Another which graphics card thread. This time agp for up to £100.

An online company i was dealing with refunded me saying what i wanted was out of stock then they sent it to me anyway. However hard i tried they wouldnt take my money back, so im keeping it. This means i have £100 spare for once and think it would be wise to replace my crippled 9700pro whcih gets worse all the time.

I dont game much but would like to be able to when in the mood. Also, as ageneral rule, i cant let myself put something new in my pc that isnt better than the compnent its replacing. I am using AGP still and will be for a year and a half to two years i supect. So this will have to last that long and still be useable.

My setup invloves a prescott clocked to 3.8ghz (similar in games to at least an a64 3200+ maybe? Anyone reckon anything different?) and my tft will be at 1280x1024, i also like AA and image quality. So id rather have a game on max quality at 40fps then lower at 60fps for example.

After my life story, i was thinking of something along the following lines:

B-grade 9800pro £59 (too late to get that nice £65 9800xt)
B-grade 6600gt £88
New 6800le £82 (id unlock it as much as possible)
B-grade 6800 £94 (id unlock this too if poss)

Any other ideas are welcome, cheaper the better, ill overlcock and unlock whatever i get as much as safely possible (though i wont link it into my watercooling system anytime soon) .

I'd go for a cheap 9800 Pro, and then get another card in the future. It's almost as good as a 6600GT, and cheaper.

I personally think that the b-grade 6800 wins if it's still available and works 100%, remember it was probably returned because it didnt unlock. But they overclock well and are by far the best cards for under £100 in my personal opinion.

I agree with Voodle. If it's @ 1280x1024 and with AA and max quality, I would think you would be better off with a 6800.

Also I personally find it hard to see a great deal of diffenece with AA and AF when at 1280x1024, but that may just be my old eyes.

I tend to notice jagged edges a lot, even at higher resolutions. But i dont notice anythign like flickering when the framerate drops unless its too low so image quality has priority.

Good point about the reason for return, i can still give it a go though. Do you think its worth the extra over a new 6800le then? Id imagine the processor would clock from 300 to 325 fairly easily and the pipes should go to 12, i would have thought. Its all about risks i suppose.

It's far superior to a 6800le which is about the same as a 6600gt, sounds like the best idea to me.

This should answer most of your questions

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...s-pcie-02.html

Get the 6800, seems to have about 10% on the 6600gt and would overclock even higher.

I suppose you could always get the new 6800le, try to soft mod it. If it doesn't work, send it back and get the b grade 6800. Not sure how happy the company would be with all that though and plus it sounds like a lot of hastle for you.

Id been using the toms hardware guide charts already for most of my decisions. I def wouldnt go for a 6600gt anyway. I think a smike suggests the 9800pro makes most sense, but i think i want to go bigger, better and newer.

So i think its between the 6800le and the 6800.

Well, I have a 6800LE (that I bought for another pc) which is one of the leadtek ones, softmodding them is a pretty big gamble, I've read of some that cant unlock any of the extra pipelines, but mine has gone up to 12x6 which is fairly good I think. Remember that soft modding isn't perfect, I've noticed that if I hibernate the pc and turn it back on, the card will go back to 8 pipes.
It overclocks nicely though, the 6800nu/le are more limited than the GT in their voltages and are usually set down at 1.1volts to keep them cool enough to be fitted with cheap coolers for oems, but the leadtek has a huge heatsink and so putting its voltage up to 1.4 volts hasnt been a problem (it did require some bios tweaking though) and the card now runs nicely at 425mhz core and 850mhz memory, which for a sub £100 card is very nice :)
heh, looks like you'll have equally impressive results since that 6800nu is a leadtek too

Yes im happy that they have those huge heatsinks, i hear they are quiet too, any comments?

If we assume the nu is stuck at 12x5 hence it being a b grade then i think id be inclined to take the risk with the le, as i have read most of them will reach 12x5.

Have you tried the batch method or just riva tuner?

I would say get the B-grade 6800 considering the quiet small increase in price compared to the 6800le. Try and unlock extra pipes and overclock, but At stock levels with no overclocking, the 6600gt would be a good choice.

Well, the vertex shaders almost always unlock so it's more likely you'd have 12x6 quite easily, which is still a gamble on the 6800le.
The fan on the leadtek is actually quite quiet, defintely tolerable compared to the standard 6800GT heatsink/fan.

I haven't tried or heard of the batch method, what's that? I've only just used rivatuner so far which is why I've had the hibernation problems :)

http://www.ocia.net/articles/6800/page4.shtml I dont know how it works, what the risks are, if its reversible etc etc Youll ahve to research but ive heard it can work if rivatuner doesnt.

hehe, thanks for getting me interested in messing about with this 6800LE equipped pc again :) I just got the card to recognise itself as a 12x6 card in the bios using one of rivatuner's patch scripts (NV40BIOSHWUnitsmaskeliminator) which allows the card to use the 12x6 configuration without having to load up rivatuner's nvstrap driver. although it did require re-modding and reflashing the bios of the card again, the benefits certainly seem to be worth it :D

Thats good to know, im starting to look forward to the fun of messing around with one myself.