X800GTO/GTO2 vs. 6800GS

[Richimself]

Alright i'm thinking of getting a new system to upgrade from my current pc. I'm probably going to go with an athlon 64 3200+, MSI K8N Neo4 plat, 1GB corsair value ram, and was going to go with the 6800GS until i saw that you can flash the GTO2 to X850XT PE, and the powercolor GTO comes with 16 pixel pipes, so i'm wondering if anyone knows which will perform better?

 

[weringo]

The GTO2 flashed to a 850xtpe will definately outperform the 6800gs as it has a higher clock speed and 4 more pipes. The 6800gs has pixel shader 3.0 which will be a requirement when unreal engine 3 comes out.

Its up to you

 

[Richimself]

ouch, i do intend on playing UT2007 so that kind of sucks that i'll need 3.0 and the ati cards don't have it.. But it will definately outperform the 6800gs by a good margin?

 

[003]

Don't worry about shader model 3, the 6800gs won't play UT2007 very well anyway, and btw, shader model 3 will not be REQUIRED, it will have fallback to 2.0 or 1.4. Deff go for the GTO2, it will unlock to x850xtpe which will kill anything in it's pricerange. btw, the ati x1000 cards do have shader model 3.

 

[Richimself]

ohhh thank you very much, that info is very helpful, i saw the new X1600PRO/XT and was very impresse, i didn't think they had SM 3.0 but i guess they do huh? well thank you both for your useful replies, i think i'll be going with the GTO2 then. Oh and, is there a good site to get the flash from? I've certainly never flashed a card so any info on that would be useful as well, and lastly there shouldn't be any heat issues with the higher clock speed right?

 

[003]

No the temps should be fine. I've never flashed a card myself, but from what I hear all it is is a simple BIOS flash, like you would do on a mobo. I can't really help you however as I have never done it

 

[Richimself]

Ah well thank you for all your useful info , i'm definately going with the GTO2 now, you've convinced me. Was just concerned with heat considering the XT PE speed is like 150Mhz faster on the clock and basically the same for the memory clock.

 

[003]

Just one thing, make sure you get a GTO2, the normal GTO is not guaranteed to unlock, the GTO2 is.

 

[Richimself]

Ah alright, thanks again for all the help, i plan on going GTO2