Is this a good 6800?

[Hmse]

I'm getting ready to buy a killer cpu, but I'm not sure what video card to get. I'm only getting an nvidia, no ati, and I'd like a 6800, but most of those are a little pricy for. I'm looking at something about $250 or so. And anyway, I found this one http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA29760 but I don't know much about the ChainTech cards, so I hoping someone could give me some feedback on it.

[bsm2001]

Get me one while your at it ;-)

Should work just fine.

[bwkaz]

It's not a GT or an Ultra, meaning that it only has 12 shader pipelines rather than 16, but it's better than most (all?) FX series cards, which only have a maximum of 8 shader pipelines IIRC.

That sentence sounds strange, let me reword it.

The FX series cards have at most 8 shader pipelines (IIRC). The card you linked to definitely has 12. 6800GT and 6800 Ultra cards have 16.

There, that sounds a little better. :p

Well, actually, the card you linked to has 16 pipelines, but 4 of them are disabled in the card's BIOS (usually this is because they tested bad off the chip fabrication line). It is sometimes possible to flash a plain old 6800 to a 6800GT or Ultra (thus enabling the extra 4 shaders), but it usually ends up making the card unusable because those 4 shaders are usually disabled for a reason (they don't work right, or at all).

Anyway, yeah, it shouldn't be too bad. It's still a 6800 core, anyway. ;)

As far as ChainTech goes, I haven't used them either, but I don't remember any specific complaints against their cards. :)

[timothykaine]

I dont know if youre buying a new motherboard with the new cpu, but if so you might want to look at getting a pci-x board and card instead.

[bs_texas]

If I was going to spend nearly $300 dollars for a 6800 I would spend a bit extra and get a GT or Ultra.

Of course, that's from a guy that went to microcenter today and looked at the AMD 64 FX53 Socket 939 - $999 and then looked at some socket 754, or something, AMD 64 3n00, something or other, for less than $400 and said... man, that would sure be faster than my 2000+.
:D

[Hmse]

Ok well heres what I'm probably going to be getting and building:

Athlon-xp 3200
gig of ram
40gig maxtor x2
liquid cooled, most likily,
fan/temp control
chaintech nvidia 6800 (like what I'm seeing so far;))

So yea, its not exactly going to be cheap, and I'm custom building the case, so yea.
But thx for the feedback guys, I think that's probably what I'll go with.
I dont know if youre buying a new motherboard with the new cpu, but if so you might want to look at getting a pci-x board and card instead.
Never heard of it, is it another manufacturer for nvidia cards?

If I was going to spend nearly $300 dollars for a 6800 I would spend a bit extra and get a GT or Ultra.

Of course, that's from a guy that went to microcenter today and looked at the AMD 64 FX53 Socket 939 - $999 and then looked at some socket 754, or something, AMD 64 3n00, something or other, for less than $400 and said... man, that would sure be faster than my 2000+.

Well, this is actually a x-mas gift, so that's getting just a little to pricey for me.

Oh, one more thing, is this deffinatly a card that will be able to run Doom3? Cause that is a requirerment

[timothykaine]

Originally posted by Hmse

Never heard of it, is it another manufacturer for nvidia cards?

Its the current high end for pci slots. Its faster than AGP 8x, and has replaced it. All the new graphics cards are PCI-X. Its PCI-Express. You can still use regular PCI cards in it, but youll need a PCI-X video card. Theyre not much more expensive, if at all. Id definitely look into it.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Hmse
Never heard of it, is it another manufacturer for nvidia cards? PCI-X is the replacement bus for both PCI and AGP. AFAIK there's basically only one or two motherboards out that support PCI-X so far (and IIRC, they're both Intel chipsets, so no Athlons, but that could be wrong ;)). Personally, I'd wait on it, but you might want to look at Tom's Hardware's or Anandtech's info on PCI-X and decide for yourself. ;)

Oh, one more thing, is this deffinatly a card that will be able to run Doom3? Cause that is a requirerment It should be able to run it, yeah. My 6800 GT struggles when I set Doom 3 on highest detail (except no AA), and 1280x1024 resolution, so I wouldn't expect you'd be able to do that, but you should be able to get decently high detail and/or reasonable resolution out of it.

Edit:

Originally posted by timothykaine
All the new graphics cards are PCI-X I wouldn't say that. I believe all the nVidia 6800s have both models available (I know the Ultra has PCI-X and AGP, I know the GT has at least AGP, and I know the 6800 has at least AGP because of the card Hmse linked to). The chip probably only supports PCI-X (that seems to be how nVidia does stuff like that), but it probably has AGP "adapter" circuitry on it for the AGP models.

[Hmse]

Alright, thanks guys. I'll probably just go with the Chaintech, one because I want an athlon. :)

[je_fro]

Save your $$ for a little longer and get the 6800GT. It's soooooo worth it.

[Hmse]

Well ok, heres the thing. This is actually a x-mas present for a friend who has helped me way for than he should, so I kinda need to make it up to him. So I only have a couple months do get it, and I just happen to also be building a new computer desk for my dad's x-mas present. So I've got a lot of things needing cash, and not much time to do it.