ATI X1800 series

[Nubius]

I am going to have to build completely new anyways because ATI and Nvidia have basically said "F*CK YOU!" to me and the many others who built high end systems during the first 3 quarters of 2004.

Yeah right, get a 6800GT because they are rapidly dropping price, overclock the crap out of it with an Nvsilencer and your computer will still be set for quite a while....once it comes to the point where your computer is getting outdated and you REALLY start to notice it in games because you have to sit with no aa, no AF, medium settings...you'll be ready for a complete system overhaul anyway.

The only thing that's holding your system back now is the X800pro which like I said a 6800GT would remedy that...sell that X800pro for $100 if you have to, I just had to sell my 6800GT for $200 even though I paid $400 and its still $300 in a lot of places.

Learn overclocking and boost up your CPU and RAM power....if you've got Kingston HyperX then those should have BH-5 chips which will OC very well, however you'd need a lot of voltage which I don't believe that asus board can give, but I'm sure they'll still want to go up a little bit.

There are other solutions to making your computer go faster without cursing manufacturers and thinking you're the only one being tossed to the ground.

I paid $135 for an nf3 ultra-d board I used for 3 months but was unstable as hell and then had to say screw it and just give up, cut my losses and go to PCI-E and a stable board.

It was known that during the last year there were LOTS of hardware changes and I remember tons of those topics back in the past....moving to the new sockets, 754 being dropped, AGP being phased out, etc...etc....so this should all really come as no surprise.

 

[gaara]

Yeah seriously, even people like me and Nubius and others building AMD64 systems now will be screwed over in 4 months time with AMDs new socket and memory type...infact, I was planning on keeping my 9800pro and getting the MSI Neo2 way back but I knew PCI-E was coming which is why I now own the nf4-D and 6800GT

Either way, advancements and obsolete parts are nothing new to computers as I think I said, you were always be forced to buy new parts at one time or another...think about those people YEARS ago who paid thousands of dollars for a couple of megahertz of power

 

[DoomUK]

I paid $135 for an nf3 ultra-d board I used for 3 months but was unstable as hell and then had to say screw it and just give up, cut my losses and go to PCI-E and a stable board.

So you are (currently) upgrading Nubius?

On overclocking: Gone are the days when one could get a 50% performance increase with a good OC; or so I've been told, never OC'd a pre-K8 system before, meh. Regardless, these days you'll be lucky if you get a 10% performance increase. For those of us that simply want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of our already-top-spec systems it's still exiting, but for someone desperate to gain performance out of need (like beedubaya ), it's a diminishing return for their efforts.


On topic:-

I think I'm going to wait until the damn thing is on the shelves before I start making decisions about it. There's been so many rumours about ATI's new puppy that it's hard to distinguish the real from the bulls*** any more.

 

[Nubius]

So you are (currently) upgrading Nubius?

Nah I've already made the switch actually...I just rebuilt my system (took out the nf3 Ultra-D and 6800GT AGP, drained water cooling, put in nf4 Ultra-D, 6800GT PCI-E, redid the water cooling and got windows installed) last friday...so I'm already up and running on the Ultra-D PCI-E system...gaara and my system is practically identicle except for the RAM and the CPU water block lol.

The only thing I've OC'd though is putting my 6800GT to Ultra specs, haven't gotten around to OC'ing RAM, CPU, or pushing the card yet.

On overclocking: Gone are the days when one could get a 50% performance increase with a good OC; or so I've been told, never OC'd a pre-K8 system before, meh.

well the XP-Ms were the freakin best....my 1.8GHz stock 2400+ XP-M hit 2.8GHz bootable but not at all stable, 2.7GHz stable, but too much vcore for my liking which would be WAY too hot during summer months and 2.5 or 2.6GHz was for 24/7 use....that was good stuff.

however the 3000+ venices are still doing good...1.8GHz stock at 2.5GHz is nothing to sneeze at, muchless if you can get PC3200 RAM hitting up at DDR540 speeds+

 

[DoomUK]

Correction to my original statement: I have indeed OC'd a pre-Athlon 64 before . My old XP 3000+ Barton hit around the 2.4GHz mark if I remember...