Hi all,

I'm in the process of upgrading my PC and i've been wondering which of these two Graphics Cards to go for. If possible i'd like some advice or opinions of members on the forum - i will trust your judgement . If you register a vote please bear two things in mind:

1) These are AGP cards
2) I'd preferably like a reason why so i can separate those meaningful comments from those who just click anyone

The specifications are ss follows

ATI Radeon x800XL

Core Clock - 400MHz
Memory Clock - 980MHz
Memory Size - 256MB
Memory Interface - 256-bit GDDR3
Pipelines - 16


nVIDIA GeForce 6800GT

Core Clock - 350MHz
Memory Clock - 1000MHz
Memory Size - 256 MB
Memory Interface - 256-bit GDDR3
Pipelines - 16

The 6800GT supports the latest version of Shader Model so it could be better in the long run for games that support it.

Thanks A Bunch

Chris

go for the nVIDIA Geforce 6800GT? i got the 6200 at the moment and its good so its all good lol

i agree, go the 6800gt. apart from shader model 3, the 6x series is a very good series. great bang for your buck. plus nvidia has great driver support.

also the linux drivers for nvidia are a S@#T load better than the ati ones, so if you want to dabble a bit in linux...

i am really impressed with my 6600gt, did farcry at 1024x768 at veryhigh vid settings

I concur with my learned friends, I noticed nvidia has more game support than ati plus ati suxx and nvidia roxx

i'll be the voice of dissention.

i'd never buy an nvidia card again supposing someone paid me to.

ATI all the way baby.

Well Ati cards usually fair better in antiantilizing at high res and dont have a performance drop hardly compared to nvidia.

The drivers.

Nvidia - Usually good and supports all the range of geforce and gets updated often.

Ati - No idea but i presume the ati drivers released always have more problems with each release so ive heard so they update the drivers to fix what the old ones caused in the first place. I think the control panels are about the same tho i think ati have upto 6x aa where as nvidia has upto 8x aa.

Speed wise.

Nvidia 6800 cards are good. I myself have a new asus v9999 GE (6800 that can perform like a gt version). Cards bloody massive tho and requires 2 power connectors one molex from each 12v rail (rail as in 4 pin molex cable.) 8x Antiantilizing isnt perfected and is only best used rarly as i heard a few sites call it experimental. But 4x aa and 16x antistropic filtering, is great. Nvidia usually has lead in image quality too.

Ati - there good performers with AA used as you dont get a performance drop usually. The new GTO version at http://www.overclockers.co.uk are "guarenteed" to unlock to all 16 pipelines. "while stocks last" so if u want a bargain then if u know and want to unlock the extra pipelines to turn it into one of them uber cards then go that route.

Try reviews, forums, websites all about the range ur interested in. http://www.tomshardware.com has a good gfx card comparrison test usually.

So summary:

Nvidia -

1. Good image quality and reliable drivers usually and a new 6800 version card has just been released which might work good for u. Performance is top and is future proof with shader model 3. Has sophisticated cooling solutions and can sometimes take space of pci slot 1 (next to agp slot).

ATi -

Cheaper i think, drivers so so. Cards are physically smaller and dont need much power compared to 6800 series. "i think". Good AA ability. Works fine without massive cooling sollutions generally.

Now if you wanted there is a new motherboard that has both AGP and PCI - E slots. Its the latest AsRock motherboard. About £50 i think but it hardly has any pci slots and is smaller than the normal atx size. You could get one of these and get a cheap agp card and later upgrade to pci-E.

My recomendation would be nvidia. The 6800 cards are well built, will last you ages and have all the latest features of other cards. Drivers usually work for all games and updates often. Performance is great provided you have at least a decent cpu and ram combo. AMD 64 3000 or better or equivelent. With 1 gb ddr ram 400mhz speeds. Best in dual channel setup.


If your in the UK. Try these for good price finding.

kelkoo
pricerunner
dealtime
ebuyer
komplett
overclockers.co.uk
tekheads

are you sure you've got those descriptions the right way round skeeter?

nvidia drivers almost always suck, and their cards are the cheaper on a direct model comparison to the ati.

if performance matters, check out the numerous online comparisons between the two manufacturers. ati cards always seem to come out ahead.

ati is the amd to nvidia's intel as far as i'm concerned...

I don't know jack about these things (that's why I haven't voted), but when I look at the specs you provided they are about exactly the same apart from minor differences in the core and memory clock.

So if I were you, I'd find out how much the two cards cost and simply go for the least expensive one.

nVidia drivers are historically better than ATi's. They're levelling out a bit now though. I wouldn't buy an ATi card though, as they are truly poor when it comes to OpenGL performance, and as I require that most of the time, nVidia is the way to go. Although I would prefer a Quadro, I currently own a 6800GT. Good card.

I agree, I love my ATI

Thanks for all the superb feed back

btw, i run games at 1024x768 with all the settings maxed out

eh???

i don't get where this line of thought comes from. ATi cards ALWAYS seem to outperform their nVidia equivalents on benchmark reviews around the net - i spent hours reading heaps of them just a few months ago when I was looking for a new card.

e.g. http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/163/5 - and there are hundreds more of thos all over the net.

besides, don't forget the comparison here is between one of nVidias's top of the line cards, and an outdated ATi card by comparison. it'd be like comparing an AMD K6 processor to an Intel 3ghz P4. the current ATi card with same memory clock as the 6800 is the x850xt. the x800xl (or the x800 pro in some places) is the competitor to the 6600. let's not compare apples and oranges here, eh?

if you want my advice, don't even think about AGP. if you're mobo doesn't support PCI-E, then get one that does. there's no point buying a top of the line video card, and then limiting it because your mobo ain't up to scratch. there's a reason both nVidia and ATi didn't make their top cards for AGP after all.

after that, it comes down to budget. based on experience, and from reading reviews, i'll swear the nVidia cards are inferior when compared like for like. however, if your system is going to be good enough, it won't really matter that much as the 6800 is still a powerful card - albeit one that will be outdated sooner. so it all comes down to economics really. the nVidia card will be cheaper (hence why your price point has brought you to an older Ati card I'd assume), but more than likely will need to be upgraded sooner.

oh... and TBC, if you're like my mother, who was pestering me a few weeks ago about what new video card she should buy, and then picking out two top of the range cards when all she does is browse the net, read emails, annoy me on msn, and play solitaire, i think i might have to kill you...

edit: forgot a key word.

A meaningful comment from me would be to trust ATI coz they made the card that I use!

And for the record, i've never had a card from nVidia, so perhaps i'm biased?

You never had a nVidia card wow i think you are the first person i have met that hasnt tried one lol

i've got a 6800 go, its brilliant can handle anything thrown at it. however nvidia has be show to over optomise its cards leaving the aa lacking and the worst on the market.

however out of the two i would go gor the nvidia, but if ur going the up market u could always go for the 7800

game support for ati cards is much lower than nvidia and anything made by id software runs quicker on nvidia cards

plus someone said a ati x800xl was the competitor to the nvidia 6600gt, well the 6600gt is £90 and the x800xl is £180, so ati seem to be very expensive then, ya can only get the ati x700 pro for the same price as a 6600gt

Here's what i thought:

At first the X800XT was the competator to the 6600GT, but now it's the X800GT(O) - which is sometimes as good as the 6800GT. However the X800XL is faster than the X800GT(O).

I'm sorry I can't help you with this Because I dont now anything of this kind of hardware

What kind of Hardware is your forte?

I don't now much of hardware and software at all .......Everything is good (when you can play the best games)

Course, there's a difference to being able to run a great game looking $H!^ and it looking great

vid cards go through phases of greatness. with the ti4xxx series it was nvidia, then ati released the 9700 and 9800, and they were cleaning up, nvidia couldnt compete with its fx 5xxx series, then nvidia came up with the 6xxx series and sli, and are in control of the market at the moment. hopefully ati will come back at them, but they ARE behind atm.

and btw intel processors are good, its just if you want to be able to encode movies, while playing high-end games you buy an amd64.

Unless you're needing someting VERY specific you can't go wrong with either card. Most people won't notice a difference between the two.

The idea that ATI has poor driver support is outdated. My last two cards have been ATI and I highly recommend them. I don't believe I've ever used an nvidia card.

I also agree that if you're going to upgrade your video card you should consider upgrading your motherboard to support the latest PCI-E video card if you have the bucks. But, the difference between AGP and PCI-E won't be a big deal that most people won't notice. If it's a tight budget AGP will be fine.

I have had the 6800 GT for about six months. This card owns. Just make sure you have enough RAM to take advantage of this baby, especially in games like Battlefield 2. I recently upgraded from 1 gig to 2 gig of RAM and the difference is astounding.

~panic

what i know is that the last 1/2 years nVidea is really turning into the number1 in video cards. Sure ATI is fine, and i was (still am) always a loyal fan/buyer of them, but from what i hear is that the benchmarks and tests have showed us that nVidia cards are the most powerful. Yet i don't know how it is in this case... but i just love ATI.

P4s are actually better at DVD Encoding but AMD 64 rock at anything else. The new Radeon X1800XT is aparantly slightly better performance than the nVIDIA 7800GTX atm

i have a 6200 and i havnt found a game yet that it wont run lol got loads of course as well i have stuff like star wars battlefront 2 and elite force 2 so quite new games so a 6800 should hadle basicly any game how much you getting this stuff for chris?

Well if the bids don't go sky high i could have a fully revamped pc for £120

New CPU
New Graphics card
More RAM

lets hope the ebay gods are with you lol

but the key was to play a game, AND encode a movie at the same time

i will always buy a nvidia card because of linux support, ati has **** support for linux.