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9800GX2 Tweaktown benched

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ebilcake said:
But the card came from an unknown source, I know that because I actually read the review. :rolleyes:

This might interest you also.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33918735
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so an NDA card came along from ATi obviously as Nvidia love to hand their cards out over there, so this ATi guy sent the wrong drivers over :p

We all knew it wasn't going to be great, so what.

AS to if they "had" to rehash old tech, yes they did. You guys are missing the "business" aspect here. The 8800gtx might have been the fastest single core, but it doesn't matter. ATi are making massively cheaper cores, put them together and in all likelyhood making a much higher profit on the X2 than Nvidia was on their "faster" 8800gtx. In terms of money, and this is something very few people seem to notice, ATI has wiped the floor with Nvidia.

The mid/low end 8000 series came out at the SAME time as ATi's mid/low range, except ATi's had better features and were cheaper. The 2900xt was always supposed to be a 65nm part, 65nm sucks hard at the fabs where they are making them.

Nvidia DID have to rehash their stuff as they simply couldn't compete on pricing vs ATi. Ati were making a lot more cores per waifer, on the whole range, and Nvidia were losing money its as simple as that. Without a "new" 8800 or the 9800 they'd be screwed. Without the 8800gt/new gts them simply wouldn't have sold more than 10 cards total since the 3870 release which would have been half the price for similar performance.

ATi have done magnificently, they've dragged computing back to value, Ok the quads are iffy , untill later this month, but then you've got £120 quad cores, looking set to be sub £100 quads easily by the end of the year. Midrange price now gets you the high end part in graphics cards, they've taken £200 of the price of the ultra high end part, as opposed to nvidia who were happy to add £50 to the top end part every single generation.

Yes we "might" have a faster part, though its unlikely, from nvidia had it not been, but that next 9800 "real next gen" ultra would have been £500.

Once sales on the 9800gx2 are known to be utter crap they will drop to £280-320 range to compete with ati which hopefully nvidia will be held to for the next few generations to come aswell.

AS for Vista drivers, especially 64bit, nvidia still haven't got total stability in 64bit, let alone a fast driver set. I thought the whole idea was we can either get fast drivers, or stable. From day one of the 2900xt launch there have been stable 64bit vista drivers from ATi on a monthly release. Yes they do tend to do a hotfix here or there, but every nvidia driver release, like the crysis one, seems to entail 10 separate beta/final sets over the space of 2 weeks. I love that Crysis, a TWIMTBP game, took a SINGLE ATi driver to work perfectly for me.

This is why i have a not altogether perfect phenom, against my Q6600 it performs IDENTICALLY in GAMES< although benchmarks it sucks. Maybe if you really won't ever see the difference you should throw your support to the guys who fight really hard to bring you better value, service and support.
 
I'd choose an 8800GTS 640 over a 2900XT anyday since the 2900XT was, and I repeat was slower than the GTS 640. And as for drivers in Vista 64 I've been using Vista 64 for quite a while now and had no problems what so ever and games ran fine.
 
willhub said:
I'd choose an 8800GTS 640 over a 2900XT anyday since the 2900XT was, and I repeat was slower than the GTS 640. And as for drivers in Vista 64 I've been using Vista 64 for quite a while now and had no problems what so ever and games ran fine.
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Emphasis on was, because after a some driver optimizing the 2900XT topped it in most games.
 
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I have owned an X2 for about 3 weeks now and I am really impressed with it. I am running Vista 32 with Cat 8.3 and have had zero issues. The fan now runs quiet since using 8.3 and reseating the heatsink.

In the last 3 weeks I have played Oblivion, Hellgate, NWN2, Sins of a Solar Empire and UT3. I have noticed no slow downs and the frame rates have been much better than my overclocked GTS 512 and GTX. Thats with the X2 at stock.

In Hellgate there is a big difference in IQ. The X2 actually renders the game perfectly. With the GTS there are all sorts of issues. Portals for example.

I really love the way it uses power. For example

I'm running a Quad @ 3 Ghz, 3 HD ( 1 Raptor ), water pump, 5 120mm fans and I idle about 190 watts at the socket.

Playing Sins of a solar Empire I get a load of 232 Watts
Hell Gate 300 Watts
UT3 around 275 Watts

Seems to turn on the power when required and doesn't over render frames for low end games like Sins.

I have found Crossfire so far to be transparent and a far better experience than I had with SLI which drove me to despair.

I have been following the new 9800 series with interest but so far remain unimpressed. I will probbaly give them a miss just like I didn't bother with the 2900 series.

For me the X2 is a worthy upgrade from the GTS / GTX especially for the money.

Just thought I would throw this in for anyone thinking of buying a dual gpu card.
 
Richdog said:
Mate if that's the best response you can come up with to a well-structured argument, no matter whether you agree or not, then you're just trolling, plain and simple. Kids stuff.
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He's being a troll and a fanboy ;). At least most people here make intelligent posts on this topic, too many people are way to into brand loyalty. It's a bit creepy for people to be so into graphics cards in a way that makes them spew crap when the "enemy" is spoken about in any positive way. Best they can do is insult since they have nothing more intelligent to come back with.
 
The Asgard said:
I really love the way it uses power. For example

I'm running a Quad @ 3 Ghz, 3 HD ( 1 Raptor ), water pump, 5 120mm fans and I idle about 190 watts at the socket.

Playing Sins of a solar Empire I get a load of 232 Watts
Hell Gate 300 Watts
UT3 around 275 Watts

Seems to turn on the power when required and doesn't over render frames for low end games like Sins.
Click to expand...

Asgard, how did you measure your watt draw mate? :)
 
The Asgard said:
I have owned an X2 for about 3 weeks now and I am really impressed with it. I am running Vista 32 with Cat 8.3 and have had zero issues. The fan now runs quiet since using 8.3 and reseating the heatsink.

In the last 3 weeks I have played Oblivion, Hellgate, NWN2, Sins of a Solar Empire and UT3. I have noticed no slow downs and the frame rates have been much better than my overclocked GTS 512 and GTX. Thats with the X2 at stock.

In Hellgate there is a big difference in IQ. The X2 actually renders the game perfectly. With the GTS there are all sorts of issues. Portals for example.

I really love the way it uses power. For example

I'm running a Quad @ 3 Ghz, 3 HD ( 1 Raptor ), water pump, 5 120mm fans and I idle about 190 watts at the socket.

Playing Sins of a solar Empire I get a load of 232 Watts
Hell Gate 300 Watts
UT3 around 275 Watts

Seems to turn on the power when required and doesn't over render frames for low end games like Sins.

I have found Crossfire so far to be transparent and a far better experience than I had with SLI which drove me to despair.

I have been following the new 9800 series with interest but so far remain unimpressed. I will probbaly give them a miss just like I didn't bother with the 2900 series.

For me the X2 is a worthy upgrade from the GTS / GTX especially for the money.

Just thought I would throw this in for anyone thinking of buying a dual gpu card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the Info mate I always like what you have to stay nice and honest, what res do you game at with the X2
 
Maybe this will replace my crusty olde 8800GTS 640Mb :o

Looking forward to a 2 x GX2's benchmark to see how it holds up against the 3870x2 in tri/quad crossfire.
 
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