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Hi,
I'm buying a new graphics card and have narrowed it down to these two. Matt D is selling an XFX 6800GT for £160 in FS&FT and Scan have the Sapphire X800GTO2 for £140. If I unlock the pipelines and overclock the GTO2, which card would be better?
Thanks
Neither, for that money, buy this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...CI_Series.html
A Powercolour X850XT for 158. It has gone up a little in price, it was £152, it's still awesome, and well worth 18quid more than a GT02.
Assuming you're on a PCIe board I'd agree with what Smokey says.
The x850 XT for under £160 looks to be a bargain. Performance wise its fairly close to the 6800 GT but generally above it, especially when you turn on AA and AF at high res. There is the odd benchmark where the 6800 GT gets close or even beats the x850 XT by a small margin but generally the ATI card is ahead and often by quite a margin.
Some x800 GTO2s (£138.59 Including VAT) or x800 GTO16s (£129.19 Including VAT) can be modded to be an x850 XT. You can enable all the pixel pipes in both cards but not all of them will be happy to run at x850 XT speeds unless you put a big heatsink on them (like the one that the x850 XT gets).
If you're AGP, the x800 GTOs can't be modded, 6800 GTs are more expensive and you can't actually get the x850 XT either. For around £160 you can get a x850 Pro AGP which is about the best (new) option, the 6800 GS AGP isn't as fast as a PCI version (which matches the 6800 GT on performance) and is more expensive than its PCIe brother too. Otherwise ebay and a 6800 GT AGP is about the best you can do.
u know? i would just shove anoter £40 for a cheapo 7800GT from microdirect..
speedier than anything in this list...
Sorry for not specifying. I have AGP and PCI-E slots but am going PCI-E for obvious reasons. I'd go for the X850XT, but I've had bad experiences with OcUK. I might save up a bit more money and go for a 7800GT like sawyen said.
Does anyone know when the 7900 cards are going to be released? If it's within the next couple of months, I might wait for them to arrive and then buy a 7800GT/X if they come down in price.
the 7900s should be officially announced somewhere in March or April... By then the 7800GT should be as cheap as dirt..
Both great cards. You can get a new 6800gt for about that price, or you can save money and get virtually identical performance with the 6800gs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sabriel
The ATI is faster for non-PS3 stuff, and most game devs code for the ATI PS2 anyway. But if you're dead set on PS3 I'd go for the 6800gt.
Otherwise I'd have to recommend the ATI until NVidia sort their drivers out.
I would definately recommend the x850xt over the 6800gt. An x850xt is comparable to a 6800 ultra rather an a gt.
However I'd recommend a 7800gt over an x850xt as the 7800gt is more modern and just that bit faster to make it worthwhile.
<rant>
but you can easily oc the 6800 gt to an ultra, the optimum clocks for mine, according to coolbits are 430 and 1120 that is more than the ultra, we are not comparing the 6800 gt to an x850 xt but a 6800 gt to an overclocked and modded x800gto2 i you want to l out the x800 mod that is fine but remember ht the 6800 oc too
</rant>
the 6800 is a good card and now that both ati and nvidia have sm3 cards game developers will be more likely to skip sm2, just coding for sm1.1 and sm3
so in the long run, while not as blazingly fast, the 6800 may be better.
just my 2p worth
I would wait till you can get the 7800GT. you can pick it up at microdirect for 190 including postage and it comes with CoD2, which is worth £25 on it own... rest of the bundle is okay (project snowblind being the most notable) and mine was clocked above reference speeds on the chip (stock on the memory)
Nah, the X850XT is faster than a 6800Ultra.Quote:
Originally Posted by user1453
Your choice about how much you wanna spend at the end of the day.
^ is correct. I got an x850xt for my bro for £146 from OcUK. Didn't want to buy it from there but it was a bargain. Went from stock 520/540 to 575/600.