5900Ultra 256MB upgrade to x800Pro?

[gmow]

I have a 5900 ultra and i was wondering if its worth dropping the 500 bucks on and x800 or the new nvidia one...... If its true that these 2 new cards dont even support PS 3.0 ... shouldnt i wait a generation?

 

[sparkyclarky]

The ATI card doesn't support the full implementation of PS 3.0, just some of the features. But it is up in the air as to whether PS 3.0 will make a huge splash in the market (same with the ATI only features such as the lossless texture compression). Your after upgrade costs (assuming you sell your old card) would be in the range of $125-$200. Personally, I'd wait at least until the refreshes come out in the fall. See how your hardware does with HL2 and Doom III, then make a judgement based upon YOUR gaming (and possibly video encoding/decoding) needs.

 

[touchmyichi]

waste of money

 

[gmow]

yah... i guess i should wait then? Im going to at least wait until this whole argument about 6800 vs x800 settles...

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: gmow
I have a 5900 ultra and i was wondering if its worth dropping the 500 bucks on and x800 or the new nvidia one...... If its true that these 2 new cards dont even support PS 3.0 ... shouldnt i wait a generation?

Depends on what you want to do with the card. First make sure you have an Athlon64 3000+ or Pentium4 3.2Ghz+ or else your CPU will make it so that the card is a waste of money. If you're looking to play with full AA and AF at resultions 1024 and above it's worth it. If you're looking to play the new shooters at 1280 and above resolution with or without AA and AF it's worth it. Otherwise, don't waste your money. There are no killer features that the card brings other than more power and if you don't use high resolutions you're wasting your money. The current state of the X800 Pro. I have one and I'm not terrible impressed. Sure it's better than my 9700Pro in FarCry (which is why I upgraded) but in everything else the 9700Pro was fine.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Waiting is the wise thing to do, plus it saves you money. You aren't exactly hurting for speed in 99% of games on the market right now

 

[gmow]

well all i ever play now is star wars galaxies at 1024x768. I have a p4 3.2 1 gig ram. And i didnt really like farcry .... lol

 

[Bar81]

Well there's your answer then

 

[gmow]

bar i know this really doesnt belong in this forum but i see u are running a SATA hd... i was thinking of purchasing one. Will running games off of a SATA drive actually improve FPS in games..... and if it does will i have to boot XP off of the drive to utilize the extra performance? (In other words would leaving my xp booting off a ata133 drive but running games off of the SATA be acceptable?)

 

[Bar81]

Just getting a SATA hard drive will give you a small boost in general as from the numbers SATA drives perform better than their IDE counterparts. But it's not a big difference and not worth upgrading to. What is worth upgrading to is a faster drive. If you currently have a 5400rpm or 2MB cache 7200 rpm hard drive you should definitely think about getting either an 8MB SATA drive like the Seagate 7200.7, the Samsung SP80 (be careful not to get the 2MB cache version), or the Desktar 72K50. But the real boost would come in the form of a WD Raptor SATA drive. These are 10k rpm drives. But the only thing these drives will do is make Windows feel "faster" and more responsive and decrease level loading times in games. They won't make the actual in game portion any faster, that's mainly CPU/RAM/Video card.

Personally, I love my Raptor because it makes Windows feel ultra snappy and fast and because it massively decreases level load time in games like FarCry. If you have an 8MB cache 7200 rpm IDE it's probably not worth upgrading unless you're crazy like me

Check out www.storagereview.com for reviews of hard drives. They do really great tests with excellent comparisons and the forums are just untouchable; a good group of well informed smart guys who never fail to give the proper advice.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: gmow
bar i know this really doesnt belong in this forum but i see u are running a SATA hd... i was thinking of purchasing one. Will running games off of a SATA drive actually improve FPS in games..... and if it does will i have to boot XP off of the drive to utilize the extra performance? (In other words would leaving my xp booting off a ata133 drive but running games off of the SATA be acceptable?)

I have a RAID 0 array of WD Raptor SATA 36GB drives. The drives speed the bootup of games noticeably over my IDE drives, but that is because they are 10,000 RPM, not because they are SATA. But HD speed has nothing to do with FPS (unless you are out of RAM and need to do some texture swapping).

 

[gmow]

so formatting and installing xp onto the new SATA drive for "performance" is another waste of time. ok thanks.I might just get an external 120 gb western digital just cause it lights up. hahaha

 

[Bar81]

Yup it's a waste of time unless you get a better spec'd hard drive and what you're looking for is snappiness in windows and decreased game load times. If that's not your bag then save the money.

 

[gmow]

One more thing... im interested in an external HD so i can bring it to friend's houses to whore some files quick and easily..... whats really faster firewire or usb 2.0?

 

[Bar81]

firewire is the better interface, but USB2.0 is faster. Now, the new Firewire aka IEEE1394b, that just flat out owns

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Bar81
firewire is the better interface, but USB2.0 is faster. Now, the new Firewire aka IEEE1394b, that just flat out owns

NO even though USB2.0 is speced faster than firewire. In real world performance firewire is faster in all flavors.

 

[Bar81]

hmmmm, good to hear. I can't stand USB2

 

[gmow]

guess ill go firewire :}

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Just remember to make sure your buddy has a firewire port as well.

I guess most new computers come with firewire built in, but USB is definitely more readily available.

-D'oh!

 

[BFG10K]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but the XT price is supposed to be $500, not the Pro. The Pro will be cheaper.

As for the upgrade in general I'd say it's easily worth it if you play a lot of modern games that use shaders (such as Far Cry). If you only play old games then don't bother.

 

[Algere]

Your almost right

It's $499(MSRP) X800 XT

&

$399(MSRP) X800 Pro



sorry, just being a smart ass.