BF2S Forums dual card or upgrade

ATI's Crossfire is not really tried and tested.  There have been slow drips and drabs of it into the market but if your looking to dual up your cards nVidia's SLI is the proven way to go.

However, with more and more cards coming out now everythings changing.  Yeah, nVidia's 7800GTX remains one of the fastest cards around for pixel pushing poke with about 24 pipelines.  Its also cheaper than some of the other offers you can get, its compact and it runs quietly.

But the X1800XT is a monster.  512mb of ram and advanced 3D architecture simply blow the competion out of the water.  Its also one of the only cards to be able to use both anti-aliasing and HDR, and the graphics it gives out have to be seen to be believed. 

With the price of the 7800 at about £300 and the 1800XT at £320, its a hard choice to make .

Last edited by Paladus902 (2006-01-13 16:11:30)

By the way, Paladus, the 7800GTX also comes in a 512MB variant. It's unfair to say that the 1800XT simply blows the competition out of the water just because you like ATI. Quick Half-Life 2 Benchmark:


I'm not going to deny that the X1800XT is capable of outperforming the 7800GTX here and there, but the advantages either have over the other are nominal (if you discount NVIDIA's purportedly 'more-stable' drivers). Of course, some benchmarks may conflict with this information; it also depends on the platform used for testing.

Bottom Line:

Honestly, if you're already thinking of spending a bunch of money on a 7800GTX or 1800XT, Do yourself a favor and wait for NVIDIA's G80 series to come out this year instead.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-01-13 17:57:51)

Think about the G80 as an NVIDIA GeForce 8800. The 7800's were the G70's.

I've got Nvidia Geforce 6600. Is it good or bad?

Me? I'm no ATI Fan, but what I said is true, the 1800 does blow the competition out of the water.  Hell I like both makes of card, but the 1800 offers so much more and it isnt because of the 512 mb of ram, as I said, it has advanced 3D architecture that uses a ultra-threaded dispatch processor, meaning far more efficiency than most cards out there.

However, its your money in the end, just trying to help you make a good choice.

well some ppl like dual monitors, but their useless to me, they'll fix it in a few updates

I would go with the single card but with the Nvidia next generation, I would wait for that.

I love Nvidia more ( I got ATI because of the price )

Last edited by bad-dog (2006-01-14 13:23:39)

Alienware is such a rip-off. now SLI has dual 16X pci-E instead of the 8X, the true 16 dual sli supported are all made by asus...

You can custom-build a top-of-the-line computer for about $2500 less than an Alienware.

If you really want to run SLI, make SURE you use the NForce 4 SLI X16 chipset (as mentioned in a previous post), otherwise you're essentially running both cards on a pair of PCI-e 8x slots. However, if memory serves, ASUS no longer has a monopoly on the NF4 SLI X16 chipset.

If you really, REALLY want to run SLI, make SURE you wait for DDR2-enabled AMD Socket AM2 systems, and the accompanying 8800's (or whatever equivilant ATI has, if that's your schtick).

If you want to get the most out of an NVIDIA card, go with BFG. They ship overclocked, and are supported by a lifetime warranty and 24/7 telephone tech support. Some of them even ship premodded for watercooling, if that's what you want to do.

uk.solidsnake wrote:

The X1800 XT is a better choice over the 7800 GTX, not just for speed, but superior architecture and image quality. Adaptive AA and HDR + AA is a godsend.

Since this is a BF2 forum, I feel this segment of a HardOCP review is appropriate. (Scroll to the bottom.)

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODc1LDc=

Now I'm not 100% sure how, but the game looks infintely better on the X1800 than it does on the 7800. Take a look at the mesh on the fence and the crane.

But all in all, it's probably worth waiting for either the new G80 chips, or the X1900.

That article is skewed in ATI's favor. It pits a X1800XT 512MB against a 7800GTX 256MB. The compared screenshots may have been taken from the JPG copy of the BF2 screenshots rather than the significantly higher quality PNG copy. Still, the BF2 section concludes with "we saw no differences between the two video cards in this game..."

Not that I'm saying that ATI has poor image quality, or anything. The adaptive AA is very nice, and you can get an OEM SAPPHIRE X1800XT 512MB for $460.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-01-19 14:42:20)

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

uk.solidsnake wrote:

The X1800 XT is a better choice over the 7800 GTX, not just for speed, but superior architecture and image quality. Adaptive AA and HDR + AA is a godsend.

Since this is a BF2 forum, I feel this segment of a HardOCP review is appropriate. (Scroll to the bottom.)

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODc1LDc=

Now I'm not 100% sure how, but the game looks infintely better on the X1800 than it does on the 7800. Take a look at the mesh on the fence and the crane.

But all in all, it's probably worth waiting for either the new G80 chips, or the X1900.

That article is skewed in ATI's favor. It pits a X1800XT 512MB against a 7800GTX 256MB. The compared screenshots may have been taken from the JPG copy of the BF2 screenshots rather than the significantly higher quality PNG copy. Still, the BF2 section concludes with "we saw no differences between the two video cards in this game..."

Not that I'm saying that ATI has poor image quality, or anything. The adaptive AA is very nice, and you can get an OEM SAPPHIRE X1800XT 512MB for $460.

Yeah, that is true. The article is to be taken with a pinch of salt, pitching a 512 card against a 256 meg card is hardly fair. But in real life terms the 7800 256 meg version is the only competitor against the X1800 XT becuase the 512 meg 7800 is significantly more expensive, so I guess putting them together is only realistic if you are looking from a cost / performance point of view. As far as I know 512 meg versions aren't as widely available either.

I'm curious why they concluded with saying they noticed no differences visually. Those screenshots clearly show otherwise. I assumed they meant there was no image difference when using standard filtering techniques, because Adaptive AA does wonders for image quality.