Sir.Smoke.Alot

ok, so futureshop is garbage for computer hardware, but they are having a big ass sale and i got 200 dollars to futureshop aswell. they have X850 Pro card for 299 from 499. Can this card be OCed much ?? ive heard of these cards running really hot.??

Also X850XT for 329. same question for this card...any OCing that can be done ?? or is it even a good card

all my buddys run GeForce cards and say its the only way to go but i have never had a problem with ATI...should i look at some GeForce cards maybe ? i have a price limit of 400 bucks so i dunno.

Ator

The X850 Pro can unlock to an X850XT because it uses the same core (R480). You'll need the AGP version, though, because the PCI Express version has a laser cut.

ATI has made better video cards for the past couple years (basically, ever since the 9700 Pro came out). I don't see why people blind themselves to this by becoming nVidia fanboys. ATI's cards have their flaws, but better image quality is far better IMO than an extra 2fps in a game that runs 100fps.

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PokenHopen

Just my opinion from what I have seen the ati brand was beating nvidia in price performance ratio(which is what most people care about). That is untill the 7800s came out in large quantities(at launch). While the ati1000s are and where still struggling to get large quantities out. I know from newegg you can get a 7800gt for about $350 which should outperform the 800s by a large margine since the 800s are of the 6800 series.

Ofcourse I am not absolutely sure on all this, so get some more opinions. I am trying to avoid getting to far into it till next year when I do my upgrading after vista comes out.

And just to let you know I am still running a 9700pro in both my and my wifes PC till next year and most games run just fine

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Error404

Yea, as Ator said, the AGP version can be unlocked, and I'm recommend getting OMEGADrivers, I believe they come with ATITool, which is a great program. Use the program to find the Max Core and Max Mem setting, this will bump each one up by 1 until it's an artifact while rendering, then it goes to what the last "safe" setting was (Basicly, just down 1), which, IMO, is great, because it takes out SOME of the risk of guessing. I can give you a starting point though.. My X800GTO is clocked at 450/500 at the moment, so I'm sure the X850Pro can do the same and higher.

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Sir.Smoke.Alot

Cool, Thanks for the help, im gana pick up the x850 pro i hope a i notice a difference from my current card......ATI Radeon 9500 ....LOL!!!!

Also, ive seen my buddys computer run a BFG 7800GTX and i couldnt beleive how the sun was reflecting off the gun and such, will a x850 deliver that kind of shading? or is Nvidia's 7 series gpu just better.?

Error404

The 7 series is better then the x850, the X1000 series is what ATI put out to compete with the 7Series..

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Chrome_Rust

I have a ATI x850 pro 256 AGP that i flashed to XT, opened up the other 4 pipelines and overclocked the card to 540 core 587 memory from 500/500 stock. i paid 197 for mine at best buy. So far i have had no artifact problems and i am on the stock cooling. before i flashed it i let ATI tool clock it to the max core max mem to see what it would do. 595 core and 621 mem on stock cooling. I think the B4tB (bang for the buck) you cant beat them. I play BF2 at MAX settings now, my 9800XT cried everytime i even thought about loading the game....

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