New graphics card help

Dman_15

Basically my 9800pro->xt died yesterday :mad: no warning or anything, just died.
So i'm in the market for a new card and seeing as my sister is going to the states in september i'll get her to pick up one there as they are vastly cheaper.

I'm thinking a 6800Ultra or x800pro but which is better? From what i've read the 6800 wipes the floor with the x800.

Finally, is it worth holding out for PCIe?

RuggieBear

well without wanting to sound like an an ATI fanboi i'd go for an x800xt or even it's platinum edition......seemingly the best card around at the moment

Mutant_Fruit

The Nvidias are better at Direct3d, but the ATI's beat the Nvidias in OpenGL. Whereas in Direct3d, the Nvidias win by 15 fps (for example) the ATI's win by 20fps in OpenGL (For example). In otherwords, the ATI's hold a larger lead in OpenGL than the Nvidias do in Direct3d.

They are both fairly evenly matched, so it really depends onwhat your budget can handle.

There was a company offering premodded x800pro's, with 16 working pipelines (comes with 1 year guarentee). Those sound like the right stuff to be getting. With good cooling they can be overclocked up to XT speeds, basically making them an XT (exact same specs then), and costing a good bit less than the XT.

BloodBath

Mutant fruit it's the other way around. The Ati's are better at direct3d and the Nvidias are better at open gl.

Personally after reading 6 dozen benchmarks i'd go for the X800XT if you can pick one up. Stock levels are very low and they are hard to get.


BloodBath

GreyAlien

Yea ATI is better at Direct 3d while Nvidia is better at OpenGL. Personally I'd go for the ATI one as I'm more interested in Direct 3d.

vishal

i am not sure but i read that all vivo x800 pro graphic cards can be flashed to the xt. i would buy a his excalibur with an arctic cooler rev 4 and just flash that.

Dman_15

Tbh id rather steer away from oc'ing. once bitten twice shy. my 9800 was only 4 months old and it gave up the ghost.
the card i'm thinking of is a BFG 6800 ultra off newegg.com which comes with a lifetime warranty and is factory oc'ed to 425 mhz.

vishal

had you cooled it properly and what had you overclocked it to?
as regards the lifetime warranty, it doesn't matter cos as long as it lasts three years it is good enough for me cos the chances are you will have a new card in 2 years time.

uberpixie

Why go for the 6800 ultra DMAN?

The 6800GT is €100 cheaper and offers most of the performance of the ultra.

Even with everything jacked up the ultra never strenches much further than at most 8 frames over the GT.

Plus GTs seemingly overclock past the ultra fairly easy, if you really notice the difference of 8 frames or less :-)


http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQyLDM=

36 vs 40 frames in doom 3 @ 1600 x 1200, high quality, x4 AA, x8 AF.

Get the GT and if 4 frames difference matters to ya o'clock the mofo ;-)

OfflerCrocGod

I totally agree with this opinion here I'd go for a GT and OC it to Ultra speeds. What I'm really doing though is waiting until Nforce 4 SLI comes out and grabbing an Athlon 64 skt 939 PCI-Express MB and build myself a kick-ass rig

vishal

i don't know what the big deal is with sli is. the 6800gt preforms great on its own so why would you want get 2. there will be no games that will need it for the next year or maybe even 2 (u3 and battlefield 2 look great) and by then there will be a better graphics card for the the price of the 6800 gt that will probably preform 2ice as good. and besides 2 6800 gt dosn't mean 2ice the performance.

uberpixie

vishal wrote:

i don't know what the big deal is with sli is. the 6800gt preforms great on its own so why would you want get 2. there will be no games that will need it for the next year or maybe even 2 (u3 and battlefield 2 look great) and by then there will be a better graphics card for the the price of the 6800 gt that will probably preform 2ice as good. and besides 2 6800 gt dosn't mean 2ice the performance.

True, 2 GTs won't be twice the performance. But buy a gt early at close to full price and later on buy a second at a much cheaper price. It's a nice way to upgrade your gfx without paying full whack for a new card.

Of course it all depends on how the prices pan out and the actual performance of SLI, if it is of actual use.

I read that article on the inquierer http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18029

TBH offlercroc the article, while it makes a few good points, is far too negative.

I really don't ATI are that fecked. Certainly this round i would buy a 6800GT.

But to say ATI are boned is another matter. The have a nice chunk of the OEM market:i.e. dell machines, the amount of pcs on sale in PC world with a radeon 9200/9000 in em!

They will include PS3.0 support in their next card and very few of the general public will use SLI(the majority of the market).

Now for hardware nuts that a different story. Now chances are I will buy an SLI nforce 4 board when I finally get my act together and upgrade, just so I have the option on SLI.

Buts it's way too early to tell what gfx i will be using. All depends on how things pan out and if SLI is all that.

Dman_15

the card had an artic vga cooler and ramsinks front and back. my case has about 4 fans and the card ran at stock xt speeds with an xt bios. It never showed artifacts or crashed before, then one day its just dead. got an rma number for it and i stuck the stock heatsink back on it and fingers crossed they will plug it in and see that it doesnt work and just give me a new one.
If not i'm defo leaning towards the 6800 and probably the gt version. ideally i would like a free replacement because now doesnt seem to be a good time to buy.

vishal

Dman_15 wrote:

the card had an artic vga cooler and ramsinks front and back. my case has about 4 fans and the card ran at stock xt speeds with an xt bios. It never showed artifacts or crashed before, then one day its just dead. got an rma number for it and i stuck the stock heatsink back on it and fingers crossed they will plug it in and see that it doesnt work and just give me a new one.
If not i'm defo leaning towards the 6800 and probably the gt version. ideally i would like a free replacement because now doesnt seem to be a good time to buy.

what brand was it?

astrofool

u'll only be able to SLI on pci express boards...

OfflerCrocGod

uberpixie wrote:

TBH offlercroc the article, while it makes a few good points, is far too negative.

I really don't ATI are that fecked. Certainly this round i would buy a 6800GT.

I don't think they are fecked, as you put it, but they are no longer the kings of performance! You even admit it yourself when you tell us what card you would go for

uberpixie wrote:

Now chances are I will buy an SLI nforce 4 board when I finally get my act together and upgrade, just so I have the option on SLI.

See you are also going to buy their chipset aswell - this "round" has not yet begun wait until Nov/Dec to see how things are really like; with new games engines and Doom derived games and SLI boards hitting the market. I'd say ATI won't be smiling.

pyrogenx

Dman_15 wrote:

I'm thinking a 6800Ultra or x800pro but which is better? From what i've read the 6800 wipes the floor with the x800.

I'm gonna have to make the very same choice soon... tell us what u've gone for when u get it

uberpixie

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

I don't think they are fecked, as you put it, but they are no longer the kings of performance! You even admit it yourself when you tell us what card you would go for ;)See you are also going to buy their chipset aswell - this "round" has not yet begun wait until Nov/Dec to see how things are really like; with new games engines and Doom derived games and SLI boards hitting the market. I'd say ATI won't be smiling.

It is true at the moment Nvidia have the performance crown. But it's not a huge margin over ATi. At most 10 frames between their high end cards.

Now only 10 frames in the difference is piss, thats only for doom3. At the moment a lot of people would pay 10 frames in doom3 for 20 frames in hl2 (or so they think).

To be honest both their high end cards are going to be tweaked and optimised so any advantage one has over the other, in game X, is going to be small in the long run. Both are DACENT cards.

The GT6800 I would buy because it is at the right performance/price ratio for the high end. ATI have nothing to match it at the mo, the GT beats the pants of the 800 pro in a lot of things and is even speed with an x800 xt pe in doom. A GT is also not much slower than an ultra and €100 less.

The GT is the smart choice at the moment. ( if you can call €450 on a gfx card smart )

The next few months will be interesting to see what ATI and Nvidia will pull out of the hat.

Nvidia had to pull out all the stops, with a new design, just to pull ahead of ATI, while ATI ran on design based on their stuff 2 generations old and come out fairly close to them.

Nvida will be now optimising their currrant design. The question is what do ATI have up their sleaves? New design or just more optimisation?

SLI I think is Nvida's insurance against ATI. If ATI manage to pull a rabbit out of the hat, a ****kicker of a new design, Nvidia can always say "well yeah the ATi is faster, a bit, but if you stick these 2 cards together this is faster".

I would buy a mobo that supported SLI as insurance. If an ati card comes out, is at a good price and is not much slower than 2 nvidia's stuck together I will buy it. All depends on how much those Nvidias are faster by how much.

If 2 nvidia cards in SLI are twice the price in total of an ATI but only 10 frames faster I wont' be buying :-)

SLI will be an ace up my sleave. If it turns out to be all that, I have it as an option.

astrofool

sli boards are a few months away

Dman_15

it was a saphire.
Why do you ask vishal?

uberpixie

astrofool wrote:

sli boards are a few months away

won't be building for a few months :-)

Calibos

Damn D-man! I've also got a Sapphire 9800pro flashed to XT at default Xt clocks with ramsinks front and back and an Artic cooler. I actually turn it up to 435/380 for Doom3 the odd time too. What core temps were you getting before it went pop. Mines idling at 59-60 according to atitool atm and under load it goes upto 65c.
I presume Vishal was inquiring for the same reasons. ie that he has the same setup.

Dman_15

I didn't think you could monitor the temps with ati tool.....
the card had a 360 core amd samsung memory.
Anyway my mobo is at 20 and my athlon processor is at 36 with a fairly stock heatsink on it. i would be very suprised if it was heat that the card

Calibos

Mine has a 360 core and hynix 2.8ns Memory. Its on a red PCB. Apparently this is actually an Xt pcb and has the temp monitor chip. Atitool displays my core temp in the taskbar. Dont get an overdrive tab or temp readings in the ati driver control panel after flashing to XT though.