Rumours floating around seem to indicate that ATI is considering adding one more member to its Radeon X800 family. Touted the X800 'GT' (or anything they end up calling it) would be a 16-pipeline part clocked lower than the higher-end X800 XT, such a card would fill the gap left between current Radeon models which has given some slight advantage to NVIDIA's new generation GeForce 6800 GT.

regardless of what ati intends to do, overcoming the lack of 32 bit support and 3.0 will without a doubt cause ati purchasers to duplicate that purchase down the road. whether it be 6mos , a year, doesn't matter, they'll be forced to buy an upgraded card. not to say that either offering isn't spectacular. it's just......why buy two cards?

I'm sure they'll compensate with something once they release their new chips

that's when you fork over 400 again for the upgrade. dumb.

NVIDIA has the better line of cards IMO.

In the end, it's better for us (consumers) that both companies are offering competitive solutions and people is divided whether they should buy one or the other... we get a better deal at a lower price.

and, now, it's tag, your it, for ati.

Who gives a rat's wet behind about PS 3.0 right now? How many games rely on this? Not many if any, and there won't be for a long time. Throw in the fact that the ATi runs much cooler and does not require a nuclear reactor to run it, plus it's faster than the nVidia card. Oh yeah, this is a tough decision...

what you are talking about. the gt version requires no such thing. the ati card is a 24 bit card as opposed to the nvidia line of cards being 32 bit / pci xpress /sli capable/ far cry is already patched for 3.0. so there goes all that hot air.

Whatever, you can have your two slot toaster oven.

this card is a one slot solution.

There's little to no advantage using 32-bit floating point operations instead of 24-bit. MS had asked for 32-bit at one point but then figured 24 would be more then enough.

It turns out at the time they decided to go with 24-bit, nVidia & MS were not really in good terms (pricing for the Xbox chips were in discussion) so nVidia apparently didn't get that info & got stuck with 32-bit, which is better in theory but unused by games or applications & slower then 24-bit.

If it is ignorance it is not mine. The review I read said it took two slots and required a new power supply:

[url]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1583527,00.asp[/url]

[url]http://www.vgpro.com/news/4565[/url]

[url]http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1578[/url]

Those reviews are of the 6800 ultra, not the GT. This thread is discussing the 6800 GT. Get your facts straight.

Doh! Where did this GT come from?

Ok, I'm ignorant.

but, why be without it?.....things are going to change?......take the optimizations, right?

No personal flaming, please...

The 6800 GT is faster than the X800 Pro. ATI need a 'GT' model to compete. The 6800 GT is the best card to go for right now if you don't want to spend the bucks for top end gear.

The 6800 GT is still expensive IMO. The 6800 non-ultra & 9800 Pro are probably the best bang for the buck right now.