6800OC v X800SE

[Chris]

Hi
Dont know much about graphics cards, but my BFG 6800 ultra OC gave up the
ghost on me tonight after about 12months so I just rushed down to PC WORLD
and without much choice, and no knowledge of whats the latest and best
cards, came home with a SAPPHIRE X800SE 256. Both AGP. It was like £200

To say I am disappointed is an understatement.
I play World of Warcraft, which I didnt think would need much power but now
the game looks bare and the characters look void of any nice textures or
shades, its gone from lookin cool to crap. From something mature to childish
looking.

I KNOW I should have done some reasearch before hand to find out the best
cards but my 6800 packed up and i had to rush to pc world hoping they'd put
me straight. Have I been ripped off? I'm currently looking at the software
that came with the card seeing if i just need to turn a few things on
etc...a few tweaks..and then it will be awesome..

Have I brought a vastly inferior card to what i had before?

Thanks,,

 

[Bob Knowlden]

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipelines. At the nominal Ultra 400 MHz clock,
that gives a nominal Pixel fill rate of 6400 megapixels/second. The BFG card
was clocked higher than that, but I don't recall how much higher. (450?)

The X800SE has 8 pixel pipelines. A quick Google search showed an example at
520 MHz, so you'd get 4160 megapixels/second. That's closer to a vanilla 600
(325 MHz, 12 pipes, 3900 megapixels/second) than to an Ultra.

That's a noticeable performance difference, but I doubt that it explains
what you're seeing. I don't play W. of W., but I'd be surprised if the
difference in DirectX (or is it OpenGL?) functions between the ATI and
nVidia chipsets would be that major. Maybe you need to adjust settings in
the game.

It may also be that you have a driver problem. Did you uninstall the nVidia
drivers completely? You may find it worthwhile to try Driver Cleaner:

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

(It's freeware.)

Good luck.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Chris]

Turns out my bfg6800 card is overheating. I went into display
properties>advanced>geforce6800ultra and in there it allows me to monitor
the cards temp ( inever knew this before).
This was going up to 95c plus, and was then freezing up the game. After
minimizing the game, i could watch the temp drop down again on the card,
maximize and things would be ok but the temp would steadily rise again.
To cure the problem i have turned the ingame screen resolution down to
800x600 and a few other settings down and it steadies the temp at 70-80c and
i can play all night!
..
Why it is overheating i do not know. All the fans work as they always have
done (though they are limited). And i played the same games throughout the
summer without a problem.
Maybe I turned the cards settings up a few months ago but I would not have
thought it would cause it to overheat?, would have thought it would just
make the game struggle and slowed it down?

I'm going to get an additional fan as I only have 2 case fans, both
expelling air. I'll get one on the front blowing in across the cpu and card
etc.

Do you think the card is on its wayy out though, and therefore now starting
to overheat?

I set up the uguru that came with the board and the cpu temp rises too, when
playing a game, by about 10 degrees to around 30c. I removed the cpu fan and
got rid of the dust that was sat on the heatsink. Thought that might be
causing it but it wasnt.

Many thanks

Chris