Taking the plunge on 6800GT AGP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustR...=N82E16814130203&SortField=0&Pagesize=&Page=1

I'm going to go for the EVGA 6800GT AGP video card here today or tomorrow and was wondering on your thoughts on the card if anyone had any? I'm going to be playing WoW, Doom and fear on it soon and was looking to upgrade from the FX5200 128MB dinosaur I have now. But i've read a couple of reviews on it most postitive but some not entirely positive such as this:

Pros: first off new egg rocks,
sadly this card did not!

Cons: i also recieved one with only 8 pixel shaders enabled on what's suppose to be a 16 pixel shader card!!! Four vertex shaders are on out of six.Usually all six are enabled.


Pros: Good newegg response to RMA for this first time buyer.

Cons: Found out what was causing my low 3dMark05 scores(3400). Turns out I have only 8 pixel shaders enabled on what's suppose to be a 16 pixel shader card!!! Four vertex shaders are on out of six.Usually all six are enabled.

Other Thoughts: Hopefully this will not be a trend on this particular card. Will await new card and update.My understading is that this chip(NV40) is out of production. So how did eVGA get this item back into stock?


Anyone know anything about the pixel shaders? Can you turn on all 6 vertex shaders? These were from two different users but a majority of the reviews are positive just wondering about your thoughts? This is probably the last line of good AGP cards to come out and don't want to spend the insane money for an ultra or downgrade to a 6600GT. Anyone?

Also wondering people have told me that this doens't have PureVideo capabilities but most have said it does. This is a big purchase for me and I don't want to be unsatisfied if it isn't as good as it supposed to be. I got a response that this card the EVGA one was not really a GT but Newegg was shipping out LEs or GX's or something.

Someone recommended this one too:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122195

But the reviews on it are also mixed somewhat and issues dealing with it dying out of nowhere and artifacts and dealing with RMAs alot. Anyone provide any useful information or using it?

I dont know anything about that brand but my roommate has the BFG 6800GT AGP and ultra PCIe and both rock with very nice o/cing.

I personally after concidering investing in a new video card like the 6800GT/ultra I can to the conclusion after talking to a number of people its better to just build a whole new PCIe system rather than investing a few hundred in an outdated AGP setup.

Basically AGP has gone the way of the dinosaur so unless you plan on using your current AGP system for a few more years I'd probably consider what would be best. But my honest opinion if you're going to sink ~$300 in a video card you might as well build a new system with PCIe. I hear the performance of the cards is much better in them.

Weird, my eVGA 6800GT AGP runs fine, I got it over the summer. RivaTuner reads 16x1,6vp.

But then my 6800GT also yields low 3dMarks05 scores, around what you got. Was too lazy to rma because all the games ran at settings on what I expected it to be.

that 6800GT will eat your crap 5200 for lunch - but why not get the 256mb versions?

alo the GT will O/C to Ultra Speeds and BEYOND! mine did 420 / 1200 with a VGA silencer

AGP is more o less dead - with no new cards expected - the 6800 Line / ATI line was the last for it your not likely to see the 7800 o x1800 in AP.

BUT if you are not one to upgrade for year or so, then yes a 6800GT is your best investment.

Just ordered the card friday and its in transit already. Heard too many bad things about the leadtek. But I also picked up a 1 year replacement plan on it if that will do anything. Just want to have good reliability in my system and I hope the this card will in fact "eat" my 5200 alive. I cant wait to see the difference.

Also should I do a driver cleaner first and then install the video card, the software and then update the drivers from the nvidia website to latest? I DL'ed the latest drivers for my nvidia 5200 a few days before ordering this card.

Driver cleaner is always a great idea for whenever you install any new drivers. I didn't know what I was missing until I started using it a year ago. My windows load times improved and navigation in windoze improved too.

boot into safe mode - uninstall your drives and - reboot - windows - driver cleaner - reboot - new nvidia's

i safe boot into safe mode cause then the NVIDIA drives arent loaded, only the windows default ones.

I'll make sure to try that out. I found a site that has a driver cleaner program on it. Should I take the 5200 out first then put the 6800gt in and then do the driver cleaner program then install the new drivers? OR should I use driver cleaner first with the 5200 in it then take the 5200 out and put the 6800gt in there and install new drivers?

Just making sure I just don't want to jeapordize my WoW playing time. lol

Driver cleaner pro has the uninstall/reinstall instructions in the readme, follow their instructions and you should be good to go. Also what CPU/motherboard/RAM do you have? All of those contribute to your 3DMark score as well

AMD FX-53
Asus A8V Deluxe
2gig of PC3200 Memory Samsung

=)