Those benchmarks are abosulute BS that you find dale, yeah the x800XL beats out the 6600GT in almost everything, but those benchies are false
Can we please get off of the nVidia high horse for one second and examine the facts?
I'll agree that the benchmarks in that review have an unfair
bias towards ATi in them. nVidia does not like to have AA cranked up very high, which they did in Half Life 2, and 3 out of 4 of the programs benched run using direct3D which ATi excels in. However, I highly doubt they are simply bullshit.
I did some looking around and there really aren't that many benchmarks with the x800XL, but the ones that I did find all agree with one another.
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/x800xl/index.htm
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/printpage.php?id=353
Comments like "its pretty sad when its 16pipeline oponent cant even pwn it that bad" just make me chuckle at this point and time as not only does the x800XL perform considerably better than the 6600GT, it does considerably well against the 6800GT.
It was also nice in the latter review that they've even calculated a price/performance ratio in all the tested games, and guess which one wins?
Now please, please, please do not give me the argument that nVidia has dominated the market prior to the release of the x800XT, that may have been a relevant argument before the x800XT came out, but in all honesty, are you really going to avoid buying a better card based on the fact that its manufacturer wasn't exactly on the ball six months ago? If you want to try to pull that one I may as well rub the fact that it took nVidia a whole new generation to surpass ATi...
I'm not trying to pin the two against each other, that's been beaten to the ground too many times now, but many of you are twisting up the facts with your nVidia bias.
But once again,
the 6600GT should not be compared to the x800XL due to the difference in quantity of pipelines, just as the x800 Pro should not be compared to the 6800GT for the same reason.
On a bit of an unrelated note though, it seems a bit interesting how the different companies seem to be mirroring Intel and AMD. AMD choose to change their pipeline architechture which is similar to ATi changing their memory interface, and Intel and nVidia are just pumping up bigger and badder clockspeeds. A rather interesting observation.