Make up my mind - X1900XT-X or 7900GTX

Nobski · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:15

Flanno said:
Well I probably should have mentioned on my post that value wasn't a major concern as I was prepared to buy either card. The tone of your postby telling someone they they 'need to learn' something instead of suggesitng it to them, comes off as sounding beligerant and unappreciated in my book.

pot, kettle, black

Flanno · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:19

Which part - the value bit or sounding beligerant.

I do admit I was up until recently reckless with my spending on PC upgrades and besides this 1 purchase I am pretty value conscious, I reckon.

If you are calling me beligerant, then we have a problem.

man_from_uncle · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:28

To question 2: Not in my experiance.

Nobski · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:31

Flanno said:
Which part - the value bit or sounding beligerant.

I do admit I was up until recently reckless with my spending on PC upgrades and besides this 1 purchase I am pretty value conscious, I reckon.

If you are calling me beligerant, then we have a problem.

You have answered this by your last line, linky

Anyways, its only a piece of hardware, so nothing to get stressed about

trojan698 · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:44

Let's not fight over graphics cards people.

Flanno · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:48

Nobski said:
You have answered this by your last line, linky

Anyways, its only a piece of hardware, so nothing to get stressed about

Well my original comment wasn't even addressed at you, so why the smartness - why get involved ?

Flanno · 17 Apr 2006 at 22:49

trojan698 said:
Let's not fight over graphics cards people.

Yeah, let not fight.

Nobski · 17 Apr 2006 at 23:07

Flanno said:
Yeah, let not fight.

Ditto

Richdog · 17 Apr 2006 at 23:12

Ahh there's nothing like a good old 7900 vx X1900 thread to get adults acting like children within 5 minutes.

Flanno · 17 Apr 2006 at 23:39

I think I will buy both and send back the one which benches slower. God bless credit cards

pieman109 · 18 Apr 2006 at 00:51

Forget benchmarks, these two cars perform VERY similarly in all games and unless you're running fraps or summat, you'll not see any difference I reckon, only when you start to push the ingame settings (very high res, lots of AA and AF, etc) you might see one card pull ahead of the other.
I've got an X1900XT with a VF900 cooler fitted and for cooling performance and silence "at max speed" which its set to permanently, its virtually silent. I run all ganes at 1280 x 1024, 4 x aa, 8 x af, and I've never once had any slowdown in anything that caused stuttering or difficulty when playing games.
Choose absed on cost/value for money, you won't be disappointed with either.

easyrider · 18 Apr 2006 at 02:05

Flanno said:
Hmmm...I have been reading reviews now. And so far on vr-zone and xbitlabs the 7900gtx came out ahead at 1280 and 1600 with 4x AA/16xAF. It was faster in Quake4,Doom3,HL2:Lost coast, pretty much tied in COD2 and BF2, and only lost out in Oblivion. Anandtech shows a closer battle, but the 7900gtx comes out ahead in most games, if ever so slightly.

I know the ati is supposed to have better image quality and can run HDR/AA at the same time but I am thinking this trade off is worth it for less noise/power consumption which is important to me, and still be as fast or possibly faster then the ati in current games.

Yes if the issue of heat noise and power are factors get the quieter cooler and less power hungry card being the 7900 GTX.

In benchmarks its faster in some games its faster of couse it cant do AA and HDR at the same time but IMO who cares.

I think some porkies are being told with HDR + AA in terms of frames in games and this seems to be the only arguement people have at the moment with regards to the x1900.

And the funny thing is whats 50 quid saving at the top level of pc hardware?
Nothing IMO.

I shouldn't have to fit an after market cooler on my 350 quid gfx card to make it quiet.Making the financial gap between the x1900 and 7900 GTX closer still.

Ill install my 7900GTX and have silent,and I mean silent top end cool gfx power thankyou very much.

But everyone is different.

Energize · 18 Apr 2006 at 02:10

LoadsaMoney said:
Yeah x1900 XT, clocked to XTX, and also able to have AA+HDR on at the same time in games like Oblivion, which Nvidia can't do, also x1900 is cheaper, just uses more power, and generates more heat than the GTX.

IIrc you cant run oblivion with aa and hdr, because its a programming issue not a hardware one.

Flanno · 18 Apr 2006 at 02:43

Fair comments Easyrider. Also I am a bit reluctant to mess with the stock cooler for warranty reasons on such an expensive card. I would prefer something I can just plug in an use and know it aint go to be noisy, and since my psu is limited power wise and would be tricky to replace, it would be nice to have a card I know isn't going to suck it dry and still have some juice left over for a physx card if they takeoff.

I'm going to have a think about it over the next day or so before I make up my mind.

Out of curioisity - would you recommend the cheapest 7900gtx I can find and overclock it. Is there a good chance it will reach the same speeds as the extreme xfs's. And if so, which would you recommend, the OcUK version or the Gainward which are both in stock.

egt · 18 Apr 2006 at 07:49

Energize said:
IIrc you cant run oblivion with aa and hdr, because its a programming issue not a hardware one.

Ati have released a driver patch so that AA+HDR indeed can be enabled in Oblivion. Trouble is, there's a massive performance hit in outdoor area's with running both together, so much so that i don't even bother with it now. The game looks amazing with just HDR anyway.

Flanno, whichever card you buy, shop around and get the cheapest. IMO, the "OC" versions are just a gimmick and another way to get more money out of us

THC_SsSsSnake · 18 Apr 2006 at 08:53

O/T
Lovely pics of PF sea

easyrider · 18 Apr 2006 at 09:11

Flanno said:
Fair comments Easyrider. Also I am a bit reluctant to mess with the stock cooler for warranty reasons on such an expensive card. I would prefer something I can just plug in an use and know it aint go to be noisy, and since my psu is limited power wise and would be tricky to replace, it would be nice to have a card I know isn't going to suck it dry and still have some juice left over for a physx card if they takeoff.

I'm going to have a think about it over the next day or so before I make up my mind.

Out of curioisity - would you recommend the cheapest 7900gtx I can find and overclock it. Is there a good chance it will reach the same speeds as the extreme xfs's. And if so, which would you recommend, the OcUK version or the Gainward which are both in stock.

Yeah I would just go for the cheapest the chances are it will clock to higher.I have mine running 700/1800 with no issues.

Mercutio · 18 Apr 2006 at 12:38

easyrider said:
Yes if the issue of heat noise and power are factors get the quieter cooler and less power hungry card being the 7900 GTX.

In benchmarks its faster in some games its faster of couse it cant do AA and HDR at the same time but IMO who cares.

I think some porkies are being told with HDR + AA in terms of frames in games and this seems to be the only arguement people have at the moment with regards to the x1900.

And the funny thing is whats 50 quid saving at the top level of pc hardware?
Nothing IMO.

I shouldn't have to fit an after market cooler on my 350 quid gfx card to make it quiet.Making the financial gap between the x1900 and 7900 GTX closer still.

Ill install my 7900GTX and have silent,and I mean silent top end cool gfx power thankyou very much.

But everyone is different.

The point is it's not £350 its £380, you seem to have mis-placed a good £30 somewhere there. It IS a difference of around £70/80 between the 2 cards, (thats around 20% extra) the stock cooler isnt an issue unless you really are used to almost complete silence (ala big box ibm/dell/compaq etc silent).
The option is there to add a silent cooler if needed. The 2 sites on the net that are generally viewed as being the most "fair" in reviews (anandtech and firing squad) both have the X1900XT in a fair lead.
We have a thread of around 20 people giving good fair reasons why the X1900XT is a better purchase but of course their all wrong because of a few fairly pitiful reasons you give.
We know you LOVE nvidia with the zeal only a true fanboi can have but take a slightly more reasonable view when people come wanting to spend money wisely.

If you want to spend around an extra 25% of the X1900XT's price on a card that is at best on par with the only difference being the retail cooler and higher power consumption by all means, go right ahead.

If you play doom/quake engine games the nvidias are ahead.
If you play COD/source based games or oblivion ATI is the way forward.

Richdog · 18 Apr 2006 at 13:09

Mercutio said:
The point is it's not £350 its £380, you seem to have mis-placed a good £30 somewhere there. It IS a difference of around £70/80 between the 2 cards, (thats around 20% extra) the stock cooler isnt an issue unless you really are used to almost complete silence (ala big box ibm/dell/compaq etc silent).
The option is there to add a silent cooler if needed. The 2 sites on the net that are generally viewed as being the most "fair" in reviews (anandtech and firing squad) both have the X1900XT in a fair lead.
We have a thread of around 20 people giving good fair reasons why the X1900XT is a better purchase but of course their all wrong because of a few fairly pitiful reasons you give.
We know you LOVE nvidia with the zeal only a true fanboi can have but take a slightly more reasonable view when people come wanting to spend money wisely.

If you want to spend around an extra 25% of the X1900XT's price on a card that is at best on par with the only difference being the retail cooler and higher power consumption by all means, go right ahead.

If you play doom/quake engine games the nvidias are ahead.
If you play COD/source based games or oblivion ATI is the way forward.

Well said, seems sensible and objective opinions are a rarity these days...

speeduk · 18 Apr 2006 at 15:30

egt said:
Ati have released a driver patch so that AA+HDR indeed can be enabled in Oblivion. Trouble is, there's a massive performance hit in outdoor area's with running both together, so much so that i don't even bother with it now. The game looks amazing with just HDR anyway.

Have you tried tweaking the ini? I gained 15fps overall from tweaking the settings which made up for high res texture mods and HDR+AA.