BFG 6800GS AGP is identical to BFG 6800GT AGP?

[redfoot12]

I'm starting to turn to ZipZoomFly more and more. I got the BFG Geforce 6800 GS there for $199 and of course zzf has free 2nd day air.

 

[RossCorp]

I agree with wolf, the BFG 6800 GS is the best AGP card for the price right now...I just got mine and it unlocked without a hiccup. In the process of OCing. Fingers crossed

 

[sykopath79]

Just wanted to chime in with some relevant information for anyone considering this card. I purchased the BFG 6800GS OC AGP from mwave.com last week, and so far I have been thoroughly pleased with it.

One minor issue, the current latest WHQL driver available on NVIDIA's website (81.98) does not support this card, despite NVIDIA's website listing the 6800GS as supported by this ForceWare version. As a result, BFG ships this card with the non-WHQL 82.12 ForceWare revision. So far, I have had no problems with this beta driver, but I just wanted to mention this as a heads-up since I was initially frustrated by trying to install the WHQL driver with no success.

On the issue of unlocking the extra pipelines to turn the card from a 12x5 pixel/vertex pipeline configuration to 16x6, I was able to unlock mine with ease using Rivatuner. Rivatuner griped that it has not been tested to work with the installed drivers, but it does not appear to have any difficulty accessing and modifying my card's settings.

The only problem (if you can call it that) that remains is that, since unlocking the pipes in Rivatuner, neither the Coolbits settings in the NVIDIA control panel nor Rivatuner will allow overclocking of the card. When you click to test the new clock settings, it instantaneously comes back and says the test failed, and will not let you set the higher clock speed. A minor issue though, as my 3DMark05 score and performance in several games was noticeably better after unlocking the pipes.

A great buy, if you have an aging AGP8x card and don't want to upgrade your whole platform to support PCIe cards, it's a great value.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Did nVidia find a way to lock these cards? I mean if you unlock them, you can't overclock them and if you overclock them you cannot unlock them. There is another person stating this same fact yesterday. Anu truth to this?

 

[sykopath79]

My assumption for the moment is that it has something to do with the fact that since it's necessary to use the non-WHQL driver for the card to work, and since Rivatuner does not officially work with the 82.12 ForceWare, that is has something to do with how the driver recognizes the card after the pipelines are unlocked and it is therefore unable to run whatever self-tests it attempts when you try to overclock.

We will have to wait and see what happens when 1) new WHQL ForceWare is released by NVIDIA, and 2) Rivatuner is updated to support the latest drivers.

 

[SelfishGene]

I wouldn't be too quick to assume this is a general problem with the card or drivers, since i can both unlock the card using RivaTuner and overclock the card using coolbits without any effort or trouble at all. And having tested many different settings in 3dmark, i'm assured that these settings are working correctly.

 

[imported_helto]

Hi,

I am using 81.12 drivers and have overclocked, slightly, my card.

Helto

 

[lifeguard1999]

Originally posted by: SelfishGene
Tomshardware has their VGA charts. At the end of their latest PCI-e VGA charts they came up with some sort of average of every test they ran and created a spreadsheet you can look at determine "% increase in performance vs. your current card, on average." I would direct link, but, well, you know, protocol vs. the two sites and all. They rated all the X800 and X850 card above the 6600GT and 6800 but below everything else, including SLI 6600GT, the 6800GT and 6800 Ultra. In fact they rated the 6800 GT about 10% better then the X850 XT PE. But again, all on average.

Link @ THG

 

[Kwincy]

Glad I didn't hop on this card immediately, as Nvidia is launching the 7800GS AGP card in a week or two. A dude over in the hardocp forums already bought one for $350 (yikes!) somehow and this card will be the best AGP card for the forsee-able future:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1010363

I don't know about paying $350 for a AGP card, though.

Kwincy

 

[Wolfshanze]

Glad I didn't hop on this card immediately, as Nvidia is launching the 7800GS AGP card in a week or two.

Yes and no... while the 7800GS will definately be the top AGP card available, that may not be the same reason folks are buying the 6800GS.

Considering we're looking at the very least a $150 price differance between the 6800GS and the 7800GS, these cards are at very differant price points. Unless somebody bought the 6800GS thinking it's the fastest card regardless of cost, most of the folks who bought it were also considering the price/performance ratio as well and got what they wanted for the price.

I'm glad AGP has more options, including the 7800GS, but they really need to drop the price on the 7800GS... I think it's too early to compare a 6800GS purchase with a 7800GS purchase because the prices are too far apart for comparison.

 

[Kwincy]

Agreed.

The reason I haven't bought higher end AGP vidcard lately is because I didn't want to spend more than 250 to 300 on it, otherwise I woulda either bought a 6800GT AGP or finally made the switch to PCIe and got a 7800GT for less than this 7800GS debuts at.

My plan was to get that ASRock mobo with both AGP and PCIe with at least an A64 3500 and upgrade my AGP card later on down the road. Since I don't game as hardcore as to justify an SLI setup, this mobo seems like a good fit for my current 6800 OC vidcard.

Kwincy

 

[Wolfshanze]

My plan was to get that ASRock mobo with both AGP and PCIe with at least an A64 3500 and upgrade my AGP card later on down the road. Since I don't game as hardcore as to justify an SLI setup, this mobo seems like a good fit for my current 6800 OC vidcard.

Yeah... that's a good MB... been thinking about that for my wife's system.

 

[RossCorp]

I just wanted to say that I was able to unlock to 16p6v and overclock my BFG 6800 GS to 435/1220 and it was stable with no artifacts

That gave me a score of 5833 in 3DMark05. In 3DMark03 I got 13,872 with my 3.2@3.5, 250mhz FSB!

Also, in RivaTuner, click on the Power User tab, scroll down and find overclocking/global. The first thing under it is DisableClockTest. Right click on it and turn the lightbulb on. You should be able to overclock as well now.

 

[ThE B MaN]

Originally posted by: RossCorp
I just wanted to say that I was able to unlock to 16p6v and overclock my BFG 6800 GS to 435/1220 and it was stable with no artifacts

That gave me a score of 5833 in 3DMark05. In 3DMark03 I got 13,872 with my 3.2@3.5, 250mhz FSB!

Also, in RivaTuner, click on the Power User tab, scroll down and find overclocking/global. The first thing under it is DisableClockTest. Right click on it and turn the lightbulb on. You should be able to overclock as well now.

sorry to get off topic, but damn dude, looking at your sig, you have virtually the same setup as me! Same motherboard, same memory, same soundcard... only diff is I have the 3.0mhz cpu. Im not sure what my power supply is, I bought this computer system used from a friend, he told me it was 400watts, Is there a way to find out by looking at it??

Also curious as to the cooling options out there for this card as it seems like overclocking it makes this thing run super hot. I also want to know what a safe operating temp is for my computers cpu. My cpu runs at around 88F average, is this safe? Just curious because I got a cpu fan error the first time I booted my computer up but havent had it since, and I want to make sure this temp is ok before I go and throw a card that runs very hot into my computer