P4 2.5/400 w1GB RDRAM - GF4 Ti4600 vs. 6800GT

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 04:38:33 GMT, "Larry L."
wrote:

If you allow me to say so, I think the difference between 400fsb and 533
is
noticable, but not to a very disturbing amount. Given that your 2.5/400 is
indeed a bit a setback why not go for a regular 6800, would match good
these
2, and save you quite some $$.


The GT seems to be the sweet spot -- $100 difference, but with a few fairly
substantial improvements like DDR3, twice the memory, etc. I figure that
this will give me a little more longevity overall -- i.e. the card could be
put in a MUCH faster system without becoming a bottleneck. The only
"gotcha" in this is if PCI-E gets popular REALLY fast, in which case the new
motherboard couldn't take an AGP card. I don't think this will happen as
fast as others think, however, given that the AGP slot is nowhere near being
a bottleneck yet -- i.e. how much "push" will there be for PCI-E graphics
cards given that the performance won't be effected by the current
generations of cards? Assuming my next system is still an AGP system, the
GT will be plenty powerful for a while still.

Your assessment is spot-on. I considered the vanilla 6800 as well,
but the extra $100 gets you twice the card, and for me that made it a
no-brainer.

And in answer to your other question, I doubt there's much difference
at all between your 2.4 and my 2.53. It would be so close that only a
benchmark would be able to point out any differences.

PCI-E is Intel's vision of the future. It will probably be a while
before AMD/VIA jump off that bridge, and given the stellar performance
of the newer AMD chips, I might make that my next upgrade anyway.