X1800XT - quick reply if possible!

[Dark_Angel]

Hey,

I currently have an x800XTAGP and 1GB ram, a venice at 2.75GHZ.

Is it worth me ditching the board I have, and grabbing an 1800XT 256MB of ram, its mostly for elderscrolls and co. I play at 1280 or higher typically.

I was planning on grabbing the x1800XT now, and then grabbing the PCI board next week thursday or friday. I only have a standard PSU though, and I dont have the PCI express compatibale connections. Is this something to really worry about? or do I need to buy one of these also? lastly how much of a boost will I get from my current x800XT? it is clocked at about 540/540 at the moment.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Should get a good boost, i went from an x800 XT PE to an x1800 XT 512mb, performance increase is staggering, i only use 1280x1024 as having a TFT to, you can get the connectors here if you don't have em, 7th one down.

 

[Dark_Angel]

So I should grab a 4 to 6 pin converter, as well as the 20 to 24 pin converter?

Lastly, I looked at a few sites and it seems that although the 7800GT is a lovely card, the x1800 beats it by about 10 - 15 percent... so its worth the extra bit of cash?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Deffo, the XT is faster than the GTX.

Yeah grab the connectors as well, although i think you get the 4 pin to 6 pin convertors in the box, i got one in with my Sapphire card.

 

[Dark_Angel]

Hmmm,

I was doing a bit more searching around... it seems that the 7900GT always slightly beats the x1800XT, especially the 256MB of ram version... I am thinking it may be worth waiting a week or so and seeing what happens with the stock levels on the nvidia cards. At the least I can buy the motherboard and the graphics card at the same time, in case I need to RMA something...

Anyone convice me otherwise?

 

[Delvis]

If your getting an X1800Xt the converter should come with the card in all fairness...but the 20 to 24 pin converter "shouldnt" be needed...we get boards with 24 pin connections but with 20 pin PSU's and they work fine.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Odd that, the 7900 GT is about on par with the 7800 GTX, and the x1800 XT is faster than the GTX, its about on par with the 512mb GTX now with the latest drivers.

 

[easyrider]

Well the performance of my old 7900 GT was on par with a 512mb x1800 and got the same points in 05.

And that was with a mild overclock.

 

[ACESHIGH]

I would recommend gettthing the 512MB X1800XT.
Most reviews i read states the X1800XT is faster.
Anyway the 512MB ram will likely be more & more valualbe as newer games come out.

I don't believe anyone reading this would disagree that 512MB cards will become a firm requirement of high end gaming very soon, but the key question here is do 512MB framebuffers offer anything to us now, other than future proofing? To answer this we first need to understand exactly what happens to a 256MB card when you max out its memory (VRAM).

Simply put, the data that cannot be stored locally in VRAM is transferred to system memory where you will incur large latency penalties across the board. Technically the only penalty incurred should be fps losses, but a typical symptom you'll probably encounter is stuttering caused by texture swapping from the system RAM to the VRAM, generally known as cache thrashing. This takes place because textures needing to be displayed on screen obtain absolute priority, so if a texture needing to go on screen is currently being held in system RAM it will need to be moved to the video card ram before it can be displayed. Like I said, technically this should not happen, but inefficient memory management in many game engines guarantees the stuttering issue a common one. So a 512MB card is indeed preferred where high res & AA/AF are a requirement.

 

[oweneades]

The X1800XT is a quality card. Accordingly to Guru3d's latest review of the X1900XT (where they have graphs which include the X1800XT and the 7900gt) the X1800XT is in the lead in all games except thoses which are known to be in favour or Nvidia (OpenGL).

TBH the performance difference between all the high end cards is small but seeing as the X1800XT is cheaper (On OCUK at least) I would go for that.