Hey guys,
I recently bought a BFG 6600GT OC video card to play Half-Life2. I was upgrading from a Geforce4 MX and this was supposedly the best "bang for your buck" type card which would enable me to play and get relatively good performance without having to spend 500$. (I bought mine for 210$ +tax). So the card is working perfectly however now they come out with the BFG 6800GS OC! Which is only 22$ more expensive then the card I already have and has 256 Mb of memory instead of 128 Mb!

*Please note both cards are for AGP not PCI-e)

Specifications:

6600GT/OC:

Memory 128MB GDDR3
Core Clock 525MHz (vs. 500MHz standard)
Memory Clock 1050MHz (vs. 1000MHz standard)
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 and lower, OpenGL 1.5 and lower for Microsoft® Windows®
Connectors: Dual DVI-I, HDTV /S-Video Out
393 million vertices/sec setup
16.8GB/second memory bandwidth

Now for the 6800GS:

Memory: 256MB GDDR3
Core Clock: 370 MHz (vs. 350MHZ standard)
Memory Clock: 1050MHz (vs. 1000MHZ standard)
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
API Support Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0, OpenGL for Microsoft® Windows®
Connectors: VGA, DVI, S-Video-Out
555 million Vertices/Sec setup
33.6GB/second memory bandwidth

So, the 6800GS outperforms the 6600GT in almost everything except the core clock speed, which is 370 Mhz and 525 Mhz for the 6800GS and the 6600GT respectively. The 6600GT (the card i already have) has 155 Mhz more in its core clock speed. Is this a big deal? Will it downgrade my performance if I get a 6800GS instead of my 6600GT? Or will the higher Vertices and higher memory bandwith and higher memory (256 instead of 128) will be faster even if the "core clock speed" is lower?

So my question is: " Should i get the 6800GS instead of my 6600GT if it is only 22$ more? "

Thanks guys,
David

nice...

" Should i get the 6800GS instead of my 6600GT if it is only 22$ more? "

YES!!!!!!!

YOU SHOULD!!!!!!

THE 6800gs is MUCH BETTER than the 6600gt.

PERIOD.

BTW, clockspeeds don't mean everything. For example, the ati x1600xt has much higher clockspeeds than the x1800xl. However, the x1800xl outperforms the x1600xt by almost double perfomance.

Free

Where did you get your BFG 6600GT OC from, because right now you can get the same BFG 6800GS OC (BFGR68256GSOC) for $198.00 shipped to your door.

There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer.

just be careful i have the card u want to buy. it runs at 60C at idle and 90C under full load and my comp is well ventilated. the stock cooling just plain sucks. also unlocking the extra pixel/vertex shaders helps a bit but doesnt increase the temp. however my extra vertex shader turned out to be faulty so i turned it back off. the card is making my system restart like once a day. im waiting for a vcool blower for the card. hopefully that will help.

Zo

Do you live in the US? If so, where the heck are you buying from? A standard 6600GT (non-OC) sells for less than $120, delivered to your door. Basically, you paid an extra $100+/- for a 5% overclock (which you could have easily done yourself). The memory is better (GDDR3 vs DDR), but I doubt it's worth $100.

Is the 6800GS a better card that the 6600GT? Sure! Is it worth upgrading to it? I would have to say NO...not unless you plan on upgrading the CPU & adding more RAM

Hellz Yea!

"Is it worth upgrading to it? I would have to say NO...not unless you plan on upgrading the CPU & adding more RAM"

from what I understood, he es planning to give it back and pay the difference to get a 6800gs. That IS WORTH DOING.

BTW, he has an AGP slot. Last time I heard all agp 6800gs are over 200 bucks. However he definitly overpaid for the 6600gt.

you have given newegg a look i suppose????? www.newegg.com

Free

Well, at least he didn't mod the card ;)

Hellz Yea!

shut up

:@

Free

BTW, yesterday I run atitool for 20min with my card O/ced to 603/1220 an it didn't artifact. :D
It was cooler last night.
Summer is no good for overclocking.

Free

nice overclock there fennerman. My plain 6800 never goes beyound 56*c even when doing heavy number crunching, yet i'm still unable to hit 400 at the core. But hey, i'm happy cuz on most of my games I run @ 16x1,6x1 so the quad unit and vertex pipe are running. The only thing I wish I had more of is Vram!! Its becoming increasingly more evident that current games and ones that are in the making, greatly benefit from more video ram, expspeacially at high res settings.

Will underclock for food.

ok i have spent like a day looking up user reviews etc. on the 6800GS and none of them seem to be getting as hot as mine. could my card be defective? i have already emailed BFG. no reply yet. also my comp is restarting more often now. and each time the comp gives the blue screen it blames ndis.sys or something like that. im assuming thats something to do with the nvidia driver failing. and its failing while its idle btw at 60C. i havent put any graphic load on it in a day. what do i do!??

Zo

Galileo, my card is an x1800xl which has 500core/1000mem , not a 6800gs in case you thought I got the 6800gs to 600 in the core :O. That'd be amazing.

zcubed, have you tried different drivers?? Perhaps those temps aren't accurate. Sometimes drivers have bad temps... for example the drivers that came with my card reported 90ºc at idle. Catalyst 5.13 fixed the problem.

Free

I have a 6800 vanilla that used to idle at 60ºC with the stock drivers, I now use the latest beta drivers (Forceware 82.12) and the idle temp is down to 48ºC.

BTW, I did not unlocked any pipes on it but it is OC'ed to 385MHz/820MHz.

There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer.

ok heres what ive done.ive directed one sytem fan directly on it and one that takes the air around it out of the case. lowered idle temps to ~56C. full loads still stay in the 80s. but its seemed to have become more stable for now. im waiting for the better cooling soultion ive ordered. the antec vcool blower. still no reply from bfg. i have the 82.12 forceware drivers btw. the 81.98(or whatever the current official ones r) don't detect the 6800gs. i realized that unlocking the pipes didnt change the stabily at all so i unlocked the pixel shader. but my extra vertex shader is faulty so i left it off. hopefully it wont crash anymore till like monday. this bfg card came OC'd at 370/1050.

Zo

just a quick question. the vcool has an adjustable length and i was wondering if i should direct it to blow directly on to the fan part of the graphics card(where the gpu is located under) or past it toward the no fan/heatsink only(where im assuming the memory is) portion of the card?

Zo

"just a quick question. the vcool has an adjustable length and i was wondering if i should direct it to blow directly on to the fan part of the graphics card(where the gpu is located under) or past it toward the no fan/heatsink only(where im assuming the memory is) portion of the card?"

Try both. ;)

Free