As if I wasn't confused enough... need the [H]elp you guys have always given..

G

GSRwBOOST

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 14, 2001
Messages
488
Returned a crappy fx5200 this weekend and am back to my Asylum ti4200 128meg card. It's overclocked a little and has a nice heatsink on it, but I want a DX9 video card of the next generation with 256mb ram.

PROBLEM: Which card to get? On Tom's Hardware review http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html there are litteraly 2-3 dozen cards it seems and among those reviewed there are probably 5-6 different manufacturers of that type of card.

My GOD!

I'd love the 6800 OC BFG flavor, but can't justify 400 bones for a card this time around.

So what to pick?

Sounds simple, but I look at the cards then manufacturers, clock speeds, pipelines, dx support, price and it just gets that much more confuseing. The reviews don't help past telling me whats the fastest on the benchmark score.

Score meaning that there are the top 10 cards but twice as many flavors of those cards.

Lets say for arguments sake I want to spend between 200 and 300$, has to be a direct x9 card, clock speeds as fast as i can get for my pricepoint and a reliable brand of card.

I mainly play first person shooters at LAN's and with a seperate group getting together occasionally for the RPG games.

Anyone have any suggestions?
 
eVGA 6800 @ Newegg for $280, comes with FarCry.

EDIT - Oops, its $300 as posted below.
 
eVGA 6800 standard, its 128mb but its 15-30% faster than the 9800xt 256mb and has sm3.0 + fp16 blending for HDR lighting.

Proof?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2113&p=4

For comparison:
win = 5fps or higher score than the competition
* means the card won by 10fps or more (big win)
tie means score difference was less than 5fps (insignificant)

6800 128mb vs 9800XT 256mb

Aquamark - 6800 win

no AA/AF
EVE: The Second Genesis - tie
FarCry - 6800 win*
Final Fantasy XI - tie
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - 6800 win*
Unreal Tournament 2004 (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
Unreal Tournament 2004 (1600x1200) - 6800 win
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - 6800 win*
X2: The Threat (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
X2: The Threat (1600x1200) - 6800 win*

4x AA/8xAF
EVE: The Second Genesis - tie
F1 Challenge (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
F1 Challenge (1600x1200) - 6800 win
FarCry - tie
Halo (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
Halo (1600x1200) - 6800 win*
Homeworld 2 (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
Homeworld 2 (1600x1200) - 6800 win*
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - 6800 win*
Neverwinter Nights - 6800 win*
Unreal Tournament 2004 (1280x1024) - tie
Unreal Tournament 2004 (1600x1200) - tie
Warcraft 3 - 6800 win
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - 6800 win*
X2: The Threat (1280x1024) - 6800 win*
X2: The Threat (1600x1200) - tie

(digit-life)
hl2b1.png


---

Note that the 9800PRO you will find for $200-210 will be slower than the 9800XT that the 6800 beats across the board, and will have less features and be less future proof than the 6800.

Where to buy?
evga 6800 in stock $299 with free farcry direct (was 289 at newegg but they are out of stock and raised price)
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?Part_Number=128-A8-N343-AX
 
Yup, the vanilla 6800 @ $300 is just about the best budget deal around right now. It trumps any of the last generation cards at a lower price point. And believe it or not, it's in stock at a lot of places, unlike the GT and Ultra.
 
Ditto, 6800 for 300 bones is a great deal.....From what I am hearing, most are OCing very well too.

Also, you might check out some of your reviews cover 6800 technology so far, as the benchmarks above are canned and do not show real world gameplay which is a LOT differnet in games like farcry.
 
One suggestion for the under $200 price point, the FX 5900 SE is a bit faster than a 9700 Pro and trades blows with a 9800 pro. The SE version can be had for about $175 at last check, possibly lower now.
 
I'm guessing that the 6800 standard will do nicely on the newer games like farcry and soon, doom?

I never put too much into numbers or scores on a review but occasionally you find a couple cards that play as well as they bench...

Real world performance is important to me... I used to bench a card by playing a game i had trouble playing with an existing card and if it ran better then it was a keeper.

I can play all my games on the card i have now.. but its hard to say how many of the new games it will handle without being overwhelmed... (Doom/HL2)
 
GSRwBOOST said:
I'm guessing that the 6800 standard will do nicely on the newer games like farcry and soon, doom?

I never put too much into numbers or scores on a review but occasionally you find a couple cards that play as well as they bench...

Real world performance is important to me... I used to bench a card by playing a game i had trouble playing with an existing card and if it ran better then it was a keeper.

I can play all my games on the card i have now.. but its hard to say how many of the new games it will handle without being overwhelmed... (Doom/HL2)
Click to expand...

Both the 9800 Pro and the 6800 play very nice in FarCry. Obviously the 6800 more so. I have the GT which I was lucky enough to get in on the CompUSA 30% PNY deal. It plays very well and I believe will handle both hl2 and doom without issue.

Just a few games I've been playing :
FarCry
BF1942
Everquest
CoH
Homeworld 2
 
GSRwBOOST said:
Returned a crappy fx5200 this weekend and am back to my Asylum ti4200 128meg card. It's overclocked a little and has a nice heatsink on it, but I want a DX9 video card of the next generation with 256mb ram.

PROBLEM: Which card to get? On Tom's Hardware review http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html there are litteraly 2-3 dozen cards it seems and among those reviewed there are probably 5-6 different manufacturers of that type of card.

My GOD!

I'd love the 6800 OC BFG flavor, but can't justify 400 bones for a card this time around.

So what to pick?

Sounds simple, but I look at the cards then manufacturers, clock speeds, pipelines, dx support, price and it just gets that much more confuseing. The reviews don't help past telling me whats the fastest on the benchmark score.

Score meaning that there are the top 10 cards but twice as many flavors of those cards.

Lets say for arguments sake I want to spend between 200 and 300$, has to be a direct x9 card, clock speeds as fast as i can get for my pricepoint and a reliable brand of card.

I mainly play first person shooters at LAN's and with a seperate group getting together occasionally for the RPG games.

Anyone have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

The BFG 6800 GT OC is one hell of a card and in some cases it can be purchased for under $400.00. I got mine for $385.00. It's one hell of a card and you will be 100% satisfied with it! Although any 6800 series card you can't go wrong with.
 
I concur with the 6800 for the $300 range and the 9800 Pro for the $200 range. I prolly wouldnt buy anything below the 9800pro -
As for being future proof - lol - I have yet to see a truely future proof (ie 3+ years) vid card for top games... The only way you will know if the card you buy is "good enough" for HL2 or D]|[ is to see what happens when they come out - buying the newest tech will prolly be more "future proof" than a card that is more than 6 months old. Things change way fast in the vid card biz.
 
Personally I'd wait a month or two and let things calm down. I'd bet after the gddr3 supply is ramped up you'll be able to find 6800gt/x800 pros for 350ish. Besides Doom3 isn't coming out till aug, stalker in late aug, and hl2 prob not until late fall. At worse prices will stay the same and you get the 6800nu for around 300$, but it would suck to by a 6800nu now and in 2 months from when all the cool games come out and you see 6800GTs all over the place for 350. You'd be throwing phone books all over the place ;) .
 
Makes sense to wait for the newer games and possible price drops. I havn't been in the market for a new card until now and there's a billion choices it seems.

If I do end up buying one it will most likely be the one above for 3bills...

I wish there was a super crazy sale on the 6800oc's hahahahaah
 
GSRwBOOST said:
Makes sense to wait for the newer games and possible price drops. I havn't been in the market for a new card until now and there's a billion choices it seems.

If I do end up buying one it will most likely be the one above for 3bills...

I wish there was a super crazy sale on the 6800oc's hahahahaah
Click to expand...


If you don't mind waiting for it to ship, there is a super crazy sale on a 6800 right now:

PNY 6800 $250 at buy.com (preorder)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10376098&loc=101&sp=1

That's almost 20% off list price, and you probably aren't gonna do much better than that anytime soon.
 
101998 said:
Personally I'd wait a month or two and let things calm down. I'd bet after the gddr3 supply is ramped up you'll be able to find 6800gt/x800 pros for 350ish. Besides Doom3 isn't coming out till aug, stalker in late aug, and hl2 prob not until late fall. At worse prices will stay the same and you get the 6800nu for around 300$, but it would suck to by a 6800nu now and in 2 months from when all the cool games come out and you see 6800GTs all over the place for 350. You'd be throwing phone books all over the place ;) .
Click to expand...

Not if he goes EVGA they will auto upgrade within 90days if you buy from them.thats full purchase price toward a faster card.......I will certainly be taking advantage of that
 
Ordered the e-GeForce 6800,128MB DDR tonight and although the wife won't be happy I dropped 300+tax on a "video card"... she'll get over it.(one day hopefully) :eek:

I just had to sign a pact with the devil... (Not to upgrade anything for the next year)... and we all know how long that lasts in the computer industry...

hahaha

Their upgrade offer is tempting but considering the amount of money i've dropped in the last couple weeks on other stuff... I'll hold off... still gotta buy a house at the end of the year...

thanks for the [H]elp!!!!!
 
I'm assumeing that the 6800 can be overclocked to ultra or gt stats? If you can overclock it, which program is everyone using for these 6800 cards..?

-thanks again...
 
GSRwBOOST said:
I'm assumeing that the 6800 can be overclocked to ultra or gt stats? If you can overclock it, which program is everyone using for these 6800 cards..?

-thanks again...
Click to expand...

I use powerstrip. Yes it can but not nearly to the extent the gt can. the core is robust but the 68oo has slower memroy. 375/ 800 is doable from what i am hearing as opposed to 400/1100 or better with the GT
 
The regular 6800 runs with a slower clock speed, slower memory, and 12 pipelines instead of 16, meaning it won't oc nearly as well as the GT, which has the full 16 pipelines and faster memory. But it still outperforms all last generation cards.

PNY 6800 $250 at buy.com (preorder)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.a...98&loc=101&sp=1
Click to expand...

And holy shite is that a good deal. That makes me wanna buy one right now...any idea on an in-stock date for that? I couldn't find one.
 
GSRwBOOST said:
I'm assumeing that the 6800 can be overclocked to ultra or gt stats? If you can overclock it, which program is everyone using for these 6800 cards..?

-thanks again...
Click to expand...

You can get some great overclocking out of the 6800. It might not be GT speed since GT is 16x1, but you can get a nice OC out of it.
 
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