The NVIDIA 6800 GS Closer Look: EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, and Evertop
by Josh Venning on January 27, 2006 8:53 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
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All the SM3.0 options were enabled to test the 6800 GS, so the numbers aren't directly comparable to the X800 GTO. We see that performance of the ATI part is higher than the NVIDIA card, but image quality of the game running on SM3.0 hardware is vastly improved. You do get a trade-off, but if you want the eye candy, the 6800 GS is the way to go in the mid-range.
All the SM3.0 options were enabled to test the 6800 GS, so the numbers aren't directly comparable to the X800 GTO. We see that performance of the ATI part is higher than the NVIDIA card, but image quality of the game running on SM3.0 hardware is vastly improved. You do get a trade-off, but if you want the eye candy, the 6800 GS is the way to go in the mid-range.
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bob661 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
I don't see why anyone would still be buying an AGP card when the prices differences between AGP and PCIe are negligible. And why buy a card like the 6800GS for an older board when the video is going to be bottlenecked by the old CPU?superkdogg - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
Bob, umm, I don't know how to tell you this, but any Athlon64 socket 939 has AGP motherboards available for it. Bottlenecked by "old" CPU's..... And the price differences are more than negligible. PCI-e is significantly cheaper, actually.The problem is that for Intel users, most will need new memory and everybody will need a new motherboard.
Spacecomber - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
I'm running a 6800GT with an Athlon XP clocked at 2.3GHz, and they are a good match for each other. Why should I upgrade a whole system when a better video card is enough to let me keep up with my gaming needs (mostly BF2 these days). The 6800GS is priced about right and the performance is about right for use in systems with the rough equivalent of a Pentium 3.0 GHz processor. And, the range of AGP cards still available is getting narrower; so, the interest in those that are still being made is sharper.Spacecomber - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
I didn't really find benchmarks that just compared 6800GS cards to other 6800GS cards that helpful. As a buyer I'm going to probably pick the 6800GS card that is selling for the best price or has the best warranty or some other such feature, if I decide that a 6800GS is the right card for me. In order to do that, I need to see how this card compares to the competition, both from other nvidia cards and from ATI's cards.Ideally, these comparisons should also include SLI tests. Does the lack of pipelines come into play when running in SLI mode or not, compared to a 6800GT, for example?
When you write these reviews, you guys need to be asking yourselves the questions that a Anandtech readers, as consumers, will be asking.
nullpointerus - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
Didn't the previous 6800 GS article do just what you wanted? I think I even picked the 6800 GS based on that article.Hacp - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
How about showing the results of an overclocked gto? These things overclock pretty well, and should get to x850 pro speeds.