I have had my new 256 mb eVGA Geforce 6800 GT in for over a week, replacing my old 128mb GeForce4 ti 4800 SE. I got it on sale for $328 from MicroCenter.
Immediately noticed that my 3dMark03 and AquaMark benchmark scores increased significantly. Thought - wow this is great! I wonder what my games will look like?
The problem is, they looked the same.
I already had the graphics pretty much maxed out in FarCry, the Doom3 and Halflife Demos and was experiencing good quality game play. The only change I made to the graphics was to push FarCry water quality to Ultra - which was the only setting not already maxxed... The change in cards didn't affect my gameplay experience - perhaps a barely noticeable FPS increase. I say this, because while the FPS numbers may have increased, without the numbers being displayed, I really cannot see any functional difference.
What differences did I see? I can now run the 3dMark05 benchmark (the old card was not DX-9 compatible) but even with my new system, two of the tests run at 4 FPS (the second showing of the balloon thing and the second space battle...). Big whoop. It is not a game.
My warning is this: If you have a good processor and card - don't upgrade now. There are no games out there that need this level of processor power for the price they are charging.
I play DesertCombat (mod for BF 1942), FarCry, JointOperations Typhoon Rising, the two demos mentioned above, Rome Total War (which I won't open again until the next patch comes out) all of which can be fairly demanding of GPUs and CPUs. However, with no real increase in performance over what I had before, I caution anyone against rushing into a new purchase just because the reviewers and others are excited about the cards. None of these games need DX-9 functionality, none of them stressed my old card to unplayable framerates (EVEN AT MAX GRAPHIC QUALITY), and no current game is worth $300 plus just to get a few extra framerates...
So what advantage did I get? - Bragging rights. Also, I am future proof for a few years. That's it. Guess I won't have to buy another card for 3-4 years. I will keep the card I bought, but strongly recommend people looking to upgrade to either wait for the prices to drop significantly, or for the games to improve significantly. Without either happening, there is no reason for anyone to drop dime on a new card.
Just my thoughts.
Sys:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum NForce3 250 Gb
1Gb PC 3200
256mb eVGA Geforce 6800 GT
old: Geforce4 ti 4800 SE (Which is a kick ass card for the $$$)
Immediately noticed that my 3dMark03 and AquaMark benchmark scores increased significantly. Thought - wow this is great! I wonder what my games will look like?
The problem is, they looked the same.
I already had the graphics pretty much maxed out in FarCry, the Doom3 and Halflife Demos and was experiencing good quality game play. The only change I made to the graphics was to push FarCry water quality to Ultra - which was the only setting not already maxxed... The change in cards didn't affect my gameplay experience - perhaps a barely noticeable FPS increase. I say this, because while the FPS numbers may have increased, without the numbers being displayed, I really cannot see any functional difference.
What differences did I see? I can now run the 3dMark05 benchmark (the old card was not DX-9 compatible) but even with my new system, two of the tests run at 4 FPS (the second showing of the balloon thing and the second space battle...). Big whoop. It is not a game.
My warning is this: If you have a good processor and card - don't upgrade now. There are no games out there that need this level of processor power for the price they are charging.
I play DesertCombat (mod for BF 1942), FarCry, JointOperations Typhoon Rising, the two demos mentioned above, Rome Total War (which I won't open again until the next patch comes out) all of which can be fairly demanding of GPUs and CPUs. However, with no real increase in performance over what I had before, I caution anyone against rushing into a new purchase just because the reviewers and others are excited about the cards. None of these games need DX-9 functionality, none of them stressed my old card to unplayable framerates (EVEN AT MAX GRAPHIC QUALITY), and no current game is worth $300 plus just to get a few extra framerates...
So what advantage did I get? - Bragging rights. Also, I am future proof for a few years. That's it. Guess I won't have to buy another card for 3-4 years. I will keep the card I bought, but strongly recommend people looking to upgrade to either wait for the prices to drop significantly, or for the games to improve significantly. Without either happening, there is no reason for anyone to drop dime on a new card.
Just my thoughts.
Sys:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum NForce3 250 Gb
1Gb PC 3200
256mb eVGA Geforce 6800 GT
old: Geforce4 ti 4800 SE (Which is a kick ass card for the $$$)