ATI or Nvidia...best card in £200-£210 range

blueshade · 14 Jan 2006 at 10:04

Hi

Wondering what would be the best card to go for out of the following

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-042-HT)

or

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-102-SP)

or

BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-010-BG)

or

Leadtek GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-073-LT)

or

XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme LED Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) & Call of Duty 2 Bundle - Retail (PVT70G-UDF7) (GX-053-XF)

KiNETiK · 14 Jan 2006 at 10:11

7800 GT

Moeks · 14 Jan 2006 at 10:15

Yea I'd agree with that, if you plan to overclock it though the ATI is 'arguably' the better buy from what I've been reading. Also it is said that the ATI has slightly superior image quality, this is subjective, but I know my X1800XT has superior IQ to my GF 6800GT, is the 7800GT any better in that regard ? ...I really don't know, the 6800GT is very, very good though, don't get me wrong, but the ATI is noticeably better. So worth bearing in mind.

subxero · 14 Jan 2006 at 13:42

Would personally go for the BFG 7800GT, lifetime warranty, can't scoff at that

Col_M · 14 Jan 2006 at 14:16

Why not go for the OcUK 7800GT, cheaper for what is essentailly the same card and you can clock it to comparable gpu and mem speeds. Also all you need IMHO is a 1yr warranty, if it's going to fail it's going to in the first few days or weeks and within 2 years you'll probably be looking to upgrade anyway, 2 years is more than likely well within the MTBF (even with an overclock).
HTH

p.s. you do know those cards you listed fall in the £200-£210 price band before VAT right? once VAT is added you're looking at about £240

DannyW · 14 Jan 2006 at 14:27

dude get the ocuk or winfast 7800gt, there around £200 ******* bargain!!

No swearing, read the FAQ while you're on holiday.

Otacon

Goksly · 14 Jan 2006 at 15:34

I'd go for the XL.
Better image quality and more overclocking head room. Slightly slower at stock.

speeduk · 14 Jan 2006 at 16:57

Goksly said:
I'd go for the XL.
Better image quality and more overclocking head room. Slightly slower at stock.

Links to prove this would be ideal. Standard GT is 400/1000. Most overclock to 450/1100 and some upto 500/1200. Thats pretty good clocking. As for image quality I went from an x800 to a GT and the I.Q is spot on.

My leadtek comes clocked at 450/1050 and clocks to 488/1120.

Raikiri · 14 Jan 2006 at 17:02

I would say get the OCuk value 7800GT, £211 inc. VAT and comes with a brilliant game... Did i mention they actually have a 3 year warranty and mine clocks to 497/1240?

loltim · 14 Jan 2006 at 17:41

Any 7800GT.

Goksly · 14 Jan 2006 at 17:52

speeduk said:
Links to prove this would be ideal. Standard GT is 400/1000. Most overclock to 450/1100 and some upto 500/1200. Thats pretty good clocking. As for image quality I went from an x800 to a GT and the I.Q is spot on.
My leadtek comes clocked at 450/1050 and clocks to 488/1120.

Should have really saved the links but if your willing to dig:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=3 -> Thread on there about people who have gone from flagship nvidia to flagship ati.
http://www.anandtech.com -> Review on there talking about how each company works out AF and that ATI does take more samples and thus provides better quality.
As for overclocking, looking at the 3DMarks each of these cards seem to get overclocked, I dont think Ive seen many GTs break the 9k barrier in 05, but seen plenty of XLs. Yeah yeah people might come back with the mighty "megh - its not benchmarks I care about", but if you look at it from a logical point of view, if a card scores more in a benchmark its more than likely to score better over a series of games.

Another point to base your decision on is what type of games you play. If you are a Doom chump then get the GT, else if youre HL2 monkey, get the XL. Although, for me, OpenGL seem to have a small game library compared to DX, so again - I'd personally pick the XL.

chaparral · 14 Jan 2006 at 18:15

Goksly said:
Should have really saved the links but if your willing to dig:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=3 -> Thread on there about people who have gone from flagship nvidia to flagship ati.
http://www.anandtech.com -> Review on there talking about how each company works out AF and that ATI does take more samples and thus provides better quality.
As for overclocking, looking at the 3DMarks each of these cards seem to get overclocked, I dont think Ive seen many GTs break the 9k barrier in 05, but seen plenty of XLs. Yeah yeah people might come back with the mighty "megh - its not benchmarks I care about", but if you look at it from a logical point of view, if a card scores more in a benchmark its more than likely to score better over a series of games.

Another point to base your decision on is what type of games you play. If you are a Doom chump then get the GT, else if youre HL2 monkey, get the XL. Although, for me, OpenGL seem to have a small game library compared to DX, so again - I'd personally pick the XL.

Where's the links to these XL's breaking 9k in 3d mark05..I see nothing on http://www.anandtech.com about this???
All the reviews i have seen,,have given the XL1800 lower fps in games then the 7800gt

smids · 14 Jan 2006 at 18:25

chaparral said:
Where's the links to these XL's breaking 9k in 3d mark05..I see nothing on http://www.anandtech.com about this???
All the reviews i have seen,,have given the XL1800 lower fps in games then the 7800gt

On this forum - several members have done it. I think the clocks of the XL are superior to the GT and they can score higher for that reason.

Anyway, I'd think more XL purely because I believe it can do HDR with AA. nVidia's cannot do this so I'm lead to believe. Seeing as the cards are virtually identical performers, I'd look at the features:

Two which stand out for me:
HDR with AA
AVIVO encoding - dumps video encoding to the gfx card meaning very fast coding.

The 7800GT is a great card, put one in recently for a friend, so either way you go, you won't be disappointed.

chaparral · 14 Jan 2006 at 18:44

Thanks for your reply smids

I forgot about that HDR with AA on the geforce cards...I remember reading about this somewhere..

Right am off now to do some tests with farcry and this HDR/AA thing....I was only playing farcry again yesterday..(Had some boat killing me all the time)

Goksly · 14 Jan 2006 at 20:35

chaparral said:
Where's the links to these XL's breaking 9k in 3d mark05..I see nothing on http://www.anandtech.com about this???
All the reviews i have seen,,have given the XL1800 lower fps in games then the 7800gt

You have to remember, pure fps is only just part of the pie which defines which card is better. As I said, I have no intention of going through trying to find out exactly which article it was said - but the AF algorithm is better in the ATI implementation.
Also for the 3D mark 9k thingy, there are several posts on this very forum saying that iirc.

oweneades · 14 Jan 2006 at 20:46

I would personally have said the 7800gt would be the better buy. I didn't realise the x1800xl was down around the 210 mark?! or is that before vat.

Both cards are very good and I doubt you would dissapointed in either however if you prefer opengl based games (doom3 / quake 4) they I would sway towards the 7800gt.

GAMEfreak · 14 Jan 2006 at 21:19

thats before VAT. you have all swayed me into thinking about the 1800XL now..., that adaptive anti aliasing is pretty nice too, the thing that aliases alpha maps or whatever. i think i'l go ATI now perhaps, but at the same time, quake 4 looks ever so nice... would an 1800XL be able to keep up with a 7800gt playing Q4 when its ( the 1800XL ) overclocked? or is the gap too big?

Goksly · 14 Jan 2006 at 22:14

1) I *think* nvidia have their own version of adaptive anti aliasing, but cant remember what code name they call it, and i do have a feeling that again, they are slightly behind in the quality race on that - but cant remember where I read that. Might have been hardocp.

2) Quake4 isnt going to be the XL's strong point, but in the Cat 5.12 they released a change for the X1?00 series that improved performance in OpenGL games dramatically. I would think that when overclocked it would close the gap to such an extend you wouldnt be able to tell any performance differences, but the GT would probably have a slender lead when it itself is overclocked as well.

Klo · 14 Jan 2006 at 22:15

As you may have heared before, when you are at 60/70 fps, can you notice 5fps difference?

Alexrose1uk · 14 Jan 2006 at 22:24

The 5.13 improve performance drastically with the new cards.

Also, fyi I run quake 4 on med detail, at 1024x768 with shadows off, but specular, vsync and bump mapping on, and get 40-60fps most of the time, only dropping to around 20 in the worst fire fights.

And the x1800xl is a FAR faster card than the one I have.