Anyone playing on an ATI X800XL yet?

[Sammo]

Looking to upgrade my comp, or more like replacemost most of it. This is the video board I think I will get. Does it have all the issues that older ATI cards have? Or have they improved compatibiity with Horizons?

I also plan to get an ASUS 955x motherboard with 1-2 Gbytes of DDR2 800MHz memory and the Intel 820 2.8 GHz CPU. If I have trouble getting these then I am looking at an ASUS 925x motherboard with the Intel P4 640 3.2 GHz CPU.

Thanks for the input.

[Zephyr]

Hi! Been owning ATI for some time and when is time for upgrades I always end up with an ATI again. Saw the config you posted u planing to buy. Even I been told that Horizons is the most demanding game with all settings turned to max your rig could do fine I suppose.

Most times ppl seem that want to do an upgrade for a particullar kind of game and ussualy they dont do the right upgrades.
-First thing that a person must look at when upgrading for an MMOG is the RAM. ussualy has to be the motherboard too because older ones may not be compatible with newer RAM modules but this doesn't seem much of an issue these last 4 years from what was happening in the past.
-Second GPU graphic card
-CPU

note:Nvidia seems that grabs every chancethey can get to push their cards to developers so most of demanding games are writen on Nvidia not because they do better performance wise than ATI but because of Nvidia clever marketing. ATI on the other hand have more quality in their build and are more durable if you plan to keep it for a long time and stress it. Games developed for ATI are ussualy smooth evenwith the older ATI cards.

edit I would recommend the 3.2 P4 if you planing to keep this rig for a while.

[Fratricide]

I understand where you are saying that you would recommend theh 3.2 P4.. but I actually differ here on your opinion. Mainly because there is a big difference on these two, because the ram on the second choice is not ddr2 ( unless Im mistaken ) therefore your internal throughput would be less if you went with the faster processor speed. I would also state that the bus speed is technically more important to get information to the video card, soundcard, etc thus improving your overall gaming performance. Yes... picking a faster processor speed is important, but the difference between a 2.8 and 3.2 is quite negledgible when it all comes down to it. If you could have the best of both worlds, the faster processor speed and the faster ram/bus speed, then your are in a better boat then just one or the other, but since that was not one of the stated choices... I would go with the better motherboard that can run the DDR2 and get the slower processor for now.. the faster ones will still be available for some time and you can always drop one in at a later date.

Correction.. after investigating further both MoBos support ddr2, however one supports ecc as the other does not, as well as perhaps other not listed other changes that I found in my brief search. Don't know what the extra features are of the newer version of the chipset on the 955x if you think those are truly worth it.. then go for it... else go with the tried and true 925x...

[Sammo]

I received the new components in the mail today. My final choices were:

ASUS P5WD2-Premium (955x chipset) mobo
ATI X800XL 256MB video card
2GB Corsair DDR2 675MHz memory
P4 640 3.2GHz processor
Antec Neopower 480 watt P/S
Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu CPU fan/heatsink

I hope to get it all installed this weekend. I'll let you know how it works out.

If you are curious the system this is replacing is:

ASUS P4T533 mobo
P4 2.53 GHz processor
512MB RDRAM memory
ATI 9700 Pro video card
Antec 350 watt P/S

I am replacing this system mainly because I cannot upgrade the memory and due to overheating when pushing the system. Running HZ causes random crashes (hard reboots). The processor gets well above 60 degrees C when gaming.

[Stingray]

A little off topic but I loaded the game up on my new computer (3.4 GHz P4, 2 Gb DDR2 600MHz RAM, ATI x850). The only other program I run on that machine is ventrilo voice server and EQ2.

The first 5 mins of game play it locked up and i had hard boot my machine to regain control. Every thing seemed to be running fine until it locked up. Love the game but can't stand the game's compatability issues with hardware. its what drove me away the first time [:'(]. In a month or so when I cool off I will reload the game and try again. If you guys know of any special drivers I could use with my video card (like I used to have to do with my 9800 Pro) that would be great and I would surely come back to the game.

Oh and BTW, can ATI owners fly over to the floating city yet or will we still get booted from the game?

[Koragan]

Hi Stingray

I have Floating City lockups on my X800, but not on my 9600. Go figure.

[Tokoz]

I dumped catalyst and haven't had lock-up problems sinse with my x800 Pro.