09-14-2004, 09:21 AM
The 6800 Ultra outperforms the x800's in most if not all OpenGL games. This is because ATI hasn't rewritten their OpenGL renderer since the r200 core. If you decompile the renderer you will find there are still optimisations for Quake 2 present in it.
The x800's tend to achieve better benchmarks than the 6800 Ultras in Direct3D. This is because like most video cards they rely heavily on optimisations, optimisations that in the case of the x800 lead to graphics discrepancies such as texture shimmering and the white dotting of flat textures. If you disable these optimisations (a difficult task in itself) it tends to result in a 30-60fps drop in all games. nVidia's optimisations do not cause these same problems when enabled, are nowhere near as difficult to disable, and if disabled do not cause the massive framerate hit/compromised image quality that occurs in the x800's.
The x800's tend to achieve better benchmarks than the 6800 Ultras in Direct3D. This is because like most video cards they rely heavily on optimisations, optimisations that in the case of the x800 lead to graphics discrepancies such as texture shimmering and the white dotting of flat textures. If you disable these optimisations (a difficult task in itself) it tends to result in a 30-60fps drop in all games. nVidia's optimisations do not cause these same problems when enabled, are nowhere near as difficult to disable, and if disabled do not cause the massive framerate hit/compromised image quality that occurs in the x800's.