6800 gt, brand?

Hey everyone, I just upgraded my motherboard to a pci Express. It comes with onboard graphics; but as we all know if you want to play games you're pretty limited to how good the graphics are with onboard. In fact, here's the motherboard I ordered.here I play modern games. (doom 3 or whatever is considered recent) Basically, I see a bunch of 6800gt graphics cards over at newegg. Does anyone know why they get more and more expensive even though the specs are the same? I'm opting for the xfx one its simply cheaper and the specs look good. Also, is there much noticable difference between a 6800GT and a 6800 Ultra? noticable meaning in overall gaming experience, i'm not much of a benchmark bragger, so i don't care if it gets 8 more points in aquamark or any other benchmark program both cards I see from the specs are awesome. My last question is this, what is the quadro graphics card and why does it cost an arm and a leg for such low clock speeds?

 

I'd go with an Asus or eVGA because both have good reputations for the 6800GT but for the budget I'd go with the eVGA because it also comes with opengl 2.0 instead of the usual 6800GT 1.5

 

The XFX one also has openGL 2.0, and it comes with a good rebate. Now that I have got those things straight; i've got some decision making, lol. Either way, they're all good cards. I used to have an XFX 5200(despite all the crap 5200s get, got that card as a huge step up from a 32mb tnt) and i loved it at the tme. I've got no complaints with XFX. A buddy of mine has the EVGA6600GT but still hasn't played games on it, I"m dying to see what the 6XXX cards can do. I'm upgrading from a MSI geforce FX 5950 ultra.and if the 6 series is all that people say it looks like i'm gonna be doing alot of gaming soon. The card was awesome while i had it, and it plays games pretty well as long as you don't do resolutions higher than 1280X1024. I think i'll go with XFX just to save a few bucks. Thanks for the reply dude.

PS. Anyone know about Quadro and what its for?

 

oh yeah, because the new line contains it, then go with XFX, whatever floats your boat, how much are you getting it for, I got my 6800GT for 350$

the 6xxx line is amazing man, I can play doom 3 on ultra, 4xAA, and 16xAF, on 1280x1024
with 32-38 fps, never lower and never higher haha

two 6600GTs can't handle those settings, but a 6800GT should, or at least mine could

 

Awesome!! I can't wait to get mine! Just ordered it with overnight so that i get it the same day as my motherboard and CPU.

 

Well, to answer your question about the Quadro, they are 2 different animals. You have to remember, computers aren't all clock speeds, look at AMD 64 vs. Intel. Who wins in clock speeds? Who is better? anyways, the Quadro is a specialty card, meaning it is designed for professional graphic designers. You couldn't game very well on it, but it would render a picture better than a 6800. It is the same with ATI's FireGL line.

 

Yeah its good for Maya and more graphics centered things, but its ironic it performs bad when the graphics MOVE haha

wait you're getting a 6800GT? right?

 

I got my 6800GT and i'm thriled as well as slightly disapointed. When i play Counter Strike Source there is still some drop in fps. I thought this card was a beast? Same thing with guild wars. Although with guild wars i don't know if it is an FPS problem or lag, either way if i move the mouse fast it pauses here and there. Still the card is cool as hell, not literally, in reality its HOT, idle at like 58. thats higher than what i'm used to. 5950 idled at like 35. (celcius) Oh well overall it was worth the buy.

 

yeah theres something weird in cs for me too, seems to get purple spots on tiles when I crank it up to 16xAF, but 8xAF works fine on mine, mine doesn't lag, but it can't be artifacting

F-series is hot.
A faded SG from Gibson for 650 would be nice, owning a GIBSON for 650 is rather cheap, but I just made myself broke over my pc, hopefully i'll be saved up for a new amp a year from now

 

Sweet beretta9m2f, you've got yourself one kick butt card. Usually the drivers included are pretty out of date, update them and you should notice a good improvement. Looks like you'd better update your My Computer tab

 

I've updated the drivers to the current Nvidia drivers. I'm still getting some slowdown in counterstrike source as well as half life 2. (well same engine so that goes without say) Also guildwars is still choppy whenever i turn left or right. Whats worse is that half life 2/CS:Source is without any AA or anistropic! it still drops in fps. Do i have a faulty unit? I've also heard that this card takes a alot of juice to run, is a 400W power supply from thermaltake enough? I currently have a dvd drive, a cd burner 52x, two 120gb hard drives, and then that massive card that takes two power connectors. oh, I thought you should also know what i'm running the game on. Its at 1280*1024@85Hertz. NO VSYNC ON, NO filtering of any kind, no anistropic no AA. (bilinear at most) and i get sometimes 45-50 fps when in a large outdoors area (outer map deDust) and about 60-80 in a small corridor. same thing in half life 2. If i was still running my FX5950 then i wouldn't mind these fps, but this is supposed to be a 6800Gt, did i get a dud? or did i expect too much?

 

Yeah that does seem rather odd, 45fps is nothing to frown at but I can understand you're disappointment as it's an expensive card. I have a friend that plays Guild Wars too with the same card and gets the same choppiness but I'd blame that one his connection, which may very well be the case with you? It's also possible that since both games are optimized for ATI cards you won't get the fps you desire. Do you have Doom 3? If you're getting a good bit of slowdown you can almost be certain you're card is faulty as even 6600GT's can get around 80fps on higher settings. As for your powersupply since it's a trusted brand you should be okay, closer to 500 would be nice but 400 should be alright as only the Ultra needs a 480wt PSU (it doesn't need that many watts on it's own just a power supply with that rating).

Was that directed at me Max? I thought I was on track this time at least.

 

Well, i'm certainly going to install doom 3 this very instant and try running that. cuz on my fx5950 i ran it on high settings at 1280X1024 and i used to get around 60 fps. i'll get back to you in a bit.

 

Ok ran doom 3 on ultra setting, with 1280x1024 and no AA got an average of 60fps. Is this optimal? Or should it be higher? On "high" settings i got the same. but the numbers keep locking at 60 and changing rapidly. Is there an fps lock on doom 3? Regardless of what the FPS counter in doom 3 says, the game runs incredibly smooth at ultra settings, when i added 16X AA the frames naturally dropped. I don't know if i'm just being picky or if this card should be performing much better. (i don't think i'm picky when it comes to halflife 2 cuz with my 5950 the game ran at 60fps no problem) Are these fps optimal for the 6800 GT? or should i RMA it and get a new one? Sadly my faith in 6XXX line of cards is declining.

 

Yeah Doom 3 seems to lock the fps count at 60, I've heard 100 but I think that's after some tweaking. 60 on Ultra is great so you're card is great then, I get the jittering 60 on high aswell but I don't have the ram or vram to handle Ultra so it totally dies when I bump it up that high. I guess I'll stand by my statment regarding the source engine and the GuildWars engine and it's lack of optimization for the Geforce series.

 

if you're getting 60 FPS on Doom III Ultra rock on :good:. But Sierra makes it very clear that it is in with ATI so that explains the lack of optimization for nVidia.

 

Ok just installed raven shield as well. running it at 1024X768 getting about 50 fps. This is another ATI game, but c'mon its not that new and with the 5950 i believe i used to get somewhere around 60 fps on a big map with all squad members (single player)

 

That is really odd, other than patching the game though there's nothing esle you can do but grin and bare it you know.

 

So i guess this means the card is fine? damn lol I guess I will just have to deal with it. Not worth shipping it back to newegg for an RMA if its not busted. But its weird how it runs doom 3 FAR better and at higher settings than raven shield. And i just patched it, funny thing is that the game runs at that fps no matter what the resolution. straaaange. guess you're right for now, grin and bear, but i will test more stuff on it and keep you posted. Should i run a benchmark program to test the card? if so, what is a good one?

 

3Dmark2005 might do the trick, you should get about 4500 or higher.