Hello again,

I am getting a new PC but the PCs I am up against are all littered with various choices. Basically I need an idea of which card is truely the best card for playing future games like Doom 3, Half Life 2, and newer games which follow this format. If someone could put it in ranking order of performance then this would be helpful.

The options are as follows:

Geforce FX 6600 PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon 9800SE AGP
ATi Radeon 9800 AGP
ATi Radeon X300SE PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon X800SE PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon X800XT PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon X600 PCI Xpress

Thank you for your time.

PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows XP

If money is no object, I vote for the X800XT. It's the most powerfull in that list.

As for ranking them, I'm probably not the best person for that.

Check out <A HREF="http://www.ixbt-labs.com/articles2/over2k4/" target="_new">http://www.ixbt-labs.com/articles2/over2k4/</A>

But here's my guess from best to worst:

ATi Radeon X800XT PCI Xpress
Geforce FX 6600 PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon X800SE PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon X600 PCI Xpress
ATi Radeon 9800 AGP
ATi Radeon 9800SE AGP
ATi Radeon X300SE PCI Xpress

Any one want to tell me how bad I did. Keep in mind I didn't look up any benchmarks.

"A delayed game will eventually come out, a bad game is bad forever."
-Shigeru Miyamoto

How did you come up with that list? Strange selection of cards, high end, low end, odd ball, all in the same list?


My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>

You probably meant Geforce 6600 GT PCI-Express. The Geforce FX is the previous generation.

That's also the best one for future games. It has great performance for DOOM 3 which is very heavy on graphics. And it won't dissapoint for Half-Life 2 either. But most of all, it supports 100% of the DirectX 9 specification, whereas ATI only supports the older features. Which means that the next generation games will still run in full glory on the Geforce 6 Series.

Your list is only slightly off.

I'd put the R9800AGP above the X600(especially plain X600, but even if it's and XT)

And IF it's a REGULAR VANILLA GF6600 then I would move it down just below the R9800AGP but above the X600.

If it's a GT, then they are just above the X800SE in most cases but close (depends on Resolution and setting too because the X800SE does still have 256bit memory bus and 256mb of memory), but the GT is cheaper too based on usual MSRP.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

I think you already know the answer yourself.

It's obviously X300SE *cough* I meant ATi Radeon X800XT PCI Xpress

<font color=red><b>Life just gets better and better, first there was 9800SE->Pro, second 475Mhz on stock VGPU, third there's XT BIOS and now I've vVPU modded it! w00tz!</b></font color=red> <A HREF="http://www.maccrazy.net/9800" target="_new">http://www.maccrazy.net/9800</A>

I dont see a GT on the list.

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

OK it seems that X800 is the popular option so I'll have to stretch my PCs budget to include that. A couple of questions though:

- Is the X800SE faster or better than the Radeon 9800 Standard or Geforce 6600 or 6800?
- If I was to get the 128MB version of a Radeon X800SE instead of the 256MB option, will I still be able to play games like Doom 3, Half Life 2 or NFS Underground 2 at high resolutions like 1024 x 768 with highest quality and still get a decent framerate of around 50 or 60fps?
- Same question as above except this time with the X300SE in place of the X800SE although I can probably guess the answer to this, I would like solid confirmation of this
- Same question as above except this time with the X800XT in place of the X800SE
- Is it true that PCI express cards have the ability where you can upgrade the memory of them by buying another one of the PCI express graphics cards and installing it in a vacant PCI Express slot? How does this work and how easy is this to configure?

Please clarify this so I can make a more informed choice on my PC

PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows XP

Whoa looks like you want a tutorial.

1.) The X800SE was usually used in OEM Dell systems for a while after its release, however I do see some trickling into retail now. They would be slightly better than a Radeon 9800PRO or equal to an X700XT in the benches Ive seen. It would be faster than the 9800 standard, 6600 standard, and roughly equal to the 6800 standard.
2.) 1024x768 is not considered high resolution; your video ram will have almost no effect there. The 256MB of texture memory comes into play at settings like 1600x1200.
3.) X300SE is the cheapest, slowest PCI express card you can get. The X800SE is the cheapest, slowest X800 you can get...the X800 chipset is ATI's current flagship. These 2 cards are not even on the same page.
4.) The XT model will be significantly faster than the SE model of any Radeon card. They are considered the extreme ends of the model spectrum. You could roughly consider an XT of one model number to be comparable to the SE of the next step up.
5.) Right now Nvidia is the only card manufacturere supporting dual graphics cards. They call it SLI and it uses 2 8x PCI express slots on the motherboard (Nforce4 based boards with this layout just came out this week). Its not upgrading the memory necessarily, its like taking the workload of your game and spreading it over 2 cards. Performance increases up to 70% at higher resolutions (well above your 1024x768 definition of "high" ). ATI is supposed to have something like this in Q2 2005, so we shall see.

Every bit of this info can be found on sites like Toms and Anadtech, you should try reading some of the reviews on these cards (they are on the front pages right now!) to get a good idea of actual performance.

"Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my drive?"
P4 3.0C HT, Intel D865GBF, 1GB Crucial PC3200 DDR, 2x WD 36GB Raptor 10kRPM, BBA Radeon 9800PRO, SB Audigy, Hauppage WinTV

Actually SLI is still two 16x slots, just running at 8x.

Just so he doesn't look for an 8X card.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

Lol thank you, I am now very informed and I can have the assurance of being able to play future games at something like 1280x1024 with a 128MB X800SE card and still get silky smooth framerates (80fps or above). Sorry for calling the 1024 x 768 resolution high. Thats wat happens wen u r bein suffocated with a 32MB TNT2 card, you never know the joys of a proper high resolution like 1600x1200!!!!

Just to be totally sure, will I be able to get a 128MB X800SE card and have it kick the ass of a 256MB 9800 Standard card in terms of performance. Will I only lose out on running games like Doom 3 at a 1600x1200 resolution with highest quality textures by getting the 128MB version of the card? What is the highest resolution that 128MB can go up to while playin Doom 3 on highest quality textures?

Also when ATi do release their new technology to get two graphcis cards toegther, does this mean I'll have to upgrade my motherboard to get this support. The PC I'm purchasing is a Dell Dimension 8400, if anyone knows what this motherboard is I woudl be happy to know. Upon closer inspection the layouts seem very different and strange to usual retail motherboards. This motherboard has two PCI Express slots and one is taken up by the new card, so I wandered whether the free slot could be used as I described above. Or when ATi release this technology, will I be able to perhaps flash my BIOS and update my motherboard with this support. Also will the second graphics card have to be the same model or brand as the one already in existance or coudl I perhaps have something like an X800SE 128MB card running together with a X800XT 512MB card (If they ship tht much memory with those cards by that time!) I dont intend to mix brands like have an nvidia with an ATi as there are bound to be huge conflicts between the drivers but it woudl be interesting to see if you could mix the two brands. You may well know some other guy in this forum has already enquired about the concept of mixing two brands of graphics cards.

Thank you for your help so far, you guys have been great!



PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows XP

<A HREF="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1371898" target="_new"> Turn your X800 Pro into an X800XT PE </A>

Get the pro version, then flash it to a XT PE, don't get the SE...

<font color=red><pre>\\//__________________________________
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

Not sure if it still works on the new cards or not.
Hopefully Sapphire ones still works.

This trick was done long ago by someone in THGC(I can't remember his name now).
Don't you ever steal the light away from THGC and shine it on thy evil AnandTech communitah!!!

<font color=red><b>Life just gets better and better, first there was 9800SE->Pro, second 475Mhz on stock VGPU, third there's XT BIOS and now I've vVPU modded it! w00tz!</b></font color=red> <A HREF="http://www.maccrazy.net/9800" target="_new">http://www.maccrazy.net/9800</A>

Read the posts. It works on most Pro versions, and if it doesn't, you can always revert back to previous bios.

<font color=red><pre>\\//__________________________________
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>