ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on December 1, 2004 9:41 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Half Life 2
| Half Life 2 Performance Summary | |||||
| at_canals_08 | at_coast_05 | at_coast_12 | at_prison_05 | at_c17_12 | |
| ATI Radeon X850 XT PE | 116.1 | 134.2 | 111.3 | 114 | 84.6 |
| ATI Radeon X850 XT | 112.6 | 133.6 | 109.4 | 109.6 | 84.4 |
| ATI Radeon X800 XT | 104.9 | 129.2 | 104 | 106.6 | 83 |
| ATI Radeon X800 XL | 92.3 | 121.1 | 97 | 90.8 | 80.2 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra | 95.6 | 116.4 | 96.4 | 91.6 | 79.7 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT | 85.5 | 108.8 | 89.3 | 80.3 | 76.2 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT | 58.3 | 79.4 | 65.1 | 55.8 | 62.1 |
| ATI Radeon X800 | 66.8 | 98.1 | 73.6 | 65.9 | 72.3 |
| ATI Radeon X850 Pro | 91.1 | 118.7 | 93.6 | 87.7 | 80.4 |
| ATI Radeon X800 Pro | 84.1 | 113.1 | 87.7 | 82 | 78.3 |
For our performance graph, we took our five performance tests and averaged the scores. The results here show the top of the line NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra performing on par with the new Radeon X850 Pro and X800 XL parts. The DirectX based, shader heavy game by Valve clearly runs faster on ATI's hardware.
These numbers are in contrast to Doom 3 performance, as should be expected by now. The adoption of the Doom 3 and Source engines in other projects will continue to be of major interest over the next few months. One engine gaining broader acceptance among game developers could help tip the field in either ATI or NVIDIA's direction.
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IdahoB - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I just hope that the large increase in the variety of cards means that a couple of them which actually be available to buy. It seems that they have more model numbers than physical stock these days. I would have loved a X800 of some description but couldn't find one anywhere in the UK so settled for the still slightly unreliable 6800GT.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#7: At least it's less confusing than intel's new numbering system. yeesh.StrangerGuy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
X800SE,X800,
X800 Pro,
X800 XL,
X800 XT,
X800 XT PE,
X850 Pro,
X850 XT
and X850 XT PE
9 models of high-end ATI cards? Oh man that is really confusing even for enthusiasts and geeks...
Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#4 The 'video processing unit' isn't for playback, it's for encode, and as far as I'm aware, ATI's non-AIW cards don't have hardware encode either.Araemo - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I guess my 9700 Pro is safe for another 8-12 months...hopefully.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
No-one is mentioning the one thing ATI almost certainly has in its favor: video playback. The GeForce 68xx's "video processing unit" still does not have drivers that take advantage of it, whyever the case may be. ATI has always had a strong tradition of video playback performance. I'd really like to see Anandtech bench CPU usage with these cards with 1080 HD .WMV files, as well as with MPEG-2/MPEG-4. This would be truly useful for enthusiasts and help round out our buying decisions.gibhunter - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Ati is looking desperate with this release. Their fastest part is what, 3% faster then their previous champ. On top of that, you still can't find these fastest cards. If they were trying to confuse the customer, they might as well consider it mission accomplished.Personally, I'd just stick with 6800GT and have an upgrade path with an SLI Nforce4 board and another 6800GT in the future.
segagenesis - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
The X850 Pro is somewhat disappointing vs. its competition, does nVidia even have refresh parts planned for winter? I was looking at the $400 price range myself :(Cat - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
If it means more cards are available for less cost, than I'm all for this. It's still kinda disappointing, though.