Damn. I was just about to lay out $200+ for a 9800 pro, and suddenly these bastards come out with the 6800.
The 6800U is certainly a nice piece of hardware. Weighing in at 222m transistors, 400MHz, and 16 pixel pipelines, it does indeed blow the socks off a 9800Pro/9800XT. However, ATI's R420 is just around the corner (expect availability next month)
R420 weighs in at 180m transistors, and will come in two distinct flavors--a X800Pro, clocked at 475MHz with 12 pixel pipelines, and a X800XT, clocked even higher, and offering 16 pixel pipelines. This comes as something of a shock, as the community was expecting a 12-pixel part, but not the 16. If this is the case, the higher clock speed of the X800XT may make up for its less sophisticated core (as is indicated by the transistor difference) and give the 6800U a real run for its money.
As for me, my 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro (which has given me ABSOLUTELY ZERO PROBLEMS) will have to suffice.
As far as the processor note by UnderGod...I don't even know where to begin. AMD's don't multitask any better or worse than Intels. HT doesn't aid multitasking, as all HT does is try to make better use of both ALUs present on the Netburst core. However, they share the same instruction decoder (hence why the op trace cache is so vitally important) and therefore present a small (but noticible depending on what you're doing) performance gain. While a P4 system with HT may be slightly more responsive when heavily multitasking than one without (or an AMD), it is nowhere near the pure multitasking smoothness that is SMP. In addition, 64bit chips don't make any difference in multitasking. A 64bit chip does NOT process two 32bit instructions simultaneously. It just handles 64bit instructions.
As for the Mac vs. PC argument...well, the G5 is, at best, roughly comparable to the Opteron/Athlon64 core in both performance and IPC, and this is across the board. If you believe the numbers Apple supplies, then you would be very mistaken. Apple, in keeping with longstanding tradition, doctors the tests to provide results in their favor. Independent testing has shown the G5 a formidable competitor, but it's not significantly faster.
