6800gt to 6800 ultra - upgrade worth it?

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

Im thinking of trading in my eVGA 6800gt for the Ultra using the eVGA "Step up" deal. It will cost me @ $110 to trade. Ive been happy with the gt - no problems. Scores and IQ are great.

I typically use "Auto Overclock" feature in Coolbits as this gives me the highest bench scores (compared to manual o/c). Because I use this setting I dont know what the memory and gpu are set at, and thus its hard to compare to ultra speeds.

How much more perf will the u give over the gt - will it be worth the $$?

alinosa · Dec 2, 2004

the only real benefit to the ultra is the RAM and maybe dual DVI if you don't already have it. The mem on the gt's is 2.0 ns, where the ultra's are 1.6. This should give you theoretically more head room for o/c'ing. This is according the posts on this forum. If your card is doing great as it is, why pay out the extra cash for a that is marginally better? I'd say buy some aftermarket cooling for the card you have and go to town with it. (this is the reason i decided against a 6800 gt... My cpu will bottle neck it, so i decided on the 6600 GT and am using the extra cash to improve some cooling...

David · Dec 2, 2004

If everything works great just now, I see no need to upgrade. An overclocked 6800GT shouldnt really be that much slower than an Ultra. Not worth a great deal of money to upgrade unless you are unhappy with performance.

Miguita · Dec 2, 2004

The Ultra has 100 MHz higher memory speed than GT, but the Ultra's timings are looser. I've heard that a GT card OC'd to Ultra-speeds will actually outperform the Ultra because of this. Plus you can look into the possibility of flashing an edited BIOS. Personally I wouldn't have done this upgrade.

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

David said:
If everything works great just now, I see no need to upgrade. An overclocked 6800GT shouldnt really be that much slower than an Ultra. Not worth a great deal of money to upgrade unless you are unhappy with performance.

o/ced gt = stock u.

What about o/ced gt vs. o/ced u?

How well do the ultras o/c?

JeffP · Dec 2, 2004

cmitchellfly said:
o/ced gt = stock u.

What about o/ced gt vs. o/ced u?
How well do the ultras o/c?

A good ultra on watercooling should hit 500 to 525Mhz on the core. The memory shouldn't be a problem to go 1300Mhz. Your not going to hit either one of those numbers with a GT. If ~10% increase in performance is worth $110 to you then you have yourself a winner.

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

JeffP said:
A good ultra on watercooling should hit 500 to 525Mhz on the core. The memory shouldn't be a problem to go 1300Mhz. Your not going to hit either one of those numbers with a GT. If ~10% increase in performance is worth $110 to you then you have yourself a winner.

Nothing against H2O - but im on air.

So how high will the ultra go with O2? Specifically the eVGA since thats what I would have to get.

Aw shucks...I probably should stick with the gt. I would prob get lucky to a see 10% perf inc.

JeffP · Dec 2, 2004

cmitchellfly said:
So how high will the ultra go with O2? Specifically the eVGA since thats what I would have to get.

On air your not going to get much more then a GT honestly (maybe 30-40Mhz). Your going to run into thermal throttling issues going beyond that I can almost guarantee it. Your pushing more voltage to a Ultra then a GT which obviously is going to result in more heat.

>HyperlogiK< · Dec 2, 2004

You might also want to consider sofmodding (get riva tuner) or hard modding (can't remember the site offhand and i'm on my g/f's pc so pm me if you want it) the card to open up the extra pipelines, physically the gt & ultra cores are identical (just some pipelines disabled by software). There is no real risk with the softmod either + if the memory oc'd (and most will especially with extra cooling) ok the card would hit the 6800 ultra perf with no problems. It could be a way of getting an ultra upgrade for $100 less

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

>HyperlogiK< said:
You might also want to consider sofmodding (get riva tuner) or hard modding (can't remember the site offhand and i'm on my g/f's pc so pm me if you want it) the card to open up the extra pipelines, physically the gt & ultra cores are identical (just some pipelines disabled by software). There is no real risk with the softmod either + if the memory oc'd (and most will especially with extra cooling) ok the card would hit the 6800 ultra perf with no problems. It could be a way of getting an ultra upgrade for $100 less

If im not mistaken:

ultra - 16 pipes
gt - 16 pipes
non u - 12 pipes

The (main) difference between ultra and gt is 350/1.0 and 400/1.1.

In any case thanks Hyperlogik (and everyone). I will either stick with my gt and use coolbits (I know im a wimp) or get the ultra - most likely the former.

I appreciate all of the input - I still have not made up my mind.

patriot71 · Dec 2, 2004

On Air my 6800LE (basically an ultra) will do 450/1.2--ultra extreme speeds no problems with a modified bios. I just got this card and I feel like a kid at christmas time showing off his new toy!!!

Edit: btw

the difference between an Ultra bios and a GT bios is apprx 200 points in 3dmark03 @ 450/1.2 with the score favoring the GT bios.

Sentential · Dec 2, 2004

Look bro

If you are gonna do anything, simply flash your card to ultra via the 1.4v BIOS and upgrade your cooling. That should be more than enough.

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

patriot71 said:
On Air my 6800LE (basically an ultra) will do 450/1.2--ultra extreme speeds no problems with a modified bios. I just got this card and I feel like a kid at christmas time showing off his new toy!!!

Edit: btw

the difference between an Ultra bios and a GT bios is apprx 200 points in 3dmark03 @ 450/1.2 with the score favoring the GT bios.

I bet your happy with that - I would be to.

What is the LE and what are the stock mem/gpu and # of pipes? And I noticed its an eVGA which is what i have and would get.

Achilles17 · Dec 2, 2004

Also, I believe that you are only allowed one "step-up" per card. So if you steped up to the ultra, you couldnt then stepup the ultra to a PCI-E card. Therefore, I'd wait till you build another system, and get a PCI-E card instead.

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

Sentential said:
Look bro If you are gonna do anything, simply flash your card to ultra via the 1.4v BIOS and upgrade your cooling. That should be more than enough.

Yup...thats an option. I might look into it.

Thanks Sen.

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

Achilles17 said:
Also, I believe that you are only allowed one "step-up" per card. So if you steped up to the ultra, you couldnt then stepup the ultra to a PCI-E card. Therefore, I'd wait till you build another system, and get a PCI-E card instead.

Good thought.

However,

The Step-up deal is only good for 90 days from the date of purchase, and that date is only a couple weeks away :-/

. Otherwise I like the way you think

.

Also, PCI-E is NOT in my future - at least for the next year or so. I just dropped a big wad of dough in my current rig (which is prob all the more reason NOT to get the ultra).

patriot71 · Dec 2, 2004

cmitchellfly said:
I bet your happy with that - I would be to.

What is the LE and what are the stock mem/gpu and # of pipes? And I noticed its an eVGA which is what i have and would get.

Let me point you to this thread......

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=338050&highlight=6800

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-212&DEPA=1

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1413019

Basically the LE was a release only from eVGA of cards identical to Ultras in every which way. The boxes the cards shipped in said LE after the 6800, but the stickers could be peeled back and the word 'Ultra' was underneath. The cards were origionally clocked at 325/1.1 and and it is speculated these cards were clocked like that because they couldnt handle the 400/1.1 but I havnt really seen an issue where this is true. The majority of the cards also shipped with pipes of 16x1. The cards are classified as defective by eVGA but they sold them anyways and from what I hear I could upgrade to a 6800GT for $25 through their stepup program if I ever wanted to do so because they did sell the defective cards. The only problems I have really read about on these cards is only 1 dvi port works but I think that may have been resolved through some BIOS tweaks by a member in the anandtech.com forums.

Good luck finding one, I was lucky and found one in the [H] classifieds and I traded my BFG 6800GT. I am extremely satisfied with the deal.

bobmanfoo · Dec 2, 2004

will you guys stop calling the EVGA 6800 Limited Edition an LE? the 6800le is a crippled 6800nu with 8pipes, just use ltd ed or something, its going to confuse noobies out there...

i would not upgrade from a GT to an Ultra unless you're a hardcore OC junkie, not worth the 110$ for 3-5fps imho

NinjaTotok · Dec 2, 2004

upgrade to x850xt pe... its worth it... trust me... im bill gate's best friend

cmitchellfly · Dec 2, 2004

NinjaTotok said:
upgrade to x850xt pe... its worth it... trust me... im bill gate's best friend

Umm....lets see....yeah!....ok!!.

Ill just go drop another $600. Best idea yet - NOT.

6800gt to 6800 ultra - upgrade worth it?

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