At least according to this…
http://theinquirer.net/?article=23528
I’m quite confused about the pecking order of ati cards. Is the x800xl top of the line? What about the xt, standard, platinum and wht-have-you? Where do these fit in?
XT-PE>XT>XL>the rest..
Oh, and take the Inq with a BUCKETLOAD of salt.. think about it.. if 1 6800U is roughly equal to the XT-PE, 2 in SLI will kickus buttkus..
Yes i agree with TechHead.
a x800 xl is roughly equal or “slighty” faster than a 6800U (depending upon the game / benchies actually)
hence 6800U in sli will be far better in performance then a single x800 xl.
perhaps a x800 xl will equal or surpass a 6600GT in sli mode.
Hmm, this will sure make some members mad.. 
But even a die hard ATI fanatic cannot agree with such a crap. As Techead amd Deejay rightly point 1 6800 U is about as fast as a X800 XT. 2 * 6800U is the fastest solution at present for games optimised for SLI.
X800XL is about as fast as a 6800 GT other then OpenGL.
its unrealastic.
But X800XL 512MB is faster than X850XT 256MB in most cases @1600x120, 6xAA, 16XAF.
Have the look at results here.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/211/8/
Apart from HL2 the X850 XT PE is atleast 20% faster in all the games !!
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/sapphire/512/
For Video card reviews, Beyond 3d does the best job. Also one of the reasons could be none of the games may be coded to consider the extra RAM available, apart from HL2. Nevertheless if X800 XL 512mb is indeed better then X850 XT PE only the newer lot of games can determine. But at the moment X850 XT is clearly much faster.
i am aware of the B3D review but i did not refered it bcoz guys over at R3D have noticed a problem with VIA890 and 512MB frambuffer cards.
Via needs a driver update for that. It dosent show benifits as it should in most games.
Thats why i gave link to the guru3d review which uses NF4 and the ATI framebuffer tweak in their cats work just fine on NF4.
If what you are saying is true then only with 16x AF do the performance really show, however in HL2 the 512 mb buffers. are working fine.
On the otherhand, Rage3d which is using DFI NF4 gets the same results :
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/sapphirex800xlu/?p=6
X850XT Pe is around 20% faster.
Never saw that rage review before. Anyway i will search out that thread at rage.
Well afterall guru3d had used 4000+. Looks like CPU is making a lot of difference @ 1600x1200, 6XAA/16XAF.
The review at Guru3d is showing abnormally low FPS for Farcry, most of the websites are getting 54 FPS with an X850 XT. where as Guru3d is just getting 33 FPs ?
I think its more of a driver issue at Guru3d, they should test again with CAT 5.5. CPU is not being a bottleneck at 1600*1200 with 6x AA and 16xAF, I was surprsied to read the CPU being a bottleneck at that resolution…
**But only if you push hard enough**
We hear that if you put a 512MB graphics card under heavy stress you will see some worthwhile performance beyond that of a 256MB card but just in the most extreme cases.
A Danish colleague managed to prove such a thing when testing Doom 3 and Far Cry on a Geforce 6800 Ultra SLI, a Geforce 6800 GT and a Sapphire x800XL Ultimate with 256MB of memory and a Sapphire x800XL with 512MB.
On Nvidia cards he used 4X FSAA and 16X Anisotropic while on ATI cards he used maximal settings: 6X FSAA and 16X Anisotropic and 1600x1200 resolution.
We were surprised to see that in Far Cry under similar circumstances, the two ATI cards were able to beat both Nvidia’s 6800 Ultra and 6800GT SLI.
Even a 256MB ATI card was faster than both SLI setups, while the 512MB version blew Nvidia’s brains out.
As a matter fact, Sapphire’s x800XL 512MB is twice plus faster than two 6800 Ultra cards under these circumstances. Very strange and interesting finding, I have to admit.
i saw this earlier today but wasnt sure how reliable the info was so didnt post it 
Yeah… me too saw it. The 6800U and GT scores are all like 25% of what they shud be .
I am completely blown out with Ati’s performance after reading this.
According to hardinfo.dk the geforce sli beats the ati by a nice margin as far as I can tell by the graphs.
We had a discussion about this earlier.
Infact Al you are late this time. Kindly merge the two threads.
1 Like
Yup similar discussion smetme bac…
nd dont those figures look like they hav been paid to b so low 
merged threads
The 512Mb debate is not ATi vs Nvidia.Larger frame buffers will become necessary,u can’t avoid that.And as games use better textures ,more frame buffer will be crucial for performance.When Quake 3 came out 16-32mb cards were very good,when Doom3 came out 256mb frame buffers were common.Expect 1Gb frame buffers in 2 years time.
Nvidia also 512mb 6800Gts and Ultras out,why not compare it with them(if u want to compare 512mb cards that is,a 512MB 6800U vs a X800XL ,the X800XL will be torn to shreds)?
BTW the X800Xl beating a 6800U-SLI is plain bs,meant to satisfy Fanatics.
True… The rsults are surely rigged… There is no way an XL will beat an Ultra in SLI.