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  • gamara - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    From TomsHardware, "... when I called ATI PR manager Patricia Mikula yesterday, she stated that the retail channel should have stock today(10/5). NewEgg and Fry's were named and others should have availability today and at the latest by Thursday."

    Today is 10/17, 12 days past the 10/5 launch of the X1800XL and my local Fry's, listed as one of the available locations, has not seen a single x1xxx SKU delivered. Not even an x1300. They did have a Phantom Edition X850 though. :)

  • TinyTeeth - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Paper launch or not, I just wonder whether you have tested an X1800XT and will be releasing a review when the NDA is due?
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    ATI's countdown clock on their website is at 15 minutes ATM, so I'm assuming the reviews should start rolling in around 9am ET.
  • TinyTeeth - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    That's great! I personally hope that Anandtech and Xbit Labs have got their hands on the card because I trust them the most and think they give the most qualitative reviews.
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Update: Just read Extremetech's review, where they also compare an X1800XT 512MB vs the 7800GTX 256MB card. The X1800XT is anywhere from 3 - 20% faster than the 7800GTX, depending on the game. It's slowing in DOOM 3, but that's not surprising. Their comparison of the X1800XL vs the 7800GT was similar to the preview from HardOCP, in which those cards were evenly matched.
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Well, HardOCP and a couple other sites have reviews up on the 1800XL, and performance is on par with the 7800GT, but no better. Wonder when anandtech will put up their (p)review?
  • Beenthere - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Let's face it the hype in the PC industry is second to none. Few mfgs. actually deliver products when they claim they will. AMD is a notable exception in the past 6 years delivering virtually on-time every time that I can remember.

    The sad reality is that gullible PC enthusiasts will run right out and buy the latest releases of graphics card, CPUs, Mobos, memory etc. because industry media rave about how great it is and there are enough naive people who belive they can't live without the latest and greatest.

    When you have people willing to go out and spend $400-$1000 every few months for the latest video card, you know these folks have more money than brains. Same applies for CPUs, memory, DFI Land Party Mobos, etc. If there was some TANGIBLE benefit, you might be able to rationaize the expenditure, but there isn't. PC enthusiasts need SLI and Crossfire like they need another hole in thier head... All it's worth is bragging rights. Bragging rights and a $10 bill will buy you a $2 dollar cup of coffee.

    Bottom line is that the PC hardware mfgs. know how gullible PC enthusiasts are and they price their products accordingly. It's like fools waiting in line outside stores to purchase the newest release of the defective Windoze O/S, at midnight...Could anything be more ignorant??? It really makes no difference when a new PC product is PAPER released, there are enough fools out there to buy it when it finally shows.
  • Kegh - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    What difference does it make to you or me or anyone else what "fools" are willing to spend THEIR money on. Just because you (or I) would not spend money on a premium product doesn't mean jack. It's their money, they can spend it any freaking way or for whatever product they want... Get over it people, life's not fair. When you guys rant about "idiots" who upgrade every few months even though YOU don't see a reason for them to do it just makes you sound like your whining, just like a little kid who is jealous of the "rich kid" down the street who has all the popular toys.

    Rant off....
    Can't we all just get along? :)
  • SimonNZ - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link

    I agree, so what if i want to upgrade to a SLI for my gamming rig? my other hobbies are alot cheaper and I earn my own money, I agree totally you just sound like a little kid who wants the new toys. Yes ALOT of people wont see any benefit in running a 7800GTX or a X2 but their are some people who will and as long as they are willing to pay for it then their is a market.
  • TheInvincibleMustard - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Exactly right, because there's no tangible benefit in upgrading a 6800Ultra to a 7800GTX ... Hell, I'm going to be upgrading to an X2 and 2x1024MB of RAM in the near future here (from an o/c'd 3000+ and 2x512MB), but I guess I won't see a tangible benefit from that, because you state that there's no tangible benefit to purchasing the "latest and greatest" especially since I just upgraded two months prior ... thanks for saving me several hundred dollars! *rolleyes*

    Show me another video card on the market that can run WoW at 1920x1200 (my Dell 2405FPW's native resolution, which I suppose was also a stupid upgrade from my 19" LCD if you include monitors) with AA, AF, transparency AA, everything on full, and still maintain a playable frame rate ... that's right, good luck in that quest. If for some reason you equate "enjoying a game to a full extent" with "bragging rights" then yes, I guess it's bragging rights for me. I suppose I was also stupid for purchasing an MX1000, or an Audigy 2, or my Logitech Z-680's back in the day ... wow, guess I've made a bunch of stupid purchases.

    On a much larger scale, did you know that there really is a tangible benefit to greater computing power? And that faster and faster computers are being built all the time? For billions of dollars? And researchers (especially in the fields of climate prediction and forecasting) are craving orders of magnitude more processing power than what is currently available? Shame on them, you say, it's overpriced and doesn't offer a tangible benefit! Tell that to the thousands of people's lives that were saved in the past year due to accurate prediction of future storm paths ...

    If everyone had an attitude like yours, we'd still all be running on 8086's (if even that) because manufacturers would be too scared to spend the money on R&D since no one would purchase their new products. Where do you get your logic from? If there was no tangible benefit, people wouldn't buy the stuff! You seriously think that someone is spending upwards of $4000 on a system to pick up chicks or something? It's not a question of relative worth (ie, price/performance), it's a question of is there some benefit to the upgrade, however miniscule, and I (and many others) would argue that there is.

    -TIM
  • route66 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Sad.

    I like how you validate your purchases by saying buying overpriced computer equipment gives the world more computing superpower to help predict deadly storms.
  • TheInvincibleMustard - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    I in no way attempted to "validate" my purchases by saying that my purchase of a 7800GTX allowed the Earth Simulator to gain another 10FLOPS, and I don't know where you got that notion from my post ...

    What I find sad is that some people who responded to me thought that they were agreeing with the OP when in fact they were actually agreeing with me -- the OP said that there is no tangible benefit from going from (say) a 6800Ultra to a 7800GTX and I countered that there was indeed a tangible benefit, irregardless of whether that benefit is justified by the extra $300 purchase price or not.

    If people want to argue questions of relative worth, then that is a completely separate topic. Is it worth spending $300 for an extra 5fps? For some people, no, but for others, yes -- no matter if it is "worth" it to you or not, you must agree that there is a benefit, however small, or else you just come across as ignorant.

    To the person who stated that his X800XT PE was able to do what I do with my 7800GTX and WoW, is that also including transparency AA? If it is, then I retract my statement about "good luck in that quest", but I was not aware that you could enable transparency AA on an X800-class card in a game that uses it a lot (eg, WoW) without a fairly significant drop in framerates (on the order of 10-15%) ... if it works for you, then congrats, and I feel more knowledgable that it is indeed possible to have playable framerates on a non-7800GTX card (though, again, we could argue as to whether the 7800GTX provides a higher minimum, and that leads back to the argument that there is a tangible benefit).

    -TIM
  • RandomFool - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    if you seriously believe that upgrading to the fastest and best thing every two months then you are retarded. There's no point in upgrading just becasue you can upgrade, it's a waste of money. IMO it's not worth it to upgrade unless your current system is limiting you, and it sounds to me like your system is fine you're just obsessed with seeming cool with your fancy computers. But if you can justify spending a ton of money for 10 fps in a game and so you can tell people you've got the uber-mega-1337 system with everything turned on go ahead.
  • TheSloth - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link

    I just picked up a 7800GTX and x2's about two weeks ago, and I don't think it was splurging at all. Up until then I'd been using my old HP with an integrated GeForce4 MX440. Upgrading to a mere 6800 would be inefficient, because the 7800 rapes it and isn't that much more. I spent good money built myself a system that I won't have to replace for a few years. Even my old rig, which wasn't even good at all when I got it 3 years ago could play HL2 and WoW, not well though. I expect several years of happy gaming on my new rig, and that justifies the cost
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    I run WoW on my 2405 @ 1920x1200 with all the options on full with an X800XT PE, and get very playable framerates...
  • Quiksel - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    too bad you sound like one of the guys that has more money than brains, as mentioned above... :rolleyes back:

    And don't even start to get on your soapbox about how scientific computing needs all the UBER GHZZZZ that hasn't been invented yet, as if everyone here doesn't already know that.

    You're just a gamer... a gamer that is trying to justify an incredibly wasteful appetite for spending lost of money on an increasingly agressive upgrade cycle. You're not a scientist, you're just a consumer.

    So stop preaching. You're just one of the sheep.
  • xsilver - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    you are very right.... however there is the small group of people that run SLI 7800gtx's on a 17"lcd, or even worse, 17" crappy CRT

    there are more examples of idiotic computer matching but i think you get the idea

    dont get me wrong, I agree with you, just trying to point out what the OP probably meant
  • deadlock - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    I run two 7800GTXs on a 19" LCD, which has the same resolution of 90% of the 17" LCDs out there.

    At 1280x1024, with 16x AA and 16x AF, modern games slow to a crawl on my system. The F.E.A.R demo, for example, runs at about 5fps. Basically unplayable.

    Modern hardware has a long way to go before it can play every game with everything maxxed out. Until that day comes, there will always be an argument for using SLI on most modern setups (even with a 17" LCD), and you will never have redundant power.

    The value argument is something else, but "value" has never been a word associated with the ultra high-end anyway. Also questionable is the sense in spending so much on two high-end graphics cards but still use a 17" monitor, but doing so is their prerogative and I am just trying to point out doing so on a 17" monitor is by no means pointless.
  • TheSloth - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link

    Sir, what are you doing to your system. 1280x1024 with maximum setting on the fear demo whould run with at least 60 fps with one 7800.... dear god....
  • bob661 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    If you think really hard about it, no one actually NEEDS a computer at home. What wouldn't get done if there were no computers at home? Bills can be paid without one, shopping can be done without one, and even entertainment can done without one. That said, people that buy computers can be said to have "have more money than brains". That $400-$1000+ spent on a computer could be dropped into savings or added to a retirement fund. Computers are a luxury.
  • highlandsun - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link

    Computers at home a luxury?

    With the price of gasoline these days, the money I save by not having to drive to an office or a store easily pays for the cost of the computer, electricity, and ISP. My electronic bill payments are free, so no check printing and postage costs either. No way is it a luxury; that $400-1000 spent on a computer is money well-spent.
  • TheInvincibleMustard - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    It shouldn't be boiled down into a question of "need" as then we can get into some very far-reaching conclusions.

    Telephones? Luxury
    Electricity? Luxury
    Cold food-storage? Luxury
    Vehicles? Luxury

    Yet I would wager that most of the people (probably 99.999%) that have the above four items see themselves benefitting very tangibly from those four items. Do we need them? Of course not, people have lived for thousands of years without them, and I'm sure people in "modern times" could do without them as well ... does that mean that people that have them "have more money than brains?" Of course not, and I hope people can see the flaw in utilizing a logic such as basing things off of "need" ...

    -TIM
  • Brian23 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    i only boo this because I'm still running my Geforce 3 card and I need an upgrade. Since product launches bring down prices, I was about to buy a new card, but I don't want to get a gto2 because I don't have the money to splurge on a pcie system right now. I was hoping that r520 would bring down the prices so I could get something like a 6800.
  • michal1980 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    HAHA

    i mean is there really anything more to say?
  • Brian23 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    I want a new graphics card NOW!

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