advice on Geforce 8800 GTX

sparkicks1

i was planning on upgrading my gfx card for christmas. the geforce 8800 gtx looked really attractive but its pci express... i have little to no knowledge with graphics cards now does it only come in pci-e or is there some sort of pci/ agp version? cus my motherboard doesnt have any pci-e slots...

the answer of which is most likely no in that case any sugestions for a motherboard upgrade... ive looked through some sites and i havnt a clue what im looking for...



not that it really matters but atm i have a geforce 6800 GT

secret_squirrel

Tbh if the rest of your system is as old as your current gfx card you are wasting you time with the 8800, it would be like polishing a turd.

For the price of a 8800 you could spend some money on a Core 2 Duo, Mobo and a decent mid range gfx card.

If you want to upgrade slowly a board like the Asrock Dual-Vsta will let you upgrade a bit at a time - it supports both AGP and PCIe graphics - most mobo's dont.

sparkicks1

actually i had a radeon 9800 before (still do but not connected) funny enough the fan actually got pulled half off (dont ask me how) and the whole thing fried... now all i get is random squares of colours on the screen...
money isnt an issue atm i got my pc around 3 years ago its a p4 cpu 2.3ghz (2CPUs) 1 gig of ram ddr
and btw... a geforce 6800 is old...?

StRiKeR

my 2 cents, 6800 may as well be a mid range card these days, the core duo is the lead at the moment, then looking at AMD is bringing out the fx64, fx 70, fx72 and fx74, I think some are out already but not in Ireland, fx7x when you buy, you actually get 2 CPU, on socket F, dual cpu dual core = quad core, myself I'm still on 939, couldn't be bother spending too much money so I just got myself a 8800gtx and a opteron 185, which is duo core running at 2.8GHz stock, if you look at benchie it doesn't run as high as the core duo, but runs every single games at the highest res on my screen which is 1680 X 1050 widescreen and all setting at MAX, once the games are running in that kind of setting without a glitch, I dont care about benchmark score anymore, its a waste of time and money just to get high score really.

hope this give you an idea to start with, I suppose when DX10 games are out I might need to upgrade the CPU to something else, that I wait and see how my system perform first, but I have to say, 8800GTX image quality is superb.

secret_squirrel

sparkicks1 wrote:

(2CPUs)

You have a dual socket mobo? Thats fairly unusual!

sparkicks1 wrote:

and btw... a geforce 6800 is old...?

Well let me rephrase - its 2 generations behind the state of the art, and thats light years in the crazy world of Graphics Cards.

For example see here

sparkicks1

no not actually 2 cpus i was just printing what it said in my diagnostic tool its a 3.2 ghz with duel thread i think... which would be better do you know a radeon 9800 or a geforce 6800 gt

and yea my pc is old but it isnt bad... with the exception of everquest 2 i havnt seen a game i couldnt crank up the settings up max and have it work perfectly... and i defently dont think my cpu at 3.2 GHZ is bad...

secret_squirrel

Ahhh

Its a P4 3.2Ghz with HT. (hyper threading which makes a single core chip work like a dual core chip for certain instructions)

If its a northwood it might be a decent overclocker.

Hmm personally I would say its borderline, but horses for courses and all that.

Depends if its the 9800 Pro or not. I would guess the 6800 GT beats the non-pro easily and the pro reasonably. That link to Tomshardware might tell you. If I recall correctly the 9800 was roughly speaking the ATI generation before the Nvidia 6800 series and it shows it in benchmarks. The 6xxx series was when Nvidia achieved and then exceeded parity with the ATI cards that up til then had the edge. (All generalities of course)

sparkicks1

yea thanks just one more thing... the 8800 gtx only comes in pci e right?

awhir

yep i think the best agp card out at the moment is the mid range x1950xt pro.

go for a cheap mobo and a e6300 and a x1950xt 256 and that would be a very nice rig.

dazftw

My friend just spent 2 grand on a new pc... that core duo processor and that card amongst other stuf... He gets 275 fps at the lowest in CS:S.... Im only a bit jealous like lol :rolleyes:

muppetkiller

You'd probably want to be carefull too about the size of the card.
I have just got a 7800 and it wont fit as the fan gets in the way of the cpu cooler.
Upgrade for me too...
:mad:

TerrorFirmer

muppetkiller wrote:

I have just got a 7800 and it wont fit as the fan gets in the way of the cpu cooler...
:mad:

Ouch...I'd say that was a fair pain in the arse!

KdjaCL

sparkicks1 wrote:

yea thanks just one more thing... the 8800 gtx only comes in pci e right?

For now yeah They will release a GS version usually about 5 months after the PCI E or flagship card.


kdjac

8T8

I'll move this to the graphics forums as it is a bit more appropriate in there.