Choices choices choices........

.... and none of them is a clear winner. My 9800Pro died on me so I was left
scrambling for a replacement
video card on the weekend. It puts me in a dilemna because right now I have
a P4 2.8ghz with AGP bus.
I was not planning on a system upgrade for a while yet, but I don't want to
buy an AGP card that I cannot use
in the next system I buy. I'm also torn between sticking with ATI or going
with Nvidia because there's good
and bad points to each. So I bought a 6800GT on the weekend with the option
to return it if I don't like it.
For $30 more, I can get an X850 XT (not PE) which is faster, but lacks 3.0
shaders. Yeah I know they say 2.0b
is almost as good, but I think 3.0 is where the safe money is. Then I have
to think about do I want to spend
almost $600Cdn on a video card when the PC gaming market has seen better
days (losing a lot of ground to
console gaming). Then there's also the fact that while some cards are
faster than others, at what point does a
person draw the line? If my HL2 game plays at 60fps, does it really get
better at 100fps?

My choices:

Keep the 6800GT
Return 6800GT and buy the 850XT or save a bit and go with the 800XL.

If games are going to start supporting more HDR, are the ATI cards going to
suffer because they don't
have shader 3 support? Is Valve delaying the HDR ATI levels to give ATI
time to come out with their
next product? It probably would not be a good thing for the 'ATI Levels' to
come out and run alot
faster on the newly released 7800GTX compared to the hardware they were
named for. Hey this is just
speculation on my part.

I guess the bus type is my primary concern, but also the shader support.
Opinions?

--


Rob

"Rob G" wrote in message
...
... and none of them is a clear winner. My 9800Pro died on me so I was
left scrambling for a replacement
video card on the weekend. It puts me in a dilemna because right now I
have a P4 2.8ghz with AGP bus.
I was not planning on a system upgrade for a while yet, but I don't want
to buy an AGP card that I cannot use
in the next system I buy. I'm also torn between sticking with ATI or
going with Nvidia because there's good
and bad points to each. So I bought a 6800GT on the weekend with the
option to return it if I don't like it.
For $30 more, I can get an X850 XT (not PE) which is faster, but lacks 3.0
shaders. Yeah I know they say 2.0b
is almost as good, but I think 3.0 is where the safe money is. Then I
have to think about do I want to spend
almost $600Cdn on a video card when the PC gaming market has seen better
days (losing a lot of ground to
console gaming). Then there's also the fact that while some cards are
faster than others, at what point does a
person draw the line? If my HL2 game plays at 60fps, does it really get
better at 100fps?

My choices:

Keep the 6800GT
Return 6800GT and buy the 850XT or save a bit and go with the 800XL.

If games are going to start supporting more HDR, are the ATI cards going
to suffer because they don't
have shader 3 support? Is Valve delaying the HDR ATI levels to give ATI
time to come out with their
next product? It probably would not be a good thing for the 'ATI Levels'
to come out and run alot
faster on the newly released 7800GTX compared to the hardware they were
named for. Hey this is just
speculation on my part.

I guess the bus type is my primary concern, but also the shader support.
Opinions?

--


Rob



Just a personal opinion - If you were happy with the 9800 Pro then buy
another - cheapest option. However I'd go for the X800XL AGP which is
plenty fast enough for current games (and probably for all that will be
released over the next year or so) and will be saleable when you do upgrade.
Buying one myself soon - a little like you I dont want to upgrade everything
for at least a year (XP2800, 1GB PC3200, NF7-S" etc) and I think this will
see me through until I do. I 'guess' this will also do HDR but if it
doesn't then I'm not going to be too disppointed - I can wait

The 9800 Pro would be investing money in dead tech: basically throwing your
money away. I'd stick with the 6800Gt personally, the X800xl is faster in a
few benchs, but then again the 6800Gt is faster in others. IOW, it wouldn't
be worth it to dump a 6800gt and get a x800xl.

--
there is no .sig
"Shawk" wrote in message
...


Just a personal opinion - If you were happy with the 9800 Pro then buy
another - cheapest option. However I'd go for the X800XL AGP which is
plenty fast enough for current games (and probably for all that will be
released over the next year or so) and will be saleable when you do
upgrade. Buying one myself soon - a little like you I dont want to upgrade
everything for at least a year (XP2800, 1GB PC3200, NF7-S" etc) and I
think this will see me through until I do. I 'guess' this will also do
HDR but if it doesn't then I'm not going to be too disppointed - I can
wait