I know enough people that changed from the 7900 GTX to the 7950. Gaming on a PC is more pricey then ever and people are crazy enough to dish out the dough.
I bought a X1800XL from a friend that upgraded from the X1800 to the X1900 within 3 months, but thats people that are willing to dish out 400 Euro for 2 GB ram, because its l33t överclocker stuff.
Based on the benchmarks I’ve seen, I’d say no. Is your A64 4000+ a Socket 754 or 939 CPU? If so, you could migrate it to a PCIe MB then buy a PCIe videocard, if you’re really dying to splurge right now. But the 7800 GS isn’t enough of an improvement over the 6800 Ultra to justify the expense.
Since I’m hearing that a 7800GS it would give a performance boost, but not enough to justify buying one for only a year to a year and one-half. Let’s look at it from a different direction. Is there a card out there for $100 - $150 that would give me significant boost over the 9800 pro?
My 9800 is 3 1/2 years old and was going to be retired this coming Jan. and if I can get a card that will give me an approximate 20% boost, plus or minus then I might go that route. When I was talking about replacing the 6800 with the 7800 what I really meant was that I was going to place the 6800 in the secondary system and then place the 7800 in my primary computer.
You could get another 6800 and unlock both of them with Riva Tuner.
You might also consider an ATI 800 or 850 series but they cost a little more.
I did take the plunge and got the EVGA 7800 GS but I waited for it to go on sale. It’s better than the 9800 Pro but it’s not going to be able to handle the next Gen games because of the AGP, FSB, CPU bottleneck so upgrading the system is inevitable.
My 9800 lives on in my Wife’s computer and still looks darn good for anything she plays including BF2 on med detail.
Links:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=282&model2=289&chart=102
I’m running Tomb Raider: Legend with next-gen content on with my 7800GS fairly nicely. No FSAA though.
I just did this exact same thing. In my situation, I changed cases without knowing about the power connector. Then I said what the heck and upgraded board/cpu without remembering that I needed an AGP board.
We’re not alone btw. I know of at least one other person who did something similar.
Define “significant.” The 6600GT is faster than the 9800 Pro and is under $150 now; but its benchmarks are all over the map - sometimes it shows huge gains, other times it’s negligible. Like FIDGAF said, you could also buy a 6800 and hope you’re able to unlock it.
Again, what CPU do you have? For $500, you may be able to buy a decent PCIe A64 MB and, say, a $400 video card which would be a significant improvement over your 6800 Ultra.
I have a socket 939 motherboard (nforce 3) and I bought it with the thought that I could re-use my cpu when I was ready for the PCIx conversion. However with AMD going to AM2 socket and phasing out the 939 socket as well as the core duo coming out from Intel it will be a hard decision as to what upgrade path I want to go. Should I go cheap and stay with a socket 939 board or start over with AMD or Intel’s new architecture? Since I won’t have to make this decision for another year the choice may be easier.
I would see if I could unlock my current card before spending a dime.
Some of the guys I’m gaming with unlocked their older 6800’s and their benchmarks match or exceed mine.
Before counting on unlocking a 6800, read:
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_6800_unlocking/
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=841145
http://www.ocia.net/articles/6800/6800.shtml
Sometimes they unlock and work well, sometimes they don’t.
It all depends on the chip. I’ve heard more success stories than failures.
Rivatuner can be acquired from here:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
I recently ran into a problem with my Nforce 3, AGP, S939 system and was considering replacing it with a ASRock 939Dual-SATA2. It’s an S939, so I keep my old ram + CPU. It’s also dirt cheap cause it’s Asus’s value line. It’s got an AGP and a PCI-Express slot. Performance is also good unlike other PCIe/AGP sets. It’s only like $67, what’s to lose?
I have a perfectly viable 6800 AGP. Oblivion + Titan Quest have acceptable quality at 1900x1200, thought I wish I could turn AA on (I hate jaggies!). Battlefield doesn’t like the card too much, but I’m starting to suspect DICE is secretly funded by video card companies to get suckers like me to upgrade.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524
I didn’t do it cause it doesn’t support ECC, I really didn’t want to reinstall windows and tweak all my applications the way I like em. But if my board breaks again sometime soon, poof.
It should be obvious, but you don’t “have” to upgrade at all until something breaks…but why apply that sort of nonsensical logic here? :-)
It depends on your priorities: S939 is definitely a dead end, but switching to AM2 or Conroe requires new DDR2 RAM on top of everything else. And the A64 4000+ with 2 gigs of RAM is no slouch; you’d have to spend a lot to get a significantly faster CPU. In your place, I’d seriously consider the “PCIe S939 MB + new videocard” combo, so you can stick with your existing CPU and RAM while you ride out the first wave of the new generation of CPUs. It’s why I recommended it in the first place. :-)
His current card is a 6800 Ultra OC - what exactly is there left to unlock?
I got that board in my secondary machine, but on PCI-E. Runs not ASRockstable ;) as my DFI Board does, but its ok for the money. I think I pay´d 30 € second hand.
Overclocked and unlocked do not equal each other.
RivaTuner can show if their are any unused pipes or shaders on the card.
Most of the time there are so it’s well worth taking a few minutes and looking.
I have a freind that has an OC and was happily surprised to discover that their were a few more pipes and shaders not in use. The trick is to turn each one on one at a time and test for stability.
Hey, one never knows until one looks and looking doesn’t hurt anything.