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X800 Video Card Wednesday?

Barefeats has benchmarks comparing the 6800 Series Cards to the new X800 XT.

http://barefeats.com/radx800.html

The X800 XT beats the 6800 series cards in all tests except for the Motion tests. However it is important to note that in the PC world with DOOM III the Geforce 6800 series wallops the X800 XT and even the newest X850 XT Platinum Edition Cards.

I think the Mac Drivers for the 6800 series cards still have alot of room for improvement and we may see the performance gain of the X800 XT shrink.
 
I just spoke with ATI order-by-phone store at 09:30 EST and they didn't even know about it. I had to show the guy on the phone the press release on their site. The only thing the guy could really say is that the press release doesn't say they are available, but only announced and that "they should be available sometime." Sometime? This is obviously not the guy I talked to when I ordered my Radeon 9000 the day it was 'announced'. Here's hoping they 'know' something soon because for the Mac it appears that this is now the card.

P.S. Please tell me I'm not the only one that gets disappointed when ATI is just releasing the X800 card for Mac and they have stuff on their site showing how wonderful the X850 is.

Ciao, MS
 
Apple have always said, at least unofficially (on the phone), that 6800 owners should wait for Tiger to get real optimized drivers. Considering ATI make there own drivers and have had a long time to get these right I find the performance increase currently showing over the 6800 to be pretty lousy. Remember that to all intents and purposes the current appalling crop of 6800 drivers are just moded 5200's, we don't even know how many of the cards features are actually enabled with them. I use Motion so I'm affraid my money will be going on a 6800 be it in Ultra or GT forms. ATI could have at least given us the Platinum of or new 850 additions.
 
ATI state the card will cost $499 the same as the 6800 GT. If apple get the drivers right the GT will smoke it, you just have to see the PC Open GL benchmarks for proof of that. At least you can actually buy a 6800 now, anyone actually know when we can get our hands on this ATI vapourware, ATI just give us the outdated PC cast offs.
 
psycho bob do you work for Nvidia??

I for one returned a 6800 Ultra ($549) due to it barely outperforming the 9800 Pro in my system. Apple promised better drivers in 10.3.7 and ya know what? the performance was equal to 10.3.6 and even worse on some apps / games.

ATI has a wonderful product here for those of us who use one 30" or less. (gee what 99%? of the market?).

ATI Pros:
1) one slot (with only 3 pci slots on the G5 this is very welcome).
2) less power consumed (runs faster with less, how can that be bad?).
3) support for controlling FSAA and other tweaks
4) rom updates (perhaps, still yet unknown, how many times has Apple offered to update the roms on the 4600ti or the 5200?)
5) 3 year ATI Warranty on X800, 1 year (if you can talk to the techs at Apple on the 6800U
6) $499 vs. $599
7) CAN BOOT FROM APPLE RESTORE DISKS... the 6800U basically made booting impossible from the distributed G5 disks.. this was the final straw for me.

We were promised faster drivers for the old G4 4600ti and guess what, they never came.. the ATI brand was always as fast/faster and had better support.

I see NO reason to buy the Nvidia Apple card. Unless you have $6000 for two 30" displays.

Better go read the barefeats review, the 6800 Ultra is over priced hardware.
Grats to ATI for bringing the Mac community this.
 
go ati.

now if i can find a agp 2x keyed x850XL and flash it with the rom from this card i may have a new card for my cube :D.

(i know there is a 99% probability of this not working due to the lack of 2x keyed x800's but one can dream, there are 2x keyed 6800's)
 
I'd definitely want to wait for Tiger... in fact, 10.4.1 or .2 and a couple game patches to go with it... before trying to judge the true top Mac card.

Luckily I can be patient... I don't even OWN a tower yet.
 
If I didn't have a 6800 Ultra already, I'd probably buy the X800 now. Since I have the 6800, I'm sticking with it. I was a bit disappointed with the performance I got initially, but the driver updates were very nice, and I expect performance to improve much more as time goes on. The X800 is basically a fixed performance, and what I've seen it is barely better than the Ultra.

The advantages the card has are obvious: smaller, cheaper, and good performance right from the start. But the 6800 Ultra has much more room to grow, and will probably outperform the X800 in the middle to long term. So for existing 6800 Ultra owners, it's probably best to just stick with what you've got, unless you can get all of your money back that you spent to buy it initially.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1711/
http://barefeats.com/radx800.html
 
Choice is always good, whats also great is those who don't want to use an adapter can now use both a 30 inch and an old style ADC Display, without having to plug them in!
 
The X800 XT is better than the 6800 Ultra in theory. Comparison. However, the PC benchmarks that usually show the 6800 Ultra to be best, tell us that theory doesn't always reflect the real world performance.
 
I'm curious if this card would perform better in games than the 6800 Ultra does. I've been somewhat displeased with my 6800 Ultra.
 
Platform said:
PCI-X is not PCI Express PCIe is :cool:
Click to expand...
You do know that you repeated exactly what the original poster said, right?

Also the reasoning that it must be used in the next PowerMacs seems off to me, as well.. if it WERE going to be in the next PowerMacs, I doubt they would have announced it before the next PowerMacs, especially after the hissy fit Steve Jobs threw the last time ATi announced a card early. Seems to me that announcing this card is proof that there will NOT be new PowerMacs at MWSF. (Or that ATi cards will not be used in them)
 
RGunner said:
I for one returned a 6800 Ultra ($549) due to it barely outperforming the 9800 Pro in my system. Apple promised better drivers in 10.3.7 and ya know what? the performance was equal to 10.3.6 and even worse on some apps / games.

ATI has a wonderful product here for those of us who use one 30" or less. (gee what 99%? of the market?).

ATI Pros:
1) one slot (with only 3 pci slots on the G5 this is very welcome).
2) less power consumed (runs faster with less, how can that be bad?).
3) support for controlling FSAA and other tweaks
4) rom updates (perhaps, still yet unknown, how many times has Apple offered to update the roms on the 4600ti or the 5200?)
5) 3 year ATI Warranty on X800, 1 year (if you can talk to the techs at Apple on the 6800U
6) $499 vs. $599
7) CAN BOOT FROM APPLE RESTORE DISKS... the 6800U basically made booting impossible from the distributed G5 disks.. this was the final straw for me.

We were promised faster drivers for the old G4 4600ti and guess what, they never came.. the ATI brand was always as fast/faster and had better support.

I see NO reason to buy the Nvidia Apple card. Unless you have $6000 for two 30" displays.

Better go read the barefeats review, the 6800 Ultra is over priced hardware.
Grats to ATI for bringing the Mac community this.
Click to expand...

I wish I did work for NVIDIA then I'd have a few things to say to apple and their crap driver development team. I quite agree as it stands (if ATI actually make the card available for sale somewhere soon) it is a far better buy then the Apple/NVIDIA offerings. Benchmarks for GPU's don't lie. Sadly I do design work so Motion performance is important to me and even with the crappy drivers the 6800 (Ultra) is the best. I'm angry at Apple rather then being a firm supporter of NVIDIA, I firmly believe that as far as Apple desktops go ATI offer the best cards and indeed have done for quite a while. I just don't see why ATI couldn't have given us the latest hardware rather than something that has been out for quite a while, I can't believe that the ADC socket is the sole reason for this. The fact remains that at the time of writing the 6800 Ultra is the only card that is also the top offering on the PC side available for mac, is this as close as mac users will get to having the latest technology? If the drivers were better then, assuming no hardware changes were made between the PC and mac cards, the 6800 would be the better card as OS X and indeed nearly all mac software is Open GL based.
 
Well I am definately going to get one or the other but it appears to be too early to tell which one will be best. I don't think I am going to have 2 30" monitors but I am also concearned with heat and noise. Are the cards noisy or do they make the fans in the G5 spin more? This is a major deal to me.
 
BTW, I find it astonishing that ATi has released it now..... rather than at the expo next week.

Or is it better to hit the news now, instead of getting dimmed in the limelight of Apple's gr8 releases at the Expo.
 
m a y a said:
I believe the Core Image list of supported GPU will be updated for the new graphic cards released for the Mac since the the surface and knowledge of Core Image to the developers. :)
Click to expand...

He he .. just imagine the X800 NOT being compatible ;) :D
 
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