Hi,
I got a 6800XT agp card from xfx today.
I replaced my 6600GT with this card carefully. I unplugged all the cables properly and slowly and put the 6800XT in the agp slot properly.

I uninstalled the older drivers, and installed the latest drivers, and everything worked fine.

However, when I opened 3dmark 05 and clicked on "details" its ays the vga core is running at 11.3Mhz.
Here are few details:

Description NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS/XT
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Total Local Video Memory 256 MB
Total Local Texture Memory 256 MB
Total AGP Memory 128 MB
Driver File nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version 9.1.3.1
Driver Date 6-1-2006
Driver WHQL Certified true
Max Texture Width 4096 px
Max Texture Height 4096 px
Max User Clipping Planes 6
Max Active Hardware Lights 8
Max Texture Blending Stages 8
Fixed Function Textures In Single Pass 8
Vertex Shader Version 3.0
Pixel Shader Version 3.0
Max Vertex Blend Matrices 0
Max Texture Coordinates 8
VGA Memory Clock 1.0 GHz
VGA Core Clock 11.3 MHz

I checked this a couple of times, even after rebooth, but the 3d mark shows the vga clock as 11.3Mhz each time.

I just want to make sure that I havent done anything wrong, so if there is anything wrong I can correct it before its too late.

I ran the 3d mark 05 tests, and it completed successfully. The 6600GT used to give me 2700+, the 6800XT gives me 3142(aprox)
I have been playing fear and the computer has been on quite a lot, and I dont see any signs of trouble at all. Fear runs at higher detaisl than the 6600gT could.

Everything seems fine, I just want to make sure that the 11.3Mz reading is not a fatal error which should be fixed soon.
If it is an reading error, I dont mind. I just want to make sure I have set up the card properly.

Also, the card name displayes as 6800XT/GS in the nvidia control panel, device mangaer, and dxdiag, but I read somewhere that this is normal.

This card is supposed to be 256bit, but I dont know where to look to find out that it is 256bit or 128bit.

Finally, I had asked my friend to purchased this card way back in july when this card was newly up for sale on xfx.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

When I asked my friend to buy this card, there were about 10 user reviews available, but now there are about user reviews, and after reading them i found that many of t heir cards have failed. Some failed within 2 days, some within 2 months.
If this card fails on me I dont know what I can do about it, except go back to the 6600gt.
So I just want to know that there is nothing wrong I have done in installing the card that may contribute to its early demise.
Thanks and regards.
Sarosh.

Sarosh

You should try going into the nvidia monitor panel and looking at the GPU heading In there it will tell you the actual speed of your GPU. To access it go to start > all programs > nvidia corp > Nvidia Monitor. In the middle speed of your gpu in 3d mode.

I had this problem with 3dmark on my XFX 6600GT.

The 6800GT is only a little bit better than the 6600GT.
The GPU speed of the 6800GT is 350mhz compared to the 500mhz of the 6600GT. The memory clock is just the same. The only real difference is the 256bit and the 256mb RAM.

Living on a steady diet of....soda pop and ritalin

The other real difference is the pixel and vertex pipelines of the 6800gt and the 6600gt.

I notice only a slight improvement over the 6600GT, which is good, because I had initially read that some 256MB cards peform a bit worse than some 128mb cards.

What is the difference in the pixel and vertex shaders between the two cards?

Sarosh

I wouldn't worry, I don't know where 3dMark gets its info from, it's never been right, especially when tyring to pick-up RAM settings (as in system RAM), try RivaTuner from guru3d.com, that should give you a more accurate result

Hi Thanks,
I think you are right, the card seems to be working fine and there must be some issues with 3d mark not being able to read the card clock speeds correctly.

This card did exhibit some odd behaviour while trying to install the drivers. I am currently using the latest drivers released by nvidia on 14 september. Windows does not seem to recognize this card as a valid card otherwise.

Also, I think now (although very late) that the windows desktop search toolbar was responsible for the problems I had. I used to click on "index now" to enable it to index the HDs, but that used to throws all sorts of errors when I used to use the computer. When it is not indexing there are no errors.
So I am not even sure whethere there was ram problem, driver problem, or it was just the indexing service of the windows desktop that was messing everything up.

I am back to 1GB ram and this card can play FEAR at quite higher settings than the 6600GT could with more fps too.

Sarosh

If this is useful for anyone, I think the windows desktop search is a major cause of problems, specially while it is indexing the HDs.

While it indexes my HDs I get browser errors and Dr watson erroros and even the antivirus has some "reading errors"
After the indexing is complete, these problems seem to just vanish.

Sarosh