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  • jmvillafana - Saturday, October 20, 2007 - link

    I greatly appreciate the large scope of your comparison. As new boards come out, they are just compared to their close competitors. I am out to buy a board and after reading your article I am sure I will make the best decision.
  • GlassHouse69 - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    that crap was boring.

    it's so kiddie like.

    where is quake 5 arena?

  • segask - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    what about DX10? The X1950 is a DX9 card isn't it?
  • Sunrise089 - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    1) Next gen cards finally coming into their own - the 8600 series is beating the old high-end 7900 series, and the HD 2600 series is very close to the X1950pro.

    2) ATI looks great - HD 2900XT way better than the 8800GTS parts, HD 2600 XT way better than the 8600 parts.

    3) X1950XTX is the exception to surprise 1, and seems to be holding up spectacularly well.
  • aka1nas - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    The 2900 is only doing so well because there is no AA in the demo.
  • cmdrdredd - Saturday, October 20, 2007 - link

    At playable resolutions the HD2900 can do AA well enough.
  • ChrisSwede - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    If I have an ATI 9800 Pro, what card would that be comparable to? ...or is it too old to even compare to any of these?
  • Spoelie - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    it's performance would be slightly slower than a 6600gt, which itself is >~30% slower than the 7600gt
  • Sunrise089 - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    First of all it won't be able to run all of the effects...even all of the DX9 effects. Then it also may be limited by it's small memory size. Barring those points though, I'd compare it to the 2400XT, but I wouldn't count on matching the performance.
  • punko - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I'm running that card with an ancient AMD XP 1800+ at 1024x768 at detail level 5

    Am I missing graphics & performance? Yes.

    But I agree, I have no idea what I'm missing.

    Running about inside the dark walker is great fun.
  • TSIMonster - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Looks like UT3 is going to scale well with lower end hardware. Can't wait to see some tests with AA and AF.
  • blckgrffn - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    GDDR3 or 4?

    Thanks,
    Nat
  • Makaveli - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    "The thing that most suprises me is the 2600XT beating 1950pro"

    The 2600XT wins by 1 fps at 1280

    Then X1950pro wins by 1 fps at 1600

    I hardly call that a beating more like a tie. Generally the 1950pro is faster from most other games and benchmarks i've seen.

    I want to see how the numbers shape up once the final game is out
  • ChronoReverse - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Honestly that's the way it SHOULD be. A midrange card of this generation ought to at LEAST tie a high-mid card from the previous generation.
  • xsilver - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    Whats odd to note is how the older gen cards are finally starting to struggle compared to mid range new gen cards.

    What wasnt shown on the recent HL ep2 tests is that the 7900gtx is no longer holding down the 8600gts and 2600xt. In older games - it would be certain that the older gen card would beat the newer mid range card.

    It will be interesting to see what the range mid spec'd cards coming out this christmas can do to the 8800gts and 2900pro
  • poohbear - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    great to see my x1900xt is still kicking as$ and chewing bubble gum. it`d be great to see a DX9 and DX10 comparison in the final release if possible. cheers.
  • ratbert1 - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Looking at this graph, the AMD performance advantages are certainly clear.

    The only price/performance advantage I see is the hd2600xt. With the maturation of ATI's drivers, especially for Crossfire, you can get two of these for less than 2 bills. Of course, then you need a Crossfire board, and then its 16x/4x unless you go Asus and you can get 8x/8x.
  • DerekWilson - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    you can get crossfire boards with 2x x16 slots.
  • Regs - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    High Quality = 8x AF and no AA support?
  • DerekWilson - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    high quality = the highest quality available in the beta demo... so you're kind of right. it's also high world geometry. And we used the -compatscale=5 command line option to make sure everything was run with the same options and highest graphical quality.
  • Ecmaster76 - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I bet all those people who bought x1k cards are feeling pretty good right now. Once again, the radeon has shown in the long haul its superior longevity compared to the Geforce (assuming that future UT3 verions and drivers dont change the results significantly.
  • legoman666 - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I'm still running with my x1800xt. The problem is, I never see benchmarks for it for new games. I can't really compare it to the x1950xt either, since they're different cores. Is there any way future reviews (or maybe this reviewcould be updated?) could have the x1800xt benchmarks included?

    That being said, I can run all of the Orange Box games at 1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAF, all max details with vsync on and still get 38fps (75hz/2). As long as UT3 isn't much more demanding than the source engine, I will probably be fine. Now that I typed that, I remember that Bioshock uses the UT3 engine. Bioshock also runs great on my machine with all the max details.

    I guess a good thing about having a compariatively small monitor (1280x1024 instead of one the larger wide screens) is that I still get decent frame rates since the newer monitors are designed for those huge screens and I'm still using my "tiny" screen. hopefully my monitor is the next thing that gets upgraded.
  • Spoelie - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    x1800xt is somewhat comparable to the x1950pro

    it has less shading power but more pixel pushing power, so in shader heavy games like this its general performance will be slightly less than the x1950pro, but it will cope better with stuff like anti-aliasing, upping the resolution & anisotropic filtering.
  • johnsonx - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I'm personally not too sure about my 1950Pro AGP. I don't seem to be getting such great performance.

    My system specs out far better than my son's (me=X2@2.5Ghz, 1GB, X1950Pro AGP, Vista) (son=A64-3500, 2GB, 7900GS PCIe, XP Pro), yet he appears to get better performance in UT3. I haven't benchmarked it, but he has all detail levels turned up to max while I run mine with the details one tick above minimum, yet his seems smoother than mine.

    Between my slightly faster dual core vs. his single core, and my more powerful video card, I ought to be able to run max detail (we both run 1280x1024 LCD's, which should be a walk in the park for my rig).

    His system has only one thing better than mine, which is he has 2GB of ram while I have 1GB... but I haven't noted any swapping, and the game still loads pretty fast so it doesn't seem memory constrained.

    I know there are many variables here (Vista vs XP, 1Gb vs 2Gb, AGP vs PCIe), but none of those AFAIK should make all that much difference today (obviously the Vista vs XP thing was a big deal 6 months ago, but the drivers have largely reached performance parity haven't they?). I guess I need to figure out how to run the benchmarks Derek did and see what's what.
  • Spoelie - Friday, October 19, 2007 - link

    it's not the fact that you have 1gig or the fact you have vista, but the combination of those 2 make it really a sub-par gaming machine. You really ought to double the ram if you want to game in vista, and even then the same config will get a bit better performance if it was running xp.

    Also "seems choppy": do you have an lcd screen? v-sync on then.
  • mcnabney - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    You are running Vista, your son is running XP. Vista cripples gaming performance across the board.
  • ChronoReverse - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Yeah, I have an x1950 and I'm feeling pretty plucky indeed =D
  • MrKaz - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Why do you put the 2600XT in the same bag of the 8600GTS.
    The price difference is huge.

    I can buy one good 2600XT for 100€ and one good 8600GTS for 190€.

    The more correct comparison is (I think)
    19x0XT = 8600GTS
    2600XT = 8600GT
    2600PRO = 8500GT
    2400PRO/XT = 8400GS
  • dm0r - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I compared in performance, not price...anyway looks like 2600xt is getting mature with new drivers.

    I would like to see power consumption tests please
  • cmdrdredd - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    power consumption is covered elsewhere. Game performance reviews/previews/guides are for PERFORMANCE based comparisons.
  • tfranzese - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link

    Power consumption is one measure of performance just as frames per second is. There is no standard measure for performance and in this day and age, power consumption is becoming an even more important metric for deciding what the better performer is. I don't know anyone who loves excess heat and a high electric bill.
  • MrKaz - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Thanks for the reply ;)

    But I was asking to the reviewer (Derek Wilson)
  • DerekWilson - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    I did group cards by performance. Certainly, the 2600 performed quite well for its price. Which I hope was well noted in the article...
  • dm0r - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link

    Very informative and with surprising results, great job as aways...
    looks like the midrange fight is between the 8600GTS and 2600XT.The thing that most suprises me is the 2600XT beating 1950pro

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