Budget Graphics Cards

[DAve]

Hi all,

Thought this would be the list to ask this on :)

I'm thinking of upgrading my system and ditching the ati 8500 I've got for either a x700 pro or a 6600 gt as they're both around the same price at just under £100.

What's the list's opinion of these cards? I thought I was a ati-fanboy until I started doing a bit of research - looks like the 6600 gt is consistently a few fps faster.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2297&p=2

[Phizz]

Check these guys out too for cheap gfx cards that aren't all that bad

http://www.pless.co.uk/customer/home.php?cat=59

[Bluepixie]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of upgrading my system and ditching the ati 8500 I've got for either a x700 pro or a 6600 gt as they're both around the same price at just under £100.

What's the list's opinion of these cards? I thought I was a ati-fanboy until I started doing a bit of research - looks like the 6600 gt is consistently a few fps faster.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2297&p=2

It's true in practice aswell aswell. I have a BFG GeForce 6600 GT. It's very swift. My friend Peter on the other hand (Yega.Doyai) has the x700, which has almost te same performance, but not quite. Only thing that the ATI does better than the GeForce is HL2. But there is not much in it and I would always go for nVidia's stability rather than ropey ATI drivers. :P

Go for the GeForce, I have no complaints on performance! :D

Battlefield 2 for you my lad!

[DAve]

I'm now thinking I can go for the 6800LE and unlock some of the pipelines. Hmm, tempting, especally as some of the cards are skimming the £100 mark.

[Bluepixie]

6800LE?

[DAve]

Yes, AOpen GeForce 6800 LE 128MB (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/GeForce_6800.html)
It's on order and should be this week sometime. Sub £100 (It was on special offer :D )

I hear there's a way to unlock some of the pipelines on the card taking it from 8 (6800le) to 12 (6800) or even 16 if lucky (6800GT). OOh, I'm very excited :D

[Bluepixie]

Sounds well sweet. Let the fragging begin!

[Phizz]

Been out of the hardware spec understanding for too long. Got a n00b's guide to Gfx cards?

[Bluepixie]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/

Is a damn good place to start!

[DAve]

w00t!
Unlocked the card from 8 pipelines to 12 and 4 vertex units to 6. Also installed a nice shiney heatsink on it too. Pictures to follow shortly methinks!

The performance increace is astonishing. I'm playing UT2k4 in high settings at 1240*1024 now where it was 800*600 on medium with my radeon 8500.

[happy DAve!

[Phizz]

How much and can you help me with something similar Dave?

[DAve]

Yeah, sure.


The 6800LE is not guarenteed to unlock though. I've heard that it's around 50/50 if it does allow youto onlock pipelines or not.

I bought my Aopen6800LE from overclockers.co.uk (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/GeForce_6800.html) for £100 (it was on special offer) and got a zalman VGA cooler for £20 as well.

To cut a long story short, I used rivatuner (http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/) and this guide on doomedPC to unlcoking the 6800 (http://www.doomedpc.com/drupal-4.5.2/?q=/node/9)

It unlocked nicely from 8 pipelines to 12 (unlocking to 16 pipelines made nasty artifacts appear onscreen) and from 4 vertex units to 6. Your milage may vary, but rivatuners forums are a good guide (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108905) to what is possible from unlocking the 8pipes and 4 vertex units from the standard 6800:

results votes percentage
Yes, 16 pipelines and 6vp ON and working 234 53.06%
Yes, 16 pipelines and 5vp 20 4.54%
Yes, 12 pipelines and 6vp 127 28.80%
No 60 13.61%

[Bluepixie]

Sounds kick ass! Good work! Have 10 points!

:)

You done any 3Dmarks on it yet? See how it's doing.

[DAve]

I have, but I can't access them again. Fricin' 3dmark steals your 3dmakrs and hides them away after you benchmark. I'll dig them out tonight sometime.

Preliminary comparison between the graphics cards:
(1) is the unlocked 6800LE, (2) is the out of the box 6800LE and (3) is the old 8500LE I had in there

1 2 3
Width 1024 1024 1024
Height 768 768 768
3DMark Score 7652 6201 764 3DMarks
GT1 - Wings of Fury 139.0 138.1 49.3 FPS
GT2 - Battle of Proxycon 65.9 50.7 4.1 FPS
GT3 - Troll's Lair 53.6 41.3 5.4 FPS
GT4 - Mother Nature 43.3 35.5 0.0 FPS
Pipelines 12 8 4
Vertex units 6 4 2
I'm quite happy with those results, it's a huge boost to FPS to what was there previously!

[Bluepixie]

WOW! That's amazing! About a 24% increase when it's unlocked! Have you tried overclocking the little biatch? Squeeze a bit more out of her? Good stuff though! I really should have a look and see if I can do anything with my 6600 Gt. Yega.Doyai has one of those mental Zalman VGA coolers on his x700. Gets a huge amount of overclocking without even changing voltages or anything!
one of these bad boys.....

http://www.techniz.co.uk/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=258

[DAve]

I was really pleased, let me tell you ;)

I hear about the unlocking, quite recently and never though it would increace that far. The 3dmarks benchmarks sometimes lie as well, but the 3dmarks games were definitely increased. I'm going to run some 3dmark05 tonight and see what the changes have been on the DX9 hardware.

I ran HL2 last night too, and it was like playing a different game. Smoooooth FPS on 1280*1024 while in story mode. I've not played deathmatch in HL2 yet, I'll save that for the LAN I think!

I'm tempted to overclock it as well, but I think I might err on the side of caution for the next few days. The case is 5 degrees hotter (I'm going to have to sort out that airflow) and I don't want to push it too far yet.

There have been people overclocking the 6800LE to 6800GT speeds (http://www.doomedpc.com/drupal-4.5.2/?q=/node/9) though, that was with atric cooler. I'm tempted to see how far it will go, but need to sort out the problem of the heat generated before I go and start clocking the card.

[Bluepixie]

Sounds wise my friend. Airflow is a hard thing to sort out, but worth it. Brings temps down all over. The Zalman cooler could definately push the line for higher clocking though. I'm really tempted to get one now.......but maybe not until after the lan. I have a bad habit of doing upgrades before lans, then everything goes tits up. :( Fried CPU's, shafted XP installs, the works.

having to revert back to my TNT2 Ultra would be bad..........
:wink:

[Phizz]

meh. Money. My body for money. I'm on 4.85 per hour at the mo' at work and it's not enough. Just enough to get up to glesga and get some beer in. Not much else.

[Bluepixie]

Dial-up and no money?!

Man, I feel really sorry for you

:(

Here, here a hug. :P

[Phizz]

and once again Blue diappears into the post distance.....

[Bluepixie]

and once again Blue diappears into the post distance.....

No need to worry my friend. I'm always be here for you. :p

[DAve]

No need to worry my friend. I'm always be here for you. :p
[sniff] that's beautiful, man ;)

[Phizz]

bah. damn your bb conn!