ATI's next graphics card possible specs.

4Xcut

ViperVenoM i agree completely with you on the sli thing.I may be wrong on this but did i not hear correct that sli is supported in as few as 3 games. if this is true then it doesn't seem to make sense to spend that much money on an sli setup when there is so little usefor it. would it not be better to wait and see what ati's response is and spend money on that as it is more than likely that it will have support in more than 3 games.

gline

4Xcut wrote:

ViperVenoM i agree completely with you on the sli thing.I may be wrong on this but did i not hear correct that sli is supported in as few as 3 games. if this is true then it doesn't seem to make sense to spend that much money on an sli setup when there is so little usefor it. would it not be better to wait and see what ati's response is and spend money on that as it is more than likely that it will have support in more than 3 games.

When ati have a response to sli out then nvidia will have a response to that in the pipeline, its an endless circle, you dont get the hardware because you need it, you get it because its slightly future proof . Its also a hobby. with pc's you can never have the best as there is always something else on the way to beat it

ViperVenoM

yeh well

im not making the same mistake as before

the 9800xt came out..when ..september 03 or something? (could be a bit off there)

and they was still the top card in feb 04 which is when i got mine thinking wooo gonna be well ahead for ages..only to hear of all this pci express and sli stuff up and coming and seeing benchies of my card getting well and truely trashed! i mean the 9700pro was better than the 9600pro..the 9800pro was nice little increase over the 9700pro etc etc..then the 6800/x800's just completely CRAPPED! on the 9800xt by like 90% in cases..i just was not happy!

so in future if im gonna get the latest gen stuff..ill get it pretty much as soon as it comes out giving me longer before it gets beat again, which is what i intend to do with ATi's next card...

obviously ill read up about it and doing so is what put me off getting SLi if SLi was like supported for everything and took full advantage of the hardware then id have probably opted for it..but £100 on a motherboard and £600 on a couple of 6800GT's...waa no ta i think ill just pay the £350 for the next card or whatever and have done with it for another year! :eek:

gline

ViperVenoM wrote:

if SLi was like supported for everything and took full advantage of the hardware then id have probably opted for it..but £100 on a motherboard and £600 on a couple of 6800GT's...waa no ta i think ill just pay the £350 for the next card or whatever and have done with it for another year! :eek:

true, sli doesnt seem to justify the price

Azza

All that has been confirmed so far is thats its called an X950XT and its got 512MB of ram. It could possibly be no more than an X850XT with more ram.

There is talk now of a 6800 Ultra with 512MB ram making an apperance at some German event on the 10th of March.

jessy

I think it would be a mistake for NVIDIA to release the 6800 ultra with 512MB Mem, first cos no game needs that kind of video mem and second, anyone who can afford to buy a 6800ultra will probably know enough to know 512 video mem won’t make a difference in games over 256.

Azza

The next Unreal Engine which I think is due out next year will require 1GB ram to run at full wack according to the designers.

jessy

1Gig of video Ram :eek:

gline

Azza wrote:

The next Unreal Engine which I think is due out next year will require 1GB ram to run at full wack according to the designers.

Video ram or system ram??? probably system ram, as i dont think video cards wil have 1gb anytime soon

BloodBath

Video ram of course. 1gb of system ram is the min requirements already to run games at their full potential. Textures and 3d models are starting to get massively detailed. Doom3 requires 512mb of video ram and a lot of future titles will be the same. Games are only limited by the hardware that's available for them. Otherwise the developers could crank up the 3d and texture detail easily.

I saw some guys got one of those ati cards for testing and the only real improvents in the benchmarks were memory related so I think the first card will be an x800 core with 512mb of ram with the new cores with 512mb and 256mb flavours out in the summer.


BloodBath

padraigf

Anyone saying Doom3 requiring 500mb of video ram is just being ridiculous. I'm aware that it has 500megs of textures, but it runs in Ultra quality perfectly on a 256meg card. The cost of a gig of GDDR3 sounds incredibly prohibitive to me....

Also, anyone remember all the speculation that youd need like a 9800pro or an x800 to play D3 on low/medium ? It was all just a bloody joke! You can play the game on a GeForce 3 for crying out loud!

BloodBath

I know it runs fine on a 256mb card but it does require a 512mb card for full quality textures. GDDR3 will get cheaper like any ram once it's popular. There are no 1024mb modules of it yet but i'm sure samsung are working on it already. If you have seen the quality of the 3d models and textures of unreal3 then i'd say it will easily require at least 512mb of video memory to run properly, ie full detail.


BloodBath

padraigf

But Doom 3 doesnt require 512mb of video memory to run textures at full quality. If you select "Ultra Quality" then it's using 512mb of textures. Theres more than enough bandwidth to chuck them in and out of system/video memory. 512mb definitely isn't "required".

Look at the newest TurboCache 6200s. I think that manufacturers should be working this into all models (in some way shape or form) to keep prices down a bit. GDDR3 is obscenely expensive.

BloodBath

Sorry the textures will look fine. What I mean is if you want to run doom3 on a high resolution @ ultra quality it is recomended that you have 512mb's of video memory as by id's own calculations a typical level in doom3 can hold 500mb's of texture data. This can lead to chopiness at certain times on a 256/mb card as textures have to be constantly reloaded.


BloodBath

Azza

Good news for ATI fans. The X850XT and the X800XL will be available very shortly in AGP form.

The X800XL is considerable cheaper than the 6800GT and preforms almost on par so looks like a good card.

Also noticed overclock.co.uk are selling the Powercolor X800XT cheaper than the 6800GT.