Good news: X850XT PE in stock locally

[eden]

Yup, my local PC shop has some in stock. Sapphire ones. Now, unless the guy screwed up pricing between the regular and PE model, the good news is that its price is nowhere like the gouged 900$ US we saw a week ago. It's in fact 750$ CANADIAN. About 625$ US. Which is in line with PriceWatch's reporting. Good news IMO (well, relatively speaking, because ATi's pricing seems too good to be true at 549$ US) because that means X800XL, when truly out, should sell for the exchange rate price here, and should not be more expensive than actual MSRP. Hopefully.

And also good news because this shows ATi is actually delivering as promised, one month and a few weeks after annoucement. Vastly better than last year. So things are starting to look good now. Plus there was no uber pricing on the video card either.

I'm considering the X850XT PE, but am not sure if Sapphire is the choice to go with against HIS (not yet here). They both are similar so far.

--
The <b><A HREF="http://snipurl.com/bl3t" target="_new"><font color=red>THGC Photo Album</font color=red></A></b>, send in your pics, get your own webpage and view other members' sites.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Eden on 01/26/05 01:41 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[endyen]

What is happening with prices. The Asus SLI is $265 at newegg, but my local shop has them for <A HREF="http://www.anitec.ca/?mode=product_detail&pid=2922" target="_new">http://www.anitec.ca/?mode=product_detail&pid=2922</A>. That's Canadian $.

 

[eden]

Yup, I pointed that out too a few weeks ago to PaulDH. Really weird ain't it? But it seems only NewEgg kept that price. Though I can still spot some stupid shops selling for nearly 300$ the Asus SLI or even the Gigabyte SLI one without even being in stock. Seems like in some cases, Canadian pricing is winning over exchange rate.

Heck your local shop has a much better pricing on that SLI board than mine! Nice site design overall too.

Sweet, they too now sell the X850XT Sapphire in stock too!
Albeit at 799$, still not bad, 40$ more only. I'll have to decide soon to see if I buy the Sapphire or wait for HIS. And will check to confirm if it's 750$ for the PE version.

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[endyen]

With the quality of onboard sound and lan, who needs the other slots anyhow?

 

[Worf101]

Will ATI or any of its subs make an AGP version of this card or is my X800XT PE Excalibur the LAST AGP card I'm ever gonna get so that when I try and upgrade I'll have to replace Mobo as well?

Da Worfster

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

 

[sweatlaserxp]

But if you go with ATi then you don't really need SLI, do you? Unless you decide to switch to nVidia, of course...

Anyway, eBay is a really good place to pick up an SLI mobo right now- they can be had for well under $200 USD. There are people selling them "Buy It Now" for $250 Canadian.

<A HREF="http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=dumb01&mature=accept" target="_new">DumbLand</A>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

R481 will come out later to support the AGP market;

<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20774" target="_new">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20774</A>

No one is sure yet whether ATi will use the Rialto for the R5xx series or continue to make AGP chips, despite all the bruhaha regarding moving to all PCIe for this year.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You wouldn't need 16x for a ram drive, but those 2 PCIe 1X slots should do fine for a RAMdrive.

BTW, you could use it for what I'm hoping for, multi-card multi-monitor applications. And maybe surround gaming some day.

If you wanna play it safe for a RAMdrive type application go with something like the DFI board which has 4X as well;

<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20611" target="_new">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20611</A>

<A HREF="http://gandalf.vef.free.fr/DFI/DFI-nf4-ultra+SLI-2.jpg" target="_new">http://gandalf.vef.free.fr/DFI/DFI-nf4-ultra+SLI-2.jpg</A>


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[sweatlaserxp]

Would one of you be kind enough to briefly explain to me what RAMdrive is?

<A HREF="http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=dumb01&mature=accept" target="_new">DumbLand</A>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

A 'HardDrive' that uses RAM chips instead of Platters to store the data. This allows very fast transfer rates and ultralow seek times.

The first ram drives involved actually taking extra SDRAM and <A HREF="http://users.cybercity.dk/~bse26236/batutil/help/RAMDRI_S.HTM" target="_new">making it into a virtual drive</A>, now they've progressed to PCI card versions with small batteries so they aren't volatile. Well actually they've had those for a while on things like BANK servers that need to grab account information from VAST volumes of data extremely quickly for things like Interac, these things cost a fortune (think 10gigs costing $50,000) when they came out, now some servers can act like that without actually having the physical drives they had before , but there's still call for them in in server apps. Depends on your setup.

The next step is something I read about around Xmas about this new memory that is XNANDOR or some such where it combines the tow benifits of NAND and XNOR to create very very fast 'flash-like' memory that runs as fast as DRAM, but with the benifits of SRAM & FLASH RAM in that they won't erase when there is no power. This is the holy grail for RaqmDrive users,wannabees and former user-'historians' who would now have a reason to come back.

Think of it like this, Booting XP+Drivers,etc in under second.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheGreatGrapeApe on 01/26/05 10:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mozzartusm]

Whats the drawback? Im guessing cost.

To save us both time, assume I know EVERYTHING :tongue:

 

[DeathClock]

The Sapphire Radeon X850XT PE can be bought here for € 468,35. Thats not much, but I dont have PCI-E :s I hate this g*dd*mn mess with those PCI-E stuff. I will have to wait another couple of months for a proper AGP, that sux.

<A HREF="http://worldwar3d.com/afmod" target="_new">Half-Life2:Armed Forces</A>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The layout is supposedly fully configureable.

The slots are 2 16xPeG slots and 2 4x slots OR 2 16xPEG + 1 4x slot and 1 1x slot.

That allows (as it's been 'splained to me);

16x + 4x
16X + (2X + 2X in each of the 4X slots)
16X + 2x in the other 16x slot + 1X +1x
8x + 8X + 4X
8x + 8X + 2X(on 4x) + 2X(on 4X)

Now that's for the closeup pic example with 2 4x slots. The Inquirer pic shows the 1X and a 4X, I assume that would mean similar configurations, but where there's a 2X on one of the 4x it would be 1x on the 1x leaving 1 lane left over of the 20 possible.

Anywhooo, the most configureable board I have heard of and supposedly that SLI bridge is electronic instead of swapping out some stoopid physical card like the ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte boards.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The drawback is cost and compatability. While RAMDISKs sound cool and run well on occasion, they can be very finicky just when you don't want them to be, and if your power spikes or your battery dies, bye-bye information (why it's good to keep it strictly to OS and easily replaceable features for home users). The card to build these are expensive (usually $200-300+ [often much more]), and then you have to buy the memory for it (how much is a few gigs of even just PC2100?). Often teh boards are limited to 2-4 slots, so the configureability is limited. 2 Slot would require at least 2 1GB sticks for and XP install with drivers, and that would be with a small swap / page file, etc.

The method Wuzy is talking about isn't bad, but it won't allow you to boot from that drive, and it won't keep information there after shut down, you need to feed the memory each time you boot up.

The best application for that type of ram-drive (system RAM) is for dump drives for editing or for virtual game drives (increase loading times) which are getting hard to do with massive game sizes nowadays.

I'm thinking I may try this when I get more memory for the new rig and put it in my old rig, and run a benchmark like 3Dmk01, PCMArk04, etc and see what benifit you get from it in just the benchmarking. Really I'm not promising anything, but it's be nice to try. I have a feeling that a system RAM ramdrive would likely work best on single channel memory, but that's just a theory on my part.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

but I dont have PCI-E :s I hate this g*dd*mn mess with those PCI-E stuff. I will have to wait another couple of months for a proper AGP, that sux.

Luddite! :tongue:



- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[pauldh]

Hey, what's wrong with a Prescott? At 3.8GHz, they <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2" target="_new">almost compete</A> in HL2 with an A64 3200+ with that X850XTpe in it. :tongue:

And forget that inefficient heat loss thing, it's 2 degrees F. outside right now and I am wrapped in a blanket. I could use that extra heat those scotties give off. Venting the case exhaust fans down near my frigid toes would feel mighy nice about now.


<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=3400555" target="_new"> My</A>
<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8268935" target="_new">Gamer</A>

 

[eden]

I never said I was gonna get an SLI mainboard.



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