU single board solution.

Now the X1900XTX seems it should best the nVidia with twice the pipelines yet I'm confused as to how the few reviews out there on 7950GX2's are biased to allow them to lookas if their out-performing other cards.

Anyway I do know these dual core (ehmmm) cards are running 60C idle which has to be an issue, and the 7900GTX runs cooler but even that card seems to fail more then a Alcoholic attempting to stay clean and sober for 90-days while working 80-hours weekly in a College Bar.
Right now I have two bioards working a DFI (rev.1) LAN Party UT Nf4 (moddable to SLI) and a Asus P5WD2 Premium. I'm waiting on a AOpen i975Xa-YDG Socket 479 Intel 975X
I neeed some advice PLEASE
Click to expand...

lol a new DX is on the horizon, and u wanna dump 550 dollars into a video card..., just get a cheap x1900xt and oc it a bit u won't regret it
 
x1900xt would be my choice. Why? If your using samsung 930b then 7950 would be overkill as anything under 16x12 wouldnt push the 7950 to its fullest. Save some moola and get the x1900xt and wait for dx10 cards.
 
lol

It's gonna be a while yet before not only DX10 comes out but a game that actually takes full advantage of it. Vista is Q1 07 at the earliest remember.
 
buy a power supply or something else

If you cant wait then ,what the hell buy a quad , i know how you feel , i just dont have the money to think like you at the mo. :)
 
why anyone would consider a 7950 an upgrade is beyond me. it has OK AF and loses to ATI in IQ across the board plus it doesn't even support eye candy features available today (AA+HDR). how futureproof is this investment? not to mention how many regular 7900s fail and the thought these are binned cores means NV could have a mess on their hands in the coming months (pure speculation but a serious consideration).
 
R1ckCa1n said:
why anyone would consider a 7950 an upgrade is beyond me. it has OK AF and loses to ATI in IQ across the board plus it doesn't even support eye candy features available today (AA+HDR). how futureproof is this investment? not to mention how many regular 7900s fail and the thought these are binned cores means NV could have a mess on their hands in the coming months (pure speculation but a serious consideration).
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HDR+AA Is everything isn't it? :rolleyes:
 
If it was up to me I would get dual x1900gto's or x1800xt 256MB cards and a 3200 motherboard (dongless crossfire).
 
Firebat said:
HDR+AA Is everything isn't it? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It is if you're a fanATIc grasping for a bullet point to add to your platform. :D


Be nice if the forum could agree to stop using the word "futureproof" as well, since there is no such thing when it comes to PC hardware. About the only thing even remotely futureproof in the past decade is the 1.44MB floppy drive... and even it is on its way out.
 
Firebat said:
HDR+AA Is everything isn't it? :rolleyes:
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it is something that can't be overlooked and enhances your gaming experience. people who are considering a product that doesn't support it will never know. again, why dump 600 and not be able to have todays features?
 
R1ckCa1n said:
it is something that can't be overlooked and enhances your gaming experience. people who are considering a product that doesn't support it will never know. again, why dump 600 and not be able to have todays features?
Click to expand...
I've seen it and I don't think it's that big of a deal. Not to mention it thrashes performance when used in high resolutions.
 
i have a 7950 and its brill , thinking of getting another one in about another 5 months time.After i dont think the dx10 will bother me that much ,not for the first year at least..
 
I was also looking to upgrade (even with my sick fast Viper J modded 7800GTX :D) You just get that urge sometime to upgrade. Anyway, from all of the input I got, and research I did...there is no point on upgrading un till DX10. That is, if you already have a nie card.

Noticed you have a 7800GTX, have VJ modded it. Only SLI's will be pass you. I have yet to flash to the new bios, as to why my clocks are still so low.
 
Ummmm, just play at a high resolution (like you would w/ a 7590gx2 or ANY highend card), and you don't really need AA. Besides, A LOT OF GAMES HAVE hdr+aa for Nvidia cards, like HL2.

People who think HDR (something that gets on my nerves more times than not) is everything, these people must own an E-machine.
 
Chris_B said:
Coulda said the same thing for nvidia cards when they had sm 3.0 and ati didn't.
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Expect that generation NV card didn't have the horsepower to run it without lowing resolution which is not what can be said about HDR+AA on ATI's offering.

Needless to say it is easy to discount it when you can't do it........
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Expect that generation NV card didn't have the horsepower to run it without lowing resolution which is not what can be said about HDR+AA on ATI's offering.

Needless to say it is easy to discount it when you can't do it........
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Is this your opnion or the opinion of a "top overclock3rs @ xt3mesystemsdawtorg?
:eek:
 
Spoudazo said:
Ummmm, just play at a high resolution (like you would w/ a 7590gx2 or ANY highend card), and you don't really need AA. Besides, A LOT OF GAMES HAVE hdr+aa for Nvidia cards, like HL2.

People who think HDR (something that gets on my nerves more times than not) is everything, these people must own an E-machine.
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Wrong on both accounts. AA is needed for me, and many others, even at 1600x1200+. Certain games just scream for it.

NV can do HDR+AA in a "LOT OF GAMES"? Which? The only two I know of, are HL2, with Lost Coast, and EP1, and GRAW. But GRAW doesnt even have real AA, so it doesnt count.

No matter if you like it or not, HDR is the big ticket right now. Lost of reviews do not even include AA, when HDR is an option, in games such as Oblivion and others. While I dont like it, its what they do. I dont like HDR in every game, its a toss up to me. Nobody said it was everything, dont put words in other peoples mouths. Again, dont assume people who like HDR use e-machines. You only make yourself look even more foolish.
 
The only game that has done well with HDR is PGR3 on the Xbox360, and that isn't even a PC game, so I don't care that much.

You need to understand what "need" is and what "want" is.

I want a Conroe, or I want a 30" LCD, or a 24" Sony CRT triniton, but I don't "need" these things.

You don't need anything computer related unless you support yourself or your family with it.

You want AA, and if you're willing to pay $500 for a card that'll do it, while you can get basically two $500 cards for $550, that's fine by me. I used to have an ATI card, but I like to actually here the game, and not the graphics card running the game. :p
 
Expect that generation NV card didn't have the horsepower to run (SM3.0) without lowing resolution
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Typical SM3.0 paths have so far actually been faster than a similar SM2.0 path. Remember FarCry? Without any real increase in visuals, the SM3.0 path (which was probably pretty sloppy because, well, it's CryTek) netted a slight 1-2% performance increase on nVidia cards.

You're equating the performance hit of enabling HDR and multisampling on ATi hardware with the performance increase of enabling SM3.0 on nVidia 6-series hardware? I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds this highly amusing.

For reference, many nVidia cards can do multisampling and HDR in a number of theoretical situations. There's also no architectual reason why current nVidia cards can't also do sumpersampling and fp16 HDR, other than the fact that developers are not interested in allowing this (that I speculate).

I'll say it again: there's a wealth of information concerning the 7950 and the X1900 cards. Why forum users can't reference what's already known is beyond me. These topics are flamebaits.
 
If space is a great issue in your system then 7950 is the way forward also with the types of components us enthusiast has i.e. soundcards , PPUs coolers .

Space was the reason i bought the 7950 GX2 , and i also tried PREY today with everything maxed and the framerate was 70fps at 1600 by 1200. Anti aliasing by 8 and the anisotrpic by 16.

PREY is beatiful , there is so much detail and after i read the DX10 thing which got me even more exited. :)
 
No, and even Nvidia's first DX10 card won't have USA (unified shader arch.) so it'll be more able to player older games.
 
I agree with the DX10 comment, but, you have to pick an upgrade point and kind of stick with it. Otherwise your always going to be waiting and miss out by playing games on old hardware. I have a P4 2.8 with a 6800oc, yes i know it's pretty lame now. It's a good idea to wait until conroe comes out, either get that or reap the benfits of all other cpus going down in price. Well I want to wait until Unreal 2k7 comes out and upgrade after that. (Don't want the same thing to happen to me like when i upgraded BEFORE doom 3 came out, not that i really ended up liking it anyway). So wait until unreal 2007, well some on saying wait until DX10 cards are out. Ok, now some are saying that first gen of DX10 cards will still be missing some DX10 features like USA. All true and usefull comments, but things like this will keep happening, you just have to make a decision and go with it. For me i want to wait until Unreal 2k7 comes out and grab the next gen of card to come out. For you now might be the time.
On a side note, i know a few people that are eyeballing the 7950, but i saw some posts of people saying the IQ was poor, does anyone have some screen shots that compare the x1900 and the 7950? Or a link i should say?
 
Personally I think it's a bit of a gray area. If DX10 cards were due out two months from now then yes it makes more sense to wait unless money is truly no problem at all for you. But with Vista being at least six months off, possibly longer, I really don't see that much of a point. That said if you only upgrade your card every two years or more then why not just wait it out? It's questionable and it all depends on each individual's personal financial situation and how they want to spend their dough.

As for the IQ - I had an X1800XT and I can tell you there is very little difference that I can see between the GX2 and my old card in CSS. Same for FarCry.
 
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