My current system uses a AGP video card (512 meg BFG 6800 ultra OC) and I was wondering if it was worth the money to get a 256 meg 7800GS card to replace the 6800? I was going to upgrade to PCIe next Christmas but some things happened that has caused me to try and milk this system for another year to a year and a half. My primary system is an Athlon 64 4000+ with 2 gig of ram and the 6800 ultra OC card. My secondary system is an Athlon 64 3800+ with 1 gig a ram and a AGP 512 meg ATI 9800 Pro.
My thinking is I could replace the primary system’s vid card with the 7800GS and move the 6800 ultra to the secondary system. Am I going to get enough of a boost to justify to purchase? I don’t really want to go from a 512 meg card to a 256 meg card unless there is a significant boost of speed.
Right now my system plays all the current games, such as Oblivion, at a satisfactory fps with acceptable eye candy. The secondary system does fine as well and I have yet to reach my cost per year on the 9800. Because I recycle my primary systems’ components into my secondary system, I can get a $500 vid cards’ cost down to $125 a year. I typically rebuild my primary system every two years, which means the secondary system is generally 4 years old when I discard it.
You can’t put an PCI Express card (7800GS) in a motherboard that takes AGP only, so that upgrade path is out. You’ll need to rethink your upgrade to include a mobo purchase, which may mean new RAM (likely) as well.
Okay, more detail. First off, what resolutions do you run at? You’re going to see very little benefit to a 512MB vs. 256MB card unless you’re running at the kinds of resolutions with the kind of texture detail the rest of your system probably can’t handle.
(Wait, there was a 512MB 9800 Pro? Crazy. And what a waste of money.)
Anyway, as you know, the 6800 Ultra will nearly double the performance of that 9800 Pro, whether it’s 256 or 512MB. The 7800GS will have even greater performance than the 6800, even with less RAM. But the 6800 Ultra is still a great card; I have a standard 256MB AGP one in a 4000+ system, and I couldn’t justify going from a 6800 Ultra to a 7800 on an AGP system.
I’d consider taking that $300 (or whatever the 7800GS costs) and putting it into a PCI-e board and a 7600GT, which performs similarly to that 6800 Ultra. You could use the memory and CPU from your current 4000+ and upgrade down the road (and move the 6800 into the 9800 system).
I would agree with Steve - the RAM difference is only going to be noticable at significantly higher resolutions than what I assume you’re playing at. Given that you speak of playing Oblivion with your current rig, I’m guessing it’s at 1024X768 or possibly 1280X1024.
Your 6800 Ultra is on par with the 7600 GT, which is about 40% slower than the 7900 GT, which is similar to the 7800 GS. If you’re comfortable with playing Oblivion with your current primary rig I really don’t see why you’d want to upgrade unless it was to make your secondary system into a more viable gaming rig.
My personal experience having recently upgraded from a 6800 GS to a 7900 GT is that it hasn’t really done much other than let me turn the settings up a notch or two. (I’m giving the 6800 GS to a friend, which is what justified the purchase). My 3dMark06 score went up from the high 2k to the low 4k range, and in real-world gaming (DoD:Source) I can do a bit more AA/AF.
So I’d personally recommend waiting, and saving that money towards a future quad-SLI purchase ;)
The 7800 GS has the same number of “pipes and pixel shaders” as the 6800 Ultra - the 7800 GT has more (4 more of each i think); and the 7900 GT has more then the 7800 GT.
The 7800 GS is about 5-25% faster then the AGP 6800 Ultra depending upon the game. The only good thing is that it has some fairly decent headroom to overclock with.
Midnight Son said: Do you get a new Mercedes lease every two years? Are you one of those?
No, but I do lift my left butt cheek when I fart.
What I do is buy a top of the line vid card every two years. The two year old model goes into my secondary computer for another two years, thus making the card four years old when it gets retired. The 9800 pro is going to be four years old next January, hence the $500/4= $125. I may be wrong, but I doubt if I can buy a $125 vid card every year and get better overall performance. The last year the $125 card may be better, but even if I replaced the card every three years my yearly cost would be around $170 and the 9800 Pro played Oblivion at a resolution of 1152 x 864 with graphic setting to medium just fine. It was in a computer that had an Athlon 2600XP, but it went dead for some reason and I had an extra 939 socket motherboard with AGP laying around and the Athlon 64 3800+ only cost $120 so I went that route instead of totally rebuilding my main system for around $700.
I currently use dual 17" lcd monitors on my primary system at a resolution of 1280 x 1024.
I have a 6800GT in my work system with a 19-inch LCD and rarely see major slowdowns running games at 1280x1024. I couldn’t justify any videocard upgrade right now unless I was running 20-inch or bigger LCDs at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200.
Some of your math is confusing to me, but let me see if I have it straight. Every two years, you buy a $500 top of the line video card for your primary system, and move the old card into your secondary system. That means after 4 years, you’ve spent $1000 on video cards for two machines, and are just about to shell out another $500.
In general, I do think you’d get better overall performance across both machines by spending $250 every year on a mid-to-high-range card for your primary system, and moving the previous year’s card to the secondary system. Total costs are the same, and you give up really nice eye candy on the primary system, but your secondary system is much stronger. Just a suggestion – it works for the systems I maintain for my wife and I, but I tend to play strategy games that don’t need all the graphical bells-and-whistles.
On the original question, I agree with all the previous posters that you’d likely be better off just waiting, because the performance gain of 7800GS over a 6800 Ultra (even with identical RAM sizes) isn’t that much.
I upgraded from a 6800GT AGP to a 7800GS AGP and I think it’s worth it. I figured since my next PC would have to be entirely new, I might as well bring the existing one to its maximum potential. The performance boosts have been nice and I am satisfied with my course of action. Granted, I sold the old card on Ebay for :bigbuxx: so the upgrade only cost me about 90 dollars, but still.
I upgraded last year from an overclocked 6800GT to a 7800GTX because Dell was having a fire sale on the 7800GTX cards and selling them for about $350.
However, I hadn’t bothered to read the specs, so after the video card arrived, I had to upgrade the motherboard to one that supported PCI-X, I had to upgrade the CPU to one that fit the socket of the new motherboard, and I had to upgrade the power supply because the old one had 20 pins, and the new motherboard appeared to require the new 24-pin power connector.
Originally Posted by Sid_Budd Some of your math is confusing to me, but let me see if I have it straight. Every two years, you buy a $500 top of the line video card for your primary system, and move the old card into your secondary system. That means after 4 years, you’ve spent $1000 on video cards for two machines, and are just about to shell out another $500.
I hadn’t look at that way. I was only looking at it from the perspective of one card being used for four years. Using your logic I could by a new $250 card every year to replace the one in my primary system and move the old one to the secondary system.
What one needs to understand is that $250 a year is for two systems, Average cost of $125 for each system. If I was doing this for one system only I would probabily buy the $400 card and use it for two years.
Now a new question: would a $250 dollar card have more performance than a $500 dollar card in it’s second year of life?
Whether that trend will continue I don’t really know.
Two years ago the 6800 Ultra was the $500 card, and it isn’t really until recently that there’s been a $250 card that beats it (a 7900GT), although for ~$150 you can get a 7600GT which is on par.
Right now a 7950GT would be the $500 card, but I honestly am doubtful that a year from now we’ll have something at the $250 price range that will outperform it. If they prove me wrong I won’t be complaining though :)
It’s hard for me to find what prices were in the past, but wasn’t the 6800 Ultra also still about $500 one year ago? I thought NVIDIA just brought in the 7800 GTX at $600 and kept the 6800 Ultra price steady.
This isn’t a perfect comparision, but here’s the recommendations and prices for video from PC Gamer’s mid-range & dream systems.
July 2004
Dream - GF 6800 Ultra or Radeon X800 XT Platinum - $499
Mid-range - Radeon 9600XT 128MB - $150
So it depends on when you buy the premium card. In 2004, you’d have been better off buying the GF 6800 Ultra and holding it two years than buying the 9600XT & 6600GT (although that solution was $150 cheaper in total). In 2005, you’d have done better, at least in the second year, buying the 6600GT & 7600GT than buying the single GF 6800 Ultra (and would again save about $100). But from what I’ve seen, the 7600GT is only a little better than the 6800 Ultra.
It looks like you get more than two years of good performance by buying a premium card for the primary system. Going to a $250 card each year would have benefits only in the secondary system. It’s still not a perfect comparison, though, because PC Gamer generally uses $200 cards in their mid-range systems. I don’t know how much of a gain you would have gotten by moving up to $250 cards, or which specific cards were $250 one or two years ago.
Originally Posted by Sid_Budd
It looks like you get more than two years of good performance by buying a premium card for the primary system. Going to a $250 card each year would have benefits only in the secondary system. It’s still not a perfect comparison, though, because PC Gamer generally uses $200 cards in their mid-range systems. I don’t know how much of a gain you would have gotten by moving up to $250 cards, or which specific cards were $250 one or two years ago.
You’re correct, I do get two solid years of perfomance by buying a premium card for the primary system. I also believe that I get an additional solid year performance out of the card when it’s in the secondary system. It’s only when the card is in it’s fourth year that it’s age really starts to show, but even then it still does a decent job of playing the most current games. For example the 9800 pro in my secondary system can play Oblivian, Doom 3, Quake 4 and Half Life 2 at acceptable frame rates using 1152 x 864 resolution w/ medium graphic settings.
I guess my real question is this: If I buy a 7800GS AGP card place it in primary system, then move the 6800 ultra to the secondary system would that prolong the life of my current primary system to around Jan 2008?
Because of some major hardware failures in the last month I have had to use up a significant part of the money I was going to use for upgrading my system this Chrismas and I only have enough left for a medium price vid card.
I upgraded to the 7800 from a 9800 pro.
That being said, I did see a notable improvement.
If you had an older card than a 6800 I’d say that it would be worth it.
Instead I’m going to point out that by getting Riva Tuner and reading the forums on it’s uses, you still have some untapped potential in your 6800 that you could unleash.
There’s more pipes and shaders that are “Locked” via the Bios on the card.
You cannot unlock a 7800, but you can unlock a 6800. The 7800 actually is physically “Burned” so it you cannot access the locked features. That’s not the case in most 6800 cards.
That might be just enough performance boast to satisfy you until your new system.
Maybe you should be shopping for a second 6800 for your other machine. They’re cheap enough nowadays.
;)
Prolong it until 2008? No. Like i said, the 7800 GS is a budget version of the 7800 GT, scaled down to the AGP’s “energy budget”. It’s only about 50% faster then the 6800 GS AGP, and about equal or slightly faster then the 6800 Ultra.
Now, it might be fine for some. But if you are the sort of fellow that drops 500$ every two years for the latest and greatest card, i think you will regret buying this card thinking it will last that long.
Right now, imo, the video card market is fairly unattractive. Although many latest gen cards have good performance, there hasn’t been anything particularly interesting in this latest refresh of tech.
