ATI and Nvidia's Same-Day Mega-Launch Mayhem

[pschmid]

Today, Nvidia unloads both barrels at ATI with the debut of the GeForce 7900GTX and 7900GT for the extreme crowd and the 7600GT for those willing to settle for the mid- to high-end graphics card experience. Punching back, ATI Radeon X1800GTO has unveiled a scaled-down and cheaper version of its R520. Did someone say "buyer's market"?

 

[hergieburbur]

I for one am lovin this. Between the new upgrade options and lower prices on older products, I picked the perfect time to upgrade my GPU.

I also think this has a lot more affect on most of us than the stupid depates about unreleased conroe over in the CPU forum.

 

[benjamin]

...and the 7600GT for those willing to settle for the mid- to high-end graphics card experience.

Still, it's pretty disappointing when this £170 card -- which is available today in the UK, kudos -- isn't really enough to make me want to replace the old X800GTO (well, XTPE ish, but still).

It strikes me as Nvidia had an opportunity to decimate ATI on the cost front with some super-aggressive pricing. This is lost, since the mid-range, marginally better cards are still retailing for that bit more than their predecessor, and the X1800GTO is slated to be even more pricey than the 7600!

So really I don't understand the hype here, all this talk about reduced costs is certainly not working its way down to us yet.

 

[gomerpile]

I believe nothing is better than nvidia graphic chips but myself I am quite impressed with Ati technical data for its upcoming graphic design, unfortunaly ATI is to late to get the buyers market now. Most hard-core gamers have gotten the 7800 and are very happy with the results. ATI was trying to entice people to buy with lower prices while nvidia was making the bucks. This gave the room for nvidias techs to work on the next generation and for nvidia this has been their market for producing the best and most stable graphic chips. Ati benches are very nice but compared to nvidia with nearly matching scores Ati will most likely have to lower their prices a few hundreds to steal the buyers market again.

 

[hergieburbur]

ATI has already announced price cuts on a lot of their X1X00 series cards.

 

[CompGeek]

As single cards, ATI overall rule.
When dual cards come into question the cross fire seems to lose against SLI.
The 7900GT has started from where 7800GT stopped being the best price/performance. I'll probably go for one of these things when i'll build my rig. Though i'm also considering the 1900XT.
I'd still chose a 1900XTX over a 7900GTX since dual cards seem pointless from my point of view.
Nvidias cards still don't beat ATI. I guess we can conclude this as being a stalemate in performance though ATI might have to lower the prices.

 

[parlee]

so when do we see 7600gt on agp? itd be the perfect upgrade for me since its pretty cheap and gives excellent perforamnce... im doubting ati will release any x1800 series onto agp so im kinda hoping nvidia will step up... the 7800gs is a bit too pricey for me being in the agp market... so info on if/when 7600 will come to agp would be helpful ... it has 16 pipelines right?

 

[hergieburbur]

I haven't heard about a 7600 for AGP, but I have heard that ATI has all but given up on AGP, so don't expect to see any X1800 series or above realeased there.

That is why I am finally going to go PCI-E, though it hurts to give up my $200+ Gigabyte mobo.

 

[parlee]

my mobo came free with the cpu, but i like my agp card and the fact that pci express is overrated since cards dont even use 8x bandwith, let alone 16x... it annoys me

 

[hergieburbur]

Yeah, I can understand that.

Unfortunately, I have one of the very first socket 939 mobos, and being that is was the only one with decent features, it was very expensive.

 

[gomerpile]

Dual processor, dual GPU, Dual channel Memory Is an advantage in today’s market, for example; ‘{Colombia studios and many others have been using dual processing for years}’ to the movie industry and the gamers perspective, dual integrated systems is the smarter investment. Look at the benefits of having a dual system opposed to a non-dual 1 year from now. Most software, new releases of windows, and other OS systems will take great advantage of a dual and multi core instruction set.

Nvidia VS ATI has been for years and it was decided by most reasonable thinking imputs that it comes to choice.

 

[parlee]

oh yea, plus the fact that i have socket 754... somehow i dont see socket 754 + pci express working too well together, there arnt many name brand mobos that support pciexpress on 754, or last time i checked all i could find was jetway... if i did get one i guess it wold be a hybrid because my x700 is plenty fast for now, and in 6 months when i cant run games id like to jst pop in a nice ati card and have no troubles...

 

[gomerpile]

I hear ya dude, who can affort that.

 

[hergieburbur]

makes sense.

 

[DPolkowski]

parlee,

There is talk of a X1600 coming to AGP. So this GTO version might also. I spoke with ATI and the GTO might be unlockable. Granted the GTO was designed primarily from chips placed aside that could not hit the retil X1800 clock frequencies or had deficiencies. However, there are sure to be some that consumers can unlock. So if this makes it to an AGP card via a third party maker than you might get your wish.

Simplest thing is to bug manufacturers. Nvidia saw demand and released 7800GS.

 

[SuperFly03]

I would just like to add I just sumbitted my request for step-it-up on evga's website . Purchased my 7800GTX's on Dec 18th.... talk about cutting it close to the 90 limit!!!!! Ok as for 7900GTX v X1900XTX i don't care they both rule. I personaly just like SLI over crossfire.

 

[Heyyou27]

The SLI performance increase is much larger than Crossfire's.

 

[hergieburbur]

parlee,

There is talk of a X1600 coming to AGP. So this GTO version might also. I spoke with ATI and the GTO might be unlockable. Granted the GTO was designed primarily from chips placed aside that could not hit the retil X1800 clock frequencies or had deficiencies. However, there are sure to be some that consumers can unlock. So if this makes it to an AGP card via a third party maker than you might get your wish.

Simplest thing is to bug manufacturers. Nvidia saw demand and released 7800GS.

Actually, the X1600PRO has been available in AGP for a while, but I think that's the bset your gonna get from ATI.

 

[parlee]

yea ive looked into those, but the thing is it wouldnt be much of an pgrade over an x700pro.. maybe 10% at most, 1600 is a decent card but not worth upgrading, even though a friend is going to buy my x700 for 100 bux, i paid 130 for it tho..

 

[hergieburbur]

In my humble opinion, the 1600 is cripled by the 128-bit memory interface. But then, it still beats my 9800 Pro

 

[WOWchamp]

Im liking the 7900GT

 

[DPolkowski]

The one I know about is an XT version.

 

[DPolkowski]

128-bit might severly limit the theoretical bandwidth but that is the approach that 7600GT is taking with its texture memory interface.

 

[parlee]

well my x700 shares the same 128 bit... and clock speeds are similar, the 1600 offers sm3.0 but its overrated for such a weak card...

 

[hergieburbur]

Yeah. That's usually what seperates the higher from the lower cards in that situation. Oftentime, if they get a card that doesn't meet the higher specs, IE 256-bit memory doesn't pass, but it will pass as 128, then they will market it as that so that they don't waste silicone