X700, 9800Pro or X800GTO

[Raduque]

Hey everybody, I need a little bit of help choosing a new vidcard. Right now I have a 6800nu AGP that's acting bizarre. Since it's the second 6800nu AGP that's messed up on me, I've decided to go back to ATI (had a 9700pro that gave me no problems). But I need help choosing.

Should I get this x700, this 9800Pro, this X800GTO, or wait for this X800GT to come back in stock?

It's gotten so bad, I've contemplated going to a gf4mx in the mean time. Help me choose the best card. I plan on taking this card with me to an Asrock 939dual (the AGP/PCIE mobo) and upgrading to PCIE a bit later in the future.

Thanks!

 

[Captante]

Forget the X700 & the X800GT ... the 9800 Pro will outperform the X700 & is well worth $21 additional & the GTO is worth the $24 increase over the GT.

 

[Munky]

Both the x700 and the 9800p are a downgrade from a 6800, and a x800gt is more of a sidegrade. The gto will be faster, and if you Oc it, it will be a lot faster, so get the gto if you can.

 

[Captante]

Sorry, I really should have asked exactly what was wrong with your 6800nu before suggesting spending money on another GPU of any kind, because its entirely possible that the card itself isn't the problem at all & you'll have the same issues with its replacement.. what exactly is this "bizzarre" stuff its doing?

 

[imported_killuminati]

i suggest wasit a couple of days fro the 6800GS AGP .
x800GTO , even the X700Pro , and even the 9800Pro has no Shader Model 3.0 support .

maybe in some time x1600 series in AGP will come out .


Peace & ciao !!!

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: Captante
Sorry, I really should have asked exactly what was wrong with your 6800nu before suggesting spending money on another GPU of any kind, because its entirely possible that the card itself isn't the problem at all & you'll have the same issues with its replacement.. what exactly is this "bizzarre" stuff its doing?

Well, it's a bit odd. Most of the time, games run fine, just seems to be a little slow(Via chipset). However, certain games lock up completely within seconds. NFSU2 locks up about 5 seconds after a race starts only if the rearview mirror is on. Vampire Bloodlines locks up about 12 seconds into the intro. HL2 runs fine, FEAR runs fine in any res. The Movies locks up if I run it higher then 1024x768.

In 2d, after an uptime of a day or so, trying to watch a video clip of any kind causes 100% CPU usage and makes the computer pretty much useless, can barely move the mouse, till I can manage to kill the media player thread. Gotta reset to get video playability back.

This next one is MUCH harder to describe. You know that nView thing where it runs a resolution too high for the screen in a panning mode, and you move the mouse to "scroll" the screen around? Well, this is KIND of like that.... it seems to cut the screen into fourths, and then "stack" the 4ths under the top-left corner. However, the monitor still thinks it's in 1280x1024 screen rez, and the mouse pointer is still the right size. I have to use keyboard shortcuts to get the display properties and change the resolution to get it back to normal.

This happens on both my computers (granted, they are both KT600 chipsets, is there some kind of incompatibility I don't know of?), and they both have very good PSUs.

killuminati: Thanks for the reccomend, but like I said in my OP, I'm not interested in another nVidia card, much less another 6800. SM3.0 support (or, non-support in this case) is not a deal breaker for me.

 

[Captante]

The lockups & video problems both sound like driver issues... if your using an older Nvidia driver try upgrading to the latest non-beta listed on Nvidia's site (v81.98 I think) if you've upgraded drivers recently, make sure you fully removed the old ones ... also make sure you have the newest Via chipset driver (Hyperion) from www.viaarena.com ... you might also try setting your AGP slots to 4x instead of 8x, I had some problems with my old Asus KT-600 and my 6800GT that included lockups in some games until I tried that, performance was virtually unchanged but lockups went away.
Aside from those suggestions, the standard advice still applies, make sure the card is getting enough power & has effective cooling... if you have a cheap/weak PSU that would explain a lot .. otherwise you may just have a bad card & need a replacement like you said, try some more trouble-shooting before dropping the $'s though.

 

[Raduque]

I'm pretty sure it's not the PSU, I've got a Fortran 450w. I suppose I can try the new drivers, I'm running the 78somethings. I've also used RivaTuner to disable/enable various pipes and shaders, I think I had it down to 4 pipes/1 shader and it was still freezing. I'll also try the AGP slot settings, and the latest hyperion, too. I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Raduque]

OK, I don't know which, but between the 8198s and the new Hyperions, something was fixed. NFSU and Vampire Bloodlines don't freeze anymore, but I'll have to wait a while to see if I have any problems with videos. If not, I guess I don't need a new vidcard right now after all!