X800 or 6800?

[Sicloan]

I recently found myself at a huge dilema. I am looking at high end graphics cards becuase the price recently went down, and i have some cash in my pockets. I want to know what you guys think is better, and WHY!!!

I will be playing high end games, half life 2, doom3 (already have it omg its so awsome!!!!!), farcry if i get it, and some others.

So which is better and why:

Radeon x800 (pro or xt.. i'll more than likely get pro)

Nvidia 6800

my budget is about $500

(love birthdays)

 

[Rock_on]

i tend to like Nvidia better but than again i know a few people that work for them. Alot of my friends have The Nvidia Geeforce 4 cards and they work beyond awesome. Im a little behind with my Geeforce 3 but even this works great.

 

[aphextwin]

lol they're all the same imo......

 

[Sly]

6800 will work better for doom 3 b/c of its shading abilties i belive

 

[Rhyotion]

Im Going to go with NV. Personally becuase they have pixel shader 3.0 it well be able to last a bit longer than the x800. Even though no game utilizes it yet it should last a bit longer because of that.

Im not sure if this is right but ive noticed that NV seems to run better with Intel based systems. (just experience)

I hope this helped.

 

[TheHybrid]

Yeah, Doom 3 will take alot of advantage of the 6800's Shading abilities while Unreal 3 (coming 2005) will be the first game to feature Shader Model 3.0 and Direct X 9.0c.

Half Life 2 (if it ever comes out) will take advantage of ATI's hardware. But from what i heard, the 6800 can put up about 60 fps average in it, not bad at all.

So yeah, for now the 6800 (whether it's nu, GT, or Ultra) will do you good.

 

[IceDevil9]

While both cards are excellent cards, like it's been pointed out before, the 6800 would be a better option if you're runnin' Doom 3 and interested in Unreal 3 (Which, if you've played 1 and/or 2, you will be).

My uncle has a 9700 Pro and he can run Farcry w/settings all at Very High and max resolution and now lsowdown, he doesn't have Doom 3 yet.

-Frank

 

[intel]

I'd take 2x 6800, you could hook up two 6800 nvidia gfx cards. Check this link.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/sli.html

 

[Sicloan]

That would be awsome, but the problem with that is that it would cost a bunch, and i dont have that kind of money. I think im going to go ahead and get the 6800gt . At $400 its a pretty good deal compared to the ATI side of things. The 6800gt is a huge step up from the 6800 becuase of its DDR3 memory, 1 ghz memory data rate, and 350 mhz cp (which i will probably OC).

The only thing i'm concerned about is cooling. I currenly have 6 case fans, 2 psu fans (500 watt psu) and a processor fan. I am thinking about getting water cooling, with a GPU block and a cpu block and possibly a Motherboard chip block. IT would dramatically decrease the noise output of all my fans, and deliver awsome performance increases.