Radeon X1950XT going cheap!

[Parge]

Just thought I would share this, its a pretty good deal!

MSI X1950XT 256MB for £175!

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/121057

 

[4Ryan6]

It should get even cheaper once Vista is released to mainstream users.

 

[still_life]

Really.....i was going to invest in a pair of X1950 pro's in January....i should probs wait then.

 

[Mr_Bluntman]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

 

[Parge]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

Good point

But does anyone get the feeling ATI may have screwed up? (this is coming from an ATI fan)

R600 due a good few months after 8800GTX, and with seemingly less grunt, the architecture better be good.

Only time will tell....

 

[gm0n3y]

From the attitude of most threads I've read on the G80 vs R600, most people seem to be thinking that the R600 will be a pretty decent step up from the G80.

 

[Heyyou27]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

Yes but from the rumors we are hearing, the R600 has 64 complex shaders that are capable of 4 shader operations per clock cycle on each unit while the G80's 128 shaders are only capable of 1 per clock cycle. If these are true they should perform very similarly as the R600 is rumored to be clocked around 700MHz while the 8800GTXs shaders are clocked at 1.35GHz.

 

[trixst4r]

From the attitude of most threads I've read on the G80 vs R600, most people seem to be thinking that the R600 will be a pretty decent step up from the G80.

Well AMD has seen the G80 and tested it and says that the R600 will beat it(this was a couple weeks ago at some event which i forgot the name). I think this is all the reassurance we need that R600 will beat the G80 flat out.

 

[Criminal89]

You are so right! Since AMD said it has to be true!

 

[PizzaFTW]

LMAO well hell coming from AMD wtf would you expect? :lol:

If their tests showed that the G80 was more powerful than the R600, I'd expect AMD to keep it on the DL and say nothing.

 

[gm0n3y]

Dude maintain your cool. No need to start throwing fanboi accusations around. I don't think the fanboy thing is that prevalent for video cards anyways, most people just want the best bang/$.

I also read an interesting thread about how the shader gates (or something) on the 8800 are 100 times slower than the ones on the 1950 and how that is going to affect performance a lot in DX10 titles that make heavy use of shaders. After reading that thread, I will definitely wait until some DX10 games are out and check the benches before getting a G80. I wish I had the link to it, it was an interesting discussion.

 

[PizzaFTW]

And if your willing to just take AMD's word for it then your nothing but a worthless fanboi for the most part :roll:

Whoa, buddy. I'm just saying thats what I would expect. I said nothing that would imply that I favor AMD let alone that I'm a fanboy. Chill out.

Edit: Besides, we're off topic.

 

[kaotao]

I would like to think that the R600 will be better than the G80. It would be stupid to come to the party late with an inferior card. My guess, this year will be the same as most, with ATI and Nvidia playing leap frog.

 

[kaotao]

move along...nothing to see here. Getting my threads mixed up.

 

[kamel5547]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

Good point

But does anyone get the feeling ATI may have screwed up? (this is coming from an ATI fan)

R600 due a good few months after 8800GTX, and with seemingly less grunt, the architecture better be good.

Only time will tell....

I would say Nvidias plot worked out pretty well :lol:

Claiming that the G80 would not be of unified shader architecture and then WHAM! suprise!

Actually I think Nvidia made a mis-step in releaseing so soon before DX10 availibility. Most people are willing to wait until Vista comes out (or longer) to upgrade their card, and Nvidia tipped its hand with enough time for ATI to evaluate and consider fixing any problems that may exists. I think Nvidia would ahve been wiser to ahve released the card either this week or at the beginning of January to shrink the window between the release and Vista.

That being said I would expect ATI's card to perform similarly to the 8800 or better based on the long window between releases. The real question is when will NVidia update to push past ATI

 

[quantumsheep]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

Good point

But does anyone get the feeling ATI may have screwed up? (this is coming from an ATI fan)

R600 due a good few months after 8800GTX, and with seemingly less grunt, the architecture better be good.

Only time will tell....

I would say Nvidias plot worked out pretty well :lol:

Claiming that the G80 would not be of unified shader architecture and then WHAM! suprise!

Actually I think Nvidia made a mis-step in releaseing so soon before DX10 availibility. Most people are willing to wait until Vista comes out (or longer) to upgrade their card, and Nvidia tipped its hand with enough time for ATI to evaluate and consider fixing any problems that may exists. I think Nvidia would ahve been wiser to ahve released the card either this week or at the beginning of January to shrink the window between the release and Vista.

That being said I would expect ATI's card to perform similarly to the 8800 or better based on the long window between releases. The real question is when will NVidia update to push past ATI

I would expect an update (8900?) from nVidia around Q4 '07 or maybe even Q1 '08

 

[gm0n3y]

I like how you completely missed the part of my post where I said to calm down and stop throwing the 'fanboi' around.

And yes, this is all pure speculation. So is saying that the G80 will be better, or that they will be the same or any estimate of the performance of any hardware that hasn't been released.

Also, I do put (some) weight into what I read in forums, especially when the thread is like the shader discussion I mentioned above. It was clearly a technical discussion about the engineering methods that each manufacturer uses to create shader gate in the silicon. It wasn't a 'fanboi' thread, it was just discussing the implications of Nvidia's choice of technology because it makes their shaders slower in some instances and DX10 looks like it MIGHT make those slow shaders hold the card back. I am not an engineer, so I can not back up what they were saying, nor can I even find the frigging link.

So stop being a fanboi and bashing our speculation. Take everything with a grain of salt and if you don't like it, then you probably shouldn't be reading any threads on toms forums, cause that is what the majority of them are about.

I repeat Maintain Your Cool.

 

[gm0n3y]

So because I post some thoughts I had about what I read in another thread, while stating that you should take it with a grain of salt, you think I am a fanboi?? I am sorry, I didn't realize we weren't ever supposed to speculate on how the design of a card would effect its performance.

I don't really care what company's sticker is on a product in my system (warranty aside) and already said so in this thread. I recommend numerous Nvidia and ATI products to people depending on their pricing point. At the moment I wouldn't recommend a G80 card to anybody since I think they should wait to see what ATI has to offer before taking the plunge.

So RobsX2, no hard feelings, have a cookie

 

[harmattan]

I'd say it's still pretty much up in the air considering how nV and ATI architectures are diverging in this gen. Purely speculative at this point to say one will perform better than the other. G80 may turn out to be the better of the two or R600 could blow it away. In a third scenario, R600 could take the crown from the 8800s only to have nV beat it with 8900.

What will most likely happen, IMO, is that one will perform better in DX9 while the other does better in DX10.

At this point, the noise seems to lean towards ATI taking the lead with R600 and I am leaning in this direction (although there's little-nothing to substantiate this). But this is usually the case with hardware that has yet to be released; people tend to think the un-releaded card draped in mystery will be better than the one that's already released. All I know is that it is best to remain objective in these circumstances and not throw hard-earned money and time in one basket.

 

[yipsl]

If you're going to get 2 X1950 Pro cards you might as well hold off for R600. Similar price (maybe $100 more) and is supposedly faster than G80, but that remains to be seen. (128 Shaders v.s. 64?)

But we all remember 5800 Ultra against the 9700/9800 Pro, no?

Nvidia and ATI leapfrog, that's true, but I expect that ATI will have good DX10, and even better DX9.0c performance with R600. As is, I'm waiting to go PCIe until at least mid 2007, if not early 2008. That's because I want to see midrange R600, 65nm cores that are worth something from AMD and native quad cores from Intel.

So, I'll get an X1950 AGP to hold me over in my aging P4 2.8 Northwood system. As long as I can H.264 support, plus get better performance in Oblivion than with my Radeon 9800 Pro, then I'll be happy for this next year.

Now, if money were no option, I'd go with that new AMD/ATI chipset DFI Crossfire plus physics three card board. Then, I'd get one Sapphire X1950 dual GPU card to hold me over till R600. Since money is an option, I guess I can only dream...

But does anyone get the feeling ATI may have screwed up? (this is coming from an ATI fan)

R600 due a good few months after 8800GTX, and with seemingly less grunt, the architecture better be good.

Only time will tell....

Not at all, ATI has been known for paper launches in the past. Perhaps AMD is just making sure there's no paper launch this time around? I like ATI because of Avivo (ie vs. Nvidia's Pure Cinema), but when games are concerned, they're fairly close in performance in each generation.

I've been an Intel Northwood and ATI All in Wonder fan, but this merger has me looking at AMD again. Sad that the All in Wonder line has been discontinued because of Vista.

 

[gm0n3y]

No problem. I get sick of all of the "AMD is good cause heatburst sucks and Intel is WTFCENTAURS!!" too.

@yipsl

Where can you find an x1950 AGP?

 

[M3d]

Wow. Didn't know vid cards were so expensive in the UK in terms of dollars. If that is a good deal there that is an excellent card unless you want to jump on the whole Vista Dx10 right away.

 

[yipsl]

No problem. I get sick of all of the "AMD is good cause heatburst sucks and Intel is WTFCENTAURS!!" too.

@yipsl

Where can you find an x1950 AGP?

Well, Netburst wasn't that great, except for the Northwood. I went Northwood over Athlon XP just before Morrowind because of the Tom's Hardware article and video relating to Athlon XP meltdown when the CPU fan stopped. I won't go cheap Smithfield for the same reason today.

So far the X1950 Pro AGP is only at Best Buy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8040782&type=product&id=1157068455153&ref=06&loc=01

I expect them to be everywhere by February, when I'll buy with my income tax refund. I usually order from Newegg. I think Best Buy is an exclusive for the Visiontek card now. On another board, a guy reported that his local Best Buy only had 3 in stock and they weren't on the shelves, but the salesperson found them in the back.

Sapphire and other companies will have their own out soon. I also don't think the price will be $299 for long. The card's biggest competitor is the 7800GS and that didn't stay at low $300's for long.

 

[still_life]

Better enjoy me being nice to you while you can! im tipsy from drinking wine and im known to be abnormally friendly to even those that I hate the most when I have been drinking :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:



:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Kidding. But I am tipsy!!!!

:!: :?: Loser.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

I love a good fanboy thread