ATI to lower prices

[doc_bean]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060303052240.html

Price war !

[Beirut]

Yeah baby! I'll be looking extra hard at ATI prices for the next few weeks, I'm booking for a new card.

[Lemur]

I've got to get onto the PCI-E bus before I can even think about such things ...

[Mikeus Caesar]

Now you decide to get ATI? Because of low prices? I've always used ATI because they're evidently superior, whatever price i had to pay.

[Beirut]

Now you decide to get ATI? Because of low prices? I've always used ATI because they're evidently superior, whatever price i had to pay.

Most of my cards have been ATI from the start. But I'm looking hard at the Nvidia 7800 in AGP, then I can save some money by keeping my AGP MB for now and still get a card that has the Shader 3 options (the AGP ATI cards don't have Shader 3 enabled, which it must be!). Then in a year or so I can sell my entire AGP setup of CPU, MB and video card and go PCI-E. Sounds like a plan.

[_Martyr_]

Now you decide to get ATI? Because of low prices? I've always used ATI because they're evidently superior, whatever price i had to pay.

In fairness, Ive had a few ATI cards myself (still do), and I would consider myself a bit of an ATI fanboy, but the 7800 kicks the 1900's ass!

Bring on a price war!

[Phatose]

I've been an nVidia man, but the X1900s really seem to be thrashing the 7800s, and the 7900s don't seem set to retake the crown. Pricing gonna be a big issue here though, since nVidia really seems to be going aggressive on that mark.

[Beirut]

The X1900 looks great, but I've read that they're very loud. Much louder than the 7800s.

[drone]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/...xel_pipelines/

Here's a Tom's Hardware review of various X1900 cards, with benchmarks compared with the 7800 GTX. Hope these prices come down soon, I'm getting the itch to build...

[Lemur]

The X1900 looks great, but I've read that they're very loud. Much louder than the 7800s.

And don't forget two other factors:

• You need an ATI chipset to run in SLI mode, and so far the boys in red have nothing as stable as the Nforce 4 (read reviews on NewEgg of their boards and you'll see what I mean)
• So far as I know, all of the top ATI cards are dual-slot solutions, whereas Nvidia has everything in a single slot, with the exception of the upcoming 7900GTX

[orangat]

ATI has never always been superior. They had to play a catch up game when their x800 series were slower and more expensive. It took 1 whole year for ATI to release a mainstream x800xl (to replace the slower x800pro). And in the next generation the x1800xt was hotter and noisier than Nvidias cards.

But the biggest factor in my choice to go with Nvidia is that ATI only works with crummy card manufacturers. Nvidia cards normally have 3yr warranty vs ATI's 1yr. In this era of hot running cores, I'd like to have lifetime warranty which ATI cards never have. Nvidia has some good manufacturers like bfg, leadtek who have HQs in US and have a local support office in addition to real lifetime warranties. Getting an rma from Sapphire may take 3-4 weeks for them to ship you a replacement from the far east.

ATI sneakily reduced their warranty across the board to 1yr late 2005 and right now I think only Powercolor offers lifetime warranty for the x1900xtx. And I'm leery of the lifetime claim could only be lifetime of production cycle which several manufacturers used in their fine print.

[Lemur]

Apparently ATI has finally released a mobo chipse that doesn't suck, and the first board out is the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe. So now you can think about doing Crossfire on a stable platform. Chalk one up for the boys in red ...

Oh, and for the record, the chipset is called the ATI Radeon Xpress 3200. Not as succinct as the Nforce 4, but it's supposed to be just as good.

[Phatose]

Hmm. I had thought the 1900XTX's had a larger lead then they actually did.


Well, looks like this is gonna be a round of features and price, not pure performance. nVidia cards seem to do better in SLI then Ati cards do in crossfire, and nVidia cards run cooler. Ati cards can do fp16 HDR + AA, and they have the option for angle independent anisotropic filtering.

As for warranties, IIRC, a couple of nVidia card producers have full lifetime warranties that even cover cards with aftermarket coolers that have been overclocked.

[lars573]

If they lower prices enough I might have to get an X1800 instead of an X1600. I have planned to upgrade from an X1300 in the summer

[orangat]

Hmm. I had thought the 1900XTX's had a larger lead then they actually did.

Well, looks like this is gonna be a round of features and price, not pure performance. nVidia cards seem to do better in SLI then Ati cards do in crossfire, and nVidia cards run cooler. Ati cards can do fp16 HDR + AA, and they have the option for angle independent anisotropic filtering.

As for warranties, IIRC, a couple of nVidia card producers have full lifetime warranties that even cover cards with aftermarket coolers that have been overclocked.

Nvidia has problems with HDR(fp16)+AA (well ssaa is possible but the performance hit is impractical).

I think only evga keeps its warranty on user installed aftermarket coolers. I can understand why manufacturers are leery of the possibility of users screwing up the installation of thermal compound and hs on their cards.