My experience with nVidia 6800 GT

I played Doom3 and Far Cry with an ATI AIW 9700 Pro and found both games
were quite playable. Of course I was eyeing the new generation of nVidia
and ATI cards.

I was ****ed at ATI because after paying close to 400 bucks for the AIW 9700
Pro with the intention of using the card in a TiVo type computer after I
retired it as a game playing video card, ATI abandoned support for the AIW
9700 with regard to their HTPC applications.

So now I am looking hard at the nVidia 6800 series. I made the plunge and
pick up the eVGA 6800 GT. I ran all the bench marks and was elated at the
improved scores on my AMD 2800+, one Gig of ram, a pair of 10,000 rpm drives
and a Sony F500 monitor.

After a clean install of WinXP I installed Doom3 and Far Cry and played the
games. I have to say that I can not tell much if any difference in the
actual game play between the ATI 9700 Pro or nVidia 6800 GT. Interestingly,
when Far Cry looked at my system and set the video image setting, apparently
it was not impressed with the 6800 GT as it set everything very low or maybe
it was the AMD Barton 2800+ that failed to impress. Even tweaking the
setting did not produce a WOW reaction from me.

I'd say if you are running something like or older than a nVidia 5200 or an
ATI 9200 then you will be pleased with the new video cards. I also believe
it takes a kick-ass computer to take full advantage of these new video
cards. An AMD 2800+ lacks the horse power.

"Slabster" wrote in message
news:cCl3d.70805$MQ5.32163@attbi_s52...

it takes a kick-ass computer to take full advantage of these new video
cards. An AMD 2800+ lacks the horse power.

Indeed, it might be your CPU holding you back. Perhaps an upgrade to a
3200+?

going from a GF4Ti 4200 to a 6800, i wasnt impressed either. i had far cry
running sweet and doom 3 had no problem even if the facial features were a
little strange looking.
i had read that HL2 was going to need a real high spec card so i purchased
the nvidia card (mate with ATI 9600 warned me away from one from ATI).
the graphics didnt look too impressive considering the power. the
benchmarks look good but the graphics dont look that much better.

Robin

"Slabster" wrote in message
news:cCl3d.70805$MQ5.32163@attbi_s52...
I played Doom3 and Far Cry with an ATI AIW 9700 Pro and found both games
were quite playable. Of course I was eyeing the new generation of nVidia
and ATI cards.

I was ****ed at ATI because after paying close to 400 bucks for the AIW
9700
Pro with the intention of using the card in a TiVo type computer after I
retired it as a game playing video card, ATI abandoned support for the AIW
9700 with regard to their HTPC applications.

So now I am looking hard at the nVidia 6800 series. I made the plunge and
pick up the eVGA 6800 GT. I ran all the bench marks and was elated at the
improved scores on my AMD 2800+, one Gig of ram, a pair of 10,000 rpm
drives
and a Sony F500 monitor.

After a clean install of WinXP I installed Doom3 and Far Cry and played
the
games. I have to say that I can not tell much if any difference in the
actual game play between the ATI 9700 Pro or nVidia 6800 GT.
Interestingly,
when Far Cry looked at my system and set the video image setting,
apparently
it was not impressed with the 6800 GT as it set everything very low or
maybe
it was the AMD Barton 2800+ that failed to impress. Even tweaking the
setting did not produce a WOW reaction from me.

I'd say if you are running something like or older than a nVidia 5200 or
an
ATI 9200 then you will be pleased with the new video cards. I also
believe
it takes a kick-ass computer to take full advantage of these new video
cards. An AMD 2800+ lacks the horse power.

I've noticed that all the games with auto-detect settings just look at the
raw speed of the CPU - so for example my XP2600 is detected as 2.07 Ghz, and
games like Far Cry and the new Medal of Honour set themselves up for this
speed. By looking at the config / install logs you can see the speeds
recorded. I guess this gives an advantage to Intel owners, but it is
suprising the auto-detect routine does not look at the CPUID and accept an
AMD cpu at it's 'performance' speed...

And your screen resolution ?


"Slabster" wrote in message news:cCl3d.70805$MQ5.32163@attbi_s52...
I played Doom3 and Far Cry with an ATI AIW 9700 Pro and found both games
were quite playable. Of course I was eyeing the new generation of nVidia
and ATI cards.

I was ****ed at ATI because after paying close to 400 bucks for the AIW 9700
Pro with the intention of using the card in a TiVo type computer after I
retired it as a game playing video card, ATI abandoned support for the AIW
9700 with regard to their HTPC applications.

So now I am looking hard at the nVidia 6800 series. I made the plunge and
pick up the eVGA 6800 GT. I ran all the bench marks and was elated at the
improved scores on my AMD 2800+, one Gig of ram, a pair of 10,000 rpm drives
and a Sony F500 monitor.

After a clean install of WinXP I installed Doom3 and Far Cry and played the
games. I have to say that I can not tell much if any difference in the
actual game play between the ATI 9700 Pro or nVidia 6800 GT. Interestingly,
when Far Cry looked at my system and set the video image setting, apparently
it was not impressed with the 6800 GT as it set everything very low or maybe
it was the AMD Barton 2800+ that failed to impress. Even tweaking the
setting did not produce a WOW reaction from me.

I'd say if you are running something like or older than a nVidia 5200 or an
ATI 9200 then you will be pleased with the new video cards. I also believe
it takes a kick-ass computer to take full advantage of these new video
cards. An AMD 2800+ lacks the horse power.

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:23:58 +0100, "Richard Dower"
wrote:


"Slabster" wrote in message
news:cCl3d.70805$MQ5.32163@attbi_s52...

it takes a kick-ass computer to take full advantage of these new video
cards. An AMD 2800+ lacks the horse power.

Indeed, it might be your CPU holding you back. Perhaps an upgrade to a
3200+?

I had a 2800+ running a 68000 oc and it definitely ran better than the
9800 pro I had in before it.

"Raymond" wrote in message
news:Nno3d.2055$Co1.1883@trnddc02...
And your screen resolution ?

Good point Raymond. As I recall I ran everything at 800 x 600 using the
9700 Pro and now using the 6800 GT both Doom3 and Far Cry are running at
1024 x 788. Interestingly, in Doom3 I am getting about 60 fps in the
timedemo using 640 x 480 at the low quality setting and the same 60 fps at
1024 x 768 using the high quality setting. This is with no AA or VS. Any
higher setting start hurting the fps. More evidence the CPU is holding back
this video card.

"Slabster" wrote in message
news:1Lr3d.469280$%_6.231958@attbi_s01...

"Raymond" wrote in message
news:Nno3d.2055$Co1.1883@trnddc02...
And your screen resolution ?

Good point Raymond. As I recall I ran everything at 800 x 600 using the
9700 Pro and now using the 6800 GT both Doom3 and Far Cry are running at
1024 x 788. Interestingly, in Doom3 I am getting about 60 fps in the
timedemo using 640 x 480 at the low quality setting and the same 60 fps at
1024 x 768 using the high quality setting. This is with no AA or VS. Any
higher setting start hurting the fps. More evidence the CPU is holding
back
this video card.



I upgraded from a 9700Pro and where I've really noticed a difference between
the 6800GT and the old 9700 was that I can now play my games at 1600X1200
with some AA and AF sprinkled in - my 9700Pro would start to choke at that
res with AA and AF applied. Of course it depends on the game too but the
6800GT handles 1600x1200 w/o any noticeable slowdowns on my end.

"Slabster" wrote in message
news:1Lr3d.469280$%_6.231958@attbi_s01...

"Raymond" wrote in message
news:Nno3d.2055$Co1.1883@trnddc02...
And your screen resolution ?

Good point Raymond. As I recall I ran everything at 800 x 600 using the
9700 Pro and now using the 6800 GT both Doom3 and Far Cry are running at
1024 x 788. Interestingly, in Doom3 I am getting about 60 fps in the
timedemo using 640 x 480 at the low quality setting and the same 60 fps at
1024 x 768 using the high quality setting. This is with no AA or VS. Any
higher setting start hurting the fps. More evidence the CPU is holding back
this video card.

That's not surprising. At 1024 and no AA, I suspect it's going to be
CPU limited even on a much faster processor. That is not necessarily a
bad thing in and of itself. It just means your video card is no longer a
bottleneck at those settings, which is good. The system is always going to be
limited by one thing or another. The real question is what have you've
gained, how much video bottleneck you've removed vs the 9700 pro,
and how much long longjevity you've added to the system vis-a-vis
upcoming games, and whether it's all been worth the cost and effort.
That's not easy to answer, but I would not have done
this upgrade for a 2800 Athlon with 9700 pro already installed.

I think DOOM 3 has a 60 fps cap.

Good point Raymond. As I recall I ran everything at 800 x 600 using the
9700 Pro and now using the 6800 GT both Doom3 and Far Cry are running at
1024 x 788. Interestingly, in Doom3 I am getting about 60 fps in the
timedemo using 640 x 480 at the low quality setting and the same 60 fps at
1024 x 768 using the high quality setting. This is with no AA or VS. Any
higher setting start hurting the fps. More evidence the CPU is holding
back
this video card.