Hey I'm in the process of building up a new system, the specs are as follows: Athlon64 3000+ ABIT KV8-PRO A64 motherboard 1 gig Kingston PC2700 (from my old system) Audigy 2 ZS 120gb Western Digital 8mb cache and a 6800GT My dilemma is which brand of 6800GT is the best for overclocking, features, etc. Plus will my new pc bottleneck it much? What do you recommend I change? The only thing i won't change is the ram because i will be stretching my money already getting the 6800GT. Thanks Shadow27
hiya I,ve just purchased an MSI NX6800GT and am finding it an awesome card stable as,and runs fine with my athlonXP 2800+ it overclocks very well so far i,ve got it up to 425core and 1140mem. The games that were included are prince of persia,XIII,Uru + 14 demos and a few utilities + msi,s overclocking software which works very well.Anyone would be happy with this package Good luck on the brand u go with and enjoy heres a few pics of the card and box http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v377/zimz/Picture005.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v377/zimz/d316a66c.jpg
I change mobos more often than anything else and I would go with nForce3 instead of Via... http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2198
'The Gainward 6800GT GS w. 2.0ns Ram, should be the fastest out there. http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gw6800gt&page=1 The original fans are a little noisy, so Ill recommend water-cooloing or make a mod to it: http://www.tweakup.dk/HTML/casemods/mod.php?id=1264 But you will need som fans that move more air, Papst 19db is to slow.
Get the Galaxy Galcier GT version, provided you arent in the USA (not available there, yet). Its probably the coolest and has fast memory. So it will overclock very nicely. Also, look at the card, especially the cooling on the GT models, rather than the fancy package it comes with Your PC is the right spec for the card really, unless you have major funding for an FX-53!!!! Your ram is definately gonna bottleneck your cpu and your gpu though, but hey, its still gonna be a good rig
I would say get the Gainward Golden Sample 6800GT, it has a good cooling solution and the fastest ram a GT card can have at 2.0ns. Also note that just because other people can clock their card to 425 core speed doe snot mean you will. I have seen several threads now of disappointed people who thought their overclocks should match what others get. It depends on a number of factors, but most importantly is that no two cores are the same. Each can and will act differently.
I agree with s_kinton, the Galaxy 6800 range have massive artic coolers, you loose a PCI slot, but hell boy do they overclock!
Avoid Galaxy Glaciers! Avoid Galaxy Glaciers! Bought one the other week and failed miserably when I tried to reinstall XP. Kept BSODing @ different stages sometimes even allowing XP to install then failing a few mins/hours later. No consistency to its failures. Apparently a large number of those have faulty RAM and most people have to return them. Very few have bought one and not had some problems with it. I then swopped mine for a NX6800GT TD256 from MSI which was £379.99 but worth every penny. Even comes with an undocumented Fan control switch built into the card which is silent on the lowest setting with standard clock rates of 370/1000. It can also overclock well to 425/1200 but why bother pushing it for a few extra FPS when it devours almost every game out their and in the forceable future on standard settings with full AA + AS as long as you have a fast P4 this sort of rig will do you for the next 18 months easily as DX9 only titles will take a while to come out. I spoke @ depth to some retailers and they have said that some of the obscure 6800 brands are having a high rate of returns due to poor QA so better stick to a very well known brand and pay the extra for piece of mind etc etc. Should also add you do not lose a PCI slot either!
Already done that. Gainward has made some 6800GT´s w. 2.2ns Ram (1000Mhz),350Mhz GPU I did also include a link of a test w. the Golden Sample 400/1100.
Board makers can choose what type of ram is used. I have seen other posters during my research of what 6800GT is the best to get and I have seen people saying their ram is 2.2ns, and others say 2.0ns. It depends on what type of ram is available as well since the supply can definately change during manufacturing. So, thanks, but I have done my research, and if you want a board that WILL have 2.0ns vram and not rely on luck of the draw, then the Gainward GS is the card for you. Here is one example after searching for about 15 seconds on Google of a poster with a Leadtek 6800GT with 2.2ns vram. I know I could find more but I do not need to as I know what I have read already http://forums.kustompcs.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-20745.html
Hey, thanks for the replies. Yeh i don't mind the card taking up a pci slot because i'm used to it. My HIS 9800pro IceQ already takes up an extra slot. As long as it's actually beneficial then i don't mind at all. I'm in Australia and the average price for a 6800gt is AU$750 - $800. The ram i'm putting into it I got for a very good price (Aus $180 for both sticks) so i'm just going to hang onto them for now (might invest into some nice Corsair RAM a little later ) I can get this motherboard instead if it will be better than the VIA one? GIGABYTE GA-K8NS. It's nforce3. It cost's AU$161 whereas this one ABIT KV8-PRO A64 is AU$165.55. So which one should i get? The 6800 GT's I can get here are: Leadtek Winfast A400 FX6800 GT TDH 256MB for AU$808 Sparkle GeForce 6800 GT Platinum 256MB DDR3 for AU$745 Albatron GeForce 6800 GT 256MB for AU$745 So not a very wide range to choose from. The gainward looks out of the equation which is a bit of a bugger. So they are the choices I can make. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Shadow27
there is no luck involved dude , GT's should all have 2ns mem its the Nvidia sepcs not the mafucaturers specs. evga 6800GT has 2.0ns mem also and is not a secret. if companies give u 2.2ns mem on a GT they just trying to make cheap cards.
OK I guess all those people out there that have posted on various website message boards saying they have 2.2ns ram on their 6800GT can't read I know I have seen people posting that PNY and Lead Tek have come with 2.2ns ram...and I know I could find review sites that state the samething about other cards. But I am not going to, I have done research on the subject. I would suggest you take your own advice and do that same. No offense intended but don't try to tell us one thing when I already did a simple search on Google and disproved what you are saying.
Re: Re: Avoid Galaxy Glaciers! If they were in stock anywhere for more than a few seconds! You can buy one @ retail in Tottenham Court Road but they are asking £470-500 hence me going for an overpriced GT instead (caused mainly by the 14 game bundle & definately by the greedy retailer!). If MSI removed the games bundle price would probably be £300 but they wanna sell it that way so unless you wait a good 6 months prices unlikely to change by much. By the time something actually comes out which would stress an Ultra there will be newer and faster GFX cards on the market anyway so why bother with an Ultra now.
Exactly, Gainward startet to produce 6800GT 2,2ns and 6800GT Golden Sample 2,0. And there is a difference in price. Now they make the 6800GT w. 2,0ns but w. a lower core/ram speed
ASUS are selling a 128MB GeForce 6800GT (that's the one with 16 pixel pipelines, 6 vertex processors and 350/1000MHz memory) for the extraordinarily reasonable price of £250. You can buy it from www.nemax.co.uk.