SkyBum

Does anyone know how soon ATI will be releasing a PCIe verson of the XT PE?

Alternatively, are any of the new nForce4 boards going to support AGP or will they be PCIe only? Not really clear on that.....

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pr0digal jenius

newegg had some Sapphire ones in stock for $525 last night....lemme find you the link


If you mean built by ATi, I dunno



EDIT: They sold those out awfully fast...haha...nevermind

SkyBum

Thanks.

Yeah actually I'm pretty determined to stick with "built by ATI" though I just don't know if I can stand to wait....hell, they still arent shipping XT PE AGPs yet.

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pr0digal jenius

I'm nto sure if they are even going to make the PEs in AGP.....

Zardon

I dont see any issue, all vanilla XTs (500/500), overclock to PE speeds (520/560) easy enough. Ive had four PCIe XTs in the last month and they have ALL overclocked to at least PE speeds.

SkyBum

Zardon: I was just assuming that PE would have more room to OC room than XT. Is that not the case? If not, I guess I'd be wasting money for the PE...

[color=gold]pr0digal jenius[/color]: They are making PE in AGP version, ATI says they will be shipping them around Nov. 15. vbmenu_register("postmenu_476384", true);

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pr0digal jenius

awesome...I stand(err...sit on my lazt arse) corrected

SkyBum

What I found odd is that when I tried to (pre-)order an XT PE PCIe from ATI they said they had no information at all for when that card would be available.....they wouldn't even take a pre-order.

Damn skippy, how can they let themselves get so far behind the eight-ball on product availability? Kinda sad if you ask me...they should really get their manufacturing act together and get their product out there in some decent quantities.

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pr0digal jenius

it's the RAM manufacturers who are behind....not ATi....i believe they get their GDDR3 from Samsung, if I'm not msitaken, and apparently GDDR 3 is hard to come by at best

Zardon

This is a difficult thing to comment on, primarily due to the fact ATI as far as im aware dont even make a PE PCIe card and when I last spoke to them had no intentions of doing so (this may well have changed but im passing on what I was told).

Basically a Platinium edition is just an XT which has clocked well, selected from the XT batch by the testers as being able to sustain the 520 core and 560 memory speeds 24/7. Now we all know that there are many vanilla 500/500 XTs which hit these speeds via software overclocking even though ATI have classed them as a NON PE.

Every PCIe XT ive had my hands on as ive said hits PE speeds or higher, of course there is no guarantee they all will but personally I think the "PE" moniker is a bit of a marketing ploy.

For example a guy I know has a XT non PE with a PE on AGP, both he has watercooled and the XT non PE hits higher clocks on water by a slight margin.

Really I would say to you in all honesty go for the NON PE, save the money then software overclock to PE speeds, and if you add a water cooling kit to your system then you will have even more headroom with better temps than on air. I dont see any need to hang around for a card that might not come, ATI are already moving on the next generation boards so if you hang around for a PE X800XT you might as well just hold off and wait until **insert date** the next generation boards hit the shelves because I cant see ATI releasing any XTPEs on PCIe anytime soon.

Worst case scenario there is also very little noticeable difference (unless all you do is bench) in 20 core and 60/120 ram even in gaming.

SkyBum

Well thanks Zardon, thats probably the most enlightening bit of info I've seen about the PE. I'll take your advice here and go for the non PE option. Thanks.

One last question.....of those PCIe XT's you've had "hand's on" with, did you find a preference for any of them? Did any one of them stand out from the rest?

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Zardon

Yes the ASUS AX800XT stands out quite a bit, dual DVI, vivo, ram monitoring options, variable user controllable fan speeds.

I reviewed it a few weeks ago, sticky is still front page.

SkyBum

Alrighty then, I ordered the Asus AX800XT from Monarch for $590. Should see it on Thursday. After reading your review, I have no doubt whatsoever that I'm gonna love this card.

Now if only I had my nForce 4 board to put it on....I think it's gonna be somewhat of a painful waiting game there.

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Zardon

when you get it, make sure you have the newest bios, you can now get the new bios from asus site on the downloads for the card (its an easy to install windows flasher). if you try to install smartdoctor on the old bios it BSODs.

Its a wonderful board im sure you will love it, the sticky thread in the news forum has some useful info in it.

I use one myself on one of the driverheaven testing rigs, I just run it stock 500/500 24/7, everything is perfectly smooth with the 775 Extreme edition processor at 1600x1200, so it should tide you over for quite some time.

SkyBum

Will do. Glad to hear that Asus finally got the new bios up on the site.

Question: When running Omega drivers on this card will there be conflicts with any of the Asus specific utilities?

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magik10

Skyburn,

Go down to a Best Buy. Ask someone in the computer section to do a special lookup for the Built by ATI card. They can do what they call a "customer fulfillment order." Myself and 2 other friends are playing with our x800xt PE's as we speak Don't waste $580 just for a XT from monarch. That's a dumb move and there will be NO difference between a PCI-E or an AGP x800 series card. Get a MSI Neo2 Plat. board with a FX55 and an AGP x800xt PE, you'll be happy for atleast a year and a half. Be sure to get 1 gig of PC3200 RAM with 2-2-2-5 timings.

Good luck.

Zardon

Dumb move? Did you even read the review or my comments in this thread? you are recommending a new motherboard, new ram and a £550 processor?

For the record, the asus card has VIVO, DUAL DVI out for dual TFT monitor, has ram AND core monitoring, has user definable and controllable fan speeds - variable on either temperatures, auto options or a pre set speed of your choice. Aesthecially it is built on a sunburnt orange PCB with a blue glowing cooler (for those who like case modding).

Id say thats worth $580 (with the extras also mentioned with the package), especially when it will overclock higher than PE speeds out of the box anyway. Also there ARE some gains with PCIexpress which will become more apparent in the next six months.

SkyBum

Heh, it just passed through Georgia about an hour ago, no stoppin now.....come on Fed Ex, bring it home to papa!!!!

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magik10

Zardon,

Personally, I rather not wait for 6months. From the sounds of things it's not like he already has a NF4 mobo. He'll basically be sitting around with his PCI-E card in hand. From reading diff. articles it also seems that NF4 mobo's might have an issue on AMD chips which will further delay their production. Having a FX55, 1gb, x800xt PE on AGP and NF3 Mobo now is better than the same system with a NF4 and PCI-E XT a few months down the road. I haven't seen any indication from ATi or any independent testing or foreshadowing that would lead me to believe that a current PCI-E x800xt will somehow blow away an AGP based x800xt PE. I rather play now than wait but each his own and yes, you have given some very good info. on this and other threads. That doesn't mean I can't express my own opinion though

Zardon

He wont be waiting for 6 months.

You are of course forgetting that the next generation will be PCIe (with more than likely AGP bridges for those on older systems) and if he spends more money now on AGP based hardware then wants to move on he will have to sell everything (again) and rebuy. To go down the road ive said, he will have a system right now based around the ASUS AX800XT which will overclock to PE speeds, has more options than any AGP X800PE card in regards to fan controlling, ram monitoring etc and when ATIs new cards come out he can simply sell his card for a little loss and purchase the new PCIe card (if he wishes), rather than have to rebuy the whole system.


There is life left in AGP im not dying it, but I dont see moving to PCIe is a "dumb move", especially as ive played with all the hardware in question. PCie is the way forward.

I also never said you couldnt express your own opinion, in fact I value healthy debate but I do feel the need to address comments on someones hardware purchases being "dumb", when they are in fact, not.