BFG 6800 U OC or X800XT

Arkanian said:
Well I am trying to decide between these two. I like the fact that the 6800 Ultra can do PS 3.0 but I am torn between these two. Which one would you choose.:

BFG 6800 Ultra OC
http://www.gameve.com/gve/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?sku=VC-BFG-006

or

SAPPHIRE RADEON X800 XT 256MB
http://www.gameve.com/gve/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?sku=VC-SA-054
Click to expand...

General opinions are that both are great cards, but X800 xt will allow a smoother playing exp. at higher res. with everything turned on. It's a brute force vs. efficency contest here.

Also, depends on whether you will play a lot of OpenGL games, because basically nvidia pwns ati on them. However, ATI rocks HL2.

I've had the Nividia cards and loved them, but decided to go with th x800 xl for my pcie setup.
 
This a really close call.

I would choose the X800 XT because it is $30.00 cheaper and it performs just as well in most games as the Ultra.

Also you will have the "benefit" of monthly driver updates from ATI.
 
I have both cards, and its really hard to go wrong with either one, unless you play EQ1, or EQ2. Nvidia seems to fall kinda flat in those, besides that, im sure that either one will do the trick for you. I tend to favor my ATI, but thats because I play EQ still, yeah I know its 5 years old, but I still hop on from time to time.
 
Either of those cards will rock BF2. I would look towards the bundle that you get with each card also.
 
The 6800U has native DX 9.0c and Nvidia drivers actually allow for Trilinear filtering, which ATI's "drivers" do not. ATI's driver control pannels and more specifically the Catalyst control pannel are among the most annoying and poorly thought out and implemented software I've ever seen, so consider that when buying. The ATI cards are brute force over effeciency, but not only that, they use trickery to reduce image quality to get better FPS, as their drivers instruct them to, and you can't override most of the "optimizations" either.
 
If you're a Doom 3 fan tests show it runs faster on the 6800. Otherwise either is great.
I have an X800XT and the monthly Catalyst drivers are nice.
 
I'd buy the X800 XT if it's a single video card choice. The ultra consumes more power and has an uber giant fan to keep it at runnable temperatures. If you have SLI in mind for the future, then one ultra now and another one down the road isn't a bad idea.
 
BossNoodleKaboodle said:
The 6800U has native DX 9.0c and Nvidia drivers actually allow for Trilinear filtering, which ATI's "drivers" do not. ATI's driver control pannels and more specifically the Catalyst control pannel are among the most annoying and poorly thought out and implemented software I've ever seen, so consider that when buying. The ATI cards are brute force over effeciency, but not only that, they use trickery to reduce image quality to get better FPS, as their drivers instruct them to, and you can't override most of the "optimizations" either.
Click to expand...

There is a feature in the current drivers that has been available since the 4.10s called "Catalyst AI" which allows all the non-traditional software trilinear and anisotropic filtering optimizations (among a few other optimizations as well) to be disabled. Also if you find the standard CP annoying and poorly thought out then you might be not quite right in the head because its very simple and straightforward. With the exception of a talking CP that takes your commands by voice, not sure how much easier it should be.
 
The Ultra doesn't require that much power. The new drivers made it more power efficient. I personally would go with the Ultra, but that's because I play a lot of games that use OpenGL. And with the BFG, you have free 24/7 tech support and a life time warranty. Can't go wrong with a card that's already overclocked with a life time warranty. ;)
 
It's really 6 in one hand and half a dozen in the other between those two cards. Pick whichever brand you prefer.
 
I'm a wierdo, I like the 6800 GT at the $400 price point and the x800 XT at the $500 price point. But a water cooled 6800 Ultra hooked up to a big PSU would be pretty sweet. :D
 
Well I am still torn LOL. I need this in AGP so a no go for SLI. This will probably be my last AGP card. There is no need to get a new CPU, MB, and video card because I already have a sweet setup in my Athlon 64. I play mostly Online FPS. Mostly Americas Army. But for this card I am looking to the future. I will probably keep the card for 1 - 1.5 years. I also like racing and sports games. The dual slot doesn't bother me. I move alot and one day I might migrate to a shuttle so the x800 xt would fit that bill but by then I might be buying a whole new setup that includes PCI-E. I probably won't buy this until June. I need to go find me many reviews between these two cards and then just flip a coin over it. I have a window on my case the the BFG would definitly be cool looking at LAN parties.
 
Arkanian said:
...I have a window on my case the the BFG would definitly be cool looking at LAN partys.
Click to expand...

LAN parties aren't about looking cool. LAN parties are about being the fragger or fragge. I choose the first, so pick whichever card will best accommodate the games you play and buy that one.
 
ok I found this review that puts the Sapphire against the 6800 Ultra:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeon_x800_xt_agp_review/default.asp

The 6800 Ultra swap licks back and forth and remain very close to each other until the Doom 3 test which shows how good Nvidia is at OpenGl games. I think that the BFG 6800 Ultra OC is what I am going to buy. The Sapphire was against a regular 6800 Ultra while the BFG is overclocked already. Plus the edition of HDR and PS 3.0, makes this a very good card.
 
You do know that PS3.0 doesnt really offer anything that PS2.0 cant do.
It just allows for more shader instructions in a single pass.

"Shader Lengths & Passes

First let’s look at the shader length in the Pixel and Vertex Shader. In Pixel Shader 2.0 the shader length can be up to 96 instructions long. With Pixel Shader 3.0 that instruction count has been increased to 65,535 and in the GeForce 6800Ultra the instruction count is unlimited. With a longer instruction limit more effects can be applied per pixel in a game. However, writing a shader program with a very long instruction count is not the only way to achieve an effect that would require such a long shader. Long shaders can also be achieved by using multipassing. For example you could have several 96 instruction length shaders in Pixel Shader 2.0 that perform an effect by doing them in several passes, thus achieving the same effect that one very long shader program outputs. In fact the Radeon 9800 series has built within it an F-Buffer that is meant to aid shader multipassing.

One of the most anticipated games this year Half Life 2 uses Shader Model 2.0 extensively but only has a shader length of 30-40 instructions, not even coming close the 96 instruction limit in Pixel Shader 2.0. So concerning shader length, what we are left with is going to be the performance differences between running Shader Model 2.0 programs in many passes with multipassing versus running Shader Model 3.0 with very long shaders. As of right now we have no idea how well the GeForce 6 series video cards can run very long shaders, and we also have no idea how well the Radeon series can run Pixel Shader 2.0 instructions with many passes."

Lets read up on PS3.0 before we jump on it. This direct quote is from HardOCP. Too add to this the X800XT can get to X850XTPE speeds with a After Market Cooler and boom faster than a 6800U. And if you want to play it even safer just go to X800XTPE Speeds or X850XT speeds. Even still both cards are great but I would go with the X800 myself.
 
LOL..it seems everyone on here is suggesting the x800xt over the 6800 U OC. Hmm..Need to find more reviews I guess.
 
I would go with the BFG 6800 Ultra OC, because not only is it OCed already it has a lifetime Warranty. Ocing the X800 XT would void warranty plus you will have to spend extra $$ on an after-market heatsink, which also voids warranty. With the 6800Ultra you wouldn't have to worry about those things. You may think that if the card went bad because you fried it OCing I would just RMA it and lie to the Company. What if they suspect you OCed it and give you a hard time and maybe even not replace it. What if they decide to take a look under the heatsink and found a thermal paste that wasn't theirs? Something similar happened to me when my X800 XT died, except I never OCed it. But Connect3D said I did so my distributor had a really hard time getting me another X800 XT.
 
Either or is fine. I'd worry a little more about thermal issues with the ATI card. I know that all other things being equal, ATI cards have demanded better airflow and cooling just in my personal experience. I've had a 9700Pro, 9800XT, 6800GT and now the 6800U-OC. I don't think any of the current games you can play would have a problem with either card you're considering. Note that HL-2 seems to have a few IQ issues with Nvidia these days (water banding in particular), but I can't see it myself unless I'm looking at a still shot and someone is telling me exactly what to look for.

One big plus on the AGP front with the OC is dual-DVI. Not sure if you care about that....
 
Get the X800XT. I had a BFG 6800 GT "OC" 256Mb and it really wasn't all that. I could barely run HL2 @ 1600x1200 w/ AA, along with Far Cry. My X800XT 256Mb can run both of those games @ 1600x1200 w/ 4XAA/8xAF with no problem. Plus, NV hardly releases "official" drivers, the NV line has the stuttering problem once you OC, and the shimmering problem. PS3.0 is great, but the NV40 line can barely run any PS3.0 game at decent framerates..so why bother?
 
Well, a 6800U should be about even with a x800xt-pe, however it would beat an x800xt any day of the week. So you should go with that.
 
iddqd said:
Well, a 6800U should be about even with a x800xt-pe, however it would beat an x800xt any day of the week. So you should go with that.
Click to expand...


You have no idea why your talking about...

The 6800 line beats the X800 line when you factor out AA. Once you enable AA/AF, the X800XT beats the 6800U in almost every (D3D) test.
 
Well, yeah. But AA is overrated anyway. Once the resolution is high enough, you won't be able to tell the difference between AA and no AA.
 
iddqd said:
Well, yeah. But AA is overrated anyway. Once the resolution is high enough, you won't be able to tell the difference between AA and no AA.
Click to expand...


And what resolution is that? I still need AA @ 1600x1200. But that makes sense....buy a $500+ card and dont turn on AA.
 
Well I flipped a coin and the X800XT won like 10-3. So now I am leaning towards the X800XT. Oh and BTW: AA is a very important feature for me.
 
I have an X800XT-PE and a BFG 6800 ultra.

I bought the Ultra for my wifes PC last December. I put it in my PC for awhile first to see how it worked....

After uninstalling the X800, running drivercleaner from safe mode, and installing the 6800 I tried 5 popular games. I had serious graphics errors in 1 game and minor ones in 2 others. So 3 failures out of 5 games.

Meanwhile I have been using an X800 for a total of over 6 months now, have played over 30 popular new games (I buy a LOT of games), and I have never had a serious problem in any game and the 2 or so minor problems I had were fixed with game patches.

Also the 6800u didn't seem to do specular lighting right in EQ2. (which I don't count in the above errors because I didn't look into it for long). The metal didn't get all shiny and reflective like it's supposed to. Not sure why since with 32bit precision it should potentially look better, but instead it looked just like normal, even though it was taking the same performance hit the x800 took with the same settings.

So based on personal experience I would have to strongly recommend the X800XT.

 
Well I read a firingsquad review and Hexus review. Look at this page OMG:
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03NTgmdXJsX3BhZ2U9MTk=

Well I am mostly likely 99.9% going to get the X800XT now. Thanks for everyone's input and please keep them coming. Yeah I heard about graphic issues with the 6800 series including errors in the Source engine. Plus one slot solution and one power molex is nice. Of course I always leave the PCI slot that is closet to the Video Card empty anyways but this way it will get more airflow.
 
iddqd said:
I still say 6800U is better.
Click to expand...
But you have a X800 XT. I have already decided to get X800XT unless ATI is going to come out with a better card in May. Maybe R500? I am thinking though that all new cards will be PCI-E only and that the AGP is dead.
 
Once you get your XT/PE be sure to send it to Viper John for all of your v mods ;)
Check my oc...that is with my older card, too. He has a new ones of mine now that he will be putting a larger TEC on..should be able to get a bit more out of her. :)
 
2Fresh said:
Once you get your XT/PE be sure to send it to Viper John for all of your v mods ;)
Check my oc...that is with my older card, too. He has a new ones of mine now that he will be putting a larger TEC on..should be able to get a bit more out of her. :)
Click to expand...

How much does he charge?
 
Circuitbreaker8 said:
How much does he charge?
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you want. I think mine was a round 250 or something like that, but I had a tec put on and he had to d some mods to the block and things. It is not something to do if you dont have the cash..but if you do, itis fun and worth it..jsut to see what your card can do. Shoot him an email...JohnHillig@Earthlink.Net
Let him know I sent ya, never know if he will hook ya up. Mike is my name, or he will know the email of wa261
 
2Fresh said:
It really depends on what you want. I think mine was a round 250 or something like that, but I had a tec put on and he had to d some mods to the block and things. It is not something to do if you dont have the cash..but if you do, itis fun and worth it..jsut to see what your card can do. Shoot him an email...JohnHillig@Earthlink.Net
Let him know I sent ya, never know if he will hook ya up. Mike is my name, or he will know the email of wa261
Click to expand...


I think I know you from Rage3d :D ( HitmanCN47 ) Anyways, all I would want is to volt mod it...I already have decent cooling...
 
Arkanian said:
But you have a X800 XT. I have already decided to get X800XT unless ATI is going to come out with a better card in May. Maybe R500? I am thinking though that all new cards will be PCI-E only and that the AGP is dead.
Click to expand...
Correction - I have an x800xt-pe which is about the same. The x800xt is slightly worse.
 
iddqd said:
Correction - I have an x800xt-pe which is about the same. The x800xt is slightly worse.
Click to expand...
Oh well the price is pretty much the same. I still think that either of these 2 will be good. The X800 XT seems to be better in the regard I have been reading alot about graphic problems with the 6800 U.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top