Nvidia 6800 Series

[ikickpigeons]

I just have a few questions about the NV40.
1) Is it worth the 50 bucks to get the extreme edition?
2) When will all the 6800 cards be fully released?
3) Does ATI just have two cards and nothing else (X800 Pro and X800 XT/PE?
4) would a 420 PSU be enough for a 6800 Ultra?
5) When will PCI-Express come out? I thought it would be another year but Im reading a bunch of people actually have PCI-Express native cards ie: a site i forgot said they were going to test a PCI-Express 6800 gt soon.
Any replies will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Corporate Thug]

1) Is it worth the 50 bucks to get the extreme edition?

depends on your budget

2) When will all the 6800 cards be fully released?

they'll prolly be out in full force by the end of july

3) Does ATI just have two cards and nothing else (X800 Pro and X800 XT/PE?

they are going to have the PCI express equivilant to the 9600 pro and the 9200 as well

4) would a 420 PSU be enough for a 6800 Ultra?

yes, if its a quality PSU

5) When will PCI-Express come out? I thought it would be another year but Im reading a bunch of people actually have PCI-Express native cards ie: a site i forgot said they were going to test a PCI-Express 6800 gt soon.
Any replies will be greatly appreciated.

dell already has PCI express systems

 

[ChkSix]

1: Depends on the person, however I personally don't think so
2: End of June to mid/end July
3: I think they are working on an x800SE, but I might be wrong
4: 420 should be enough if you're not big into overclocking (quality 420, not no name 420)
5: Soon. PCIE doesn't bring any real performance boosts just yet that would be attractive to the consumer at this moment in time..but that will change down the road.

 

[Keysplayr]

1. not really
2. As Shady says
3. As Shady says
4. Nvidia has stated a good quality 350W PSU will be sufficient to run the Ultra without any problem. Review sites have done this and back up this claim.
5. PCI -Express is out now.

Side note: If your going to upgrade only once in the next three years, get a PCI-Express mobo and vid card. Otherwise why pay a premium for something thats nowhere near mainstream yet. AGP will do fine if your a frequent upgrader.

 

[SickBeast]

Your future rig will be a behemoth if that's what you actually end up buying. It will run games like a they're some kind of joke; it will simply mangle them. What's your budget like out of curiousity?

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Your future rig will be a behemoth if that's what you actually end up buying. It will run games like a they're some kind of joke; it will simply mangle them. What's your budget like out of curiousity?

just missing that raptor

 

[ikickpigeons]

2000 usd, i know i wish i could get the raptor, but if i did i wouldnt be able to get the best vid card. so i figured a super vid card would be better than a raptor hd

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: ikickpigeons
2000 usd, i know i wish i could get the raptor, but if i did i wouldnt be able to get the best vid card. so i figured a super vid card would be better than a raptor hd

Raptors are overrated. You're not missing a thing. I have a 36GB one that I recently bought and I don't notice any difference between it and my 120GB SATA Maxtor drive.

 

[ikickpigeons]

i too thought so, but i also think that any 10,000 rpm hd is going to have some performance increase, right? Plus i figured a Serial ATA HD is going to be good enough for what i was doing.

 

[grubbster]

I bought a raptor, and i regret it.

I'm sure its faster than my other hard drives, but it's not noticable.

Way to expensive given its size.

IMO

 

[ikickpigeons]

holy $h!t i can already buy ddr2 memory on new egg already??? Wow i already had PCI-express sneak up on me now ddr2? Man i feel old. ( 14 years now lol)

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: ikickpigeons
i too thought so, but i also think that any 10,000 rpm hd is going to have some performance increase, right? Plus i figured a Serial ATA HD is going to be good enough for what i was doing.

Well yes, technically the Raptors are excellent drives, that's why I bought one. They have ~5ms seek times compared to ~9ms on a 7200rpm drive. For some reason I don't notice any difference in real-world usage though. I almost wish I had bought another 120GB drive and just RAID-0'd them.

You're very wise in skipping the Raptor so you can buy a 6800U. Then again, if you skip on the 6800U and get the GT, you could probably buy a Raptor with the money you'll save.

 

[ikickpigeons]

very true but i dont like the thought of risking to overclock a 400 gpu... bad thoughts

 

[SickBeast]

Overclocking a graphics card isn't actually very risky at all, unless you perform a volt-mod of course. Since you won't be increasing the voltage, there is very little chance that you could do any sort of damage to the card. The worst that could really happen would be your system would lock up until you found the right speed to run the card at.

You're right though, I typically don't like to overclock high-end stuff. The GT will perform admirably even at stock speeds though. It all depends on how *hardcore* a gamer you are. :beer:

 

[ikickpigeons]

once again very true but im a n00b computer builder. My sig computer will be my first

 

[SneakyStuff]

Hey, i'm only 16, better you do it at 14 than I did at 15, time doing something = knowledge

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: SneakyStuff
Hey, i'm only 16, better you do it at 14 than I did at 15, time doing something = knowledge

Yeah, I built my first computer when I was around 14 (P100), and now I'm a bit of a guru who gets paid to build and troubleshoot computers. It really is an excellent learning experience that will last you a lifetime and will open the door to becoming a hardware enthusiast.

 

[ikickpigeons]

yes plus im tired of dealing with dell and there horrible service and products

 

[blazerazor]

Ahhh, the future... .. the future is now. There are alot of changes going on right now. Unfortunately I think its more of a marketing thing than a 'we need to upgrade' thing. From what I hear we dont use all the bandwidth in agp8x, why PCI-E... aside dual cards or more bandwidth for controller cards. Must be nice to be getting that rig at 14! You must have rich parents. When I was 14 i was into consoles, nintendo and streetfighter took all my money. good luck. Ya, Dell sucks. Really, Id wait for BTX to be a reaility, ddr2 ram, intels answer to 64, Longhorn and mature pci-e graphic cards to hit the market before upgradeing.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: ikickpigeons
i too thought so, but i also think that any 10,000 rpm hd is going to have some performance increase, right? Plus i figured a Serial ATA HD is going to be good enough for what i was doing.

Well yes, technically the Raptors are excellent drives, that's why I bought one. They have ~5ms seek times compared to ~9ms on a 7200rpm drive. For some reason I don't notice any difference in real-world usage though. I almost wish I had bought another 120GB drive and just RAID-0'd them.

You're very wise in skipping the Raptor so you can buy a 6800U. Then again, if you skip on the 6800U and get the GT, you could probably buy a Raptor with the money you'll save.

Arent the raptor drives just converted SCSI 10,000 rpm drives?

 

[ikickpigeons]

raptors are serial ATA 10,000 rpm drives. Western digital doesnt make any scsi drives, atleast im nto aware of any.

 

[SneakyStuff]

DDRII? Intel's answer to the Athlon 64? That makes absolutely no sense blazerazor, DDRII has higher latency than regular DDR, and the Athlon 64 still crushes the Pentium 4, even with DDRII. I'd love to see you back that up with some facs

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: SneakyStuff
DDRII? Intel's answer to the Athlon 64? That makes absolutely no sense blazerazor, DDRII has higher latency than regular DDR, and the Athlon 64 still crushes the Pentium 4, even with DDRII. I'd love to see you back that up with some facs

Did you not read his post? He separated the DDR2 comment from "intel's answer to the A64" with a comma. That means he was talking about two totally seperate things.

DDR2 is proving to be very overclockable in the early stages, with people reporedly running it in excess of 633mhz. At that speed, timings/latency don't matter nearly as much.