GeForce 6800 replacing the lame FX

[Animal]

The SE or LE versions are usually stripped down variants of the original version. The original version doesn't have a suffix, where as the better ones usually carry a Pro, XT, or Ultra tag on the end. The difference is usually in core and memory speeds. I think both nVidia and ATI have comparison charts on their sites to help you out.

PSU is your Power Supply Unit. It's usually marked on the outside of the unit somewhere, although 350W is somewhat conservative for a 9800. I'd suggest a quality 400W minimum. An underpowered card will cause all kinds of crashes and glitches that will drive you absolutely insane.

Check this out for a comparo of the 9800 cards. http://www.atitech.ca/products/radeo...o/compare.html

The 9800SE isn't listed on that chart, because it's not made by ATI, it's made by a third party company that ATI has licsensed their technology to. It only has 4 pipelines as opposed to the standard 8 that the 9800 has.

My advice: Take a pass on the 9800SE

EDIT: Here's a link for the 9600 comparison from ATI. It will give you a good idea about what all the different variants are. http://www.atitech.ca/products/radeo...o/compare.html

[ 07-10-2004, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Animal ]

[Memnoch]

Ok, I think I'll restrict myself to either the 9600 (original and XT) or the FX5700 (original). Surely either of them has to be better than my GeForce MX400, right?

[Animal]

Originally posted by Memnoch: Ok, I think I'll restrict myself to either the 9600 (original and XT) or the FX5700 (original). Surely either of them has to be better than my GeForce MX400, right?

That goes without saying. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Check this out for a comparison to help you make your decision:

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display...D=274&PageID=1

[Memnoch]

Cheers mate. I'll have a bit of a think about it all and come back to this thread when I've decided - hopefully tomorrow. Thanks for the help. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[Bahamut]

Hey Animal I have heard that the SE series (I think) are have 8 pipelines in the hardware itself, but they are only using four. My friend unlocked the four other pipelines and there. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Animal]

Originally posted by Bahamut: Hey Animal I have heard that the SE series (I think) are have 8 pipelines in the hardware itself, but they are only using four. My friend unlocked the four other pipelines and there. [img]smile.gif[/img]

True, you can attempt to softmod the 9800SE and open the 4 locked pipelines, but it's a 50/50 crapshoot as to whether or not it will be succesful.

That's why they're SE's, because they failed quality control as a regular 9800.

[Memnoch]

Okay, what do you guys think of this one:



It's currently going for $112 OZ on eBay Australia (that's about US$80). Description is below:

*****************
The 9600XT graphics core (as known as RV360) from ATI is considered a medium to high end solution, with 128 bit bus bandwidth, 4x1 pipelines and complete support for DX9 features. It will satisfy most of your productivity and gaming needs.

The Gigabyte Radeon 9600XT can only be used on AGP 4x and 8x motherboards, it is NOT compatible with AGP 1x and 2x motherboards, please see picture! Sorry for this mix up and any inconveniences caused.
*****************

Any comments about this one? It seems like a good price. Will I be able to run NWN, Civ3, Warcraft 3 on it?

[ 07-11-2004, 02:01 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]

[Animal]

Good choice [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Make sure your motherboard is AGP2.0 or AGP3.0 compatible, at least AGP 4X or 8X.

EDIT: NWN might be a bit finicky with this one, although using the latest Cat4.7 should do the trick.

[ 07-11-2004, 03:27 AM: Message edited by: Animal ]

[Memnoch]

Finicky? [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] What do you mean finicky?

[Memnoch]

On another note, what about this one?




Features
nVidia GeforceFX5700 GPU
CLK : 425MHz
.13u process technology
AGP 8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
CineFX shading architecture Support for DX 9 pixel shader 2.0+ and DX 9 vertex shader 2.0+
Intellisample™ Technology
High-Precision Graphics
nView Multi-display Technology
NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control™ 3.0
Industry-renowned NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
Daul, 400MHz RAMDACs
16 texels per pixel with 8 textures applied per clock
4 Pixels per Clock Rendering Pipeline
Architected for Cg
New 64-phase Video Scaler for scaling DVD and other video to full-screen HDTV resolutions.
Video Mixing Renderer (VMR)
128-bit, studio-precision color
Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
Bright NTSC/PAL TV-out support with flicker filter
On-board DVI support up to 1600x1200X32bpp at 60Hz
Provides best-of-class TV-out functionality up to 1024x768 resolutions.
I/O Interface
DVI-I
D-Sub 15 Pin VGA Out
4 Pin TV-Out Connector

Bundled Software
SiluroDVD 5
Siluro Software Album CD
Package Contents

Siluro FX5700 Card
CD Driver & SiluroDVD 5 Software
S-Video to RCA Adapter cable
S-Video Extended Cable
Composite (RCA) Extended cable
DVI-I to VGA Adapter
System Requirements

Intel/AMD/Other Compatible CPUs
One available AGP Slot and one vacant PCI Slot adjacent to the AGP Slot
64MB System Memory
CD-ROM Drive
Operating Systems
Windows® XP/2000/NT/ME/98

Brand: ABIT

Warranty: 1 Year Manufacturer's return to base


Is it better or worse than the 9600XT? It's $205 OZ ($US150 or so).