Will The NV 6800 Ultra PCI-E be available (yes, to actually buy) anytime soon? <2-3 weeks?

[Rhin0]

hello everyone,

I hope this post is welcome here it is my first and one of probably about 10 i'll make in the next 30 mins. hehehe --> Ok so my question is... My friend and I are building two computers, going to be almost the same. We are going for high end gaming rigs and we both have around 2.5-3k to spend on them. He has decided on an Abit AV-8 with a Nvidia 6800 ultra AGP. I see no real reason to even bother with ATI's offering of the 800 since it looks substantially slower in all the gaming tests I have see. The only thing it has going for is that it smooths or shades a little better, which is nice but not enough to make up for the speed difference. He agrees with me. I can sit around and wait for ATI to come out with the next card that tops the Ultra. It would just be a cycle of us waiting waiting (everyone knows how it is and how it feels). I've done at least 12 hours research on all the new hardware, it is enough to scramble a mind I tell ya!

Will there be ANY benefit that I will be able to feel when playing if I wait for the same model and spec of card but in PCI-E instead? I know there is no advantage 8x vs 16x. The benchmarks and test I have seen show marginal performance increases if any.

We will be playing BF1942: Desert Combat, HL2, Vampire Bloodlines, HL2 spinoffs, and probably Doom spinoffs if there is ever anything decent off that hog.

Our real problem lies in the fact that no Abit NForce3 board is socket 939 and supports AGP. If there was a nforce 3 of 4 board with 939 socket and AGP we would just get that. Or if there was a 939 with PCI-E and the best card (NV 6800 Ultra) was out on PCI-E we could get that. I hope that makes sense. Thus the question about the wait time and such.

I am just trying to rule out the possibility we will be selling ourselves short by jumping on a Via chipset, NV6800 Ultra AGP and not waiting for PCI-E versions of great cards. But then again we both have also agreed that we have no interest in SLI and that AGP isn't really going anywhere anytime soon. Plus we concur that by the time we need to upgrade from a AGP 8x 6800 Ultra then it will be time to build another computer again.

We would like to stick with ABit but we will be forced to buy ASUS as a second choice for video cards I believe. We have had HORRIBLE experiences with PNY, Visiontek and that leads up far away from BFG, eVGA, Gainward etc. It is hard not to be biased when I saw my friend spend 1300 on video cards in 1 1/2 years (PNY took a dump (lost the return), Visiontek died (terrible business), replaced with ABIT OTES and it is great)

Thanks for any input,
Seth


BTW- We aren't interested in overclocking. I have OC'ed before back in the Celeron 300A days but due to the cost of components and warranty issues I am not going to mess with it. Maybe when the system starts showing some age i'd toy with it isn't important enough to influence my choice now.

 

[Astu222]

zipzoomfly has pci-e 6800GT's and Ultras

 

[Rhin0]

Thanks... I will take a look. I doubt they are in stock though. I'm not interested in the GT, no reason to even look at that in my case.

If in fact I can get a PCI-E ultra I may have to reconsider everything I am doing since Abit doesn't offer a socket 939 with PCI-E. ugh... I wish they just had an socket 939 nforce3 with AGP and PCI-E out!!!!!

I hate to use anything but Abit for a motherboard but I might be forced to look at Gigabyte. MSI is out of question. Asus would be second to the Abit

 

[Rhin0]

Dang, every video card they have is pretty much backordered LOL

The price on the 6800 Ultras is outrageous. We are going to have to man up and just pay for one though. I suppose if we have to we can get the ASUS gamers edition or something to shave 300 bucks. We really want and need the Ultra's though.

 

[Astu222]

cant you OC the 6800GT to an ultra?

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: Astu222
cant you OC the 6800GT to an ultra?

my GT goes BEYOND ultra 😀
i know what he wants, i had to make a PC for a friend like this. when you have the money to blow on it, you want the FASTEST stuff availible. PERIOD.
personally, i say to the both of you, wait a teeny-weeny bit if what you currently have isn't garbage (GF3 or 4, if you have an FX or a Radeon 9x00, wait) for H1/05, and get NV50, along with a nice Dual-Core Athlon FX to go with it. then thou shall have the fastest-eth things in existance, hehe. and Abit isn't as good as everyone hypes it up to be, i'd take my A7N8X-E Dlx over an NF7-S anyday

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: sheik124

Originally posted by: Astu222
cant you OC the 6800GT to an ultra?

my GT goes BEYOND ultra 😀
i know what he wants, i had to make a PC for a friend like this. when you have the money to blow on it, you want the FASTEST stuff availible. PERIOD.
personally, i say to the both of you, wait a teeny-weeny bit if what you currently have isn't garbage (GF3 or 4, if you have an FX or a Radeon 9x00, wait) for H1/05, and get NV50, along with a nice Dual-Core Athlon FX to go with it. then thou shall have the fastest-eth things in existance, hehe. and Abit isn't as good as everyone hypes it up to be, i'd take my A7N8X-E Dlx over an NF7-S anyday

But the 6800 Ultra smokes the ATI 800XT PE right? The only thing the ATI has going for it is that the picture is a little smoother? Nvidia can fix that with software updates...

I don't want to overclock anything, it is NEVER guaranteed to work and it is never guaranteed not to cause problems down the road. Plus it voids the warranty. So I want the fatest computer (within reason, IE NO SLI with two 800 dollar video cards) that will last me until I build my next in a couple of years. I don't have the "money to blow on it" so please don't make it sound like my lawyer daddy is buying me this. I took out a loan and i'll have to pay it back off in manual labor at work with a shovel, so it is hard earned.

I don't see Abit getting hyped anywhere. I tell you what I do see getting hyped and that is ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI. Experience with ASUS has been less than pleasant but I am going to give them a second try on a video card. I may even try the MSI neo2 plat nforce 3 board but I doubt it. Abit is tried and true and is just as the ASUS AV8 deluxe so might as well get the abit IMO. As far as the NF7 vs. ASUS offering I don't know anything about the ASUS board but I know the NF7 is nice we have built 3 computers with them, works good! Doubt you could tell a speed difference in any game.

It will be FOREVER until the NV50 and the dual cores come out. But yeah they will be SWEET and expensive too probably though.

I really can't wait. My computer I play on and play games on is a Abit BH-6, Celeron 300A overclocked to 500mhz, 256mb Mushkin PC100 ram, WD 10 gig IDE-33, MX400 sound card, Voodoo5 64mb that I borrowed (the ASUS TNT 16mb blew up).

Is that "garbage"?


How sweet will the NV50 be though? You think it will come out on AGP? PCI-E is just another thing to make more money I think lol, its working great too!

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Rhin0
But the 6800 Ultra smokes the ATI 800XT PE right? The only thing the ATI has going for it is that the picture is a little smoother? Nvidia can fix that with software updates...

I wouldn't say it "smokes" it. They're pretty close in most tests (some recent benches); the 6800U is (noticeably) faster in Doom3, but the X800XT(PE) beats it in Far Cry and may be faster in HL2. ATI has less of a performance hit from AA and AF (some of which is architectural; NVIDIA cannot just 'fix' all of it via drivers), although image quality between the NV40 and R400 chipsets seems very close. By any measure, both cards are really frickin' fast.

Above, you mentioned playing BF1942, and several games using the Source engine (HL2, Vampire:Bloodlines). I would think the X800XT would be a better choice than the 6800U for those particular games, though as noted, either will be so much faster than your current system that you probably wouldn't notice the slight differences. I just couldn't see paying the huge difference between the 6800GT and 6800U/X800XTPE for the fairly minor performance gains. But hey, it's your money...

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Rhin0
But the 6800 Ultra smokes the ATI 800XT PE right? The only thing the ATI has going for it is that the picture is a little smoother? Nvidia can fix that with software updates...

I wouldn't say it "smokes" it. They're pretty close in most tests (some recent benches); the 6800U is (noticeably) faster in Doom3, but the X800XT(PE) beats it in Far Cry and may be faster in HL2. ATI has less of a performance hit from AA and AF (some of which is architectural; NVIDIA cannot just 'fix' all of it via drivers), although image quality between the NV40 and R400 chipsets seems very close. By any measure, both cards are really frickin' fast.

I just couldn't see paying the huge difference between the 6800GT and 6800U/X800XTPE for the fairly minor performance gains. But hey, it's your money...

I won't even play Doom3 unless another game comes out with the doom3 engine that is good. Doom3 sucks pretty hard. Farcry was pretty terrible too I think. I am all about Desert Combat which doesn't need anything near a 6800U power but the main intensive game i'll be playing is Half-Life2, vampire bloodlines (HL2 engine). I guess i'll get to see a benchmark tomorrow hopefully when the game comes out, then I can decide I guess. I saw a set of pics that showed quality difference and the ATI looks a lot smoother on the edges and more blended.

I will take a second look at the 6800GT though and check out the price difference. Any links to test on the Ultra vs the GT? WHat is the peformance difference like? It is always 6800 vs 800 on the tests.


BTW- my computer now would die if I even tried to load HL2 or Doom3. Actually it would take half my hard drive haha. So any improvment is more than welcome

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Rhin0

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Rhin0
But the 6800 Ultra smokes the ATI 800XT PE right? The only thing the ATI has going for it is that the picture is a little smoother? Nvidia can fix that with software updates...

I wouldn't say it "smokes" it. They're pretty close in most tests (some recent benches); the 6800U is (noticeably) faster in Doom3, but the X800XT(PE) beats it in Far Cry and may be faster in HL2. ATI has less of a performance hit from AA and AF (some of which is architectural; NVIDIA cannot just 'fix' all of it via drivers), although image quality between the NV40 and R400 chipsets seems very close. By any measure, both cards are really frickin' fast.

I just couldn't see paying the huge difference between the 6800GT and 6800U/X800XTPE for the fairly minor performance gains. But hey, it's your money...

I saw a set of pics that showed quality difference and the ATI looks a lot smoother on the edges and more blended.

Link? They may have been comparing different AA modes. At comparable AA settings, IQ between the two architectures is pretty close. And actually, NVIDIA's 8xAA (4xMSAA + 2xSSAA) on the NV40 is better than anything the R400 can do (it can do 2x, 4x, and 6x MSAA only) -- but it cuts performance too drastically to use on anything but extremely old games (literally to 1/4th normal performance or worse).

I will take a second look at the 6800GT though and check out the price difference. Any links to test on the Ultra vs the GT? WHat is the peformance difference like? It is always 6800 vs 800 on the tests.

See the link in my last post (which you clearly didn't look at). There have been many, many, MANY benchmarks done by various hardware sites comparing all the new-generation video cards.

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Rhin0

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Rhin0
But the 6800 Ultra smokes the ATI 800XT PE right? The only thing the ATI has going for it is that the picture is a little smoother? Nvidia can fix that with software updates...

I wouldn't say it "smokes" it. They're pretty close in most tests (some recent benches); the 6800U is (noticeably) faster in Doom3, but the X800XT(PE) beats it in Far Cry and may be faster in HL2. ATI has less of a performance hit from AA and AF (some of which is architectural; NVIDIA cannot just 'fix' all of it via drivers), although image quality between the NV40 and R400 chipsets seems very close. By any measure, both cards are really frickin' fast.

I just couldn't see paying the huge difference between the 6800GT and 6800U/X800XTPE for the fairly minor performance gains. But hey, it's your money...

I saw a set of pics that showed quality difference and the ATI looks a lot smoother on the edges and more blended.

Link? They may have been comparing different AA modes. At comparable AA settings, IQ between the two architectures is pretty close. And actually, NVIDIA's 8xAA (4xMSAA + 2xSSAA) on the NV40 is better than anything the R400 can do (it can do 2x, 4x, and 6x MSAA only) -- but it cuts performance too drastically to use on anything but extremely old games (literally to 1/4th normal performance or worse).

I will take a second look at the 6800GT though and check out the price difference. Any links to test on the Ultra vs the GT? WHat is the peformance difference like? It is always 6800 vs 800 on the tests.

See the link in my last post (which you clearly didn't look at). There have been many, many, MANY benchmarks done by various hardware sites comparing all the new-generation video cards.

I looked at your "some recent benches" link. I must have missed something. You have to understand I have read every review on the internet about 10x now just tryin to get all the info I can. Yeah I looked at all those tests but it was after I typed the reply I think, heck I don't even know. I'll see if I can find the pics that supposedly "showed" that the 800 picture was that much better than the 6800 Ultra.

As for the 6800GT I just checked out a review on Tom's hardware I found with Yahoo and the GT seriously is REALLY close to the Ultra. In most games you probably couldn't even tell the difference if you didn't know what was in the machine. That is something for me to think about. The GT was so close to the Ultra in most stuff it doesn't justify the price then again in some games the 800 was ahead.

I was really impressed by the 800's performance over the 6800 Ultra in battlefield Vietnam, it was pretty far ahead. That game sucks but it is like Desert Combat and Desert combat is probably even more intensive.

 

[dklingen]

What CPU are you intending to buy?

Also if you go with the ASUS video series, take a close look because core/memory configurations are not the same as other 6800 series cards. Why wouldn't you go with BFG? They are sold overclocked and have a lifetime warranty.

As for the 939 motherboard, Anandtech chose the MSI Neo2 Platinum as the board of choice. However, I am an ASUS fan because I like the way their updates work within windows (bios, drivers, ...). The old dos boot disk thing is a joke for updating the BIOS.

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: dklingen
What CPU are you intending to buy?

Also if you go with the ASUS video series, take a close look because core/memory configurations are not the same as other 6800 series cards. Why wouldn't you go with BFG? They are sold overclocked and have a lifetime warranty.

As for the 939 motherboard, Anandtech chose the MSI Neo2 Platinum as the board of choice. However, I am an ASUS fan because I like the way their updates work within windows (bios, drivers, ...). The old dos boot disk thing is a joke for updating the BIOS.

dk,

I am buying an FX-55. I know the Neo2 plat got the gold award. It was really well recieved, big time. The AV8 from Abit got a silver. All I have ever used is Abit and my friend has been using Abit solely since he had trouble with 3 ASUS mobos. We have had no trouble at all. I am starting to get an itch to mix it up and try the MSI or maybe even ASUS again. I'm not really afraid of problem with the ASUS like I am the MSI but the quality seems to be good enough? Yeah the disk thing is a joke that is for sure. My Abit is like that, they should all be getting away from that.

If you go back and look at the tests the Abit AV8 is just as fast if not faster in all the tests. To me that is kind of dissapointing because I had expected a little more performance gains in games because of the nvidia chipset.

On the topic of the video card, I checked the Asus cards reviews and it comes out just as fast pretty much as any other Ultra on the market. The ASUS Ultra is:

Engine Clock 425MHz
Memory Clock 1.1GHzHz(550MHz DDR)
RAMDAC 400MHz


The GT is a good bit slower:
Engine Clock 350MHz
Memory Clock 700 MHz(350MHz DDR)
RAMDAC 400MHz


Thanks for the heads up.

I really appreicate all your guys input. It is helping me keep an open mind. I just hope I make the right choice. It is so hard to pick because you are always wondering if you did the right thing. But in the end it doesn't matter what you pick as long as it is faster than what you had; the fact of the matter is that 3 days after you put your comp together something 15% faster will come out... IT SUCKS!!! heh

 

[Rhin0]

Well I think you guys just about have me talked into buying a BFG card.

So here tell me... Should I even look at a Gainward then? We are talking about the Ultra here

Abit- doesn't make one
ASUS- makes a nice one but expensive
BFG- makes a good one and just as fast and a lot cheaper
Gainward- ???

 

[dklingen]

Rhin0,

With an FX-55 and any 68xx you should be set for quite some time. I just don't see any great games on the horizon once HL2 comes out tomorrow. Even something "revolutionary" does come out, it will probably use the Doom3, Far Cry, or the HL2 engine (as you mentioned above). The unknown is the UT2004 engine...

I do not have any experience with Gainward. I bought a BFG 6800 OC (wasn't impressed) vs my 9700Pro (as far as "huge performance difference"). So, I bought a BFG 6800GT OC and will be installing and testing it soon. My delima is, do I want to wait for PCIe and SLI (as in buy one PCIe 6800GT now and then buy a second one when my system needs to be faster = 70% FPS boost).

The interesting thing on the CPU side is we are probably close to the top frequency for single core processors and I don't see dual core doing anything for gaming performance for quite some time.

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: dklingen
Rhin0,

With an FX-55 and any 68xx you should be set for quite some time. I just don't see any great games on the horizon once HL2 comes out tomorrow. Even something "revolutionary" does come out, it will probably use the Doom3, Far Cry, or the HL2 engine (as you mentioned above). The unknown is the UT2004 engine...

I do not have any experience with Gainward. I bought a BFG 6800 OC (wasn't impressed) vs my 9700Pro (as far as "huge performance difference"). So, I bought a BFG 6800GT OC and will be installing and testing it soon. My delima is, do I want to wait for PCIe and SLI (as in buy one PCIe 6800GT now and then buy a second one when my system needs to be faster = 70% FPS boost).

The interesting thing on the CPU side is we are probably close to the top frequency for single core processors and I don't see dual core doing anything for gaming performance for quite some time.

hey man check out this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...2442&amp;enterthread=y



see what everyone else thinks. me personally I feel confused and I know it might sound funny but somewhat sick to my stomach because I don't know what to do. I mean I can sit around with no computer forever waiting for the next big thing to come out, there is also advancements and they always happen right after you buy your new system. That is just the way it is... I just don't have the money for SLI, that 70-80% boost is amazing but $$$. But the thing that makes me think that SLI is important is seeing that Doom3 can bog down and FX-55 with the fastest video card out. THAT IS INSANE. Actually that is probably poor programming to some extent. Have to see how half-life 2 turns out, I have high expectations for it and its source engine. But like I have said when I computer starts showing its age and the hardware that is out of date now is not sufficient well its time ot build another whole new computer again, then I can pick up SLI if I need it. Plus all the bugs will be worked out, that is to say if it even makes it!

PLEASE install that BFG card and let me know what you think of it. It is at least 50-100 dollars cheaper than the ASUS card 6800 Ultra or 6800Ultra Deluxe, it is also cheaper than the ASUS GT model


The ATI x800XT-PE card looks awesome with that evil looking minotaur thing on it though!!!1

 

[dklingen]

Here is my plan:
Buy HL2 tomorrow and run tests on my 9700Pro. If HL2 plays great at 1024x768 4aa/8af high detail (>30fps), I will probably not open the AGP BFG 6800GT and take it back to Best Buy. I will then wait for AMD PCIe; buy a PCIe MB (it doesn't have to be SLI because I can always replace the MB later) and PCIe video card (6800GT).

This unfortunately is a major transistion point in the computer industry. Do you buy the cassette tape or the CD...

 

[Rhin0]

Originally posted by: dklingen
Here is my plan:
Buy HL2 tomorrow and run tests on my 9700Pro. If HL2 plays great at 1024x768 4aa/8af high detail (>30fps), I will probably not open the AGP BFG 6800GT and take it back to Best Buy. I will then wait for AMD PCIe; buy a PCIe MB (it doesn't have to be SLI because I can always replace the MB later) and PCIe video card (6800GT).

This unfortunately is a major transistion point in the computer industry. Do you buy the cassette tape or the CD...

So true about the CD or cassete thing! HAHA...

I have a question for you, why would you take back the AGP BFG 6800GT, replace a mobo with a PCI-E mobo, and buy a PCI-E 6800GT? I don't think there would be any benefit at all. I mean it would be marginal if any.