ATI X1900 Reviews

[Midknyte]

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r580/
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X1900XTXCF/x1900/index.htm
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=777&cid=2
http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=13474
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/radeon-x1900/index.x?pg=1
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/865/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTUz
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4477
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/315/
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679

[Rabbitrunner51]

Sorry little oleme had to be the first to comment..., but it just so happens I just got done with the full review at Tom's Hardware.....and it is inded impressive, that is to the extravigant and consumate consumer...

Sure I would love to have any one of these line of video cards... but seriously..not only can i never afford one now or inthe future...but now we have a ton or miriad of slightly older cards out that perform quite well enough for 80% or more of the serious gamer and prices will continue to drop once again.

I doubt i will spend more than $150-300.00 for a card tops no matter...but its exciting nonetheless that we all love to keep our eyes peeled at the two video card giants and the fight for thier supremacy...
On that note i have always felt that at the pace all of this gets thrown at all of us...it appears its more of an ego thing for this company OR THAT...whatever.

As impressive as all of this is.. I find myself asking.." whats the point" technology??, "one company fighting it out with another or just a race to get all of us to spend all of our monies for the latest and greatest?" OK I give up...

The computer i want now woould cost around $4000.00 if you threw no cautions to the wind..

Like the reviewer at Tom's was saying..; Most avid gamers run games at about 60-90 FPS and anything over that is not seen by the naked eye.
The conclusion here is that if you have or bought a card that plays a high end game like FarCry or the testiest game F.E.A.R. then most anybody should be quite satisfied they fulfilled thier truest needs... LOL

[MadPistol]

$650 for the X1900XTX!!!??? WTF!!!!!


Sure it's powerful, but dude, I thought paying $400 for my 6800 GT was too much about 1 1/2 years ago. That's just ludicrus!!!!

It is powerful though. I will give it that. However, I do not approve of it.

[RamonGTP]

Well its the same price as the GTX 512 and its available and its more powerfull. So when you look at its main competitor, the price is spot on. Thats not to say its cheap though, I think both cards are about $200 more than they should be.

[JediOfDarkness]

Well, if you consider the price of getting two GeForce 7800GTX cards for SLI, the X1900XTX is actually "cheap". Although $650 is still a lot of money to spend on a graphics card, no matter how high the scores are.

[Rabbitrunner51]

Any new HW that comes out in todays inflated market is going to start off being very high in cash dollars to the average consumer. Its just the price you play for new technology and in many cases ..something a bit more updated.
The problems I have is the genreal overall picture from the standpoint of whats been dissed many times before is obvious. Bigger..,better , best , versus our thirst for more and the fact they know enough will want and buy these cards ( in this case ).
Even most of the reputable tech report and expert computer sites agree that iin the past year the gamer or computer consumer has so many choices..and quite frankly too many choices...making all of this seem like we're drowning in a cesspool and confusion sets in.
The fact remains that only about 5-10% of all users can afford and will buy these cards... at the outset and i cannot tell you from the companies standpoint if that equates to real justification.
In reality..its still just a waste. After 65-85 FPS our naked eye cannot tell..and performance at such high end resolutions is again a personal bias and overkill.

Upon refection.., maybe its just that they are brain locked on the whole benchmark thing and losing the real perspective of the main populace.

The only real benifit here is that by doing this... it drives the prices in the near and distant offerings DOWN to the point of the avg.consumer being able to afford something they might not be able to before. ) are we bordeing on glutany and greed here??? ) LOL

[MadPistol]

5-10 %???

More like .5 - 1%. I certainly can't afford that.

[JediOfDarkness]

Well, so long as my graphics card can keep games running at 1600x1200 with over 30fps, I'm happy.

And I'd say that by the ammount of people you see with 7800GT/GTX SLI systems that 5-10% would be pretty accurate.

[Rabbitrunner51]

I DO..by the way fully understand that some like the very best and fastest and the like and thats fine. Don't really mean to diss them..

Guess its commendable that the card companies are giving us alot of choices ..whether it is low end.., low medium end, high end.., and very high end..etc.. We certainly have enough choices now....

My point is that there are just too many... overkill!

To get back to the point of discusion though... the 1900 family has somenice advantages...like less power consumption... like most newer ATI cards have as an asset....and some other.. BUT... they are very long and do hinder HD placement .

I was again called to my attention the fact that alot of these techie journals keep talking about dual cards... ( PCIE with twohigh end cards ) and that to me is overkill also.

My expert friend upstairs who builds systems for a living said to me the ohter day he agrees that all of this is way overboard.... at least for him. He stated he will use a X1300 and it does everything he wants for him.... and he is fussy about such things.

I agree that the 7800GT is a very nice higher end card.. and about what i'm shooting for someday.

I will be very happy with mid-high end and live in total bliss.... LOL :)

[RamonGTP]

He obviouly can't be all that fussy if a X1300 does everything for him.

[MadPistol]

lol. X2xxx is going to be a joke.

[Someone Stupid]

Just waiting for one more architecture change before I spend any money on graphics. No sense in buying an X1900 or GT/GTX now with Vista and WGF around the corner to make a mess of things. My X800 works just fine now, especially since I upgraded to an Opteron. Before I was considering changing, not now. Love that Asrock board, got a solid graphics boost while sticking with AGP and it gives me PCI-E as an option down the road.

[Rabbitrunner51]

HEY..SS in about three days Iwill be getting my new CPU ( X2 3800 )and like you will be putting it on the ASRock board as well. I will alsobe stickingwith my current video card and its nice to hear that it works well. I wouldn't be getting it if I wasn't sure ther would be a substantial performance boost.
Nice to know that my current graphics card might still improve some more. No problems with it now at all... plays everything out there still and looks spectacular most of the time...
Right now that board is one the hottest sellers out there.

[JediOfDarkness]

Yeah, I looked at that board when I was buying my new system, but I figured that by the time I buy a new PCIe graphics card, it'll probably be time to upgrade my motherboard anyway, so I'll just get a good PCIe motherboard then.

Oh, and WGF has been renamed back to DirectX 10 btw :t

[Someone Stupid]

The board is a great board, just if your overclocking, don't install any PCI cards until you've found your settings, the jumper is in a horrid spot. While the boot gaurd is good, I've locked the board hard a couple times too many to where the PCI cards where ripped out until I was done. Excellent board though. Haven't been as impressed with a board since my old 8rda+.

Expect your minimum frames to go up at least 10 FPS from your Socket A irregardless of your clock. In FarCry in my most taxing area that I love to use as a bench since it is right after an early save, I used to get 30ish (50 was avg in the rest of the game), now I'm pulling 45 easy in the hardest spot and 60-75 elsewhere. Getting rid of those drops really breaths a great deal of life into a card.

Some games be prepared to ctrl alt delete out and set your affinity to one core or the other as they won't work without it because of dualie conflicts. A few games have been patched to fix this, though most haven't. AMD and MS both have some DC hotfixes, but they've fixed nothing for me that I didn't still have to do manually. Small price to pay IMO - and if your too lazy for that there is at least one program which will set affinity for you for certain applications - although I can't recall it's name. I'm only mentioning this as I recall somewhere you were asking about compat problems with games - all will run, just some might have to be told to only run on one core.

[Rabbitrunner51]

SS... that was methat asked you the questions..( P.M. private message ??? I sent?? )...

I am getting a little excited..as today... ( this PM ) I am going to pick up the processor... then probably spend another day or less moving things .. ( tomy Zip folder andother in other HD ) and writing things down in my main drive i have to reinstall after a clean re-install of the OS. Sounds confusing but its just the way I do things.... I know I should just do a transfer of settings thing or whatever..but I need to do this for the new Mobo anyways.

Its rather funny yuo mentioning FarCry as I am again replaying that game again now...and while it runs very good mostly on my little ole FX5900 card.. it does have some places in the game where the FPS drop to like 5-10... but not very often.

Will my Ram be good to go?? I am running Corsair Platinum TwinX ( L2 cas timings of 2-3-2-6 ) and have 1GB of it.

Still have to make sure i check the bios version as if its the earlier one..then i need to get ahold of the latest version for bootup. PSU should be good to go.. ( 2.0 )

P.M.me a message back using private message for any detailsi should know.. THKS.

LOL