Hey ho - back to Old Faithful..........AGAIN

[RollerBall]

What is it with me and graphics cards?

Had my good ole GeForce3 Ti 64 for 3 years or more and it's given sterling service, even with a little bit of overclocking for all that time. But I wanted something a bit quicker and got a 9700Pro off ebay a while back. That let me down a couple of months ago after what, maybe 8 or 9 months - so I went back to Good Old Faithful.

Then last week I decided to splash out on a brand new HIS 9800Pro IceQ - you know, the one with the great big fan that's been voted top for overclocking. It arrived Friday and even though I should have been working I couldn't resist dropping it in and giving it a spin ...... er like nearly all day.

Bit disappointed - benchmarked SLOWER than the old 9700Pro in 3DMark2001SE so I started off a bit sick. And didn't see ANY improvement in FR over my Old Faithful in heavily populated areas, but graphics were nice and sharp.

Then what do I see this morning when I fired up Cyril Pioffet's Gazelle - a bunch of pixels not changing colour. Upper left, 3 or 4 in a row with spaces between, sometimes fewer but never less than 1.

Anyway, I've already got a Return Number so it'll be going back on Monday. Meanwhile I'm back with Good Old Faithful. Maybe I oughta think about sticking to NVidia, I dunno.

[congo]

That old GF3 is prolly nearly as good as the 9700 anyway?

You would do well to get a 6600GT instead, but the 9800pro is a decent card nonetheless, I would try the driver-cleaner /   driver re-install routine if you haven't already done that.

[Fozzer]

It's a funny old do, with graphics cards... ...!

I previously had, (have), an nVidia Ge-Force 4 Ti 64 sooper-dooper card....
Changed it for my current nVidia BFG 6600 GT OC 128....

The result in 3D Mark 01 is better, but a marginal difference in the Flight sim, regarding frame rates, (but slightly smoother)...!

The performances seem to be very close now between cards, and it's often difficult to notice the difference... ...!

Paul.

[RollerBall]

That old GF3 is prolly nearly as good as the 9700 anyway?

Nahh..GF3 BM'd at only 4332 in 3DMark2001 and the 9700Pro at 11223.

At one time - don't ask me how - I got the 9700Pro up to 13529. That's faster than the 9800Pro came out at.

Tried all the deinstall/reinstall stuff etc. It's definitely a naff card. Lucky for me really that it happened so soon before I began to breathe on it too much. Then they'd probably not have taken it back.

The stock card is 380core/335 (I think) memory and because of that fan, it overclocks safely to 474/384 without any additional cooling which is the best of all the 9800Pros. Luckily I hadn't gone on to overclocking yet as I was still really just burning it in.

What's the FX5700 Ultra like? Can get the 128MB pretty cheap just now. Says it's 475/400 as standard if I read the spec right.

[congo]

Everyone raves on about the FX5700's, and it's only because the market is flooded with the junk.

My last (until very recently) card was a FX5900 and it was as fast as a 9800pro until you started filtering, where it falls down by comparison. The FX5700 simply isn't in the same league due to it's inferior GPU.

This is why I suggested a 6600GT, as it is the next logical and cheapest upgrade option.

Here is an indication: This is a BMark of my overclocked FX5900.

[congo]

Here is my 6600GT in 2001 se:

[RollerBall]

Hmmmmm...

It'll cost me under

[congo]

ATI or nVidia, never made any difference to me, but I've never owned an ATI card because nVidia always had better value for money when I was buying in my price bracket.

Funny that.

[the_autopilot]

Dump that 9800 pro and get a 6600 gt. Much better performence for around the same price.

As for a geforce FX (aka geforce5), aviod those cards. FX's are notorious for their bad dx9 support and horrible driver problems.

AVOID geforce FX's at all costs, unless all you have is a PCI slot.

[congo]

I really didn't notice all that much difference between the FX5900 and the 6600GT other than the performance boost though.

[GunnerMan]

I really didn't notice all that much difference between the FX5900 and the 6600GT other than the performance boost though.

Is this a joke? I thought thats what buyin new was all about

BTW I had a nightmare last night, it wwas Nvidia relising the 7800GTX Ultra, the bad part was it had 52 pipes and sold for 800$ and I had just bought my 7800GTX. Only I would have a dream like that.

[congo]

Seriously, I mean there might be a couple of newer features which I barely noticed, (I can only think of one offhand), and the performance is acceptable at last, but other than that......... I mean, where are all the dancing girls? Sheesh!

[RollerBall]

Weeeeeell......looks like the way to go here is to dump the 9800Pro and go for the 6800LE which I can get slightly cheaper than the 6600GT from the original supplier.

Then what you do is get Rivatuner and unlock the pipelines and pixel shaders that the drivers switch off. That way you 'almost' get a 6800GT - almost because the memory is slower.

Read all about it below

http://www.doomedpc.com/drupal-4.5.2/?q=/node/9

[the_autopilot]

Yeah. Thats good idea actually.

Though stock, a 6800 LE performs slightly worse than a 6600 gt.

[GunnerMan]

Yes thats a good plan.