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81 Comments
- OBKenobi, on 10/11/2007, -2/+27There is not a single reason to get an ATI DX10 card for gaming so far. Very disappointing, because Nvidia isn't exactly doing great so far either. Gotta love those 8800's hitting 80c! Even more fun in SLI. You're talking about total system heat dissipation approaching that of low-end Microwave ovens.
They really should start offering some sort of grilling attachment with them. Some sort of grill-heatsink combo. - eplawless, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17please, please don't sign your posts.
please. - 0ceanic, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18im glad there is finally a review of a new videocard that speaksnot only to consumers who want to play videogames, but also to who wants great video. bout damn time. atleast they found something right with the card. plenty of info in the review, just how i like em.
- aldenhg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14That would be incredibly useful for the gamer in a ***** apartment. No stove? Just pull out the 8800 GTX/George Foreman and fire up Bioshock!
- pathy, on 10/11/2007, -3/+16Well, I prefer hardware reviews like this to all the Sony crap that you Digg.
- AngryBacon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12Jimmie! I need you to start playing so I can make dinner!
- calebb, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9True. Look at the hardware survey that Valve publishes. ( http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html ) In all reality, there aren't that many people willing to shell out $500 for a video card. Mid-range cards are the bread & butter for ATi/AMD/NVIDIA. Great article!
- hockeysmurf, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11Booo DirectX10. Go OpenGL!
- pathy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Don't give any advice to people planning to invest. Ever.
- HaMMerHeD, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6The last line of the 4th paragraph from the end of page 10 does indicate that we did disable driver signing enforcement.
" [ . . . ] None of them would even install their respective drivers until we manually disabled driver signing (by pressing F8 during Windows' boot sequence, and selecting the appropriate menu item). [ . . . ]" - AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -1/+6There's no way MS will ever release DX10 for XP, if they want to they basically have to recode XP it'self, and then people would have to buy XP2.0 or something. I can't remember where I read it, but it's practically impossible for XP to support DX10.
- INTERNETMASTER, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5nvidia had a real stinker in the geforcefx series too, but they bounced back and now make the best cards out there. I hope ATI can do the same thing, because fierce competition pushes technology forward xD
- Guspaz, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Recent reviews have shown that even the 8800 sucks at DX10 gaming (currently).
The conclusion was essentially that by switching most games to DX10 mode, you took a big performance hit (on the 8800) and got only minor increases in quality. The idea being that DX9 mode actually looks better because you can crank up the detail (resolutions/antialiasing/etc).
Of course, you could put two 8800 Ultra in SLI, but the number of gamers who can afford that kind of rig are few and far between. - AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -1/+5DX10 isn't overhyped, if anything, it's underhyped.
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9550
This thread alone should change your mind. - Darksaber11, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Come on ATI, what the ***** are you doing? I've always been an NVIDIA guy, until AMD bought ATI; that gave me pause and made me think there must be something good that AMD saw in them. But ever since the two have become one, all I've had from either is a long string of disappointments as a gamer. It's so damn sad.
- BrandonMills, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The Nvidia Geforce 5000 series was a joke at the time. ATI absolutely creamed the competition.
ATI / AMD needs to do with graphics cards what they did with processors - drastically cut prices. - XYZ1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The R600, what a flop.
It was really a good decision to buy a BFG 8800GTS 640MB back in Dec. 06. It was available for 400-450EUR these days, and today (7 months later) this card still costs 400EUR.
The 8800 series is now 8 months old and these are still the fastest graphic cards available. Shame on you ATI! Everyone said the R600 will blow away the nVidia 8800 series. And now? Less performance with higher power consuption. I can't remember exactly what card was that far away from the competition for such a long period like the 8800GTX was, but I think it was the Radeon 9800. - c0ldfusi0n, on 10/11/2007, -5/+8I'll never buy an ATI again due to their lack of support for the Linux and open-source community.
- AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Both dropped the ball at one time or another Smokez, but when it comes down to it. ATI really dropped the ball with this though because its the introduction to a new form of Direct X support, and it's the most critical time to gain people for support of your graphics cards.
- flair1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4maybe the problem is DX10? The cards are probably fine.
- BrandonMills, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5What good, though, is at this rate, I won't have to worry about DX10 until the NEXT version of Windows :)
- Spuy767, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Yeah, GPUs can take much much more heat than CPUs. Most GPUs have a factory shutoff temp approaching 130C, so at 80C, the thing is practically running cool.
- DocDEB, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Why I only game during the winter. Sure cuts the heating bills.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4maybe a 3rd player (that is strong) is needed?
- Scruffydan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The low end OEM market is probably even bigger, but it is probably under represented in the Steam survey because those people arn;t gamers
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4AMD and nVidia both show that there simply isn't enough money to be made at the high end to be worth competing with them. Sure, the few niche gamers care about nothing but graphics and just want more power, but 80+% of the public is served satisfactory by a double-buffered framebuffer. Catering to that market, and integrating the video into all of their chipsets caused them to hit #1 in the graphics market quite quickly.
Realize that adding more and more graphics power does absolutely nothing for the computer at all (currently). Nothing else but video games actually use that added advantage, so you're throwing money at hardware you're only using for a small percentage of time. Intel's not the kind of company that works that way.
What we need is a viable 3rd party, resurrect an old video card maker from the dead or create a new, more flexible company. Someone who would care enough to cater to the middle market (people who need more than a prettified framebuffer, but less than a 64-core 200W video card) and in such a way that their products are easy to use for everyone. The market is primed for innovation now that competition has stagnated due to Dx10 and its difficulties, and new uses for video hardware are cropping up every day. Someone who would just license some MPEG hardware, throw a few 300MHz modified MIPS cores on a die with some reconfigurable logic and start printing money. But, alas. - Giga, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Don't worry, it's probably faster than the HD 2600 XT judging by this review.
- Sneakernets, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4.. I just bought an X850. *****....
- Giga, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3And the 8800GTS is a better card which also could do with better drivers, ignoring completely the dominance of the GTX and Ultra versions...
- Giga, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2The only reason you would want this card is in a HTPC for HD playback, however the card is too darn big and consumes too much power under idle to be practical.
- Spuy767, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2He's right tho. It's just like the days when Quake 3 performance was used as a benchmark constantly, and all manufacturers cards ignored post processing and whatnot to achieve higher framerates. I really don't see AMD snatching up any game houses tho. They couldn't afford any of the big boys, and the little boys don't have a big enough footprint to make it worth it.
- AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -1/+3The problem is, this generation is one of the more important ones as far as support for certain things go. If you don't support things as far as introductions to the new graphics settings, how will you gain the trust of your buyer to purchase something in the later generation?
- AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -1/+3The 8800 GTS 320 MB edition isn't doing too badly at DX10 support. It's doing better than this card though.
Though, that's not saying much because this is an ATI card.
(Sorry if you support ATI, but I've delt with ATI enough after having to deal with my ATI 1950 X Pro in the machine I'm on right now.)
I myself just bought an 8800 GTS 320 MB for the machine I'll be building soon. - peterlisanti, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2What interests me about this article is the breakdown they did with the hardware HD-DVD decoding - even with the GPU handling the decoding of VC1 from the HD-DVDs the CPU utilization was averaging around 20%.
I'm betting that it's all the heavy AACS decryption that's keeping the CPU busy.
They should rip the HD-DVD and play back from the hard drive. That's a test I'd love to see. - alexace, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I thought that was a bad review due to the simple fact that the 2600xt costs half of what the 8600GTS does. From Newegg- Sapphire 2600Xt= $106.99
XFX 8600GTS (XXX Edition, the one used in the review)= $236.99
This is why the ATI card wins. It has similar performance but demolishes the competition in price. Plus, it runs cooler than the 8600GTS and does not require a power connector. ATI can't beat Nvidia in performance, but will win in economy. The big OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Apple) are gonna use this and the 2400 for sure. - melkore, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4They do this to show you what sort of settings you have to use to get similar performance. They had to turn grass and shadows all the way down in STALKER for the 2600XT but they could push the shadows up a notch for the 8600GT.
- Spuy767, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Yeah, the 8800GTX is positively stunning, it outdid my Dual 7900 SLI setup. The only thing I wonder, is if nVidia blew its load early and now has little or nothing in the pipe for us in the coming months.
- Muncher, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I'd love it if Intel moved into the high-end graphics market. It's a shame their willingness to open-source their drivers is wasted on onboard crap.
- frgmstr, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2From the test setup page....
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM2MCwyLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Game and Video Card Evaluation Setup
Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. For mainstream cards like we are evaluating here today, we are using a mainstream CPU.
Wherever possible, we use the in-game anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic texture filtering (AF) options. However, in several games the options are not there for high AA or AF levels that are supported by each video card. Therefore in these specific games we use the video cards' respective control panels to adjust AA and AF levels. Therefore, in this article, wherever you see us use AF or AA in the table, and the in-game configuration screenshot does not reflect those AA or AF settings, we are forcing that feature from the control panel. - CompIsMyRx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2c0ldfusi0n 6 months from now: "Thank you ATI for giving total open-source commitment, I'll buy your cards forever!"
- steelsmack, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I agree Microsoft will never release DX10 on XP, but impossible? nVidia supposedly couldn't handle the proper hardware side of things, so in theory DX10 would be possible on XP. More here: http://digg.com/hardware/ATI_Radeon_HD_2600_XT_A_Flop_in_Real_World_Gaming_Great_UVD_HD_Decode
- Caffeinate, on 10/11/2007, -5/+6Good review. Disappointing performance.
- Kwipper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Actually the ATI Radeon X850 was a decent card for its time. I owned the PRO version of the card and it worked well for games that came out 2004 - 2005 and even some 2006 games on the PC. However the new games that came out in 2007, now stress this card, espically with their emphasis of Smart Shader 3.0, which this card does NOT support.
I hope you didn't pay much for your X850 dude, cause it's quite dated now-a-days. - c0ldfusi0n, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Could happen. Hell, i hope it does.
- gruisinger, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Can the driver integrity check also be disabled in the 64-bit versions of Vista?
- orlyfactor, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1owned.
- baddog121390, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Sorry, it is my duty to offset all the wii stories that get on the frontpage by digging every sony story I see
I would also prefer a GOOD hardware review than a sony story... but HardOCP's reviews suck. - 0mega, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1wow, thanks, im a slight bit slow today it seems... :P
- SSCrow, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Why does Lost planet look like Crap on these Higher end PC's?
- 3xch4ng3, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3I agree, HardOCP does a good job of trying to keep it even and point out what they're doing and why. Unlike most reviews that give you a FPS table and say "NVIDIA beat ATI by 2.6FPS, NVIDIA Is the winner" Hard try to point out the strengths and weaknesses of each card.
Good review in my opinion -
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