Final Words
From our initial inspection of the Radeon X700 Pro vs. the Geforce 6600 GT, it is very clear that the only available members of the X700 family don't pack the punch that they need to surpass the value offered by NVIDIA. Looking at this fact, it seems clear why ATI would need to push out a lower cost version of its higher end parts in the new 110nm X800 lineup.For those out there who are die-hard ATI fans and absolutely need to have an X700 Pro solution, we can recommend that you simply head out and find the cheapest X700 Pro available. That suggestion makes it hard for us to recommend the HIS solution, as it will almost certainly cost more than the other three cards that we reviewed today (especially if looking at the TURBO/VIVO options).
At this point, it won't be enough for ATI to simply replace the non-existent X700 XT with their new X800 solution. To remain competitive with NVIDIA in the $200 mid-range space, they will need to bring out the X700 XT and push its price down. It's hard to believe that vendors would sell the XT at the same price point as the Pro considering the performance advantages the former would have. As a competitor to the 6600GT, the X700 XT is a better part in many ways (cost and availability are not among them). But its little brother is just not up to the challenge.
We want to see temperature data available from the full line of ATI parts. We understand that keeping the automatic overclocking value-add as part of their high end product lines is a priority, but all we want to do is check the temperature of our GPUs. Diagnostics have been available on motherboards for years now; NVIDIA has a temperature gauge in their driver for all 6 series parts, so it's time that ATI caught up with the industry.
A built-in manual overclocking tool would be nice as well. Getting a legal department to sign off on such a thing is a tough sell, and we understand that. But making it hard to get to, voiding warranty or restrictive otherwise seems to work for other companies.
In the end, we really liked the solution from HIS, but not attached to the X700 Pro. They make excellent enthusiast cards, and we'll take this opportunity to recommend one of their X800 based solutions to anyone who like the features that they saw in this round up.
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cosmotic - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Your text ad thing turns "Unreal Tournoment" into a link thats the same color as the table header background so it looks like "2004 Performance". Why do some Anand articles use pretty graphs and some use these relitively harder to read tables?MAValpha - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I dunno. I have one of these cards (Retail Built-By-ATI 256MB Radeon X700 Pro), and I didn't even try to push it too far. I set it up to run at XT speeds, and it does it with no problems. Performance at these settings isn't anything to sneeze at either, since it more or less matches my 6800 vanilla (within 5%, off the top of my head). Remember that preliminary benchmarks position the 6800 vanilla almost on par with the 6600GT, also.Granted, the two PCs are different, but they are both fairly close to top-of-the-line. One is a Prescott-775 running at 3.8 on i915P, the other is an AXP running 2.4 on NF2 Ultra. While they are understandably different processors, games turn in comparable framerates on both. Everything else is the same in both rigs, right down to the RAM and hard drives.
nserra - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
"For those out there who are die-hard ATI fans and absolutely need to have an X700 Pro solution, we can recommend that you simply head out and find the cheapest X700 Pro available."I do a better one, buy the basic X700, only 25Mhz lower clock and 150Mhz memory, and over clock it. And save 50$.
One thing must be pointed out, if X700 Pro is worst over 6600GT, "regular" X700 is better over "regular" 6600.
#9 My point answer your question or doubt?
ChineseDemocracyGNR - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
What I'd like to see is the $149 non-PRO non-XT X700, which is also non-existant.skunkbuster - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
can anyone tell me why ati's open GL drivers continue to suck? when are they ever going to catch up to nvidia in this regard?stelleg151 - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I assume that the ATI cards should be considered identical to the Powercolor cards because of same look?bloc - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Bang for the buck especially in the mid range.If ati priced the x700 accordingly and had some cards to sell, I'd consider it. Cripes I'm waiting for the 9800 pro to come down to $150 US to the 6600 GT's $200. I'd then go for the 9800 pro.
overclockingoodness - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
All I have to say is that NVIDIA's 6600 solutions are to get for mid-range setups.DerekWilson - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
The icon should be fixed -- I'm not sure what happened there :-)slurmsmackenzie - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
did anyone else stop reading after the head to head with the 6600GT?.... i just assumed everything else was just superfluous details.