What's the better buy ?

[danklumpp]

First of all, let me point this out: I am building and reselling computers locally, so people aren't going to know the difference of PCI-Express comapared to AGP.

Now that we have that cleared up, which gives better performance as of right now: a PCI-Epress 6600 GT or an AGP 6800?

I will be using 939-pin mobos either way; an nForce3 Ultra or an nForce4. Both mobos are the same price.

 

[danklumpp]

I've heard it said that AGP doesn't even use the full bandwidth yet, so PCI-Express won't be that much faster, right? Also, the AGP 6800 has 700 MHz on the memory, which is pretty good.

 

[BionicSniper]

6800

the agp 6600gt will be slower because there is a chip that has to convert the pci-e to agp (it wont be humanly noticable)
the 6800 will own the 6600gt

 

[kylebisme]

Watch out for compatablity issues with nforce3 250 motherboards and Geforce 6800gts. Just do a Google search for the hardware combo along with the terms "freezing" or "stuttering" if you want more info.

 

[hans030390]

6800 vanilla is about equal to a 6600gt. BUT, since i believe you said you have AGP, you have a good chance at unlocking 4 pipelines and a vertex shader (or two? i dunno) and then OCing it, which would then kill a 6600gt.

so just get a 6800.

 

[kylebisme]

There is only one extra vertex shader to unlock on a 6800. Besides, unlocking cards to sell them off in systems s kinda asking for trouble, I wouldn't recomend bothering with that.

 

[danklumpp]

If you think that's asking for trouble, look on newegg.com. Asus and XFX have simply unlocked a 6800 AGP and are calling it a 6800 GT with 700 MHz as the core!

 

[kylebisme]

I'm guessing you mean 700mhz on the memory. I'd kill for a 700mhz core.

As for the cards, if you are building the computers for serious gamers then the 6800s might suit them better, but otherwise I'd go for upgradeablity with a PCI-e system.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
There is only one extra vertex shader to unlock on a 6800. Besides, unlocking cards to sell them off in systems s kinda asking for trouble, I wouldn't recomend bothering with that.

Oh, yeah i didn't read that part. My bad!

Still, a 6800 would be better. If those people know how to unlock cards, then they could do that.

 

[TTLKurtis]

Originally posted by: danklumpp
First of all, let me point this out: I am building and reselling computers locally, so people aren't going to know the difference of PCI-Express comapared to AGP.

Now that we have that cleared up, which gives better performance as of right now: a PCI-Epress 6600 GT or an AGP 6800?

I will be using 939-pin mobos either way; an nForce3 Ultra or an nForce4. Both mobos are the same price.

PCI-E won't have any influence on performance, so the 6800 is going to be the faster card. for the purpose of upgradability though, I would say go with PCI-Express. by the time they decide they want to upgrade, they'll likely have a hard time finding an AGP card

 

[kurt454]

6800.

 

[Pete]

Same price? Sell them PCIe. They trade a little speed for a much easier upgrade path. Tell them to come back to you for a dual-core A64-X2, a faster GPU, and more RAM down the line.

 

[SonicIce]

the better buy

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Pete
Same price? Sell them PCIe. They trade a little speed for a much easier upgrade path. Tell them to come back to you for a dual-core A64-X2, a faster GPU, and more RAM down the line.

Seconded.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
the better buy

You're gonna confuse people with that, dude.