ATI Radeon X800 XL - A $299 6800GT Competitor
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 15, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Head to Head: X800 XL vs. 6800GT
The comparison that obviously matters most is the $299 ATI Radeon X800 XL vs. the $399 NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT (the regular 6800 isn't available in a PCI Express version for channel sales yet). The X800 XL will only be available as a PCI Express GPU while the 6800GT is available in both AGP and PCI Express versions. To ATI's credit, however, PCI Express 6800GTs are extremely hard to find while AGP versions are fairly common. In the end, we may just be comparing one unavailable PCI Express card to another, but in a perfect world where availability wasn't an issue, here's how the two would stack up in terms of performance:
You'll first notice that we added a handful of games to our test suite for this comparison - Need for Speed Underground 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (based on Valve's Source engine), NBA Live 2005 and Sid Meier's Pirates. The reason for expanding the test suite here was to present a broader scope of comparison between the two cards and to avoid only benchmarking games for which ATI/NVIDIA have optimized. Next year, we will have a much more thorough comparison of GPU performance across even more games, but for now, this will have to do.
All of the tests were run at 1600 x 1200, a resolution that both of these cards happen to handle quite well across all games. Our testing yielded the following conclusions:
- Half Life 2 is about 10% faster on the X800 XL than on the 6800GT (based on an average of our 5 demos). However, the other Source engine based game in our suite, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, shows the two GPUs performing rather similarly. With only two Source engine based titles, we cannot extrapolate any further based on these results, but they are interesting nonetheless. We will add that although the average frame rates were similar, the minimum frame rates were higher on the X800 XL than on the 6800GT in Vampire. There wasn't a huge difference, but enough to be noticeable during gameplay.
- Under Doom 3, the 6800GT is just under 30% faster than the X800 XL, a huge win for NVIDIA.
- Need for Speed Underground 2 has some serious issues on the 6800GT as it is almost 40% slower than on the X800 XL. While the X800 XL will play NFSU2 quite well at 1600 x 1200 with all of the details turned all the way up (AA off however), the 6800GT cannot. To have a $400 card and not be able to play the latest games at 1600 x 1200 at the highest detail settings is unacceptable in our opinion. This is an area to which NVIDIA needs to pay closer attention.
- Far Cry and Halo both favor the 6800GT with advantages of 12.5% and 10% respectively.
- The five remaining games basically performed identically on the X800 XL and on the 6800GT.
There's the performance comparison that matters, but if you want to see how the X800 XL fits into the grand scheme of things, the next several pages are the same benchmarks that we ran in our X850 review.
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DeathByDuke - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#3 nvidias response is rumoured cancellations of NV48 and NV50(GF7?), its NV40-NV44 refresh. then again noone else has said anything about that other than The Inquirer..... *rolls eyes* nvidia has a knack for surprising though.Avalon - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
An X800 XL for $299 and an X800 for $199...once the cards actually hit the shelves, it appears that ATI will have the mid-range in their grasp. The only thing worth going up against them is gambling on a $250 softmoddable 6800NU (which I had no problem doing, and am quite happy).:P
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
finally i hear some "official" rant regarding the recent delays/misleadings/paper launches and all that. I totally agree with all you said there. This was a horrible year.But also realize that you as "famous" hardware
reviewers are probably still in the best possible situation - because (even with shortages without an end) the vendors probably beg you to send you their stuff...eg. nForce 4 boards and all the nice things.
Imagine "us", the common people...we can only dream of getting ahold of pre-releases. All "we" have is your pre/reviews because noone sends us the nice stuff to review :)
Phantronius - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
I'll stick with my eVGA 6800GT for awhile, maybe next time ATi.eRAZOR2007 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
For gods sake stop reviewing (graphics) hardware that is not available like THG does.Houdani - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Some minor corrections...Page 1, Table: Add the X800 XT to the list, please.
Page 1, Table: Change price of the X800 XL to $299.
Page 1, Table: Change the "memc" for the X800 to 0.700 (instead of 700).
Page 1, last paragraph: Change the "$50" to "$100" to reflect the change in price of the card.
I think all other references to price in the article are correct. I only noticed the two spots on the front page which referred to the original $349 price.
Much obliged. Thanks for the review. Good read.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
P.S. To #6, I agree that the 6800NU is the price point ATI is truly competeing against, and it costs less than $299 easily, so ATI should think hard on their pricing scheme. Though I've seen perhaps a 50-50 success rate on unlocking them so far, so I wouldn't tout that as a feature. Mine didn't unlock, but I'm okay with that.LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Quote:>Despite all of the issues with availability, about >a week ago, ATI fired us off an email saying that >we should expect a Radeon X800 XL at our doorsteps.
Perhaps you should have sent a note back saying "You should expect a review right around the time this card is available to the public."
Problem with paper launches is, they still get press. Hardware sites still publish reviews of hardware not available to the public because they're afraid someone else will scoop them on it, which perpetuates more paper launches. I'd love to see an alliance of the major hardware sites on the net join together and send a note to ATI and nVidia stating that "If you cannot make a product available in reasonable quantity to consumers, we will not review it".
mongoosesRawesome - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
"If you are looking for an AGP card, your only option at this price point is really the 6800GT. There are cheaper alternatives, but not better performing AGP alternatives at $400 or less."Umm.. how about the 6800NU? I've seen some sold at 200 dollars. Throw on a arctic cooling heatsing for 25-30 bucks, unlock those pipelines - and you've got yourself a 6800GT, minus the extra memory bandwidth and 128 MB of ram. For 200 to 250 dollars less than the GT, I think that is the AGP deal here. At least until ATI comes out with an AGP version of the X800 XL.
davidos - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Anand, thanks for the great review.... Do you have any knowledge or hints as to when the pci-e 6800gts are going to start showing up in more volume?