Out - Geforce FX5600 - in - GeForce 6800 - Holy Crap!

[irrational_i]

Originally Posted by tuffguy Originally Posted by irrational_i I work with hardware often and the difference between the 6600GT and 6800GT is not that great I think SLi is not that great, unless you plan to run your games in 1600X1200. Then the SLi will shine. You obviously don't work with hardware that often, or you wouldn't say that.. :P To see what games SLI works in: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0u-sli_15.html It depends on whether the game can make use of SLI: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0u-sli_22.html Notice what happens when you turn on the visual goodies: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284&p=7 3DMark: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0u-sli_31.html Move your mouse over the second pic: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=2

I have read most of those articles. To explain my comment quickly:
The 6800GT is easily the best performance/money ratio. The 6600GT runs fine in real-world apps and is MUCH cheaper. Most people I know run games in 1024X768 on 17" CRT monitors. In this case the 6800GT is still much faster than 6600GT, but you can't really observe it. Games we often play are Warcraft3, Neverwinter Nights, Quake3, Morrowind. The difference is hardly noticable.

I recently upgraded to a 19" LCD monitor and now I would also prefer a 6800GT to run in high res with everything turned on full.
If you run games at over 1280X1024 res, then you will start noticing the differences in the newest games like Doom3 and Half Life2 with the 6600GT still being a touch slow.
Remember the 6600GT is also GDDR3 memory, not he DDR of the base 6600 or 6800. It still suffers from fewer pixel pipes and narrower memory bandwidth. This being the reason it drops far behind in very high resolutions.

When you hit 1600X1200 the SLi comes into play with a noticable difference. The difference between 80fps and 50fps is not always noticable and paying double for an SLi setup is not always worth it.

So my argument is that if you have the money - go for it. If it is an issue, the 6600GT will give adequate performance at half the 6800GT price.
And I'd rather go 6800GT than 6600GT SLi.

And of course if you have sucky RAM and slow cpu, the gfx card won't come into its own. You need a complete machine. :D

[Minacious]

Originally Posted by thamar ATI bitches, ATI

I jumped shipped from ATI to NVIDIA. I went from a 9800XT to a 6800Ultra when they came out. I'll probably go back to ATI when the new cards arrive.

[RC45]

ATI drivers support and stability outside of games (especially in 2D mode) sucks.

NVidia have perfected the universal driver.

All hail NVidia..

[RC45]

Lalalalalala...
all hail Nvidia...

Lalalalalala...

ATI is the enemy...

Lalalalala

[nthfinity]

ive recently heard that the geforce 7800 is making its debut late in june... i think ill waite til the 6800 drops in price, and then ill be the one laughing at the poor blokes who shelled out $370 for an awsome video card

or, thats just a rumor, and ill have to waite longer while you keep running higher resolutions and higher FPS then i coud hope to ops:

[Minacious]

Originally Posted by nthfinity I think ill waite til the 6800 drops in price, and then ill be the one laughing at the poor blokes who shelled out $370 for an awsome video card

I wish I did pay that small amount for my card.

[RC45]

Well - I have previously done the waiting game until this gen card - and I couldn't wait any longer

Strangely enough, the 5600's are still almost $200 - which makes no sense this late in the game.

[nthfinity]

Originally Posted by RC45 Well - I have previously done the waiting game until this gen card - and I couldn't wait any longer Strangely enough, the 5600's are still almost $200 - which makes no sense this late in the game.

that is always the game one plays... price vs. performance

when i built my PC... not one item in it was below the latest available... and its been quite a good machine (except a raid problem) since i built 'er.

so 3 years on one video card is likely long enough... i remember the huge increase in performance vs. my old voodoo 3500 card... which was light years beyond my TNT 2 card.

now im faced with new-fangled processors , PCI express cards, and SATA hard drives.

[Global Warming]

Originally Posted by Minacious Originally Posted by thamar ATI bitches, ATI I jumped shipped from ATI to NVIDIA. I went from a 9800XT to a 6800Ultra when they came out. I'll probably go back to ATI when the new cards arrive.

I can overclock my 6800GT to 435MHz and the RAM to 600MHz which is faster than the Ultra and my card never goes above 60C. I would be interested to know what the max OC settings and temps are on your Ultra.

[nthfinity]

well, i saw it (6800gt) at a new low price, so its mine now for a low $285, so the getting is good
after its done, ill post my 3dmark scores before/after... see you in a bit

8)
1557 3d mark2003 ---->9485
amazing improvements

[RC45]

^^^ See - I told ya so...

But the fact you paid like $70 less than I did is a little irritating.. hehe

[nthfinity]

Originally Posted by RC45 ^^^ See - I told ya so... But the fact you paid like $70 less than I did is a little irritating.. hehe

thamar is right, and its hard to play the game just right before buying the upgraded card... years ago when i built my pc, it hit the same mark for the Ti 4400... so im happy

anyway, what condolences can i offer you other than you are supporting the GDP more than i

in any case, it was your review that convinced me... as its been ages since i browsed toms hardware

[RC45]

Quick update...

My system (P4 2.6, 1GB Ram, GeForce FX5600-256MB) posted 1973 on the 3DMark03 test... Swapped the 5600 for a 6800GT 256MB card - and the system posted a freaking 10100 on the same 3DMark03 test

Got a P4 3.4 Prescott proc today... so folks know what to expect from GPU vs CPU upgrades, 3DMark03 posts 10100 again with the new 3.4 vs the 2.6 proc.

A little dissapointing, but good a excercise I guess.

GPU for games - and nce I do some video encoding tests, hopefully the 3.4 CPU will show gains.

[saadie]

this is interesting .... there should've been a big difference with the prescott ....
why dont you try a newer version of 3d mark ?
btw what motherboard ahve you got ?

[RC45]

Originally Posted by saadie this is interesting .... there should've been a big difference with the prescott .... why dont you try a newer version of 3d mark ? btw what motherboard ahve you got ?

The point is to compare like test with like test.

So there is little value in changing the test each time you change hardware.

The motherboard, memory, windows install, harddrives and software has remained pretty much constant, so that actual gains can be measured, not "out of context" benchmarks.

It is a Gigabyte P875 8IK1100 V2.1 motherboard with 1GBof PC2700 DDR in 2 x 512MB sticks.

This setup is a pretty general representative of an average system.

I place very little value on out of contet "bench racer" benchmarks.

Like a good dyno run, you need to control the conditions to use it as a "before and after" tool to observe the delta, and not get too caught up in the raw numbers.

The gain the GPU provided was great, the gain from the CPU not much - in game related context - I hope it will evident in the video encoding excercise.