im looking for abit of insight here, as i have the option of getting either a 7800GT or an X1800XL to replace my GTO2 (im a greedy person who wants to play loast coast with HDR and sm3.0 )

i have no clue which or what they can do, googled around but i didnt find any reviews pitting the two against each other. ive got 10 days to make up my mind. please help me


EDIT: i forgot to mention i can get an X1800XL for £160 of a 7800GT for £185 so there isnt much to sway me on price...

Id say X1800XL, due to overclocking ability & personal preferance.
But also because of this...

Gibbo said:

Hi there

The X1800XL is the better buy. 7800 GT performance, but superior visuals and AVIVO are all added bonuses.

Also the X1800 XL are superb overclockers and were talking big performance increases by overclocking making them quite a bit quicker than even overclocked 7800 GT's.

Click to expand...

thanks ACESHIGH, i do prefere ATI to Nvidia but i can be swayed based on price performance, but based on that advice and some others, i think the X1800XL is the one for me. can you give me a link to that quote please?

p.s. what card do you use?

Im sad you dont trust me.
But here is the link ... http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17533401

I have a Sapphire X800GTO2 @ X850XT PE. Got it when most people did, when we thought it was a limited edition . Still its a good card for the price.
But we have LAN parties with mates & so get to play with all sorts of cards (both ATI & Nvidia) evewn cards like the X1900XTX, which i havent splashed out on myself.

no no, i do trust you lol i just wanted to read the whole thread for the sake of it

and "when we thought it was a limited edition" indeed... suffice to say i was none too happy. if it were limited edition it would have held its value a lot better

is it true the XTX has 48 pipe lines ???!!!

locutus12 said:

no no, i do trust you lol i just wanted to read the whole thread for the sake of it

and "when we thought it was a limited edition" indeed... suffice to say i was none too happy. if it were limited edition it would have held its value a lot better

is it true the XTX has 48 pipe lines ???!!!

Click to expand...

48 pixel shaders, since ati assume future games will make heavy use of shaders. Its got a 512-bit memory interface which is connected in 2 * 256-bit busses. 16 pipelines still.

Not 48 pixel pipelines as such no. 48 pixel shaders though.

ATI has begun to decouple the pixel shaders from the texture units, so the traditional “pixel pipeline” as we knew it for years in R300 and R420/R480 no longer applies. The following chart sums things up nicely:

Pixel Shaders Vertex Shaders Texture address units ROPs
Radeon X1900 XTX/XT 48 8 16 16
Radeon X1800 XT/XL 16 8 16 16
GeForce 7800 GTX 24 8 24 16
GeForce 7800 GT 20 8 20 16

With 48 pixel processors and only 16 texture units and ROPs, ATI feels that game developers in the future will increasingly use pixel shaders to create their stunning effects. After all, pixel shaders are not only growing more common, but also more complex, with an increasing number of shaders in games being arithmetic (versus texture) operations. ATI’s looking towards the future, where shader-heavy games are the norm, rather than many of today’s titles, which are more dependant on texturing and raw fill-rate. In these types of applications, R580 will perform more like its predecessor, the X1800XT.

Depends on your gaming resolution. If either 1024x768 or 1280x1024 then any X1800, 7800GT/GTX will be more than enough as they should all give up to 60FPS (only really need 30FPS for smooth gameplay).

X1900 + 7800GTX512 & or SLI + Xfire are only really useful @ 1600x1200 or higher when you have a lot more pixels to render.

Obviously below 1600x1200 you would still get a boost FPS wise but most games are now locked to 60FPS max (unless they can be modded). Save yourself some money unless you wanna game @ ultra high res & or future proof for another 12-18 months.

I would buy a 7800GT over an X1800XL any day, because the price/performance ratio is better and when they are both overclocked the performance difference is neglible. Not to mention the 7800GT is cooler and quieter.

I would, however, give my right arm for an X1900XT.

Id debate the point that they are cooler and quieter, if you get one of the noisy 7800GT's, they will make your ears bleed

Ive owned both, preferred the X1800XL, but they are both cracking cards though

I would get a 7800 only just incase you want to SLI in future, ( some might think this an advantage) whereas the X1800's are being phased out very soon indeed and so you are stuck at a dead end.

Otehrwise its about equal

Personal preference is a 7800gt because my mate had to RMA his x1800xl, of course this is nothing to go by. If you get an Extreme edition or the like you will more than likely get good overclocks pushing the perfomance close to a gtx 256mb at stock speeds. Unable to really comment on x1900xl's overclocking abilities.

Also the 7800gt has 20 pipelines compared to the xl's 16 but the core speed increase may make up for this.

So there both as good as each other in my eyes.

I was in this exact same bind a month ago and went for the 7800gt. From what reviews i read it seemed to be marginally quicker than the x1800xl and it overclocked very well. The new optional features it supports like 'supersampling' also give it a visual advantage over the x1800xl (though the x1800xl makes up for it in other places.)

The real reason i went for it though is because the 7800gt price looks like it might be about ripe for SLi in 4-6 months. Most SLi options turn out to be non cost effective, but with the right timing of purchase you get better performance for your money. Lets say you spend £210 now for a first card that will meet all your needs today. In 6 months, once the 7900s are mainstream, the 7800s will move to where the 6800s are now. You'll probably be able to pick one up for less than £150 (maybe even £120) which will be cheaper and probably better performance than what you could get if you sold your first card and put the money towards another.

However if you can make your budget stretch to it, the best value premium card at the moment looks to be the X1800XT. If i was buying now, that's what i'd go for.

man_from_uncle said:

The real reason i went for it though is because the 7800gt price looks like it might be about ripe for SLi in 4-6 months. Most SLi options turn out to be non cost effective, but with the right timing of purchase you get better performance for your money. Lets say you spend £210 now for a first card that will meet all your needs today. In 6 months, once the 7900s are mainstream, the 7800s will move to where the 6800s are now. You'll probably be able to pick one up for less than £150 (maybe even £120) which will be cheaper and probably better performance than what you could get if you sold your first card and put the money towards another.

However if you can make your budget stretch to it, the best value premium card at the moment looks to be the X1800XT. If i was buying now, that's what i'd go for.

Click to expand...

This is true - however watch out for Nv making 512mb cards mainstream also, so therefore keeping pricing high for a while yet while scrapping 256mb

Just a possibility..........

Hmmm out of those two I would choose the 7800GT.

The x1800XL is a great card but I have read a few different reports about the cores being hard to overclock which could hinder your overclocking efforts (the main reason to buy a x1800xl over a 7800).

Are all 7800GT cards the same? Theres quite a price difference on the site between different makes.

If they arent all the same, which is the best at stock and overclocked?

Cheers

Get one one with a good guarantee, BFG give a lifetime guarantee, Leadtek give two years, whilst Point of View, Gigabyte only give a single year. At present I think OCuk have the Leadtek for £199inc vat, pretty good price me thinks.

Rob H

X1800XL due to the overclocking potential and it's so called excellent image quality.

Mul

Get whatever is cheaper, both cards are excellent and will perform on similar levels.

FrankJH said:

I would get a 7800 only just incase you want to SLI in future, ( some might think this an advantage) whereas the X1800's are being phased out very soon indeed and so you are stuck at a dead end.

Otehrwise its about equal

Click to expand...

well my current board has no SLI capabillity and i use a 19" LCD which means my max res is 1280X1024 so im still very much open to either SLI or crossfire, but it wont be for at least 14 months as my motherboard supports the new M2 AMD cpu`s comming out so there isnt much point in me going for 2 cards till they really are dirt cheap, i.e. £80 a pop.