Moving to Nvidia Card - 6600 or 6800 ?

[Zydor]

My ATI 9800Pro has gone to the great graveyard in the sky - the 3D side has gone poof. For all sorts of reasons I am going to go NVidia.

Narrowed it down to either a XFX 6800 GS Extreme 256mb AGP, or a XFX 6600 GT 256 Mb AGP

My Mobo is an ASUS P4T533-C (i850 chipset) and I have 512mb PC800 RDRAM - that board has 4X AGP.

In the latter is the slight dilema, AGP 8X is backwards compatible with 4X, but my thinking was therefore seems little point getting a 6800 GS as it may get slowed by the Board 4X anyway, seems a tad OTT.... Therefore go for the 6600 GT? The other factor being I will in all likelyhood get a new rig sometime in 2006, so the card would be a stop gap for now.

Would apreciate words of wisdom from NVidia enthusiasts, as I have been in the ATI world for years and need NVidia education

(am aware of suspicions over some 6800s vis Civ, I am ignoring that for now)

Regards
Zy

 

[Divide Overflow]

I'd definately go with the 6800 GS. You'll still notice a performance improvement, even with the 4x AGP port limitation.

Have you looked at eVGA?
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=256-A8-N387-TX

 

[Neon Deon]

My ATI 9800Pro has gone to the great graveyard in the sky - the 3D side has gone poof. For all sorts of reasons I am going to go NVidia.

Narrowed it down to either a XFX 6800 GS Extreme 256mb AGP, or a XFX 6600 GT 256 Mb AGP

My Mobo is an ASUS P4T533-C (i850 chipset) and I have 512mb PC800 RDRAM - that board has 4X AGP.

In the latter is the slight dilema, AGP 8X is backwards compatible with 4X, but my thinking was therefore seems little point getting a 6800 GS as it may get slowed by the Board 4X anyway, seems a tad OTT.... Therefore go for the 6600 GT? The other factor being I will in all likelyhood get a new rig sometime in 2006, so the card would be a stop gap for now.

Would apreciate words of wisdom from NVidia enthusiasts, as I have been in the ATI world for years and need NVidia education

(am aware of suspicions over some 6800s vis Civ, I am ignoring that for now)

Regards
Zy

Zy,

Why would you buy an expensive stop gap card?

If you plan to upgrade to pci express MB, then why buy a 200 plus agp card?

175 to 220 bucks for stop gap to me is a lot of money to give out in the mean time.

IMHO

Those cards suck power and run hot.

Get something cheaper and could run on a dinky PS if it had to.

My card the 9600XT

The sapphire 256 mb goes for like 93 retail at newegg.

Of course I could be a tad bias, but hey it works for me

 

[EoE]

I'm generally happy about my 6800 GT card (except I can't run Civ IV with it), but in your case, I would recommend another 512 MB RAM and a cheaper card. It will cost you less and performance wise it will be almost as good.

rgds/EoE

 

[taliosfalcon]

7800gt's actually only run at the maximum bandwidth of agp 4x,let alone 8, so theres no danger of 4x bottlenecking a 6800

 

[asmodai]

My 6800 GT shows no problems with Civ IV with the latest official NVIDIA drivers, however, buy a 7800 since it will run way cooler than the 6800.

 

[Zydor]

Cant run PCI-e on my rig as its an AGP 4X board, there's the usual rumours a-flying re a 7800 GT AGP card as NVidia are definitely stepping into the Market gap.

Many people are in similar situation to me where the AGP boards are fine, and dont want to junk a perfectly good system just yet just because of PCI-e cards. I think NVidia have wrong footed ATI on that one by pushing out hard recently on AGP solutions based on the 6800 - time will tell

The RAM is a good thought, but my board will only take RDRAM - which is 4 or 5x the cost of DDR (bought it in Jun 2003 when the RDRAM saga had just begun, the memory is a great Match to the P4, but as it turned out a tad heavy on the bank account ......

So you can see the pros/cons - probably end up asking the Cat

Thanks for the replys - useful to think out of the box a little.

Regards
Zy

 

[Zanmato]

Yeah, it's cheaper for now at least to get a high-end card for AGP although the AGP is being phased out, no card actually taxes the AGP bus to any great amount. Why invest in a new system with a 16x PCI-e port and all the hassle and time for installing software, etc when you can get the same benefits from a good AGP card and an already working system. I'm also looking at getting a 6600, 6800 or 7800. I was advised to get a new system just for a graphics card upgrade but between AGP and PCI-e cards are this very little difference in performance at the moment. May as well go for the cheaper option.

 

[asmodai]

Ah, sorry Zydor, forgot about the fact that 7800's are PCIE. Best alternative, IMHO, is to get a 6800.

 

[pikeman666]

The version 42 chip is the keeper on this series.
I'm doing a new box and yes, I think this is a big pile of $ for a card - and yes, it pulls alot of power, but I want something I don't have to replace in two years.
So far the best price I've located on a 256 meg 6800GS is Monarch Computer Systems, $194.69 + $5.90 for shipping.