Originally posted by: RussianSensation
I'd like to point out several things.
Raybdbomb you brought a very good point about whether or not it is worth to purchase a $400 videocard at the moment. Personally, as jhurst pointed out getting a new generation videocard right now might not be the best choice because there are very few games that will take advantage of it and the prices are sitll high. Still, in games like Battlefield Vietnam, Halo, and Far Cry you will certainly notice a huge difference in performance as opposed to having a 9800Pro card. This of course brings a dilemma - do you hold out for another month or 2 to purchase your computer? do you purchase your computer now and use an old videocard while waiting for a good deal on the new generation of cards? OR you could maximize the $1000 spending now by buying a 9800Pro derivative card like
This and then allocating the remaining ~$200 left over to a higher model processor and better quality RAM. Of course this also means that you will most likely upgrade to a next generation card within a year or so. No one can tell you for certain if by September (at which time STALKER, Doom3 and HL2 - all 3 most anticipated FPS will have come out (hopefully)) the 6800/x800pro cards will drop in price signficanlty or not. I am sure there will be price deals on them however. But I really do not want to recommend you to hold off your computer purchase until a price deal comes up because you could be waiting for a while; coupled with the fact that AMD does not intend to lower its cpu prices any time soon. So if you can wait 1 more month before August 3rd when Doom 3 comes out, and hope you catch a price deal on the new card during that period, you could do that.
Of course when I provided you with my components I tried to make a system that was a good value under $1000 this very minute. Deals like X800Pro for $330 are great and are something to consider as well. If you can still get this deal, you should probably go for it if you do not intend to wait.
I am going to disagree with Zebo and say that Newcastle core offers more overclocking room. All newcastle chips are already supposed to the CG stepping. Not only that but A64 3200+ 512kb newcastle comes clocked at 2.2ghz and considering that mhz increases are more important for gaming than cache size it should hold an advantage over A64 3200+ 2.0ghz 1mb off the bat. But it also has 200mhz extra clock speed so it should have a greater overclocking headroom, or at least just as good, not worse.
Comparisons between X800Pro/9800Pro/5950/6800 series:
*you could consider 9800 series very close to 5900 series performance when comparing old generation even though 9800 is faster in PS2.0 games
Review 1
Review 2
Review 3
Review 4
Only ATI cards
And this one might be most important for you:
Only X800Pro vs. 6800GT
Also you have to consider that Nvidia's drivers have significantly improved the situation of Nvidia cards in some games, especially Far Cry. So drivers after 61.11 should be used in reviews, but most of the ones I pointed out were often older drivers (except the last one x800 vs 6800gt)
Either way, like many said before, you can't go wrong with a new generation card as it is at least 100% faster no matter which one -- so the most important factor is the price.
Facebook
Twitter