6800 vanilla vs 6800GS

O

Ohmsford

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 3, 2004
Messages
152
I just purchased a Gigabyte 6800 video card off of ebay for $113 american. I have been reading up on the GS's unlockable pipelines and my interest is sparked. I currently am using a 6600gt and I don't expect much of an increase in performance (but i'm gonna try and sell my 6600gt for around the same price) but I am curious as to what potential the video card has for overclocking. It already has a NV5 Arctic Cooler installed compared to the passive heatsink.
 
Every unlocked AGP GS should handle 400mhz if not a little more. If you can wait, grab a 7800GS in a month for $250 or maybe even less. These cards overclock very nicely, have the 7 series features, the improved pipelines handle long shaders and HDR better than the 6800GS and while they have only 8 ROPs, the performance penalty isn´t very huge at all. I think thats the way to go if you want a decent upgrade step AND stay on AGP at the same time.
 
Well the card is already purchased (i'm a sucker for cheap prices lol) and its NOT a GS to my understanding. Its just a plain 6800 vanilla video card. What is the difference between vanill and GS?
 
The GS is better.

I'm not quite sure what your asking here, it seemed as though you were inquiring about the GS but what you're really asking is what's different about the 6800 and the GS and what kind of overclocking options you have with a vanilla 6800?

With the AGP 6800 you stand a good chance of unlocking 4 extra pipes and an extra vertex shader. It's a pretty nice performance boost for a couple clicks and a reboot.
 
that was precisely my question :D

So I have 4 unlockable pipelines and a extra vertex shader waiting to be used just to be 100% sure.

How would I go about doing this, I've never messed with overclocking video cards more then just coolbits.
 
oh whoa, thx alot guys, can't wait to get this bad boy in the mail for $160ish canadian shipped :D
 
6800GS AGP is a 6800 vanilla with faster ram, it uses the same core, but I believe slightly better power circuitry or a newer stepping b/c people are hitting slightly better (core) overclocks with the GS than the vanilla. Plus the ram is much faster (1Ghz GDDR vs 700Mhz DDR1)
Its possible to unlock but there's no guarantees.

Now the 6800GS PCIe, is a newer core on a newer process (die shrink) and they overclock like crazy!! But there are no extra pipes to unlock. Only 12 pipes, period.

Both are great bang for buck cards.
 
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