There is little reason to go to a 512MB video card today. Few games require 256MB of on-board memory for textures, much less 512MB. Most people don't play games at 1600x1200 resolution and with maximum antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. If those settings are interesting to you, 512MB may make a difference. Unfortunately, ATI and NVIDIA chose to put a premium of $150 on the cards with the extra memory. This puts the X800XL 512MB card directly opposite to the high-end 256MB X850XT within $50 or so. Performance on the X800XL is less than that level, making the choice whether you want more memory on a video card or better performance in today's games. To me the choice is clear. Overall, the X800XL is an excellent video card, just not at the suggested $449 price point. At this price point, a X850XT is a much better purchase. If you want a video card that can play Doom 3 with all the settings on, the X850XT or X800XT will do just fine, and provide better performance to boot. In my opinion, the X800XL 256MB is a great deal at $299, the 512MB X800XL is not. Of course, it's likely that we'll see a new architecture from ATI this year. Once that happens, you'll see mid-range parts that will replace the X800XL. But that's the future.
