WOW (Upgrade from 9800 Pro to 6800GT)

[crsgardner]

I just upgraded my Radeon 9800 Pro to a nVidia 6800GT (on advice from the board) and I'm quite surprised by what I'm seeing.

First the card: eVGA 6800GT. Ordered direct from their website and received it the next day. Price was high but reasonable ($400 for card). The package is no-nonsense (which I appreciate). Obviously eVGA knows gamers want to get into their games now.

The card itself -- well, quite frankly it's the largest video card I've ever seen. I mean, the thing is close to a 1/4 the size of my motherboard. Fortunately I didn't need to move anything around, as I just built the rig and had expandability in mind.

Now, my first test: UT2004. Card performed extremely well. 1600x1200, full details, no AA (at that resolution, I don't feel a need to turn it on). Wow. Even in the heaviest firefights it never dipped below 60 fps.

3DMark2003 (this was the shocking part): near double-performance. Here's the multicompare URL: Link Both cards were at their stock settings. You can definitely see where the more pixel-shader heavy demos benefitted from the new card.

Some things concern me. Temperature is running around 60 degrees Celsius, peak (40 degrees idle). The fan, despite what others have said, is really not that loud. My power supply fan easily drowns it out.

I'm going to take a look at Far Cry (that came with the card), but overall I'm impressed.

 

[VIAN]

Some things concern me. Temperature is running around 60 degrees Celsius, peak (40 degrees idle).

I wouldn't worry about that at stock spees. That's just the reason for the low overclocking potential.

 

[vshah]

60C is actually quite cool for a gt card. you'll probably see higher temps playing far cry, but that is nothing to worry about. btw your multicompare link doesn't work. congrats on the new card!

-Vivan

 

[DeathByDuke]

link doesnt work now

 

[crsgardner]

See if it works now.

 

[CraigRT]

Hi, just want to know what CPU you have? whats the rest of your setup?

I have a 9800 Pro, and was wondering what it would be like if I upgraded.

 

[crsgardner]

Rest of rig (recently built):

A64 3200+
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
1 GB Kingston RAM
2x74 GB 10,000 RPM RAID

I think it was definitely worth it, but I notice performance in UT. I've been playing that game for a while.

 

[Strk]

Those temps sound fairly decent considering the chip.

 

[FluxCap]

I want to do this exact upgrade but I am looking for a BFG 6800GT because it could be my last video card for over 2 years. Grats on your upgrade.

 

[Regs]

Yeah, I switched from a 9800 to a 6800GT at Ultra Speeds. It's amazing. You really can't go wrong with any of these new generation cards. That's really the beauty of it. My 2003 3D mark score doubled. From 5900 to 1200+. And I can now play Far Cry at 1280x1024 4X AF MAx Quality flawlessly. Before hand I used to push 1280 x 960 Max Quality with no AA/AF and the game had major slow downs with lots of action on screen.

 

[jim1976]

What is it ppl with the 3dmark synthetic crap?
Benches from games help us understand the difference. I don't doubt for a sec that GT is a great card but plz don't mention 3d$shit all the time. I couldn't care less and quite frankly is rather useless. Just a minor point of reference.

 

[MemberSince97]

Just curious Is there any hitching,stuttering, etc in Assault and Onslaught at all???

Your CPU ,Card and Drives are great , but i was wondering about the coding or(poor-coding) in CPU intensive game types like Assault and Onslaught...

 

[Spoon]

I'd really like to see some bench's if possible, I was going to move to a 9800 but might rethink that purchase

TIA

 

[Polishwonder74]

Yeah, me too.

I'm awfully close to jumping on a 9800 myself, unless I can score something better that doesn't cost $400.

 

[puffpio]

be sure to turn on coolbits and set autooverclock..it's a nice conservative overclock w/ really good gains

 

[crsgardner]

Just curious Is there any hitching,stuttering, etc in Assault and Onslaught at all???

None that I've noticed, but I have my system set to preload all skins. In the case of the RAID and memory, it makes sense to.

be sure to turn on coolbits and set autooverclock..it's a nice conservative overclock w/ really good gains

A little wary of coolbits. Any links you can point me to?

What is it ppl with the 3dmark synthetic crap?

It has it's place. I agree that games are the best thing to benchmark off of (hence hours of UT2004/FarCry gaming this weekend), but the synthetic benchmarks are nice because WYSIWYG. Everyone's running the same benches at the same settings, and you can use their ORB tool to compare to similar machines (and make sure yours is running reasonably).

 

[JackBurton]

So you're saying I'd see a difference if I went from my 8500 to a 6800GT? My 8500 sucks!

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: jim1976
What is it ppl with the 3dmark synthetic crap?
Benches from games help us understand the difference. I don't doubt for a sec that GT is a great card but plz don't mention 3d$shit all the time. I couldn't care less and quite frankly is rather useless. Just a minor point of reference.

You don't notice that the 2x speed increase the new cards show in 3DM03 corresponds to a 2x increase in framerates in shader-heavy games like Halo and Far Cry?

3DM03 is a tool. As such, it's only as useful as you make it. It still seems to be pretty useful, cheats and all, and it's still a lot simpler to click "run 3DM03" than to set up your own benchmark runs in Halo and Far Cry.

 

[imported_McBain]

I can't get your link to work. What is the rest of your system like?

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: Pete

Originally posted by: jim1976
What is it ppl with the 3dmark synthetic crap?
Benches from games help us understand the difference. I don't doubt for a sec that GT is a great card but plz don't mention 3d$shit all the time. I couldn't care less and quite frankly is rather useless. Just a minor point of reference.

You don't notice that the 2x speed increase the new cards show in 3DM03 corresponds to a 2x increase in framerates in shader-heavy games like Halo and Far Cry?

3DM03 is a tool. As such, it's only as useful as you make it. It still seems to be pretty useful, cheats and all, and it's still a lot simpler to click "run 3DM03" than to set up your own benchmark runs in Halo and Far Cry.

Pete first of all I can't notice it, since I don't have a last gen gpu.
While what you say seems to apply in many cases I think it's a way too generalized conclusion.
I mean there are so many things that can interfere with a system's performance in a game,that I don't see the point in taking so much time with synthetic benches.
I'm not saying that 3dmark isn't a very good benchmark that serves a basing point of reference,but I can't stand to see ppl occupying so much time with it.
It's like a "must" nowadays to show how far can you score with 3dmark.

 

[Regs]

3DMark was never really accurate in real world performance. But when you compare a 3dmark score to a 3dmark score and its higher, then in its own right and application their are noticeable observations which cannot go overlooked. It increased.

But I understand where you are coming from, however this fact telling lecture is un suited for this topic. The 3D mark score was only used as a supporting argument backed up with real world performance in games.

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: Regs
3DMark was never really accurate in real world performance. But when you compare a 3dmark score to a 3dmark score and its higher, then in its own right and application their are noticeable observations which cannot go overlooked. It increased.

But I understand where you are coming from, however this fact telling lecture is un suited for this topic. The 3D mark score was only used as a supporting argument backed up with real world performance in games.

Regs I wasn't reffering to you. I know you enough from several posts to have a good idea of what person you are.
I just see it all the time like it's breaking newz....