X800 Video Card Wednesday?

[Mudbug]

X800 Video Card Wednesday?


Tuesday January 04, 2005 09:11 PM EST
Posted by Mudbug

According to one source, the ATI X800 video card could be debuted for the Mac as early as January 5th. The X800 was apparently shown as a demo at the Digital Life Expo in New York in a Power Mac G5. It will be capable of driving ONE 30" display, because there is one ADC port and one Dual-link DVI port. Additionally, the card will only take up ONE slot (its own AGP 8x slot), unlike the 6800 Ultra and GT.

At the time of the demo, nothing was known about the pricing or availability.

[longofest]

See http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/10/14/ati/index.php for more information about the demo mentioned in the story.

[BlackLilyNinja]

I thought it was supposed to be a pci-x card...

[longofest]

Originally Posted by BlackLilyNinja

I thought it was supposed to be a pci-x card...

Naw. Not if they were already demoing it in existing G5's. The PC version has both PCI-Express (which is I think what you meant. PCI-X != PCI-Express) and AGP-8x versions. Eventually we will see PCI-Express, this story more about the retail card than anything, so you can't debut a retail card that supports an architecture that doesn't even exist on the platform yet.

[JRM]

XT?

[nagromme]

I don't keep up with these things... how does this X800 compare with other top boards, in terms of game performance? Does it beat nVidia's best?

[Nermal]

OK, I'll cancel my order for a 9800.

Not that I actually got around to ordering it in the first place

[longofest]

Originally Posted by JRM

XT?

That much is unknown. We'll see tomorrow, should my sources and my interpretation of their cryptic remarks be correct.

[longofest]

Originally Posted by nagromme

I don't keep up with these things... how does this X800 compare with other top boards, in terms of game performance? Does it beat nVidia's best?

Now THAT's an interesting question. I don't have hard facts for you, but from the spattering of stats that I've seen, the 6800 Ultra appears to be slightly faster than the X800 XT at some tasks, but a lot of people prefer the X800 anyways mainly because it is a better engineered card. ATI gets better performance by making their technology better, whereas nVidia appears to just keep on cranking up the clock, and therefore the heat (thus the fact that their cards have taken up 2 slots since the high-end FX line).

I believe nVidia does better with OpenGL games, whereas ATI's cards were better tuned to DirectX games on the PC side. However, I don't know if they do any tuning to the drivers when they port these things to the Mac in order to make it all a more even playing field (since there is no such thing as DirectX on the mac).

[Mertzen]

If there will be PM updates I am sure we'll see the X800 .. otherwise the whole beta project seems useless .. though I am sure more people are waiting for Quadros and FireGLs ..

[longofest]

Hey... just wondering, but does anyone else have a Geforce 4Ti, and is kinda ticked that it isn't going to work with Motion or CoreImage in Tiger? I mean, this thing was just recently top of the line! Not that I'd really want to run Motion on a G4 machine anyways... Heard it really needs a G5 to run the way it deserves to.

[enygma]

Originally Posted by Mertzen

If there will be PM updates I am sure we'll see the X800 .. otherwise the whole beta project seems useless .. though I am sure more people are waiting for Quadros and FireGLs ..

Man, if Quadros were available on the mac, I would almost be a full convert as I mainly do most of my work in Linux.

From experience on the PC side though regarding X800 vs 6800... or just ATI vs nVidia all together, I have never had very good experiences with ATI cards using OpenGL. Windows users have issues in certain 3d applications, and an X800 in OpenGL is about as good as a GeForce 5900 under Linux. Personally, my ATI experience under OpenGL all together, mainly in Linux has been iffy... and I am using a FireGL X1-128 at work.

[JRM]

Originally Posted by Mertzen

If there will be PM updates I am sure we'll see the X800 .. otherwise the whole beta project seems useless .. though I am sure more people are waiting for Quadros and FireGLs ..

I don't think we will see updates soon on the Powermacs as last night in Australia Apple lowered the prices on the Powermacs, Displays, iBooks and iMacs but not the Powerbook and eMac. My thinking is that Apple didn;t update these two becasue they are set for an update, and why would they lower the price then a day or even week later update them. Where as i see Apple doing this as a sign of imminent Powerbook and eMac updates.

[Bear]

Originally Posted by longofest

Hey... just wondering, but does anyone else have a Geforce 4Ti, and is kinda ticked that it isn't going to work with Motion or CoreImage in Tiger? I mean, this thing was just recently top of the line! Not that I'd really want to run Motion on a G4 machine anyways... Heard it really needs a G5 to run the way it deserves to.

Where does it state that it won't work with CoreImage in Tiger? (I don't care about Motion.)

All the Apple web site lists is cards currently being sold that work with CoreIame. it's very likely that the previous generation of cards will be as supported as they can be. (Limited by what the card can do.)

[swissmann]

I'm tempted to get a new video card. I have the 64 MB ATI Radeon 9600 that came stock in my G5. For a top of the line machine it sure seems like that part of it got old fast. I better get the X800 or the competing 6800 because I want to leave the door open for a 30" monitor and I am starting to use Motion. I wonder how these two cards will stack up against each other.

[JRM]

Does anyone know if ATI have a DDL laptop card, because Apple might stick that in the powerbooks as it would support a 30" Display. I don't think that they could use any nVidia card of that high end nature in the PB because of the size but maybe ATI might have something. Because at some stage Apple will need a DDL supporting card in their PB's for those who can afford those slightly more affordable 30" monsters

[longofest]

Originally Posted by Bear

Where does it state that it won't work with CoreImage in Tiger? (I don't care about Motion.)

All the Apple web site lists is cards currently being sold that work with CoreIame. it's very likely that the previous generation of cards will be as supported as they can be. (Limited by what the card can do.)

No... those cards are listed under the System Requirements section. So, they are saying you need one of the following cards. Plus, you're a little off base, in that not all of those cards are currently being sold by Apple. The Radeon 9700 Pro is not being sold by Apple currently (NOTE: I'm not talking about the mobility one used in the powerbooks, but the desktop one that came as OEM in some powermacs a while back, and is listed on that page you mentioned).

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html

[Mertzen]

Originally Posted by JRM

Because at some stage Apple will need a DDL supporting card in their PB's for those who can afford those slightly more affordable 30" monsters

I am not so sure that this is such a major priority .. if you need the resolution of the 30" for content creation you kinda need the power of a powermac ..

[oingoboingo]

I think I can personally vouch for the validity of this rumour. Why? Because I scrimped and saved and bought a shiny new 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 Special Edition card for my G5 only a few months ago

If true, it will be interesting to see if Apple and ATI can develop some Mac OS X drivers which really get the best out of the X800. From what I've read around the place, early adopters of the GeForce 6800 cards were very disappointed with the levels of performance under OS X. Were these problems fixed with the 10.3.7 update?

[greenleaf]

i hope this is true because ive been waiting for th X800 to come out for mac for awhile now...its especially good because it has an adc adaptor for my old 23acd

[Yvan256]

Originally Posted by longofest

ATI gets better performance by making their technology better, whereas nVidia appears to just keep on cranking up the clock, and therefore the heat (thus the fact that their cards have taken up 2 slots since the high-end FX line).

So... what you are saying is that nVidia is like intel and ATI is like AMD.

[Mav451]

The position has reversed. The X800, unfortunately, is only a further refinement of the old R300 core (9700 >> 9800 >> X800).

http://www.a1-electronics.net/Graphi...X800_May.shtml

Interesting to see how few transistors this Radeon X800 uses compared to the latest Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. The X800 core is based on the earlier R300 core as used in the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card which is different to Nvidia who have had to completely redesign their graphics processor cores.

The 6800 NU, GT, Ultra on the other hand are an entirely new process. Yes, the FX-line was sh*t, but the 6800 is literally leaps beyond it.

This is not to say the X800 is not competitive, but the only saving grace is that ATi is releasing a 16-pipe X800 XL for less than $300. Not sure if this is even marginally in the horizon for the Apple side though. I'm sure, however, that the flagship XT ($500) will make an appearance to compete agains the 6800Ultra (in terms of being able to power the 30").

Between the 6800GT and the X800Pro, the GT is somewhat more powerful, inherently from its 16-pipe design. The X800 Pro is only 12-pipes, however, and it is its undoing.

*actually, thinking about the X800 XL, the earliest it would arrive is the next G5 update b/c its a PCI-Express only part at this point. Plus, its vaporware right now even on the PC-side so I doubt it will even make an appearance until its well distributed throughout the hardware community.

[Mav451]

Originally Posted by longofest

... ATI gets better performance by making their technology better, whereas nVidia appears to just keep on cranking up the clock, and therefore the heat (thus the fact that their cards have taken up 2 slots since the high-end FX line).

I would be hesitant in making such a blanket statement:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...-power_10.html

Important things to note here.
1) On PC-side, the 6800GT is one of the most popular video card purchases of 2004 (for enthusiasts). Almost nobody wastes their money on the Ultra b/c the slight increase in clock requires extra GPU voltage (and hence more power and heat).
2) The 6800 makes LESS heat than a 9800Pro (and more than a 9600XT).

Not only is the 6800GT significantly more powerful than ATi's last generation flagship 9800XT, but it also consumes LESS power, and produces LESS heat. That is innovation and progress are work folks.

[Platform]

Originally Posted by longofest

Naw. Not if they were already demoing it in existing G5's. The PC version has both PCI-Express (which is I think what you meant. PCI-X != PCI-Express) and AGP-8x versions. Eventually we will see PCI-Express, this story more about the retail card than anything, so you can't debut a retail card that supports an architecture that doesn't even exist on the platform yet.

PCI-X is not PCI Express PCIe is

[Chaszmyr]

It's official.
http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2005/4808.html