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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a2daj - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
I forgot to add that I enjoyed the depth of the article, particularly the information about dual-link DVI. Hopefully, that will clear up some common misconceptions regarding DL DVI.aliasfox - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
I applaud the Mac benchmarking- handled in a fair and objective manner, with the professionalism I've come to expect from AnandTech. If you can get your hands on Motion, that is apparently a non-game graphics card intensive program.As I read through the article, I missed one important fact: what setting is the processor set on the G5? All G5 desktops offer the option of running the processor always at highest (in this case, 2.0 GHz), or at a lower speed, the "Reduced" setting. Reduced cranks up processor performance on demand, but the performance difference between that and Highest is still noticeable under the type of scrutiny that AnandTech does.
Now, before any PC user wonders why there are power settings on a desktop machine, let me offer an answer: when you don't need the processor (when you're typing in Word, for example), it throttles down, allowing the entire computer to run cooler, and therefore quieter, as the fans can then run at lower speeds.
a2daj - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
Battlefield 1942 and Jedi Outcast as well as Jedi Academy are both available for Mac OS. Same with Call of Duty. I'm surprised he ended up resorting to RtCW. Call of Duty would have been a more interesting test. Splinter Cell is also available. Anand, if you'd like any info on what to test for Mac gaming I'd be happy to provide some suggestions, particularly when it comes to some of the Mac specific settings in various games.Xbench... ugh. The OpenGL test in Xbench is useless. It's shown scores which allude to a Rage 128 being faster than a Radeon 9800 Pro.
skunkbuster - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
that 6800 Ultra DDL is freakin HUGE!shabby - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - link
How aboot some doom3/farcry/hl2/sw:bf/sims2/battlefield/jedi/ benchmarks? Oh wait... n/m ;)