hi this year my pc is 1 year old it is desperate need of upgrading i am extremly stuck on what to upgrade to. Do i get the new ati x1800xt 512mb for £390 :'( and wait for a intel crossfire mobo to be released > to do a crossfire set up, or do i go with nvidia and sli 2x 6800gt comes to £370 and a intel sli mobo which are availabe now. open to any suggestions thanks ;D

my machine is a pentium 4 530 socket 775 with some crap mobo by dell lol hence why i want to upgrade.

i would say don't go with SLi or Crossfire, having a single powerful card is probably going to be enoug for any game out now, and having 2 graphics card is VERY expensive (not to mention a new motherboard.) The price you pay for the 2 cards alone is probably enough to build an entire budget gaming computer off of.

Look into the 7800GTX models, they aren't bad. i jsut personally would not want to pay that much for 2 grpahics cards when you only get about a 60% performance increase out of the second one...it's not double the performance when you have 2 cards.

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Thanks for the insight and thinking of it you are right at the moment nothing demands all that power especially since my monitor only supports 1280x1024 lol. But for single gpu power would you say that a 7800 gtx can beat the new ati x1800xt 512mb which around £30-£40 more.

A GeForce 7800 GTX cannot beat a Radeon X1800 XT. If you want to buy the fastest single card, it's the X1800 XT. Most of the time.

Another reason to avoid dual card configurations is that it doesn't always work properly. In circumstances where there is no supporting "profile" or the image is seriously compromised, you're left with single card operation.

Then there's power and heat problems.

All in all, dual card configurations are inelegant, and not technically admirable

the 7800GTX easily beats the X1800XT in most tests, but it is more expensive. I would go with a 7800GT/GTX instead of getting a 6xxx series card and SLI them.

As for the topic, i dont think that the X1800XT 512MB is worth it, the average score in 3DMark05 was around 9500 with that card, and you can get a much higher score with a 7800GTX.

People have been so caught up in the benchmark game, some of the most important factors of gaming get forgotten; a point which graphics card manufacturers take advantage of over and over. 3DMark is a good comparison test, but gives people a warped point of view about gaming performance.

If we ask ourselves a practical question like “What do I need to play Game X at maximum detail settings?”

It’s excess to requirements to scrutinise benchmarks, extract the statement “I can get an average of 80fps with Card Y and 85fps with Card Z” and then choose Card Z. What you’re looking for gaming, is a frame rate of 60 or higher to be comfortable, so frame rates in the 100s are actually pretty worthless. To put this another way: There is no game the GeForce 7800 GTX can play that the Radeon X1800 XT cannot, and there never will be.

Equally, “What settings can I run new Game X at?” is a common practical question

As a gamer and someone who’s owned or used a graphics card from each manufacturer at every generation, I can assure you that there’s a ocean of difference between one generation and another, but very little difference between two models from the same generation. In the details, some games run better than others; for every ATI favouring Source Engine, there’s an NVIDIA favouring Doom III Engine; but the actually gaming enjoyment is not affected by performance.

“Which model has the best visual quality?”

This can stir up the hornets nest. Accusations fly as shader code replacement and filtering optimisations are discovered, and those of us who simply want to play our games are stuck with visual inconstancies and anomalies. It can’t be helped though, because time and time and time again, people say “Buy Card Z! It has a better 3DMark!”.

Benchmarking as a tool for decision making only serves to divide between graphics cards that can do something, and graphics cards that cannot. Sure, if you’re buying graphics cards to race them, pay close attention to the benchmarks, but if you’re buying a graphics card to play games, choose whichever card in a class you personally like the best.

Try not to forget you’re supposed to be playing games with them. :P

I think what you meant was there are no games out now that take full advantage of either card, there obviously will be games in the future that the 7800GTX will only be able to play at low settings.

Luckily, the latest generation of graphics cards are still DirectX 9.0c, so all games optimised with Shader Model 3.0 will take full advantage of either the G70 or R520.

And actually, what I meant was exactly what I said; there will never be a circumstance when the GeForce 7800 GTX will allow someone to play a game the Radeon X1800 XT will not.

This conversation will never arise:

Person A: “I’m playing Gears of War right now on my 7800 GTX”
Person B: “Oh, I can’t play Gears of War because I only have an X1800 XT”

Curiously though, if you paw over benchmarks like I have, you notice that in numerous games, the 7800 GTX wins in “pure” tests, but the X1800 XT pulls away when the resolution is bumped up and Antialiasing/Anisotropic filtering applied. This is not always the case; in the games to which this doesn’t apply, the X1800 can be winning off the bat, or not at all, or consistently. What this may mean though, is the X1800 architecture has greater staying power. I remember seeing these sorts of benchmarks from the R300, and look how long that architecture lasted.

i agree with that the 7800gtx will play all the same games as the x1800xt and not were 1 can and the other cant :P do you think its the r520 archutecture or because its tech specs are greater then the 7800gtx so there for you would expect it to outperform it .