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A new card...

P

Progenitor

n00b
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
9
Hello all.

Since my current motherboard died out on me and was more or less dated anyway, I've decided to go out and build a new PC. Since I plan on doing at least a moderate amount of gaming on the newer stuff, I wanted to get a good card for my machine.

I was thinking of spending upwards of 400 to 450ish, though I'd like to spend a little less if I can help it. I've spent the last few days reading a number of different bench tests and card reviews as well as comments from members in the forum. My understanding is more or less the following, but correct me if I'm wrong or if you disagree.

* Dollar for dollar, ATI seems to give the best output with the exception of OpenGL (Doom3 - anything else really heavily OGL based?).
* SLi is still more or less in the infancy stages and thus not terribly practical at the moment. From what I have seen from tests, 2xSLi cards yields far less than double the performance of a single card of the same type.

Now, I was initially planning on buying the ASUS A8N-SLi board, but it seems that a lot of what that board was built for may be squandered if I ultimately decide not to go with SLi (or NVidia at all for that matter). I'll discuss that more in the motherboard section, as I don't want to digress too much here. It looks like I'm definitely going A64, as it looks as though that has become highly dominant across the board (with the exception of multitasking?). Either way, I"m going 939-pin A64 and it can be assumed that I'll get a board that supports PCI-E.

So, any suggestiong on what is good to go with? For games, I'll be playing mostly HL2 and CS:S, and maybe some Doom3 as well (but less so). I was considering going with an X800 or X850 model, but as I understand it one of the primary downfalls with those right now is that they are difficult to impossible to find at anywhere near MSRP.

In terms of these ATI card, there are a few different models for each that seem to range in price pretty significantly. Dollar for dollar, are the upper end models more impractical for what they offer over their brethren versus the price jump?

What say you? Thanks in advance for any advice/comments.
 
On Newegg they have an X850XT for 500 Dollars, Quite resonable for a PCIe card.
Keep in mind that its the equivalent of a X800XTPE so its going to be more than fast enough for you. The only price jump I justify is the X800Pro to the X800XT for faster memory GPU and more pixel Pipes. You could also just go X800XT you can find them pretty fast if you look around. I have three sitting in my house right now (brothers computer my computer and a project for someone). If I rambled or it was in any way garbeled tell me because I had a massive lack of sleep last night.
 
If you go with a board that supports SLI I suggest buying an Nvidia card (6800 GT) because otherwise that SLI capability will be going to waste with an ATI card.
Because what if Nvidia SLI "matures" and you own an ATI card?
You might have to sell that ATI card and buy 2 new Nvidia cards.


If you get a motherboard with one PCI-E slot go with a X800 XT or higher card because they are the best single card performers.

ATI has plans to do some kind of SLI thing soon. Check out this
thread for some info on that.
 
mentok1982 said:
If you go with a board that supports SLI I suggest buying an Nvidia card (6800 GT) because otherwise that SLI capability will be going to waste with an ATI card.
Because what if Nvidia SLI "matures" and you own an ATI card?
You might have to sell that ATI card and buy 2 new Nvidia cards.


If you get a motherboard with one PCI-E slot go with a X800 XT or higher card because they are the best single card performers.

ATI has plans to do some kind of SLI thing soon. Check out this
thread for some info on that.
Click to expand...
The thing is this: If, dollar for dollar, the 6800 is not as strong as the ATI competition (for my purposes anyway), and furthermore if a second card SLI'd with it is not going to add a substantial amount of video output (again, dollar for dollar), then why buy an NVidia card in the first place? It seems to me that I would possibly be purchasing at least one card that is less efficient than what I could otherwise get in the hopes of improving its performance in the future with another massive purchase.

As to your comments about adding a second video card down the road, I'd ask the following:
1) Can any two SLI capable cards be used together and expected to play nicely?
2) Isn't the current efficiency of the SLI technology based as much or moreso on the chipset that is supporting it as on the video cards themselves? In other words, is throwing in a second SLI card later on just going to stack conveniently with my current SLI card (assuming I had one), or is everything going to be off due to the different cards and older chipset? (Did that make any sense? I'll try to reword if necessary).

Really, does it make sense to purchase an nVidia card just for the possibility of utilizing SLI in the future if I feel like grabbing another card (considering what I said above)? I'm not as familiar with all the quirks of SLI as many here, so I don't know what all the factors are that I should consider.

And lastly, is an nVidia card going to function better with an nVidia chipset? I'm talking in terms of performance here on the hardware end moreso than getting the drivers right and the like.
 
Any NForce4 board.
And a PCI-E GeForce6800 ULTRA should put you right in your 400 dollar range.
 
hard to find that 6800ultra PCI-e for 400 otherwise I woulda upgraded to nforce4 mobo and gotten the 6800ultra. I think you can get a pci-e 6800gt for a little more than that. Plus I still dont see why people get 2 6600gt's over 1 6800GT you dont get the performance in the games that don't have a SLI config. I mean come on when new games come out you gotta get the config each time or until they write it in the game. And even at that why run games slower when you can get the same type of performance from 1 card.
 
Check out FS/FT... I saw a couple X800XT / X850XT cards this morning in your price range.
 
So, assuming I'm going to be using an nForce4 chipset, does it make more sense to buy an nVidia card than an ATI card? I mean, is the performance of the nVidia card going to be enhanced and/or the ATI lessened due to the hardware [in]compatibility, or is that not a factor?

Basically, is it a bad idea to get an ATI card with an nForce chipset? Do the chipset and video card really have a lot of bearing on one another?
 
Progenitor said:
So, assuming I'm going to be using an nForce4 chipset, does it make more sense to buy an nVidia card than an ATI card? I mean, is the performance of the nVidia card going to be enhanced and/or the ATI lessened due to the hardware [in]compatibility, or is that not a factor?

Basically, is it a bad idea to get an ATI card with an nForce chipset? Do the chipset and video card really have a lot of bearing on one another?
Click to expand...

The Nforce chipset doesn't help Nvidia cards or hinder ATI cards. Heck, they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to hinder ATI cards. Someone would notice and it would seriously damage Mobo sales.

Also keep in mind the whole "ATI is worse at OpenGL" thing is a bit overblown. OpenGL makes up about 10% of mainstream games (if you are being generous). It's hardly a signficant enough factor to make videocard decisions based on unless the only games you are planning to play are OpenGL.
 
arentol said:
The Nforce chipset doesn't help Nvidia cards or hinder ATI cards. Heck, they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to hinder ATI cards. Someone would notice and it would seriously damage Mobo sales.

Also keep in mind the whole "ATI is worse at OpenGL" thing is a bit overblown. OpenGL makes up about 10% of mainstream games (if you are being generous). It's hardly a signficant enough factor to make videocard decisions based on unless the only games you are planning to play are OpenGL.
Click to expand...
Alright, thanks. That first bit is what I thought was the case, but some of the replies here brought me to question that.

As for your latter point, I agree completely, which is why I thought that, dollar for dollar, ATI was undeniably better than nVidia in terms of performance offered. I just wanted to be making sure I wasn't squandering anything if I had an SLI capable board and ended up electing not to go with SLI.

Then only arguement that I can really see in favor of going nVidia, assuming I do go with the mobo I intend to (looks likely) is the possibility of just chucking in a second nVidia card later on to boost performance. But, as I said, I'm not sure that will necessarily end up even being a practical thing to do.
 
I honestly wouldn't go with an SLI board.

There are plenty of awesome PCI-Express non-SLI motherboards out there that cost less and are just as fast and robust as the A8N SLI.

Check out the offerings from DFI, MSI, Abit, and Asus. Some of them are pretty impressive and yet cost almost half what the A8N costs. For the difference you could probably find an X850XT-PE in the low $500's range.

You will never miss the SLI because the X850XT-PE is going to have you running 1600x1200 in everything for over a year and by the time it's getting old there will easily be single slot cards that are outperforming SLI 6800ultras.
 
Dollar for dollar, the 6600gt is probably your best bet, but considering you have a bigger budget, I'd reccomend that you get either the x850xt on newegg for $500, but if you want to save a bit, get an x800pro VIVO (it MUST be the VIVO, preferably sapphire because I know a friend who did this to his card, and it was a sapphire so it's pretty much guaranteed that it will work.) and flash it to an x800xt PE. This works 100% of the time, because the x800pro VIVO is simply the x800xt PE with 4 pipelines locked. The reason which it won't work with a standard x800pro, is because the pipes are laser cut, and therefore need a hardmod to open them. This makes things a little messy.

But if the whole flashing thing doesn't turn you on, and you DEFINATELY want to stay under $450, then get either the 6600gt, or the 6800gt.
 
abudhu said:
Any NForce4 board.
And a PCI-E GeForce6800 ULTRA should put you right in your 400 dollar range.
Click to expand...

I thought the pci 6800ultras were more expensive because they are harder to come across?

Either way, the 6800ultra is a rip off. The 6800gt is significantly cheaper, and the only difference is lower clock speeds (which can easily be made up by some light overclocking).
 
Hate_Bot said:
This Mobo (presuming your going with AMD) If not then This Mobo is for you

and

Thsi Card:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/awards/image/media_170.jpg

Fantastico Single Card Solution
Click to expand...
Well, the X800XT was looking pretty appealing to me as well, and some others have suggested it, so I'm leaning in that direction.

My only concern still is with the SLI stuff, as that's the only area where I'm still on the fense. Is it worth spending the extra money on the SLI mobo and going with the dual 6600GT's instead of the single X800? Seems like a less practical solution to me for reasons that I've outlined above. I just want to make sure that I'm not coming to the wrong conclusions.

I was planning on going 939-pin AMD (I'm definitely going AMD>Intel, as that seems like a no-brainer to me at this point), and I think that your Mobo is 754.
 
Go with the XT.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041222/vga_charts-09.html

Theres a really great test. It has Half Life 2, Doom 3, Far cry and some other ones. It compares alot of cards (including SLI) and You can see, with higher settings, the XT (or X850XT) performing better.

I have found an X850XT for cheaper then most X800XTs (Up here in canada) so Im going with that, You migh wanna loook into it. I Like it because the monstro fan (its quite sais alot of reviews) Makes it OC well.

board_RX850_%20lg.jpg
 
omg

why get the x800xt.. waste of money

the 6800gt is better dollar for dollar performance, and better real world gaming performance (apparentally - i cant say exactly because i have a 9600xt), not to mention that it supports px 3.0

if you MUST have something ATI ( i hate !!!!!!s) then get yourself an x800pro VIVO and flash it to an x800xt PE
 
How is the XT a waste of money? Who cars if the GT gives .02 cents per mhz less, Your still gonna soo better performance with the XT. And I just wanna be safe buy getting an XT and not a PRO and flashing it to Vivo (Ive heard some PCI-E Vivos dont work)

And you do realise you, yourself are being a fan-boy. (Yest thats what !!!!!!) sais. [H]ard blocks it for some reason

Edit: Also, whaere have you found that the GT has better real world performance? Its the exact oppisite

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041222/vga_charts-06.html

The only place where the GT beats an X800XT, is with Doom3 (By less then a Frame, because you can OC an X800XT to X800XT-PE/X850XT-PE speeds quite easily)
 
there almost dead even in DX9 atm find me a bech some were that shows the X800XT more then 5 FPS faster at the same setting the a 6800GT and you can get a
6800GT PCI-e for 400 from chumbo.com and Ultra for 500

look at real games not 3dmark if you must look at synth look at aquamark youll see there very very close and the 6800 offers SM30
 
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