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6800 newbie thread

B

budec

Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2002
Messages
748
What's the differance between the 6800, 6800 GT, 6800 LE, 6800 Ultra?

Any reason why a 6800 isn't a good choice? Are there any other cards on the market that offer better performance?

I'm thinking about going with Gainworld again (got a Ti4600 from them), is there any other manufactors I should check out?
 
the main differences, apart from clock and memory speeds, is that the gt and ultra use faster, cooler gddr3 memory, while the nu (non-ultra) and le use slower, hotter ddr-1, and also the ultra have 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex shaders. the nu has 12/5 (pipelines come in groups of four), and the le has 8/5. on some cards, using rivatuner, you can enable disabled shaders and/or pipelines on the nu and le cards. if you get one of these, research this a lot at the guru3d forum (in the rivatuner section), and recognize the possible danger (the vast majority of people do not permanently damage their cards, in fact, i haven't yet read a story like that, I just know it's possible). I myself did not manage to enable the enabling, but I have done some more research, and intend to try again. the only differences between the gt and the ultra is clock speed, and almost every gt I have ever heard of can overcloock to ultra speeds, and sometimes beyond. technically the best value/performance of these cards is the gt, which can easily be clocked to the speed of an ultra. but, if you're not going to spend all your time playing doom3, I'd recommend either a radeon x800xt (not the pro, the 6800 gt for the same price is much faster, it has 16 as opposed to 12 open pipelines) or waiting until ati releases their next generation of chips, as they will support shader model 3.0, one of the geforce 6XXX gpu's greatest attractions, and will probably be much faster.
 
binkgle said:
the main differences, apart from clock and memory speeds, is that the gt and ultra use faster, cooler gddr3 memory, while the nu (non-ultra) and le use slower, hotter ddr-1, and also the ultra have 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex shaders. the nu has 12/5 (pipelines come in groups of four), and the le has 8/5. on some cards, using rivatuner, you can enable disabled shaders and/or pipelines on the nu and le cards. if you get one of these, research this a lot at the guru3d forum (in the rivatuner section), and recognize the possible danger (the vast majority of people do not permanently damage their cards, in fact, i haven't yet read a story like that, I just know it's possible). I myself did not manage to enable the enabling, but I have done some more research, and intend to try again. the only differences between the gt and the ultra is clock speed, and almost every gt I have ever heard of can overcloock to ultra speeds, and sometimes beyond. technically the best value/performance of these cards is the gt, which can easily be clocked to the speed of an ultra. but, if you're not going to spend all your time playing doom3, I'd recommend either a radeon x800xt (not the pro, the 6800 gt for the same price is much faster, it has 16 as opposed to 12 open pipelines) or waiting until ati releases their next generation of chips, as they will support shader model 3.0, one of the geforce 6XXX gpu's greatest attractions, and will probably be much faster.
Click to expand...
Well that just about sums it up [/THREAD]
 
Actually that's not quite right (about the gt being the same as the ultra). The ultra has a tiny bit more core voltage. But again, you can alter your GT to have the same voltage.
 
So for games, the 6800 Ultra should kick the snot out of any other video card right?
Just wondering cause I've never been an ATI fan boy and really don't know much about the cards they have out right now.
 
Right now the 6800 ultra really is king. While the x800 XTPE (not just plain XT) is as fast or slightly faster in most games, it gets it ass kicked in opengl games, doesnt have as many features, is extremely hard to find for a reasonable price, and doesnt have nvidias driver team behind it.
 
homIcIde said:
Right now the 6800 ultra really is king. While the x800 XTPE (not just plain XT) is as fast or slightly faster in most games, it gets it ass kicked in opengl games, doesnt have as many features, is extremely hard to find for a reasonable price, and doesnt have nvidias driver team behind it.
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I don't know about "extremely hard to find..." It's more along the lines of the Fountain of Youth. Also, there is a fair trade-off between the X800XTPE (Phantom Existence?) and the 6800 Ultra. For HL2 engine, the x800xtpe rocks the 6800, for doom 3 engine the 6800 rocks the x800.

I'd say, to answer the original question; the 6800 LE is a bad choice, just too crippled. The 6800 Ultra is a bad choice, it's not too available, and not worth the premium over the 6800 GT. The 6800 and 6800 GT are good choices, and it just depends on how much you want to spend. Be warned, avoid the Asus boards, they are not what they seem. The Gainward boards are supposed to be great.
 
Price/Performance go with the 6800GT and overclock it to Ultra speeds.
 
budec said:
So for games, the 6800 Ultra should kick the snot out of any other video card right?
Just wondering cause I've never been an ATI fan boy and really don't know much about the cards they have out right now.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't consider either companies offerings to be perfect.

There is no ti4200 equivelent available today.

The 6800 suffers from lack of ram.
The 6800 GT and Ultra suffer from price

Everything ATI has out right now suffers in the price/performance ratio.

I am dissapointed with all of it, as none of the offerings is without its drawbacks.
 
ati's only good agp card right now is the x800xt (the xtpe has clock speeds that an plain old xt can easily reach), the x800 pro, which is supposed to compete with the 6800gt, has only 12 pipelines, and so is easily mauled by the 16 pipeline gt. which company you go for depends on whether you will be playing hl2 or doom3, but 6800s work far better in hl2 than x800s do in doom3.
ati's driver team at least releases driver updates regularly, nvidia has just had it's first update in about four months, and often their leaked beta drivers are unstable (though those 66.81 drivers were pretty darn awesome).
 
What's the difference between the brands?
- BFG
- XFX
- eVGA
- PNY

i gather that from the boards that BFG is quite popular. any advice why the others are not as good?

i am in for either a 6800 or 6800GT, if the price is better than MSRP.
 
ta7mike said:
What's the difference between the brands?
- BFG
- XFX
- eVGA
- PNY

i gather that from the boards that BFG is quite popular. any advice why the others are not as good?

i am in for either a 6800 or 6800GT, if the price is better than MSRP.
Click to expand...

I think BFG is primarily popular because (1) they OC their cards by default, and (2) they offer a lifetime warranty. They don't bundle compelling games or anything, but . . . lifetime warranty, good service, and a card OC'ed a bit without losing your warranty is nice.
 
The best bang for your buck right now is the 6800 gt 256mb cards they rock, they are stable and overclock well. I currently have a BFG version and its great. Main reason I chose this was their lifetime warranty. Which I already used because i smoked my first one when my water block went sideways and they had no questions just sent a new one. I prefer to use the abit cards due to killer stability but way to pricey and couldnt find the one I wanted at the time.

I never liked PNY and have serviced way to many of them. BFG is popular and a good card and readily available. Nvidia all the way cause their drivers work. The new 66.91's are awesome
 
the gt is much faster than the nu. go gt. I wish I had been able to convince my parents to let me spend that extra $100. oh, well, I'll just have to get a job and cash in on the next generation.
 
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