7800GS, or an older 6800 chipset?

[Noema]

Hello all,

The time has come in which I must finally face that my RADEON 9600XT has reached prehistoric status.

Also, Oblivion has just been released and I'd like to play the game in most of its glory, at 1280x1024, which is my LCD's native resolution. And my 9600XT simply won't cut it.

One caveat is that I don't live in the US, so my access to hardware is quite limited. Fortunately, a friend of mine will be traveling to the states shortly and she can bring me whatever I ask her, so for once I will be able to pick exactly what I want instead of having to settle with what's available where I live.

So far, I've narrowed my options to these two:

EVGA GeForce 7800GS with 256MBs of RAM

XBFG GeForce 6800GS Overclocked 256 MBs RAM

Obviously the 7800GS is quite superior in terms of performance. However, there's a $100 bucks difference, which is considerable. I can afford the 7800GS but I'm concerned about mainly two things:

a) My rig might be a limiting factor. I have an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ NewCastle (s754) with (obviously) AGP and 1GB of PC3200 Kingston ValueRAM. It's still a decent CPU, but the older socket type and lack of PCI-e make it quite limited in terms of upgradeability. So that means I probably will have to upgrade to a completely new rig in about a year. So I don't know if it's worth it to get a top of the line video card for it.

b) DirectX 10 is looming near, and as far as I know, this generation of video cards won't support many of DX10's many new features.

So what do you think? Should I get the 7800GS to squeeze the most out of my current rig and play today's games at high settings or save money, get the 6800 (which I suppose is still quite decent for today's games) and make a full-blown upgrade in a year?

EDIT: Linked a PCI-e 6800 card by mistake

 

[Noema]

/bump

 

[BassBomb]

id say go for teh GS

bump every few hours (not that quick)

edit i just realized they are both GS's

go for the 6800, the money you save will help you to your next rig
you will be able to play elder scrolls at 1280x1024 no AA , medium settings or higher

 

[Skott]

Personally, I'd go for the 7800GS. You said a year meaning it could be next spring before you upgrade. The extra $100 spent would be worth it IMO. Now if you were going to upgrade in a few months then I'd say save the $100. But a year and you want to play the latest games during that time? Dont skimp. Just my two coppers worth.

 

[v8envy]

Your CPU won't limit you. It's fine, especially if you OC about 10% later this year when it becomes a problem.

Your best bet is a S754 PCIe motherboard, second best is selling your rig and getting the S939 equivalent.

The 6800GSA (gs in agp) is not that fast of a card. Unless you win the unlock & overclock lottery (in which case you'll get a 6800 ultra, roughly the performance of a 7800GS), 1280x1024 in oblivion means cranking everything waaay down.

7800GS has a prayer, but it is only 10-20% faster than a 6800GSP (gs in pcie), and overclocked versions are about on par with a 7600GS. Keep that in mind as you peer over oblivion video card results.

Best bet: PCIe sock754 motherboard, X850XT or 7600GS for $160-180ish. Second best: the 7800GS with 20 pipes and reasonable clock mentioned on this forum (the 7800GT comes to AGP thread. That one may weigh in around $400 by the time it's available.)

 

[Nextman916]

Your rig wont limit you at all running games at 1280x1024, i also suggest going with the 7800gs if you have the cash.

 

[Noema]

Thanks all for the replies; I've made my mind and I'll be getting the 7800GS. I suppose I will be able to squeeze a year's worth of play out of my system with it.

Originally posted by: v8envy

7800GS has a prayer, but it is only 10-20% faster than a 6800GSP (gs in pcie), and overclocked versions are about on par with a 7600GS. Keep that in mind as you peer over oblivion video card results.

Interesting...I didn't know the differences beween AGP and PCI-e were so drastic to the point of a 7800GS AGP being barely better than a 6800GSP. Where could I read up a bit more about this?

 

[cpubound]

what about a 6800 gt vs the 7800 gs, I'm in the same situation. I've got a p4 3 gig and want to hold out until the end of the year. any suggestions. I"m looking to power a 27 inch lcd tv and play WOW =)

 

[naddicott]

I bought a 7800 GS for Oblivion with a very similar rig ( Athlon 64 3200+ - same amount of ram though lower latency). My old vid card was a 6800 NU.

I was too impatient to do meaningful benchmarks, but I did run 3dmarks on both systems (both using 81.98s, I've since updated my drivers to 84.25 for a noticable oblivion performance increase). Here's the percent increase ([new bench-old bench]/old bench) for each test:

2001 overall - 0.24
car low - 0.12
car high - 0.02
drag low - 0.21
drag high - 0.26
lobby low - 0.03
lobby high - 0.03
nature - 0.96
single text - 0.64
multi text - 1.81
high poly 1 - 0.87
high poly 8 - 1.68
env bump - 0.21
dot3 bump - 0.53
vertex shad - 0.03
pixel shad - 0.13
adv. pix shad - 1.63
point sprites - 0.11

2003 overall - 0.75
wings - 0.18
proxy - 0.94
troll - 0.9
mother nature - 0.92
cpu1 - 0.05
cpu2 - 0.04
single text - 0.63
multi text - 1.8
vertex shad - 0.78
Pixel shad - 1.96
ragtroll - 0.76
Nosound - 0.01
24 sound - 0.01
60 sound - 0.01

2005 overall - 1.31
proxy - 1.47
firefly - 1.41
canyon - 1.08
cpu1 - 0
cpu2 - 0.06

2006 overall - 1.55
sm2.0 - 2.02
HDR/SM3.0 - 1.95
CPU - 0.03
proxy - 2.01
firefly - 2.03
canyon - 2.49
deep freeze - 1.64
red valley 1 - 0.02
red valley 2 - 0.03

Of note are the nature type benchmarks (92%-203% improvements) which on the surface look a lot like oblivion outdoor scenes (I'm sure there are substantial differences in how the 3dmark & oblivion engines render nature scenes), and the HDR/SM3.0 benchmark (195% improvement).

As for actual Oblivion performance, I'm running it at 1280x1024 HDR enabled (no AA) 4x AF, high textures, shadows lower settings (not off), specular distance at minimum, ini tweak to increase the grid variable (grids with good textures) from 5 to 9. Indoors is usually 40+FPS (measured by fraps), outdoors is usually 20+ FPS. I could tweak for higher FPS, but I really like the visual quality of my current settings and can live with 20 FPS on a single player RPG.

So in short, getting the 7800GS will let your rig play oblivion at acceptable levels, but likely not as high as if you were to replace mobo/cpu/ram and get a better performing pci-e card.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you are going to spend $300, might as well get 7800GT and S754 PCIe motherboard. Or even better, for $50 more you can get 24 pipeline 7900GT and S754 PCIe motherboard. Overclocked 7900GT will be a lot faster than 7800GS card.

gpu comparison:

EVGA 7800GS = 430 x 16 pipes = 6880 fill-rate
7900GT = 450 x 24 = 10800 fill-rate

That's 56% fill-rate increase. 7900GT overclocks well on the ram and gpu as; very close to 7800GTX 512mb performance.