What card ? ATI or Nvidia Ultra ?

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either card is good, if ya want one that will last longer and will be a good back up card in the future (like 2 years) the 6800 is the way to go. 3DC is a waste feature right now, unless its adopted by other graphics card companies it will die out just like Matrox's displacement maps and ATi's trueform. SM 3.0 is something thats worth it specially in about 6 months when the first 3.0 supported games will be released.

If you are going to upgrade your motherboard to PCI express yes wait for the pci express motherboards to appear (late this month). The PCI express cards are ready to ship when they appear. Also it is a good time to wait because the higher clocked CPU's are around the corner too. Ya might be able to get a great deal on the top end chips when the new ones come out :)
 
Thanks entium. the AMD 3000 is a newer " spare parts" box i built and am trying to get the best card for it at this point. but i cant see spending 400 on a back up card.

GA-7NNXP, XP3000+ Barton
1 gig corsair pc2700, 2 Maxtor 80GB SATA 150
1 Seagate 160 gig ATA 133,
Asus GeForce4 TI4800, Samsung 172X
D. VINE 4 Chassis (moded)
 
You might look at a pci express if moneys not a problem. It will shortly replace the 8x agp slot and has much fatter two way pipes. I would go sata and pci express if I had the money. Get a good power supply and at least a gb of ram. You should be fine with either high end card. I personally like ati. But both make fine products.

Asus p4533c 2.53,4x512 1066,40gb system ,240Gb RAID A/V Drive,80 Gb Export,Radeon 9800 Pro,Matrox Rt.X100,Santa Cruz Turtle Beach,Aardvark Aark 20,Ricoh Mp5125a,Samsung 40x cd,Antec w/400,Xp pro
 
Appears that the GF6800 can't do HDTV. Ooops!

Guess it's not one of the advanced features included, surprising since their encoding/decoding info says it DOES support HDTV resolutions. Maybe they 'could' support but don't also? :wink:

from <A HREF="http://www.bit-tech.net/" target="_new">Bit Tech</A>

<font color=blue>
Nvidia Scoop - No HDTV in 6800


:😛osted by:: mrhaz :😱n:: 03-06-2004 @ 19:08 GMT

We have some hot NVIDIA-related news for you direct from the show floor of Computex here in Taipei:

2) If you’re counting on HDTV working on your spanky new 6800, you’re out of luck: it has been confirmed this morning by Derek Perez of NVIDIA that the both the core and the existing reference board have no capacity to support an HDTV signal – though it is planned for the future NV43 & NV41 cores. If you are hoping a third party vendor is going to slap a discrete chip on there, you are likely to be disappointed because as far as we know no vendors are straying from the reference design.

The key lesson here is reading what is said, not reading what you expect: "6800 will support HDTV" is not the same statement as "6800 does support HDTV". To say that NVIDIA's Marketing is a little misleading here would be an understatement.
</font color=blue>

It's not all bad news. Statement 1) refers to the GT being a potential great buy.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK :evil:
 
If I were you I would rather just wait a few more months for multiple good reasons, such as PCI-EX, nV's little brother the 6800XT or whatever it's called is coming out soon, driver improvements from both sides, price drops especially on the little ones, benchmarks for HL2 and D3, etc., etc... I know a lot of us often say "wait a few more months", but if you're talking about the new cards then I think you should wait just a bit. Anyway, your GF4 Ti card is still pretty fast, I was amazed at how fast the Ti4200 runs Far Cry at medium detail. On the other hand, there would be nothing wrong if you bought a 5900 or 9800, but with the new cards it's just too early to tell.
 
Thanks Mindwarper and sweatlaserxp. the trick is ive got a relatively new GA-7NNXP that is 8X agp. So waiting for pci ex isnt gonna help. unless i wanna build a new box and i would like to wait at least a year or so to do that. i think ill wait a bit for the prices to come down and pick up a x800. you think pci ex cards will push agp card prices down?


GA-7NNXP, XP3000+ Barton
1 gig corsair pc2700, 2 Maxtor 80GB SATA 150
1 Seagate 160 gig ATA 133,
Asus GeForce4 TI4800, Samsung 172X
D. VINE 4 Chassis (moded)
 
Despite a slight kidnapping of my thread for other purposes I actually understood that NOW was the worst possible moment to change anything .

Without wanting to stretch your patience much farther , I have one last question .

What is this PCI express thing ?

It looks like it would replace AGP but if it replaces AGP , it would not accept AGP graphic cards either .
So buying an AGP card now would mean getting stuck with something that has no future (assuming that any AGP based developpement would stop) .

And then I'd be well advised to :
1) wait for this PCI ex
2) Buy the fastest available CPU at that moment and a PCI ex card (whether 6800 or ATI seems irrelevant according to most posters here) .

Do I understand well ?
 
PCI-EX will certainly replace AGP, but probably not for a year or so.

If you're buying a system that you HAVE to make last you a couple years or more you might want to wait for PCI-EX, but really a cheap system with AGP is still a good thing to have right now.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9700 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 329/337)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @ 2208 Mhz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,876</b>
 
Sorry Deadshade, I thought the PCI express thing had direct correlation to your upgrading. PCI Express is a new bus for you’re add on cards and video card see: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1087 . So purchasing a new system right now might be a waste in that you won’t be able to upgrade it in a few years. But then again how long can you possible keep a computer for gaming these days.

For an answer to your question I would have to strongly agree with HardwareBoss as to what direction to take. The card will be a great piece of equipment for the next 1.5-2 years. After that it’ll go into your little sister’s machine (provided you’ve got a little sister). If you wanna card with a longer than 2 year - but undeterminable life span, wait for PCI Express.

Oh and thanks all for the advise on the question of waiting for PCI ex or just going agp.


GA-7NNXP, XP3000+ Barton
1 gig corsair pc2700, 2 Maxtor 80GB SATA 150
1 Seagate 160 gig ATA 133,
Asus GeForce4 TI4800, Samsung 172X
D. VINE 4 Chassis (moded)
 
One thing to consider too is that EPOC is doing what seemed unlikely before (heck dual PCI-EX seemed impossible almost, but it's happening too), and that's add everything to one board.

EPOC is supposedly coming out with a PCI-EX-G 16X and AGP 8X Mobo. It's also supposed to support DDR and DDR2. The only drawback for me is that it's a P4 board and not an AMD64 (nothing against Intel, both rivals make fast chips, just like the idea of 64 bit). Getting a board like that will allow YOU to decide your transition path. Expect initial PCI-EX boards to show little increased performance over their AGP 8X cousins, and potentially the NV40 based HIS board to be slightly slower (but no one knows that either, well if they do know they're likely under NDA still). Of course we'll know for sure once they are put through their paces.

In any case that's another thing to consider. If you like the looks of EPOC's offering (even if you switch to it later), then you have the benifits of the new card you want (either one) without the loss of the flexibility.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK :evil:
 
Thanks all , I am set now .
Indeed I am not looking for an indefinite life span because experience taught me that such a thing doesn't exist .
I wanted only around 2 years so that I avoid tinkering in the very near future .

So it will be Nvidia Ultra AGP as soon as there is a card using it on the market .
Beside that a 3.4 Intel and 2 GB RAM .
I have no clue about the MB but as I'd like to buy an already built system (to avoid heat/power problems) , I suppose they'll already put in a MB that's up to such a system .
 
check out <A HREF="http://www.cypberpowersystem.com" target="_new">http://www.cypberpowersystem.com</A> or <A HREF="http://www.abspc.com" target="_new">http://www.abspc.com</A>

very good with service and about the cheapest ya can get for prebuilt system with the part you want. And they both have the 6800 ultra :)

Have fun gaming!
 
Thanks Entium .

That was the next question I was going to ask on another forum about a built system provider adress .
Your adresses are quite nice but ... you wouldn't happen to know an adress of somebody in Europe (France or Germany) ?
 
A lot of people don't think that the new cards (6800, X800) are going to benefit much from PCI-EX. It will be a much bigger deal when we have Longhorn and DXNext. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, especially since you JUST BOUGHT your mobo.
 
True,
Oh btw the GT just got 2 of em works perfectly with a 250 power supply!

Tested one of them on my crap system

Dell 8200
2.53 Intel
1 gig ram
Dvd+rw
Dvd
2x120 Westren Digital Caviar

Going to have to test the ultra's tommorrow with the same system. 50 more mhz's should need that much more power.
 
Sweat notes what I've been hearing also- the PCI won't speed up the new cards much - and given that I suspect PCI will take a while to catch on (ie there's going to have to be hardware that shows a sizable difference in performance while using PCI-Express), I'd buy an AGP card.

I did alot of research on the 6800 U and the x800 XT and I ordered the x800 XT yesterday (don't ask how much I paid - I dont want to think about it). The only "advantage" I've seen that the 6800 Ultra has is the 3.0 shader feature, which I suspect won't make much of a difference in gaming for a year or two to come, if at all. On the other hand, the x800 XT has proven the faster card in most of the benchmarks I've seen today. However, both the XT and the Ultra were test models with "cheat" drivers so actually performance may vary. The kicker for me was the power consumption on the part of the 6800 Ultra- it might not take 2 molex connectors but I'm not willing to risk it. The X800 XT actually uses less power in tests then the 9800 XT - so count me in.

My opinion is if you can wait a month, do so. I couldn't but I've been waiting for about a year for a new vid card and can't stand waiting. The folks that review the hardware will be getting the retail versions of both cards and will be testing them against each other, with no cheat drivers- it will be mano y mano (cardo y cardo?).

I do think that both cards will be smoking fast and the only real difference between the two is the issue of power consumption. I'll post a review of the x800 XT and my Aquamark scores when it shows up (hopefully tomorrow).
 
Just checked out the 6800 ultra with a 250 watt power supply. NO PROBLEM AT ALL. And this power supply is a crappy Dell one that came with a 8200! The card ended up using 100-105 watts while playing Far Cry. And it doesn't get that hot no where near the 5950. My monitor isn't plugged into my power supply so that could be why it works just fine.
 
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