Buying Advice Wanted

[Freddie]

Hi, currently I am using a 9800 pro (128mb) and it is really starting to show its age in moden games. Now, at the moment I have £300 (GBP) to spend on a new video card (AGP) but I am not sure which one to get, I know that whichever one I get will need to last me a while. I have got it down to a Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT or an ATI X800 XT, however every review I look at seems to give better results as to which one will give me the most FPS. I would like to hear which card people would go for and what it is based off of, and also if things like DX 9c support and Shader 3 will make a lot of a differentce. Thanks for all of your help, oh and note well, I do not want an ati-vs-nvidia war, both cards are very good.

Thank you for any advice that you can give me.

[Vertical_Zer0]

Personally, I think you're better off keeping your 9800pro until you go A64 (or any new platform) and just get a PCI express card then. Your 9800pro is perfectly fine, trust me.

[Freddie]

It is not, the memory chips on it are bad, and thus will cause crashes in games about every 30 min. Yes, I have checked the ram, rma'ed the mobo and tried a different cpu. So, I am kinda forced to get a new card.

[Nandro]

I dont think you can go wrong with either, but having tried both I liked the 6800GT better.

[mrw8419]

I have the 6800gt and love it, but honestly you can't go wrong with either card.

Michael

[Grov]

Like the others have said, either card you will be happy with. Really depends on price, i imagine you can get the 6800GT cheaper.

[WildMonkey]

I would get the XT, if you ONLY plan to play doom3 (opengl) then yeah get the GT. Otherwise get the XT, they perform better overall.
On a side note I would wait until you can get a PCI-E board, and go with the x800 XL, they are going to be faster and more oc friendly than the x800 xt's.

[Freddie]

That was the plan, until I read about AMD and ddr2, so now I will get a new card then in 2006 will trash my current comp and start again so to speak.

[Freddie]

What do you think about the Gainward PowerPack! 2400 Golden Sample? For those that do not know it is a 6800 GT (double slot) which has a guarenteed overclock of past 6800 Ultra speeds, it is about £16 more than the XT. Anyone have one, google it for more info.

[Nandro]

That would be the best 6800GT to get in my opinion. I would have got one myself except you cant find gainwards anywhere in the USA that I know of. Nice choice. How much are they selling for?

[Freddie]

I am in the UK, and at scan (http://www.scan.co.uk) they are going for £316, a real steal if you ask me. Gainward is big in europe. Now, someone said something about ati's having better image quality, I have not used an nvidia since the gf3 (then i went to my 9800) so I can not really judge does anyone know anything about this?

[Nandro]

U had both a x800pro and my GT and any image difference was un noticable to me. I could see some differences if I went frame by frame through demo's but really its negligible in my opinion. The gainward looks to be a great card. I wish I could have got one.

[Darkstorm_13]

yea, grab the gainward if u can, although i think the XT overclocks pretty well, and is good also.

[Freddie]

Well, I have now been put of ATI a little bit, for a while I have suspected that it was punkbuster servers that seemed to give me the most problems, however I thought it was just random, despite bf1942 and farcry both crashing when I join pb servers. Then I read this article, http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4701.html which confirmed what I had thought. While the artivle states it has been fixed in 4.12 and higher I still have the problem and I am on 5.1's this makes me think that anouther ati card while it might fix most of my problems will still leave me with some :( I think that I might take the nvidia route this time.