9800 Pro to Nvidia 6800 ?

[Jake]

My son's 9800SE just won't do justice to EQ2, so I decided to pass down my
9800Pro to him and get something else for myself. I really can't spend $400
right now, so I figured I'd settle for a small upgrade. After looking at
benchmarks at tomshardware, it looked like a good compromise would be a 6800
card. It scored about 30%-50% higher than a 9800 Pro on a lot of the tests,
especially when using AA/AF. So, for about $240 it looked like a decent
choice.

Well, so far I'm majorly disappointed. First of all, it scored 500 points
lower on 3DMark 2001SE - which I realize is an old test, but it's the one
that I've used most often, so I know where various cards fall along that
continuum. I opened the 4 additional pipelines with RivaTuner, and I oc'ed
it slightly, but still it appears that this card is not faster than the 9800
Pro in any real-world application that I've tried.

I realize this is an ATI forum, but does anyone have any suggestions as to
getting more from this card? Does my experience sound consistent with what
you guys (and girls) have learned about the two cards?

[BTW, I was running my son's 9800SE with the 9800 Pro soft-mod, and it
worked well, but it still was not as fast as my 9800 Pro. My 9800 Pro in
his machine definately has allowed him to up the quality settings in EQ2 a
bit, so my first goal is accomplished. It's just that I feel like I spent
$240 to move sideways. I could have gotten another 9800 Pro for under $200
easy, maybe even $150 if I shopped around].

Thanks.

jake

 

[DaveL]

This review
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-04.html#3dmark_2003
has the 6800 smoking the 9800pro by at least 50% in every benchmark. They
did not use 3dmark2001se. Try something newer like 3dmark03 or 05. Also
you did not say what cpu you have. Maybe you are cpu limited? Maybe you
need to reinstall the gart driver and then the video driver?

DaveL

 

[Mike]

Try using the driver cleaner from the ATI site, bottom of the page with
driver downloads, I think. Left over registry entries from old driver
installs could cause your proble. And use the latest nvidia drivers, not
the WinXP update ones.

Mike

 

[Conor]

My son's 9800SE just won't do justice to EQ2, so I decided to pass down my
9800Pro to him and get something else for myself. I really can't spend $400
right now, so I figured I'd settle for a small upgrade. After looking at
benchmarks at tomshardware, it looked like a good compromise would be a 6800
card. It scored about 30%-50% higher than a 9800 Pro on a lot of the tests,
especially when using AA/AF. So, for about $240 it looked like a decent
choice.

Well, so far I'm majorly disappointed. First of all, it scored 500 points
lower on 3DMark 2001SE - which I realize is an old test, but it's the one
that I've used most often, so I know where various cards fall along that
continuum. I opened the 4 additional pipelines with RivaTuner, and I oc'ed
it slightly, but still it appears that this card is not faster than the 9800
Pro in any real-world application that I've tried.

I realize this is an ATI forum, but does anyone have any suggestions as to
getting more from this card? Does my experience sound consistent with what
you guys (and girls) have learned about the two cards?

Nope but then again we're not trying to test DirectX7 performance. Most
games over the last 2 years are DX8 and now DX9 so why the hell are you
using a 4 year old benchamrking suite designed for an entirely
different range of cards?

 

[Ben Pope]

My son's 9800SE just won't do justice to EQ2, so I decided to pass down my
9800Pro to him and get something else for myself. I really can't spend $400
right now, so I figured I'd settle for a small upgrade. After looking at
benchmarks at tomshardware, it looked like a good compromise would be a 6800
card. It scored about 30%-50% higher than a 9800 Pro on a lot of the tests,
especially when using AA/AF. So, for about $240 it looked like a decent
choice.

Thats cheap for a 6800, do you mean 6600? Are you talking GT, Ultra,
normal?

Wouldn't have bothered going for a 6600 as an upgrade to a 9800.

Well, so far I'm majorly disappointed. First of all, it scored 500 points
lower on 3DMark 2001SE - which I realize is an old test, but it's the one
that I've used most often, so I know where various cards fall along that
continuum. I opened the 4 additional pipelines with RivaTuner, and I oc'ed
it slightly, but still it appears that this card is not faster than the 9800
Pro in any real-world application that I've tried.

A 6800 should pound the 9800 into the ground.

Ben