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Video Cards...nVidia 98000 vs 6800


White Knight

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...I seek.

 

Ok, wassup yall. Now I know, yall are going to say "Whitie's a software engineer, he should know this stuff", well, as an overworked Software Engineer, I haven't had the time (and doubt I would if I could) to keep abreast on the latest and greatest in the hw world. Normally it isn't an issue because I'm not buying computer parts, but...

 

I'm going to build a new PC for HL2. In fact, the day it goes gold, I'm ordering my parts so that I'm prepared to pwn HL2. My 3 year old PC definately won't cut it. Now I've pretty much sketched out what I'm buying and my pricepoints on most items, except I'm having issues deciding on a Video Card.

 

My pricepoint is circa $300. Now for that I can either buy a low end nVidia 6800 (with 128M of RAM among other things) or a high end 9800 pro (with 256M of RAM and all the bells).

 

nVidia, obviously pushing their new hardware, says the 6800 is vastly supperior and therefore I should buy that, even on the low end.

 

What do yall think? Should I go for the pimped 9800pro, or should I purchase the 'value' 6800?

 

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

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I'd go with the vanilla 6800.

 

 

 

Or if the AGP versions of the 6600GT and x700XT are out by the time HL2 is, then I would go with one of those. They are only gonna cost 200 bucks and run just as fast as 9800 level cards. This would leave 100 bucks to invest in a gig of Low Lantency RAM, or maybe a faster processor.

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Guest zerodamage
Guest zerodamage
zerodamage...where did those links go that showed the diferences in cards between doom3 and HL2?

 

I belive they are in the Doom3 forum somewhere. Just go to www.anandtech.com and check out the CPU section for the Doom3 comparison.

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Thanks for the link yall. Found a bunch of interesting stuff.

 

That sight sparked a further question:

It looks like the AMD Semperon has comparable performance to the Intel 3.2G Pentium that I was contemplating (for half the price), and the AMD 64 (for $50 less) by far outperforms them.

 

Ne1 have any experience with the 64? I know that it supports 32B operations and apparently wails on Doom, but I'm seeking more knowledge before I purchase one.

 

Thanks.

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Guest zerodamage
Guest zerodamage

The P4's cost more. The Athlon 64's cost a little less. The A64's are better in games. The P4's are better at video encoding, etc. The A64's are really close to the P4's with Video encoding. The A64's are a little more future proof with 64-bit support. The A64's are a little faster with the memory controller on the actual cpu. The P4's have Hyper THreading which makes your desktop 2D applications fly.

Edited by zerodamage
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my vote goes for two 9700pros, somehow linked in wonderous ddr fashion and functioning better than that stuff.

 

 

btw, you can wait. hl2 was supposed to come out two years ago....its still not out. im not holding my breath anymore since they had to use the jumper cable three times(this being after my dog licked my face a few times and brought me back to life with her excruciating bad breath).

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Guest zerodamage
Guest zerodamage
my vote goes for two 9700pros, somehow linked in wonderous ddr fashion and functioning better than that stuff.

 

Ask ATI and be willing to spend 10K plus one. ATI made one with 4 9700 Cores for the US Military a year ago and it was very expensive.

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ATI.jpg

 

There's a dual core ATI card. Can't remember if it's 9700 cores or 9800 cores though.

 

If i were looking for a new setup right now I would look for a highly overclockable system.

 

If I were going with Intel I would get a new LGA 775 socket board with PCI express slots with PC 4000 DDR 1 RAM. Slap a 6600GT or x700XT in, and you would be on your way. Throw in a 3.0GHz prescott processor and i'd call it a deal.

 

If i were going AMD i would get a socket 754 pin board with a 2800+ Athlon 64 processor and some low latency DDR 3200 RAM. With an AGP 6600GT or x700XT.

 

I'd get a big copper heatsink for both setups and add a phat 80mm fan on top for some great overclocking potential.

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Athlon 64 3000+ is what I currently have. It's running on an ASRock K8S8X motherboard with the included heatsink/fan and only one case fan. I also have a gig of A-Data PC-3200 RAM and a Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb graphics card. I'm loving it, runs great. I play UT2k4 at 1280x1024 resolution and get a solid 30 fps. I would echo the other guys though, and buy the 6800. I got my 9800 Pro a good six months ago, if I was buying now, I'd go with the new generation.

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