Digital Trends

MSI RX800 XT

November 22nd, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Testing

The first thing you will notice about the RX800 is that it will require a separate power supply connector. We recommend that you use a connector that is not attached to other peripherals such as an optical drive or a hard drive. This will help to ensure a more stable gaming system. While we were happy to see an actual paper manual (everyone wants to throw a PDF manual on a CD), the instructions were difficult to find because the instruction manual was not specific to the RX800 and includes all of the video cards MSI sells. So make sure you take the time to find the instructions specific to the RX800. Installing the RX800 in our test system was very easy and did not require anything out of the ordinary. We are happy that the RX800 only takes up one slot in the system versus the two slots the Nvidia based cards require.

The RX800 is a very quiet running video card, with the onboard fan putting out very little noise; but do not let its quiet demeanor fool you, this is a very fast card. Our tests are a little bit skewed because we had to compare the PCI-Express RX800 video card to the AGP based NX6800 card which runs on a completely different system. So do not take our results as the end-all of video game benchmarks. In our 3DMark 2003 and 2005 benchmarks, the RX800 edged out the NX6800 by a considerable margin of no less that 2000 points. While that is very impressive, the 3DMark programs are only synthetic benchmarks meaning that actual games may show a different result. Far Cry and Unreal Tournament proved that distinction by giving the performance lead back to Nvidia in both gaming tests. What we did find odd was that the Nvidia 6800 Ultra capped out at around 60 frames per second on our Call of Duty tests. At first we though this was a problem with out test systems until we did more research on the Internet. Apparently the latest Nvidia drivers have a problem running OpenGL based games which is why the FPS is being cut so short. So if Call of Duty is a game you love to play, ATI will have the definite edge here. Our Doom3 tests showed the RX800 as having a 9 FPS lead over the NX6800, which is a considerable difference for hardcore gamers. For complete results please click on the performance links above and below this review.

Conclusion

The question everyone has been asking is which graphics card is the best, the Nvidia 6800 Ultra or the ATI X800 XT. There is no real answer to this. The differences in performance between the two chips are so small that it is rarely noticeable by the average gamer, but Nvidia appears to hold a slight lead.  If you have a beefy power supply that puts out more than 480-watts of power, go with the MSI NX6800 Ultra which is based on the Nvidia 6800 chip. But if you are a loyal ATI fan or you are worried about not having enough power to run the Nvidia based card, then the MSI RX800 is the card for you. Either way, you will not be disappointed by what you get.

If you are a die-hard gamer and prefer to stick with the PCI-Express based motherboards, you might want to consider getting two Nvidia 6800 Ultra cards and running them in SLI-mode via Asus's A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. While the cost of two video cards and a dual PCI-Express motherboard is expensive, the reward means frame rates that are nearly double what any single ATI or Nvidia card can produce.

Once again MSI has gone over-the-top and provided a product that has exceeded our expectations. The RX800 is an incredible video card and one that should last for quite some time. The software package included with the RX800 is second-to-none and simply the best on the market. You will not be disappointed spending the premium price for this PCI-Express video card.