I'm thinking of either getting the x1600 pro or the x850xt pe. I'm not sure. I thought the x1600 would be better since 1600 is a higher number than 850. But the x850 is almost twice as much as the x1600. And the x1600 comes with 512MB. Which should I get and why?
@wdowsing i see you have a laptop with the x700 graphics card in it.Does it do a good job. I want to play guild wars or world of warcraft but not sure if a x600 or x700 can handle the game.
X1600 may be higher than X850 but that's not how it works performance wise. First of all, the X in ATi's recent GPUs signifies a 10, since that's roman numeral for 10. So an X850 is actually a 10850, and the X1600 is an 11600. The thousands figure (10 and 11) is the generation. Next generations will be better than previous generations. However, the third & fourth figures (60 and 85) are the model type. A 6 series signifies intermediate whilst the 85 signifies absolute top-end (ATi now use 90 instead of 85 but this is irrelevant). A slightly old absolute top end will easily best a recent mid-range card, more memory or not. In short, go X850.
Thank you so much. That was really helpful and informative. But does this still apply if I go down a few levels. Like to the x800. And I heard that the x1600 will have SmartShader 3, d'you think that's worth anything.
The X800GTo and X1600Pro are about on par with each other, since a new midrange card is going to about equal an older slightly above midrange card. The X800GT will probably be slower than the 1600, and the X800XL faster. Pixel Shader 3.0 (or SM3) basically means you can play games to ultra-high quality settings, to generate much more clear and detailed graphics than ever before, with some very cool and complex lighting. The downside of this is that in most games that use it, the frame rate is very low, and in many cases you need one of the top end X1800 or X1900 cards in order to not get a jerky picture at a high resolution, so with a 1600, while it's a helpful addition, it's not something to write a book about. If you're using a faster card obviously it is beneficial, the X1600XT is probably the starting point for it really being useful.
People who are into gaming are always talking about their setting.Such as playing their pc game on low settings or high settings.How do they change their settings? If i buy this acer ferrari laptop it has the x700 video card in it. Would i have to change the settings?
Settings, assuming I've got the right idea here, are the in-game options. Let's take Unreal Tournament 2004 as an example. In the game settings menu you can configure lots of things. Firstly, resolution. UT04 offers 320x240, 512x384, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. Clearly the higher resolution the better, and the last resolution (only playable on 23"+ LCDs or 19"+CRTs) offers a resolution superior even to that of a 2 megapixel camera. However, clearly a higher resolution means more graphics work. Next comes colour depth, 16 or 32bit. the latter offers a better picture but again more graphics workload. Then there are the options for Texture detail (how detailed everything looks), character detail, world detail, physics detail (how accurate the physics are), Dynamic Mesh LOD (how far in the distance you can see all of), decal stay, character shadows, Decals, dynamic lighting, detail textures, coronas, trilinear filtring, projectors, foliage, weather effects and fog distance. That's a lot of options. Each one will affect how good the game looks positively, but affect the speed negatively. As it happens UT04 isn't a massively demanding game, and with my X800pro (similar to performance of X800GTO) I can have all of them at maximum at 1920x1200 without slowdown. This isn't true of numerous modern games, though. In addition to this, benchmark tests such as those at Tom's Hardware also add Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering, options meaning the graphics card alters the picture the game sends it to make it look cleaner, with less rough edges. The results, whilst usually dramatically improving quality, will also lead to dramatic reduction in frame rate. If you're average frame rate is below 35fps, you're runnning too jerky, and need to turn something down.
