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worth the difference?

K

krueL

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
211
Hi, first off, its my BIRTHDAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME! YAY! .... now to my question. with my !BIRTHDAY! money, i planned on purchasing a new vid card. and i was wondering if you people thought it was worth spending the extra $100 to get the regular geforce 6800 over a ati radeon 9800pro.. if i ended up getting the ati, i could just go ahead and grab another stick of 512mb pc3200 ram to give a a total of 1024mb of ram.. or.. i could go with the geforce and stick with just the 512mb.. so, which do you guys think would be the wisest decision?
 
Happy Birthday! If I was in your situation... I'd settle with a $200 Radeon 9800 Pro and finish off your system with that extra 512MB.
 
Yes I'd say get the 9800 Pro and the ram. Upgrading to 1 GB or ram helped me out a ton. Also make sure you get a 256bit 9800 Pro and not one of those crippled 128bit ones.

Edit: Oops Forgot ~ Happy Birthday! :)
 
another vote for the 200$ 256bit 9800 pro. i'm sure that the 6800 would perform better in many situations but probably not enough for the extra 100$. oh, happy birthday too :p
 
I would probably go with the RAM upgrade because its going to benefit your system the most. Get the 9800 pro.

If you could swing it though, the 6800nu is going to be quite a bit faster then the 9800 pro. I've seen people overclock them to 400/800 and 400/900. At those speeds they would be nearing 1.5x or more faster then the 9800pro i'm sure.
 
bu, bu, but what about ps 3.0? :D

I also say get the Pro and ram, check Best buy for the 9800 Pro (they have a $50 rebate offer).
 
HEY! sorry for the absence, as soon as i posted this topic i went to bed last night. thanks for all the happy bdays! anyway, im still undecided as to what i should do, because.. i could always add more ram down the road.. a stick of crucial pc3200 512mb is under a benjamin.. everyone says that the geforce, has some new technology "Shader Model 3.0 and FP16 Blending for HDR Lighting" which is gonna benefit me, because all the newer games are going to be using it.. anyways, feel free to keep preaching on the subject.
 
krueL said:
HEY! sorry for the absence, as soon as i posted this topic i went to bed last night. thanks for all the happy bdays! anyway, im still undecided as to what i should do, because.. i could always add more ram down the road.. a stick of crucial pc3200 512mb is under a benjamin.. everyone says that the geforce, has some new technology "Shader Model 3.0 and FP16 Blending for HDR Lighting" which is gonna benefit me, because all the newer games are going to be using it.. anyways, feel free to keep preaching on the subject.
Click to expand...

Well, my thinking as I posted before is to get the 6800 and add RAM later. You can always add RAM, but you will be stuck with the videocard - and the GeForce 6800 is far more future proof than the 9800.

FarCry 1.3 is going to have some awesome HDR Lighting effects that will utilize the FP16 blending feature that the ATI cards lack, and there are already 10+ games coming out that will get speed enhancements from SM3.0. Plus Nvidia's fast OpenGL performance should work wonders for Doom3.

And lets not forget the 6800 is on average 15-30% faster than the 256mb 9800xt, nevermind a 128mb 9800pro you are looking at.

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=grfx&id=318
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2113&p=4

6800 wins most of the benchmarks, often by a wide 10fps+ margin...

I'd say just get the 6800 and save up the extra $80-90 for the RAM... Can't take that long to save up $80 :) Sell some old games on eBay if you have to.

NewEgg has the 6800 on sale for $290 with free shipping too:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-202&depa=0
 
tranCendenZ: You are the little devil on my shoulder thats leading me in the opposite direction that everyone else is saying.. and as usual, i think im gonna go with your advice, you do make some good points.. if i was just some kid, that hardly ever got a hold of money, only on birthdays, christmas, and other special occasions.. i would probably go with the 9800 and the ram.. BUT, im 23 !AS OF YESTERDAY! and i have a job..so raising the money to get the extra ram down the road shouldnt be so hard..
 
Upgrade to 1GB ram first. It makes quite a bit of difference in newer games. Having less than 1GB runs you the risk of ingame stuttering due to harddrive thrashing, which is much worse than the minimal differences in the high-end videocards.
 
I was gonna ask the same question, 9800 or 6800... But now, I've read that ATI is releasing the x800 SE for the same price as the 6800... Which now?
 
Sorry to have to disagree with everyone.... but I say forget the ram as long as your at 512 and get the 6800 GT which has 256mg of much faster ram. Most of the game runs here... and it is blazingly faster than your extra 512 which youd have to go through the agp bus to use. I agree, having too little ram (256 say) would be something to limit your total system, but 512 is a decent amount. spending $300 on a graphics card that has the bare minimial amount of ram onboard today (128)... especailly when you can't upgrade it, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You can always spend that $50 or $100 later and upgrade to 768 / 1024 if you get choppiness. The graphx card is an investment... that can only be replaced.
 
rea[k]tor said:
I was gonna ask the same question, 9800 or 6800... But now, I've read that ATI is releasing the x800 SE for the same price as the 6800... Which now?
Click to expand...

Well, first of all the x800SE isn't even out, so we have no idea.

Last I heard though, the x800SE was going to have a 128-bit memory bus. If that remains the case, the 6800 with the 256-bit memory bus remains the best choice.

And, again, the x800SE won't have the features of the 6800 - SM3.0, FP16 blending for HDR lighting, etc...

You really can't go wrong with any of the 6800 cards.
 
Getting a 256MB AGP card doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me right now, but honestly neither does upgrading to 1GB. IMO, right now its a bad time to be thinking about upgrading an older system and a good time to be thinking about a whole new system (with a 24-pin ATX powersupply, PCI-E, support for both DDR and DDR/2)

PCI-express will be important in the future, all R500 and NV50's next year and so on will be PCI-E... So even if there is no performance difference now (between AGP and PCI-E) it severely limits your upgrade path in the future just because of the interface. A 915 mobo that supports DDR2 and DDR is not that much more expensive than one that just supports DDR (sort of like the hybrid SDRAM/DDR mobos during that transition)
 
Not trying to topic-invade, but does anyone know if I should upgrade from a 250 watt power supply (stock :p) for a 6800?
 
Heck ya you should upgrade your 250 watter if you want to run a 6800. I'd even suggest a 300 watter if you want to use the cooler 9800pro.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/specs.html Right on the first line of the specifications, highly recommends a 300 watt powersupply.

Nvidia used to have the 480watt recommendation for the 6800ultra, but has since move to 350watt brand name powersupply recommendations for the "6800 line of products"
 
rea[k]tor said:
Not trying to topic-invade, but does anyone know if I should upgrade from a 250 watt power supply (stock :p) for a 6800?
Click to expand...

If its a good 250W psu it will be fine for the 6800 standard.

If you are considering the 6800GT/6800U, you should upgrade.
 
ZenOps : yea, i see where you are coming from.. but my situation is this.. i just got a amd64 3000+, MSI K8N Neo Platinum, and a stick of crucial pc3200 512mb about a week ago.. i sold the guts out of my old computer in order to upgrade all my stuff. when i sold my guts, my halfway decent video card "gf4 ti4200 128mb" went with it.. and i got stuck with a "gf3 32mb ddr" until i could upgrade my card.. so.. its just that im on my last upgrade and having too hard of a time making up my mind
 
I would go for the slower card and the extra ram, but then again I use my system for things other than gaming so I'm biased with that respect.
 
as for the power supply situation.. i pulled this off of newegg in the 6800 specifications..

System requirements: A 350W system power supply is highly recommanded.
An AGP 8X/4X compliant motherboard.
One hard disk drive power dongles off of separate power supply cable bundles (smaller floppy disk drive connector is not sufficient).


once again.. the infamous link.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=14-130-202&DEPA=0
 
krueL said:
i just got a amd64 3000+, MSI K8N Neo Platinum, and a stick of crucial pc3200 512mb about a week ago.. and i got stuck with a "gf3 32mb ddr" until i could upgrade my card..
Click to expand...
Heh we should have asked your system spec in the first place! With the A64 you won't be too CPU limited, so spring for the best card you can afford. Either the X800 Pro or 6800 GT would work great in that system. You really would not be getting your moneys worth on the vanilla 6800 128mb card.

It is true that you can always upgrade your ram later. With that single stick of 512mb you still have room for another. Get the best card you can afford and find in stock. Then mow a few lawns and get the ram. Problem solved :D
 
Yeah, go with the ram and wait for the revision of current gen of video cards. If you don't see the added features or higher clock worth it, you can always pick up the card you long for right now for a cheaper price.

Plus, don't you wanna wait until Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 come out and see which card is more capable? Assuming you're waiting for these games that is.
 
If you dont mind slightly longer load times with 512mb... Get the 6800 and you will have a good gaming experience.
 
6800, no question...

BIG upgrade over 9800pro

extra 512mb is not going to do anything for your gaming experience and as stated already you can always add that later.
 
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