Upgrade warning (disappointment over dollars spent / performance increase)

I wonder if when using his GF4Ti4800, he had his quality tab (in the Nvidia drivers) set all the way on Performance. That would allow him to run games in higher quality modes because the graphics drivers would pretty much ignore alot of the games extra eye candy as it was rendering the scenes. Thus for him, it might seem to be playing just fine at higher resolutions with a little AA or AF. Whereas with his 6800GT, the freshly installed drivers probably were set on Balance or Quality settings. I still can't figure out how you wouldn't see a huge IQ difference between these cards. I mean GF4 was back in the day when ATI was leading in the IQ battles. These days, it seems Nvidia has greatly improved thier IQ since both present offerings were almost identical (if I remember correctly) and most certainly better than the GF4 generation. So surely he must notice that the game just looks nicer/more realistic, if nothing else.

"i see stupid people" ...

DyerWolf said:

I previously ran games at 1024 x 768 with 85 mhz refresh. I generally max the graphics and ran AA and AF where applicable. I like eye candy. In FarCry was getting about 40 - 58 fps on average in the wide open areas - much better indoors (Very playable). Now I get 50 - 68 on average. Notice that the only difference in my system is the card. Upgrading to the 6800 gave me increased framerates, which are not jawdroppingly noticeable. But think about the science here. When you go see a movie, and even watching your TV, typically the framerate is 60 fps. More is definately candy, but not truly noticeable and less than that the eye starts picking up on the frames.

Click to expand...

Not to be rude, but duh? 1024x768 is not stressing that card. Try playing with the Ti4400 at 1280x2014, or better yet, 1600x1200. It will crawl. Now try the 6800GT, it will likely be at least 2x as fast. Keep in mind that it is running DX9, while the Ti4400 is running DX8.

DyerWolf said:

The point is that there is not a jaw droppingly huge difference. There is NOT $300 better playability AT THIS POINT. Perhaps there will be in the future. But not now. Until games come out with true DX-9 functionality using all the shaders and lighting effects, I don't think an upgrade is worth it.

Click to expand...

Its not a "jaw droppingly huge difference" because you are not stressing the Ti4400. You are CPU limited at that low of a res. Once again, try it at a high setting, and there will be a HUGE difference in speed. Yes, at least twice the speed. Especially with AA/AF on, which the Ti series took a large hit when using.

DyerWolf said:

Increasing AA and AF a couple of notches does not make such a huge difference.

Click to expand...

I feel like a broken record here, but 1024x768 is not stressing the cards. Try it at a higher setting.

DyerWolf said:

What I am saying to those who are thinking of an upgrade is this: If you have a good card (like a 4600 or 4800 - or a 9800 or even a 9700 or 5700 ) there is no reason to drop new dimes on a card when there are no games that currently stress your present setup. IF - AND ONLY IF - you are getting unpleasant slow downs and freezes should you upgrade. Otherwise save your sheckles until the price drops or the programmers catch up with the technology.

Click to expand...

Farcry WILL stress your system, you are not allowing it to. Programmers catch up to a Ti4400? Heh, Farcry will bring it to single digits if you set it high enough.

DyerWolf said:

The ultimate point is: the price to value currently doesn't add up.

Click to expand...

While thats a subjective opinion, the point you seem to be missing is, its a lot closer to adding up, if you run it at a higher setting. The 6800GT will be at least 2x as fast as your Ti4400, if you run at a high enough setting.

im not going to throw more logs into this fire,

so just sell ur card, and be on your way, b/c ur information is useless

I recently upgraded from a TI4600 OEM to a BFG 6800GT OC and I can tell a lot of difference in both performance and overall quality. Admittedly it's not so apparent at first and with the settings I was using previously with my TI4600, but once you start maxing out the settings and begin gaming a bit, it starts to dawn on you just how much of a difference there really is.

I upgraded from a madly overclocked Radeon 8500 to a X800Pro, and the difference in performance is mind boggling. I know it's synthetic, but where I used to struggle to get 1500+ in 3DM03, i can now easily get 12K+......

I even started playing Unreal Tournament against my friends because it could handle higher resolutions and detail without slowdowns when the action got frenetic.

Oh, and that's on a pretty decent Athlon XP 3200+ system.

I think it's pointless upgrading from, say, a 9800XT to a X800Pro...even though the new cards are much much faster, it's wise to hang on to your cash a while longer. But if you're struggling with your geforce4 or Radeon 8500, hey, then get the fastest new card you can afford. It *IS* worth it.

Sativa offers good insight. I had not adjusted my CMOS to reflect the 256 mb AGP video memory. That has now been done. (And don't everyone jump on the "I knew that" bandwagon - b/c only Sativa mentioned it...).

Fallguy and (most) of the "higher-res" posters also have a point. Yes, many of you are right - I can now play at 1280x1024 - which IS an improvement. I was not aware that 1024x768 was cpu limiting - guess my Athlon 64 3000+ was kicking in some help for the 4800... I will have to try the higher res settings to see what I like.

However: Despite the flaming - at 1024x768, with my system running the 4800 on a 19" monitor with an 85hz refresh rate, FARCRY was maxed out (except for water which was one step down from "ultra") and playable. Asmelia, I appreciate the link, but I see something different. Despite what some reviewer noted as the "average" frame rate for a 4600 - I am telling you what I experienced on my system. And this is the point - bumping up one position to "ultra" is not a huge difference. Certainly not worth $300. - I will offer one caveat. I have not checked out FarCry inside the more "technical" places (like the various labs) where Shader 3.0 and any DX-9 effects MIGHT show up. But so far - there is not a huge difference. Not in playability. Not in eye-candy.

Yes, I got huge increases in my synthetic benchmark scores - but so what?

Go back to the first point of the post Gents: balancing price and performance an upgrade is not warranted for most people. Yes, stepping up from a GF3 or MX card is going to be huge. But for some reason the GF4 4800 holds its own with 9700/5700 class cards, and I am telling you - unless you have a card rated BELOW those - you are likely to be disappointed with an upgrade unless you either have money running out your ears or someone else is bankrolling you. If price is meaningless, go ahead and flash cash.

The second point is merely a warning to the uninitiated: very, very few games require or even offer DX-9 functionality, fewer still can take advantage of AGP 8x or need 256 mb of video memory. So what are you buying right now? In DX-7 games like DesertCombat / Battlefield 1942 - more unuseable framerates (unless you can set your refresh rate to 150 or more 8P). In DX-8, more of the same.

My caution is against getting too excited by the hype generated by reviewers and fan-boys and the many flamers above...

Ultimately this: is $300 to $500 worth what you are getting?

The n00b has a rational point, stop "flaming" him.

Welcome to the [H] kid.

~Adam

I feel like I'm flogging a deceased equine mammal here, but I just went from an OCed Ti4200 (same features, slower memory than the 4800, which is a 4600 able to run at 8X AGP if I recall) to a 6800, and am replaying FarCry. It feels like a completely different game. Let's see: fish in the now-beautiful water, macaws and other birds, dragonflies flitting around in the day, fireflies at night, steam causing heat distortion effects -- how you're not seeing these differences is beyond me. The fact that I'm able to run at 1280x1024 with 8x AF doesn't hurt either. Are you sure you have DirectX 9.0c installed? And the latest FarCry patch? I don't mean to be an ass, but 2+2 is somehow not equalling 4 in your rig.

THERE'S FISH IN THE WATER IN FARCRY? I've spent about 2 hours swimming around in farcry with high quality stuff and have seen NO fish at all. HOW and where?!?! I WATN MY FISHES!!

BTW: random tidbit but I saw a BORE yesterday in farcry o.o, I haven't beat it yet cause the gameplay is lame but I love the visuals so I'll do it sooner or later!

~Adam

I don't mean to be an ass, but 2+2 is somehow not equalling 4 in your rig.

Click to expand...

I completely agree. I jumped from a 4200 to my 6800GT (i'm ignoring the shitty 5700 inbetween), and see huge differences. For some reason, 2+2=3 for him. (Extremely small values of 2?)

texuspete00 said:

You sure you're not GF4Ti4200 from XS, OC550, thunderbird dude?

Click to expand...

LOL!

I upgraded from a ti4200 to a 6800gt and the difference is massive to say the least. Of course, if you want to play at resolutions that are cpu limited and then tell us that the upgrade wasn't worth it, you're more than welcome to do so. Just don't expect anyone to swallow it because you didn't even know what you were upgrading for by the sounds of it. 800x600 resolution on a mid-high end video card is a joke unless you want to test how cpu limited you are in certain games to gauge an upgrade on that front or compare. NOT for playing your games, try 1280x1024 upwards with some or a lot of AA/AF applied and then come back whining please.

At the very least, set it to 1024x768 with 4xAA/16xAF and tell us what numbers you're getting, now go play on your ti4800se with those same settings and tell me there's no difference?

At 1024x768 on a 3000+ or 3GHz processor with a good amount of ram running no AA and AF, you won't see a difference between a Ti4600 and a 6800GT. Crank up the AA and the AF you should see a difference. Then set it to 1600x1200 and watch that Geforce 4 Ti4600 CRAWL. You won't get 12fps in FarCry I'd be willing to bet.

Just try exactly that test. If you try that and still can't see a difference there is something wrong with your setup. Plain and simple. That Geforce 4 Ti4600 simply can not do that game at those settings at playable frame rates.

DyerWolf said:

However: Despite the flaming - at 1024x768, with my system running the 4800 on a 19" monitor with an 85hz refresh rate, FARCRY was maxed out (except for water which was one step down from "ultra") and playable. Asmelia, I appreciate the link, but I see something different. Despite what some reviewer noted as the "average" frame rate for a 4600 - I am telling you what I experienced on my system. And this is the point - bumping up one position to "ultra" is not a huge difference. Certainly not worth $300. - I will offer one caveat. I have not checked out FarCry inside the more "technical" places (like the various labs) where Shader 3.0 and any DX-9 effects MIGHT show up. But so far - there is not a huge difference. Not in playability. Not in eye-candy.

Click to expand...

But that's the point! Why for the love of god are you running the game at 1024x768 with a 6800GT.

If you buy a 6800GT and run it at 1024x768, then yes, it's not worth the upgrade. However since you actually did buy the 6800GT why aren't you running it at least 1280x1024 with AA and AF on (or even pushing the card up to 1600x1200) while using Quality settings?

Post self-edited

You know the old saying. if you can't say anything nice......

DyerWolf said:

However: Despite the flaming - at 1024x768, with my system running the 4800 on a 19" monitor with an 85hz refresh rate, FARCRY was maxed out (except for water which was one step down from "ultra") and playable. Asmelia, I appreciate the link, but I see something different. Despite what some reviewer noted as the "average" frame rate for a 4600 - I am telling you what I experienced on my system. And this is the point - bumping up one position to "ultra" is not a huge difference. Certainly not worth $300. - I will offer one caveat. I have not checked out FarCry inside the more "technical" places (like the various labs) where Shader 3.0 and any DX-9 effects MIGHT show up. But so far - there is not a huge difference. Not in playability. Not in eye-candy.

Yes, I got huge increases in my synthetic benchmark scores - but so what?

Go back to the first point of the post Gents: balancing price and performance an upgrade is not warranted for most people. Yes, stepping up from a GF3 or MX card is going to be huge. But for some reason the GF4 4800 holds its own with 9700/5700 class cards, and I am telling you - unless you have a card rated BELOW those - you are likely to be disappointed with an upgrade unless you either have money running out your ears or someone else is bankrolling you. If price is meaningless, go ahead and flash cash.

The second point is merely a warning to the uninitiated: very, very few games require or even offer DX-9 functionality, fewer still can take advantage of AGP 8x or need 256 mb of video memory. So what are you buying right now? In DX-7 games like DesertCombat / Battlefield 1942 - more unuseable framerates (unless you can set your refresh rate to 150 or more 8P). In DX-8, more of the same.

My caution is against getting too excited by the hype generated by reviewers and fan-boys and the many flamers above...

Ultimately this: is $300 to $500 worth what you are getting?

Click to expand...

You say it wasnt worth your money to upgrade, and thats fine, its your money. But your reason for it is silly. Of course its not going to be much faster, at such a low res. If you would stress your Ti4400 in any game, then try go to the 6800GT, the performance would be at least TWICE the Ti4400's. But for some reason you just like to whine about only being marginally faster at a low res.

Why is this so hard to understand?

(p.s. BF isnt DX7)

Guys, you are missing the point.

Allow me to concede the points that many of you have made. (Despite the fact that I had the fishes and birds and boars and bugs in FarCry before the upgrade...) Playing at 1024x768 is a waste of the 6800. I grant that. In fact, I have now run the games at 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200. There is indeed a noticeable difference, in that A) I can get playable framerates at those resolutions with everything maxxed, and B) there is some improvement in video quality.

Allow me to also say this - I think the 6800 is a great card - the visuals are as good as I would expect.

But go back to the title of the post.

I STILL don't think that I got $330 MORE value than I had before. That is what I am cautioning people about. 1) Give the cards time to drop in price and buy it when the price / performance ratio is better. 2) If your current card gives you good performance with what you are playing; wait to upgrade until there are games that use the features of the 6800.

BTW - if your mom is still buying your toys, please feel free to ignore this advice.

DyerWolf said:

I STILL don't think that I got $330 MORE value than I had before. That is what I am cautioning people about. 1) Give the cards time to drop in price and buy it when the price / performance ratio is better. 2) If your current card gives you good performance with what you are playing; wait to upgrade until there are games that use the features of the 6800.

BTW - if your mom is still buying your toys, please feel free to ignore this advice.

Click to expand...

Thats fine for you, but most people are going to play at a high res, and settings to take advantage of the new card. Perhaps you should have done some research before you bought the card? If you enjoy 1024x768, you should have found out how much faster the GT is at that res, than your Ti4400. And then made your decision.

The thing is, it can be worth $330 more, if only you ran it under the right condidions.

DyerWolf said:

Guys, you are missing the point.

Allow me to concede the points that many of you have made. (Despite the fact that I had the fishes and birds and boars and bugs in FarCry before the upgrade...) Playing at 1024x768 is a waste of the 6800. I grant that. In fact, I have now run the games at 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200. There is indeed a noticeable difference, in that A) I can get playable framerates at those resolutions with everything maxxed, and B) there is some improvement in video quality.

Allow me to also say this - I think the 6800 is a great card - the visuals are as good as I would expect.

But go back to the title of the post.

I STILL don't think that I got $330 MORE value than I had before. That is what I am cautioning people about. 1) Give the cards time to drop in price and buy it when the price / performance ratio is better. 2) If your current card gives you good performance with what you are playing; wait to upgrade until there are games that use the features of the 6800.

BTW - if your mom is still buying your toys, please feel free to ignore this advice.

Click to expand...

I find that a new game is best played in the best possible way, on the best possible setup. You only experience a game once for the first time, and that is why it is important for me to get the best experience I can.

I am not one to play through games over and over, as it tends to get boring for me.

Maybe you should try playing through Farcry at 1280x960 with cold filter and HDR applied. That is the way to experience Farcry IMHO.

Okay.

I agree.

I am also playing all my games now at the highest resolution I can get. I like it that way too.

But.

Here is the difference. One pic is at 1024x768 the other is at 1600x1200.

http://img93.exs.cx/img93/9305/farcry10248jr.jpg
http://img93.exs.cx/img93/7558/farcry16002he.jpg

Open them both up and place them side by side. (Look carefully at the glass in the center of the screen). YES there is a noticeable difference...

You tell me if that is worth $300 - $500.

I agree with the last post. You want visual quality. Enabled HDR lighting and PS3.0 You'll see the difference in a second.

DyerWolf said:

Okay.

I agree.

I am also playing all my games now at the highest resolution I can get. I like it that way too.

But.

Here is the difference. One pic is at 1024x768 the other is at 1600x1200.

http://img93.exs.cx/img93/9305/farcry10248jr.jpg
http://img93.exs.cx/img93/7558/farcry16002he.jpg

Open them both up and place them side by side. YES there is a noticeable difference...

You tell me if that is worth $300 - $500.

Click to expand...

Oh man you are obvously so noob that it makes me cry (using windows at default theme also tells alot)
Btw, both of the pictures are only 288x216. so no, i cannot see any difference

johto said:

Oh man you are obvously so noob that it makes me cry (using windows at default theme also tells alot)
Btw, both of the pictures are only 288x216. so no, i cannot see any difference

Click to expand...

Gee, thanks for the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. We all gotta start somewhere...

Okay. Tell me how to take an in-game screen-shot. I tried CTRL PrintScrn, but that did not work. So I dropped FarCry into windowed mode to do the screen grab. What is the right way?

What would be the best image quality? I'll try again.

Tango.

DyerWolf said:

Gee, thanks for the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. We all gotta start somewhere...

Okay. Tell me how to take an in-game screen-shot. I tried CTRL PrintScrn, but that did not work. So I dropped FarCry into windowed mode to do the screen grab. What is the right way?

What would be the best image quality? I'll try again.

Tango.

Click to expand...

Use this to take the screenshots. I dont remember if fraps saves them in .jpg format or not, but if it saves them to another format, like .tga or .bmp, you MUST convert them to .jpg before posting...
http://www.fraps.com/

edit:
if you are interested in taking only still screenshots, all you need is the free version of fraps: http://www3.fraps.com/win9x/FRAPS19D.EXE

Dyer, please tell me the price of your ti4800 two years ago. Plzkthx.

um u press print screen and paste it into microsoft paint DUH

DyerWolf said:

Gee, thanks for the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. We all gotta start somewhere...

....noob question...

Tango.

Click to expand...

Yes but those of us starting out shouldn't try to pass ourselves off as knowledgable, thus inviting alot of WELL DESERVED flamage.

Funny how even now that you have conceded to the opinions that the 6800 runs higher res w/better eye candy/fps, you still cling to your misguided conception that it was somehow not worth the money. This is the [H], a site for hardware enthusiasts, the majority of ppl who post on the vid card forum are also [H]ardcore gamers. To this class of ppl the NV6800 and ATIX800 series cards are worth every penny.

So the moral of the story? If your still playing old dx7 games with your current card and are happy with the performance you have no need to upgrade. But if you are a 'Gamer' and play the latest games, you would do well to have a decent card.

Thanks Johto. Unfortunately for me to recreate the grabs I would have to re-replace my old card do a screen grab reinstall the 6800 and go through all that again. I will, however keep that in mind for the next time...

INEEDANAME: I think it cost me @ $175 on PriceWatch.

Vermicious Knid said:

Blah, blah, blah - WELL DESERVED flamage.

Blah, Blah - This is the [H], a site for hardware enthusiasts, the majority of ppl who post on the vid card forum are also [H]ardcore gamers. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Click to expand...

No kidding.


Thanks to the posters who pointed out the usefull stuff.

to take a picture, press F12 (IIRC) and it saves a full sized jpeg in your far cry directory

its in the advanced controls people...

as for the argument at hand, i went from one dx9 card to another, a 9600p to a 6800GT. i feel that my 430 dollars was well spent. why, you ask? i get new tech, ie HDR and other SM3 effects that will be put into upcoming games. 2. before i couldnt max everything in far cry( or other intensive games). i will absolutly not run below 1280x1024, 1024x768 just looks too crappy. (this pertains to far cry, just an example) with my 9600, it was playable for the most part at med/high settings, on the GT, its smooth as butter maxed out with all ultra high 2xAA 8xAF, and its abosoulty beautiful.

BTW, the reason your TI4800 could run at such high settings is because it was not running all the shaders and stuff the GT is. its not going to take as much as a performance hit as a dx9 class card that actually has to run that stuff. play a few levels in far cry or hl2 on your GT and then go back and play them again on the TI. you will notice a world of difference

Dyerwolf wrote:
===================================================================
Allow me to also say this - I think the 6800 is a great card - the visuals are as good as I would expect.

But go back to the title of the post.

I STILL don't think that I got $330 MORE value than I had before. That is what I am cautioning people about. 1) Give the cards time to drop in price and buy it when the price / performance ratio is better. 2) If your current card gives you good performance with what you are playing; wait to upgrade until there are games that use the features of the 6800.
===================================================================

The fact that you posted here leads me to believe you at least looked at the front page of this site. You had to have noticed at some point the reviews, or news of them, regarding these video cards.
"BTW - if your mom is still buying your toys, please feel free to ignore this advice."
With this I infer you buy your own cards. So are we to believe you spent $400.00 on a video card without reading a review? Or are we to believe that nowhere did you read in a review that the card was not a good upgrade from a Ti4800? You've had your post answered over and over by people who told you rightly that the 6800GT is faster at high resolutions, yet you insist on arguing with them by saying its not worth the money.

My question is how did you come to buy the damn thing when you dont feel you got your moneys worth? Take it back for a refund if you bought it with no idea of the performance and are disappointed. Or do you feel you were misled by the reviews and ad copy?

johto said:

Oh man you are obvously so noob that it makes me cry (using windows at default theme also tells alot)

Click to expand...

I use the Default Win Theme am I a noob? No. Haha Anyways

I have a question for you DyerWolf: Could you post all your settings for both games and then post your FPS. Cause I seriously can't understand how you are getting playable rates with maxed out setting on a GF4. On my old GF3 I couldn't even put D3 on Medium without killing my FPS. I can tell you now I can put my GF6800 on HIGH and fly through the damn level.

I mean, I just can't seem to get it through my head how you G4 and G800 are so "alike" It makes no sense. What is it, like 2-3 years advancement in technology and they are the same?? That simply makes no sense.

Also, can't we assume, much like D3 that farcry was made to run at decent FPS and still look visually appealing on lower video cards? That could explain why he is seeing little difference. I guess supporting him for a little bit, the only thing I noticed changed in D3, is that the figures were cleaner and I could up the Res to ungodly amounts and get awesome FPS. Also got some eye-candy But..yeah, could that be a reason he sees no "real" difference?



---
EDIT:
BHAHAHAHA Dyer...seems like you shot yourself in the foot with lack of knowledge.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=852038

lithium726 and MAngelo actually strike directly at both what I have been saying and illustrate the valuable responses.

lithium726 (like many others) points out WHY I did not see a whole lot of difference in performance... "BTW, the reason your TI4800 could run at such high settings is because it was not running all the shaders and stuff the GT is. its not going to take as much as a performance hit as a dx9 class card that actually has to run that stuff. " The others who pointed out the 1024x768 vs 1600x1200 difference are also absolutely correct. There is a noticeable difference.

I have taken that advice to heart and have adjusted my settings accordingly. My gaming experience is now a little better than it was before...

MAngelo writes "I infer you buy your own cards. So are we to believe you spent $400.00 on a video card without reading a review? "

That is exactly the point. I have been building computers for over seven years. I read almost ALL the reviews. I regularly read [H], Anandtech, Guru of 3d, TechReport and even TomsHardware as well as whatever else I can find. Everyone is excited by the 6800 series cards. Based on everything I read, I made an informed decision to spend the money. I also gave up on buying a new pair of skis so that I could get this card.

Nowhere have I said that the card is not top-notch. All I have said is that the price to performance ratio is skewed.

That is my point.

The card is great. However:

IMO it is too expensive (NOW) for what most people are likely to see (for the near future).

If you want it and have the cash, by all means go out and get one. You won't be disappointed by performance alone.

If, however, price and performance are important to you: my advice is to let the game tech mature to where shader 3.0 and DX-9 functionality are more common and the card becomes a "must-have". Doing so should also allow the prices to adjust downward.

Right now it is merely a "nice-to-have".

DyerWolf wrote:
lithium726 (like many others) points out WHY I did not see a whole lot of difference in performance... "BTW, the reason your TI4800 could run at such high settings is because it was not running all the shaders and stuff the GT is. its not going to take as much as a performance hit as a dx9 class card that actually has to run that stuff. " The others who pointed out the 1024x768 vs 1600x1200 difference are also absolutely correct. There is a noticeable difference.

I have taken that advice to heart and have adjusted my settings accordingly. My gaming experience is now a little better than it was before...
*******************************************************************************************************
My only point was that this is all covered in the reviews, stuff you say you read. Yet you sound so surprised at your findings, and further surprised by the advice given you by various forum members. Higher res= faster for 6800 covered in review after review.

Geforce 4 Ti 4400 runs Doom 3 at 640x480 Medium detail at 42 FPS average.
Geforce 6800 GT runs Doom 3 at 1600x1200 High detail + 8xAF at 59 FPS average.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2146&p=5
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2146&p=3

Geforce 4 Ti4600 runs Half-Life 2 at 1024x768 High detail at 67 FPS average.
Geforce 6800 GT runs Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024 High detail at 111 FPS average.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=4
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2278&p=3

No difference there.

Look at it this way Dyerwolf. Do you want to be the "gamer" who has a really nice PC.... good motherboard, A64 3000+, 1GB of nice RAM, and then for a Videocard you have..... A Geforce 4 TI4800se?

...Yeah, neither do the rest of us.

Well I went from a Ti4200 that was @ 300/600 to a 6800 NU and the difference was huge. In Far Cry I would play at 1024x768 and basically everything at medium and the water at high. And sure it was smooth sometimes but when in open areas or during combat it was barely playable a large portion of the time. With the 6800 the game is smooth as silk at 1280x1024 everything max. I even noticed a big difference when playing Far Cry on a 9800 Pro. Sure you have an AMD64 but I'm pretty sure high end P4s and Athlon XPs had no problem maxing out a GeForce4 Ti card. Its amazing to me that you couldn't notice a significant difference, just sitting in a spot and moving the mouse around to view the environment is so much smoother.

Doom 3 also was a huge difference. On the Ti4200 I ran at 800x600 medium detail and it was also pretty rough at times. On the 6800 I run at 1280x1024 high detail and it's amazing what the difference is.

But if you really feel like you got screwed on your purchase then just return it or sell it to a true [H]'er so it can be enjoyed.

I dunno if anyone said this but I played Battlefield Vietnam on my rig with my 6600GT w/ AA and filtering on full and it looked beautiful. Other games like doom3/hl2 werent as impressive. Did you turn those options on?

My 9800 pro could give your old card a bruising. And a 6800 series card would send it home screaming for mercy. And yes, they are worth the money, up to the GT at least. If someone's price range is lower, they can always pick up the still-badass 9800 pro or 6600 gt for ~200. Or you can wait a few months and buy the same tech cheaper. There is absolutely no need to pick a reasonably priced enthusiast card and try to play expert by chewing it out in a forum.

Tsumari

I found that FarCry on my 9600Pro OC'ed to XT speeds ran like ass. So I can only imagine how painfull it would be on a Ti4600.

My X800Pro was nice and so is the 6800GT. The differences were earth shattering.

I was using a GF3 Ti200 about 3 years. I decided to buy a XFX 6600GT AGP. Got it for 205 USD at the end of November. Seemed like a good deal. Overall I am happy, although my system isn't state of the art (XP 3200+) I feel it was a worth while upgrade. I can now game at 1024x768 (and probably higher but I won't know until I get back to my gaming monitor) with all the eye candy and some decent fsaa and ansio. The directx 9 support is nice.

I was tempted to order a 6800 but felt the cards potential would be wasted by my older CPU. The 6600GT seemed to be the obvious choice. Anyone looking for great game performance without breaking the bank should consider the 6600GT.