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512mb or 256mb ?

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best bang for buck for your price (provided you have PCI-E ) is an X1800XT 512mb, i got mine second hand from MM for £240, they are also going for £285 brand new i think but that may be "this week only". either way, you get one of those and you wont need to buy a new card for the rest of the year (plus it wont be worth it as come 1st quarter of 2007 Dx10 cards should be standard.)
 
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I'd say a 7900GT. I suspect they will be very overclockable.

512MB isnt needed for your res, infact it isnt needed for pretty much anything yet.
I've underclocked a 512MB card before to the same speed as a 256MB one and there was no difference at all, or an extremely tiny difference, with max settings, and 1920x1200 res.
 
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MR.B said:
I'd say a 7900GT. I suspect they will be very overclockable.

Well the benchmarks are showing that the x1800xt is actually on par and sometimes better than the 7900gtx so my best bet would be go with the x1800xt 512mb as you save your money and get a better card, it will easily outperform the 7900gt
 
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MR.B said:
I'd say a 7900GT. I suspect they will be very overclockable.

512MB isnt needed for your res, infact it isnt needed for pretty much anything yet.
.

I agree the benchmarks are on the stock or standard 7900GT's not the factory overclocked ones.

The standard ones will probably overclock to the speeds of the higher clocked 7900GT's and will offer fantastic bang for buck.
 
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But the X1800XT cards are faster at stock than the 7900GT & the X1800XT have also proven to be very good overclocking cards too. So will still be faster when both cards overclocked. Considering the X1800XT 512MB is also cheaper (& the extra ram will likely come into play in future & with AA/ AF), the X1800XT is the clear choice as far as bang per buck goes!

As for the pre-overclocked 7900GT cards these are even more expensive, so you might as well get an X1900XT for an even bigger performance boost over the Nvidia card.
 
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harris1986 said:
Well the benchmarks are showing that the x1800xt is actually on par and sometimes better than the 7900gtx so my best bet would be go with the x1800xt 512mb as you save your money and get a better card, it will easily outperform the 7900gt

A X1800XT faster than a 7900GTX? lol. Dont you mean a GT? And i would say it's equal to a GT.

And about the overclocking, theres noway a X1800XT can overclock as well as a 7900GT. It has the same core as the 7900GTX, and i've already seen a overclock with the tiny stock cooler to 550mhz. A 100mhz core increase on a X1800XT is not going to happen without water cooling or something.
 
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MR.B said:
A X1800XT faster than a 7900GTX? lol. Dont you mean a GT? And i would say it's equal to a GT.

And about the overclocking, theres noway a X1800XT can overclock as well as a 7900GT. It has the same core as the 7900GTX, and i've already seen a overclock with the tiny stock cooler to 550mhz. A 100mhz core increase on a X1800XT is not going to happen without water cooling or something.


Agreed there are to many post appearing saying the x1800 is faster than the 7900 .

The overclockabilty on the 7900 GT's on reading reviews is quite staggering.

from a review:

"More impressive perhaps though, was the wonderful headroom we found in the GeForce 7900GT, which hit 580MHz core and 1.5GHz+ memory speeds. With these gains, 10fps more frame rate was available to us, on average in our Quake 4 test. This card has enthusiast written all over it and we're almost certain NVIDIA's board partners will be taking advantage of this, differentiating products with higher tested out-of-the-box, clock speeds."

easyrideronline-oc1.jpg


when overclocked its nearly the performance of a 7900 GTX at stock :)
 
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Soldato
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MR.B said:
And about the overclocking, theres noway a X1800XT can overclock as well as a 7900GT. It has the same core as the 7900GTX, and i've already seen a overclock with the tiny stock cooler to 550mhz. A 100mhz core increase on a X1800XT is not going to happen without water cooling or something.
Incorrect.

So if an X1800XT is faster than a 7900GT at stock, it will likely still be faster when overclocked. Thats how i see it. And the X1800XT will always be cheaper :)

Just from this foum there are numerous people who have overclocked really well on air with their X1800XT cards....

Overclocked by 86MHz on core & 300MHZ on ram with stock cooler on X1800XT.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17542301


Multiple overclocks mentioned here....
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17539495
Overclocked by 124MHz on core & 340MHZ on ram with stock cooler on X1800XT.

Overclocked by 100MHz on core & 180MHZ on ram with stock cooler on X1800XT.

Overclocked by 55MHz on core & 260MHZ on ram with stock cooler on X1800XT.

Overclocked by 137MHz on core & 300MHZ on ram with stock cooler on X1800XT.

Overclocked by 100MHz on core with stock cooler on X1800XT.
 
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kbc

kbc

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easyrider said:
when overclocked its nearly the performance of a 7900 GTX at stock :)

I probably haven't been reading enough reviews on the 7900GTs, but those are pretty high overclocks, but surely, you need to be lucky to get a GT which clocks that highly as shown on that graph?
 
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kbc said:
I probably haven't been reading enough reviews on the 7900GTs, but those are pretty high overclocks, but surely, you need to be lucky to get a GT which clocks that highly as shown on that graph?

No,

Having read quite a few reviews now on the 7900GT it seems thay are fantastic clockers and have quite a lot of headroom when it comes to overclocking.

from review:

"The 7900GT though clocked significantly below the 7800GTX 512MB speeds, manages to pull up to the speed of the 7800GTX 512MB at 550MHz core. The memory also does 890/1780MHz artifact free. 7800GTX 512MB speeds, just half the memory size onboard. Core went from 450MHz to 550MHz, and Memory from 660MHz to 890MHz. That's a 22% overclock in core speed and 35% increase in Memory speed! The card brought us through 3D Mark 06 without any artifacts at that speed and gave a score higher than a default 7800GTX 512MB. Quite apparently, the main thing holding this card back is the low voltage fed to the core. "
 
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i could be wrong here but i think the rough equivelants are like this...

X1800XL 256mb = 7800GT 256mb
X1800XT 256mb = 7800GT 512mb
X1800XT 512mb = 7800GTX 256mb

but of course, the X1800 range overclock to insanity in most cases so that throws it all right out lol.
 
Soldato
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I think its more like this...

X1800XL 256mb is similar to 7800GT 256mb
X1800XT 256mb / 512mb are faster than the 7800GTX 256mb / 7900GT 256mb

So you have picked up a great performing, very well priced card.
The X1800XT 512MB advantages lie at higher res with AA / AF.
 

egt

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easyrider said:
No,

Having read quite a few reviews now on the 7900GT it seems thay are fantastic clockers and have quite a lot of headroom when it comes to overclocking.

True.

I think we're going to see some great overclocks from the 7900GT in the near future when the new Zalman arrives. This guy has already bust 20K in '03 on the stock cooler:



Looks like his CPU is only running at 2600+ too.
 
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