ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition: Competition in the Mac Market
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 5, 2005 7:38 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Final Words
Without Doom 3 it’s tough to give a full gaming performance evaluation of the X800 XT, especially as it compares to the GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL. If the Mac port of Doom 3 is anything like the PC version, then we’d expect the 6800 Ultra DDL to be the GPU of choice for it, and unlike the PC front – there is no Half Life 2 to balance things out.
The X800 XT remains quite strong and competitive in Halo, our only shader enabled GPU test here, and offers much higher performance than the 6800 Ultra with anti-aliasing enabled. In older games, the X800 XT and the 6800 Ultra are both fast enough to be CPU bound by even a 2GHz G5, so the performance there is basically a toss up.
We are a bit disappointed by the X800 XT’s lower UI performance than the 6800 Ultra DDL, which is an issue but one that we hope ATI can address through future driver updates.
The biggest advantage ATI offers here is in the size of the X800 XT vs. the 6800 Ultra. Occupying only a single slot, the X800 XT doesn’t touch any of the limited 3 PCI-X slots on the G5, whereas the 6800 Ultra prevents you from using one of them. The two cards produce about an equal amount of noise outside of the G5 tower, but both are noticeably louder than the fanless 9600 XT.
At the $499 price point, the X800 XT Mac Edition is a better buy than the $599 6800 Ultra DDL, and while we didn’t compare to the $499 6800GT, we’d expect the X800 XT to be a better overall performer considering the two cards have equal memory bandwidth while the X800 XT has a 36% higher peak fill rate.
However, if you are interested in running two 30” Cinema Displays then you are out of luck with the X800 XT. Our recommendation right now is if you’re looking to run two 30” displays then the 6800 family is the way to go, otherwise the X800 XT is just as good of an option. Once Doom 3 arrives for the Mac however things could change, as we’ve seen on the PC side, Doom 3 has been a very strong seller of NVIDIA GPUs since its release.
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Dennis Travis - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
Very well done Anand. Thanks so much.I am told Doom III should be out sometime late January or early Feburary. Battlefield and Call of Duty have been out for a long time as well as The Sims and other games.
aliasfox - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
#12You may be able to flash the X800XT's firmware with PC firmware to get it to work, though as the cards are slightly different, I wouldn't guarantee it working. $500 is a lot to just try this out (and find out it doesn't work).
KirinRiotCrash - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
ProviaFan is right. The Mac versions of the ATI cards use a different BIOS so that they work with Macs. I would guess if you were to hook this up on a PC, you'd need to reflash it with your trusty set of BIOS hacking tools in order to make it work on the PC. I do know that in the Mac side, in order for a PC ATI card (and some nVidias, too)to work properly, it needs to be re-flashed first.ProviaFan - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
Aside from the ADC connector, I would suppose that these cards use different BIOSes from their PC counterparts - something that would make them incompatible even if everything else were identical.Poser - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
I'd also like to know what #9 asked - what would happen if you plugged one of these in a PC? What're the hardware diffences that make graphics cards incompatible?Poser - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
Speaking as someone who dislikes Apple, I still find these articles interesting. It's peering into niches which I'd otherwise never bother to look at, much like the reviews of high end workstations. In both cases, I can't see myself ever buying the products discussed, but there's always little tidbits that flesh out my understanding of computing in general - stuff like the paragraph on the TMDS links.Thanks for yet another well written article, Anand.
jeremyk44 - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - link
What about a consumer PC card that can run the 30 inch display? What would happen if you plugged the ATI card into a PCGooger - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
#2 It's standard size for some Workstation Cards, and is within PCI Spec. You are just used to seeing 1/4 sized PCI cardsKirinRiotCrash - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
As both a PC and a Mac user, I really do appreciate this kind of article posted on a PC-centric site. It doesn't look biased and it's rather professional. (Whether hardcore PC users appreciate these kind of Mac-based articles is another story).Although, I would agree that you should also include Motion benches there, too. Motion, I heard, is rather hard on the graphics card. Last I checked, a minimum of a Radeon 9500 is required.
OriginalReaper - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
.01% of your readers thank you for this article