x1800xt worth upgrading?

DaveElls

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I've been using an x1800xt 512mb for probably almost a year and a half now and I never like to keep video cards for too long so I was considering upgrading. I was looking at the 8800 GTS 640's but it's hard to find benchmarks comparing them to see if I would really get my money's worth for spending $350-400. Any insight to this?

I'm willing to wait a few more months if the prices will drop but I was thinking about it this weekend as I noticed newegg has some rebates/sales on several different 8800's. I was thinking maybe the superclocked evga for $350 after rebate. The MSI one has a great price (even comes with a game) but I'm really unsure of the support any of these companies offer. Theres also a couple BFG overclocked ones however they seem slightly higher priced.
 
You would definately see an improvement, however, you may want to wait and hear the specs on the 8900s and R650s (I have no idea when they come out, though). Also, if you are shooting in the $400 range, you may want to wait and see if ATI improves the 2900's drivers signifigantly. Right now I can say (from experience) that the 2900 is a very good card, but the drivers leave something to be desired.
 

4745454b

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First, let me state that I have an x1800XT. I don't know about you, but the card handles everything I want/need it to do with pretty much ease. Unless you are encountering some slowdowns that you want to get rid of, I advise you to wait. There aren't any DX10 games out, and you probably don't want to move to vista yet anyways. You could spend $400 to get 100FPS instead of 60, but you might not even notice that. Unless you picked up some high end monitor, stay with what you have until making the move makes more sense.
 

slashzapper

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I would disagree with you i upgraded from a 1800 to a 8800 and the difference is phenomenal in both image quality and frames.

I mean can you run Most wanted at 16aa 16af at around 75 fps didnt think so :lol:

Or fear with all the eye candy , oblivion etc
 

4745454b

Titan
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Fear is the most stressful game I own, and I can run it just fine for me. (shadows are on, 1280x1024, not sure about the AA, ~60FPS.) I don't own NFSC or Oblivion. I'm not saying you won't see better framerates with the 8800, I'm saying it might not be needed yet. The x1800XT is still a pretty good card, unless you are playing with a high res monitor. Obviously if your an Oblivion nut who can't stand it when your playing at 1600x1200 and your frame rate drops to 10FPS when your battling outside, you need to get the better card. I think its silly to say "I never like to keep video cards for too long so I was considering upgrading, should I drop $400 on a new card." If you have tons of money, go for it. If you cant stand the drops in frame rates in some situations, go for it. If you have $400 to spend and you want something, dumb reason.
 

DaveElls

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First of all thanks for the replies on this.
I do occasionally play games such as fear and oblivion. My monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050 (22in widescreen) which I purchased recently and I do notice a drop in performance from before which is what's prompted my interest. I like flipping on all the eye candy and I find I can't run quite a few games on high/highest settings without it being too sluggish.

I was originally going to wait to see how the 2900's panned out but now that I've purchased a widescreen monitor theres one feature with the nvidia drivers that I would really like to see ATI add in. On the games that don't support widescreen (BF2/2142 for example) I've heard (and I do plan on checking this out more) that theres an option to scale the image down and add black bars on the side to avoid distorted to stretched video. Ati has a feature that can do this but it seems to only work if the monitor it's self has it built in.

I was considering the 320mb version but I'd be pretty much downgrading that aspect of it if I went for that wouldn't I? I know a lot of games don't use that much vram but there are a few such as doom3 in ultra quality that do if I'm not mistaken. I guess I'm a bit selfish, I want the best of both worlds, good performance and good image quality! Though I can't see myself spending over $400 on a video card at the same time.
 

jusomdude

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I would wait if I were you until the cards get better with DX10. I didn't and I'll probly pay but I wanted a DX10 capable card cause I do some programming and wanted to start utilizing DX10. In a number of games the fps gain won't be all that great. Depends on what CPU you have too. Getting a card more capable than your CPU won't do much for performance.
 

chief5286

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I have an x1800xt 512 as well. And a 22" 1680x1050 screen.

I also play oblivion, and the card does very well, though not as well as I would like at times. The game, for me, is playable with HDR at that res, with texture mods. There are slow-downs though.

Personally though, and based on the benches I've seen, there really isn't all that much of an improvement between a 8800gts and an X1800XT, especially when you OC the XT (in which case, the XT generally performs a fair bit better than the X1900XT, from what I've seen).

Look at the Toms VGA charts. Oblivion, outdoors, at 1600x1200.
8800GTS: 23.6
X1800XT: 16.1

I still haven't ran into anything the XT can't handle with a decent amount of eye candy (though, I haven't bought a new release PC game in a while).

To me, that difference is not worth $400. To you, it might be. It all depends on your situation For the money, the GXT actually sounds like a better value for Oblivion. If you hang on a while longer, you might see a much better increase in the next release of cards (hopefully, as I'll probably be building a new rig about that time)

Then again, if you can get a good price on your XT, that might alter the equation a little (and if you could let me know what you get for it, it would be appreciated).
 

slashzapper

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The 8800 has got about 20 fps on the average up on the x1800xt

Not only that the IQ , well you have to see it to believe it , its that good.

The x1800 is an old card now not comparable to a g80 chipset .e

Infact the whole comparison is flawed, apples to oranges
 

chief5286

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The 8800 has got about 20 fps on the average up on the x1800xt


I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but the benches I've seen for Oblivion do not show quite that great of an improvement. A significant improvement, certainly. But for me at least, not a $360 improvement.

For other games, there may very well be a huge improvement. But specifically for Oblivion, again, based on the benches I've seen and not actual experience, the 8800 is not a HUGE step up. A huge step up, to me at least, would be the ability to play at 16x10 with HDR + AA at solidly above 30 FPS. From what I've seen the GTS desn't get there.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a GTS/X (and would except for the ball and chain), and I realize the XT is, what, a year and a half old now. Maybe older (I got mine just over a year ago).
 

Rabidpeanut

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I would say wait until the DX10 games really hit properly, you might get a nice deal with a copy of crysis in the bundle if you wait long enough, though from a friend's experience the farcry that bundled with his card did not even work, so... up to you i suppose, though the longer you wait the cheaper it gets...
 

DaveElls

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After much indecision and checking out benchmarks I ended up clicking the order button. I hopefully won't regret spending the money but I suppose we'll see. When I purchased the x1800xt they were going for around $500-550 (I got an awesome deal on it for $350 I believe) and I've definately got a lot of use out of it. I'll end up putting it in another computer so it won't be going to waste :)
 

ethel

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After much indecision and checking out benchmarks I ended up clicking the order button. I hopefully won't regret spending the money but I suppose we'll see. When I purchased the x1800xt they were going for around $500-550 (I got an awesome deal on it for $350 I believe) and I've definately got a lot of use out of it. I'll end up putting it in another computer so it won't be going to waste :)

Hehe, it's funny how one's finger is magnetically attracted to that order button eh?

Good luck and let us know how you get on - I'm another X1800XT owner who is pondering an upgrade at the moment, so I'd be interested to hear.