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jhogarty · Nov 17, 2005, 11:30 AM

I'm looking to replace my current video card in my Dual 2.5. So far I'm pretty set on the ATI Radeon X800 XT. Best price I've found is at Buy.com for $371.99.

Any pro/cons from you guys/gals to if this is my best choice? The only other competitor I can see is the nVidia GeForce 6800 GT DDL. But it is about $128 more.

I do graphics work in the Adobe Suite, Lightwave, and now learning Final Cut studio. I have a 23" ACD. I also play WoW. Have to play in a window because full screen lags too much.

Thanks!

J.

Big Mac · Nov 17, 2005, 11:42 AM

Most everyone agrees the X800 is a better card than the 6800. The only capability possessed by the latter is the ability to drive two ACD 30" (or other similarly large) displays, and since you're using a 23" ACD that won't matter.

P · Nov 17, 2005, 12:13 PM

The 6800 GT was only the second fastest card in nVidia's generation 6 lineup, with the 6800 Ultra being the fastest, while the x800 XT was ATi's top of the line. The X800 XT should be faster at most things.

jhogarty · Nov 17, 2005, 12:18 PM

Very good. I'll order the ATI. I figured it was the "one" but wanted confirmation. Thanks!

J.

Todd Madson · Nov 17, 2005, 12:47 PM

Not to mention that it compares favorably with the 7800 (PCI Express) offerings:

(from barefeats):

November 9th, 2005 -- "If I buy a 'close-out' AGP G5 Power Mac, what graphics card is comparable to the GeForce 7800 GT available in the Dual-Core G5 Power Macs?" The short answer is the Radeon X800 XT. Take a look at these stats:

Fill rate in billions of texels per second
7800 GT = 8.0; X800 XT = 7.6

Memory bandwidth billions of megabytes in per second
7800 GT = 32; X800 XT = 32

Transform rate in millions of vertices per second
7800 GT = 700; X800 XT = 712

gangster · Nov 17, 2005, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Very good. I'll order the ATI. I figured it was the "one" but wanted confirmation. Thanks!

J.

dont forget to look for coupons for buy.com, they usually have them.

jhogarty · Nov 17, 2005, 01:45 PM

Gangster,

Thanks for the coupon tip. Think I got an email from Buy today in fact.

J.

mduell · Nov 17, 2005, 01:59 PM

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

Not to mention that it compares favorably with the 7800 (PCI Express) offerings:
<snip>
Fill rate in billions of texels per second
7800 GT = 8.0; X800 XT = 7.6

Memory bandwidth billions of megabytes in per second
7800 GT = 32; X800 XT = 32

Transform rate in millions of vertices per second
7800 GT = 700; X800 XT = 712

Memory bandwidth in billions of megabytes? Yea, right.
Also the transfrom rate appears to be incorrect; ATi.com says ~700 for the PC versions of the card, but only 475 for the Mac version of the X800 XT.

Todd Madson · Nov 17, 2005, 05:10 PM

I wonder if someone will let the barefeats guy know that typo.
I think he meant "millions".

If it's billions, that's a truly frightening graphics card.

gangster · Nov 18, 2005, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Gangster,

Thanks for the coupon tip. Think I got an email from Buy today in fact.

J.

at the very least you should be able to get another $15 off, that card already has free shipping:

http://www.buy.com/retail/coupon.asp...879&adid=17662

jhogarty · Nov 18, 2005, 05:52 PM

Thanks for the coupon link gangster. I finally completed my order. Came out to: $367.84

Not bad. I'll post my thoughts of the card after I install and have time to play with it.

J.

zac4mac · Nov 18, 2005, 06:19 PM

Good price - I just ordered one last week from J&R music in New York. Final price to me was 380 something. Quite an awesome card, was playing Doom3 at Max eye candy at 1600x1200 but it was a little slow. Settled for 1280x1024 and max, 8x FSAA and it's quite playable. Was gonna get a 30" ACD, but it was DOA out of the box and I sent it back. Good thing too, that monitor is TOOOOO BIG. I may still reorder one, but for now I'll stick with my old 23" and 15" studio.

Z

Cadaver · 09:01 PM

Message edited 11/19:

I have an X800XT Mac Edition that is not being used. PM me if you want to make an offer (sale/trade).

Edit: to provide full disclosure, the X800XT I have for sale/trade has a faulty 2nd TMDS transmitter on the dual-link DVI port, which means it wont drive the Apple 30" display correctly (looks like its running 8-bit color). It will, however, run two standard DVI displays perfectly fine (which is why I didn't know it was faulty until well after I lost the receipt). So just to be clear, it works perfectly - except with a 30" display.

droe · Nov 18, 2005, 09:40 PM

Just so you known there is a $50 rebate from ATI on the purchase of a X800XT MAC Edition good thru 11/20/05. Just got mine today fron cdw.

innerimager · Nov 19, 2005, 01:53 AM

Originally Posted by Cadaver

I have an X800XT Mac Edition that is not being used. PM me if you want to make an offer.

PM sent....Peter

jhogarty · Nov 19, 2005, 10:00 AM

I thought the $50 rebate was only at CDW. And their price, when I looked, was $399. I'd rather pay $367 or so than take a chance on mail in rebates. I have had about a 50/50 success rate with them.

J.

aljawad · Nov 20, 2005, 06:46 AM

Amazon/J&R sell it for $360

jhogarty · Nov 20, 2005, 12:14 PM

Oh, well. It is already on its way and for $367, including shipping, I'm ok with that. :-)

J.

musashi2000 · Nov 21, 2005, 12:24 AM

I bought an X800 for my dual 1.8 G5 and can not use it for some reason. I just moved and need to look into the problem deeper. Seems like a driver issue. Won't boot past the initial blue background on boot. Have to hard reset from that point. Anyone heard of a similar issue with this Card?

Cadaver · Nov 21, 2005, 12:33 AM

Originally Posted by musashi2000

I bought an X800 for my dual 1.8 G5 and can not use it for some reason. I just moved and need to look into the problem deeper. Seems like a driver issue. Won't boot past the initial blue background on boot. Have to hard reset from that point. Anyone heard of a similar issue with this Card?

There was an issue with an old X800XT firmware version and booting in some G5s. Download the latest firmware from ATI's website. Installing it, however, with a non-booting system can be a bit problematic... Try a safe boot (shift key during startup).

aljawad · Nov 21, 2005, 04:58 AM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Oh, well. It is already on its way and for $367, including shipping, I'm ok with that. :-)

J.

Make sure you let us know how you like the new card. While I await the delivery of Aperture, I’m upgrading to a bigger display and will need to upgrade the display card as well.
Enjoy!

jhogarty · Nov 21, 2005, 05:42 PM

Yes, I will post my findings after I get the card and play with it a little. I want to see how it works in Photoshop, FCP, Motion, Lightwave, and of course WoW. :-)

J.

ViviMaster · Nov 22, 2005, 01:32 PM

i just picked up the x800 from buy.com. they had great fast service. this card is flawless. i find that i cant slow this thing down to easly now than with that older 9600. all this went into a dual 2ghz g5

jhogarty · Nov 23, 2005, 12:34 PM

:-( still waiting for mine to come. Hopefully this week. Want to have some time to tinker over the holiday weekend.

J.

Boochie · Nov 23, 2005, 01:45 PM

How much more noise does your G5 produce now? One thing I do like about the stock G5 with the 9600 is that it's whisper quiet, even with graphics intensive stuff going on.

Originally Posted by ViviMaster

i just picked up the x800 from buy.com. they had great fast service. this card is flawless. i find that i cant slow this thing down to easly now than with that older 9600. all this went into a dual 2ghz g5

jhogarty · Nov 23, 2005, 01:59 PM

My G5 is whisper quiet most of the time with the stock card. Except for that annoying chirping problem some of us have. I'll see about grabbing a sound clip before and after with the new card.

J.

Cadaver · Nov 23, 2005, 10:58 PM

The X800XT is a pretty quiet card. Quieter than the famously loud 9800's.

doublep · Nov 24, 2005, 07:49 AM

I am using ATIccelerator II 1.06 and I find I can reliably overclock the X800 XT by 10% or slightly more.

Great app.

jhogarty · Nov 25, 2005, 05:42 PM

Okies I have the new X800 xt installed. I'm noticing just a slight increase in noise but it might be one of my front fans. I blew some dust out and not sure if it affected a fan or not. Either way, not real noticible.

Do I need to install the drivers from the provided CD? It seems to work just find straight out of the box. Not like my windows boxes where I have to go download drivers and install till it works right.

Going to fire up some apps now and see how it works.

J.

DeathMan · Nov 25, 2005, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

My G5 is whisper quiet most of the time with the stock card. Except for that annoying chirping problem some of us have. I'll see about grabbing a sound clip before and after with the new card.

J.

Have you looked into the CHUD tools chirping fix? I don't remember now what it was, but it worked great for me.

jhogarty · Nov 25, 2005, 11:55 PM

Yes, I use CHUD with scripts to disable/enable NAP. Just not sure of the long term affects of using it. So I use it lightly.

J.

mduell · Nov 26, 2005, 03:45 AM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Yes, I use CHUD with scripts to disable/enable NAP. Just not sure of the long term affects of using it. So I use it lightly.

Disabling nap (so the lowest power setting is doze) increases power consumption for the CPU by about 10%.
For the standard PPC970FX part at 2.2Ghz it's 49W vs 43W at full clockrate and 19W vs 17W at half clockrate.

With the usual disclaimer: Nap and Doze [power figures] are not guaranteed by test. These values are to be used as characterization-based nominal values and are included for comparison purposes only.

Cadaver · Nov 26, 2005, 05:39 PM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Do I need to install the drivers from the provided CD? It seems to work just find straight out of the box. Not like my windows boxes where I have to go download drivers and install till it works right.

Going to fire up some apps now and see how it works.

J.

You do not need to install the ATI software, but it does give you some additional features, such as OpenGL overrides for games & other apps (to force anti-aliasing, ansiotropic filtering, etc., even for games at don't otherwise support them). Also gives you control of the TV-out settings (requires the Apple G5-to-TV video adapter, about $25) and screen rotation (portrait modes, etc.).
Don't use what's on the CD though, make sure you go to ATI.com and download the latest.

jhogarty · Nov 26, 2005, 11:21 PM

Cadaver - thanks for the info. I have not installed anything so far. Been working great. I will look and see what driver/software they have on the website.

Thanks again,

J.

zac4mac · Nov 27, 2005, 05:54 PM

At first I thought it was a horrendously noisy card, then I realized the cover was off and the Mac's fans were on full speed. If anything, it's quieter than the original 9800Pro, in a revA G5DP2.0.
Checking my control panels, ATi Displays ver 4.4.4(0002) and ATicellerator II ver 1.0.2 at +10% processor and +10.81% memory, all is good.

Z

gangster · Nov 27, 2005, 08:12 PM

you sure hit a hot topic with this thread jhogarty!

jhogarty · Nov 28, 2005, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by gangster

you sure hit a hot topic with this thread jhogarty!

Is this a good thing or bad?

Card is still working great. I did run into a problem with one of my Lightwave scenes crashing but it appears to be card in-dependant. Lots of polygons, garrrh!

J.

gangster · Nov 28, 2005, 10:33 PM

Originally Posted by jhogarty

Is this a good thing or bad?

Card is still working great. I did run into a problem with one of my Lightwave scenes crashing but it appears to be card in-dependant. Lots of polygons, garrrh!

J.

i think its good because alot of folks are interested. also good to see mac fans interested in MORE POWER! its an awesome video card.

Camali · Dec 2, 2005, 01:14 AM

I just installed my Radeon X800 into my G5, but its alot noiser than the original 9800 Pro card.

I checked the System Profiler and the ROM is: 113-A35801-104

Does it need the update?

jhogarty · Dec 2, 2005, 01:43 AM

Mine is: 113-A35801-109

I notice only a slight increase in sound/noise. I'd rather have the power with a little noise.

J.

Camali · Dec 2, 2005, 01:50 AM

Thanks for the quick reply!

I just did the update and its at the 109 ROM version...the sound is the same as the 9800 Pro and games are much better now!.

jhogarty · Dec 2, 2005, 10:08 AM

Excellent! Enjoy it. I'm hoping to get Aperture for Christmas so I can test that application as well. So far, I'm very please with this card.

J.

cla214 · Dec 5, 2005, 05:39 PM

Just got the X800 for my Dual 1.8 G5 today. It's certainly noisier than the stock card, but the increased performance is definitely worth it...

C

doublep · Dec 6, 2005, 07:30 AM

Ok, while on the subject of video cards, does anyone know where it is still possible to buy a GeForce 6800 Ultra? They were stopped - but is an online retailer still selling them?

mduell · Dec 6, 2005, 02:30 PM

Originally Posted by doublep

Ok, while on the subject of video cards, does anyone know where it is still possible to buy a GeForce 6800 Ultra? They were stopped - but is an online retailer still selling them?

Froogle knows!

doublep · Dec 7, 2005, 07:33 PM

Right, guys (and girls), which card would be faster for Aperture? The X800XT or the 6800 Ultra? (I have a dual processor 2,3 Ghz with 4 Go RAM) and am looking for the best performance.

jhogarty · Dec 10, 2005, 10:22 AM

I can't comment on how one peforms against the other. But I did get Aperture two nights ago and last night I sat down with it for a couple of hours. I had no problem displaying any of my images. The slowest thing I encountered was importing a folder of images on my desktop into Aperture. It looks sweet, and after watching the tutorial DVD I want a second 23" display. :-)

J.