6800 GT vs. 7800 GT

[gaara]

If you have a VIVO x800 you can unlock the pipelines and flash it to an XT card easy as pie, otherwise you can try your luck at a bit of hard and soft modding and flashing.

No one can answer your video card dillema since we are dealing with a nonexistant card. I think most likely I'll end up with an x900 Pro VIVO in the next year or so and flash that baby to an XT PE.

As far as your overall system goes, you are fine for a good while. You are stuck on socket 754 so you might as well wait for socket M2/S1 and act from there.

 

[str8lazy]

Yeah I would definately wait for a bit, and see what ATi is going to do. 7800 is a pretty damn good card, and it will definately go down with some competition. Then you will just have to figure out which one you like the best.

Your system should go pretty good for a little while, but you might want to upgrade so you can get PCI-E and SLI. Your system should be pretty damn decent until the end of this year, because AMD just keeps pumping out chips.

 

[timmer]

ur crazy to buy a card now that would be stupid unless u buy the 7800gtx. U have a pretty good card but wait until u can afford a new mobo so u can get pci-e

 

[beedubaya]

ur crazy to buy a card now that would be stupid unless u buy the 7800gtx. U have a pretty good card but wait until u can afford a new mobo so u can get pci-e

Yeah, I might as well hold off and just build from scratch next year. That is what I was planning on doing anyways. I have recieved news that Quake 4 will be not be much more taxing on the graphics card than Doom 3, which is this is true it would be nice, because with the new Catalyst 5.6 drivers, Doom 3 actually plays nicely. But really, it all depends on how these Q4 2005 new releases play.

 

[PP Mguire]

Hmm i would still get a 6800GT.

 

[DoomUK]

Quake 4 will be not be much more taxing on the graphics card than Doom 3

Don't know any technical details about Q4 so don't shoot me here, but from the screenies/footage I've seen, looks like higher res materials, higher poly count... hopefully improved physics & AI systems, along with the global self-shadowing bug that sadly affected Doom 3 fixed... less hardware taxing you say?

Anyway, and I'm only parroting what everyone else has said here, but if you want to get a card right now the 6800 GT is your best value for money I'd say, especially as it's no longer nVidia's flagship; unless you're insane like me, and want to spend your right eye on a 7800 GTX (mine's coming later this week ), you could pick up an (AGP) 6800 GT and run F.E.A.R and what have you at acceptable settings @ a decent framerate. Otherwise wait around until ATI's new puppy come's out, and go from there.

 

[gaara]

As I've said especially since that card still has potential, flash it to an XT, you'll both increase the lifetime of the card, as well as the value of it, and you can easily survive at least until 2006 Q1.

 

[PP Mguire]

i asked him and he said his card dosent have VIVO gaara, so he cant do that.

 

[gaara]

He should still be able to flash the bios to an XT and get the clock speeds on par, the only thing that'd be missing would be the extra pipes. That's too bad though, as I say though an x900 Pro VIVO card will save you a boatload of cash if you are considering a new card in the next quarter.

I am still a fan of the 6800GT though.

 

[Apokalipse]

to flash the non-vivo X800 pro, you need to do a hard-mod