I must be mad but.....

.....I've just bought myself a Geforce 6800 GT graphics card!

Expensive mind at £275, but its got a 350 MHz core, 1 GHz DDR3 memory, 16-pipelines, 256 Mb RAM and it runs practically every game with full detail at 1600x1200 at 50 FPS or more :MILD:

Cant wait to get it, I will let you guys know what its like

 

I just got a ATI 9800 Pro Mac Special addition with 256 megs.

F**k me I expected it to improve games but the whole macs gone turbo! Scrolling, web pages everything is blistering.

Well pleased, even more so that a friend got it from America for me at around £170 cheaper

Plus its dealing with my 23 inch flat screen (1900x1200) like childs play :MILD:

 

How much was it normally? Sounds mighty expensive! Cant you just use a PC 9800?

 

It cost £359 in the UK
I run an apple mac, so it needs special cards

 

Garyi, do you have any links ?

 

Ouch!!! Heavy price to pay!

 

Yea its the price of mac upgrade, at the end of the day only ATI and Radeon support macs, and they need to specially devlop there stuff.

Voodoo the apple store sells it in the UK, around 350, I got it from the states privately (my dad knows someone in apple over there) so there was heavy discount.

Its made a hell of a difference, Paul you will be as pleased as I am the whole system performance increases and with desktops like this:



You need all the graphics processing you can

(Yes ok showing off but still in love with my new screen)

 

Sorry Voodoo wrong price:

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObj...BUw4Ox2G6XgP42K0S8XX4/2.0.9.1.0.6.25.7.11.2.3

£329 in the uk, apple seem to have the best price FWIW

 

Very nice.

I had a go of one the other day, and a new member of staff at our place who sits next to me has one, and to be fair it is a very nice looking operating system.

Is that UT2003 or 2004 I see on your toolbar? I prefer 2004, much better playability than 2003 IMO. I especially like the "invasion" mode

 

Is it just me who thinks the new Apple and XP icons look a bit, err, twee??? NIIIIICE backdrop though Gary - very cool indeed!

I'm going to be in the market for a better card soon (only just got a 64 meg one, as was going to use new PC just for music, BUT I wanna run Doom 4 (or whatever it's called) and my PC ain't good enough graphically. Ooops. What's the best 256 meg card under a ton right now?

 

dom, to change an icon in OSX you just paste your chosen one on the existing one, as such those Twee icons you see are my choice!

 

Cheers for that .

I see you use Limewire. Any good ?

 

It works

 

Dom, you aint gonna get a particularly good 256mb gfx card for under £100, but I do suggest that perhaps you stretch to just over £100 and get a 128mb ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

 

Well, I'm jealous, Paul. Doom 3 is going to be a cinch for that thing

 

Paul - thanks for the advice to Dom re: graphics cards. I'm looking at upgrading the one in my PC (a lowly Radeon 9200), so may very well go for the Radeon 9800 Pro that you mention. That 6800 GT sounds like a nice piece of kit - hope it lives up to expectations for you!

 

Well I got the card this morning, but unfortunately didnt have much chance to play around with it, but I do have some preliminary thoughts.

First off, it seems quite noisy, at least compared to the fanless* Ti4200 I had before, but then I guess it would do. Its a beast of a card, with a huge heatsink covering the core and memory.

It went in painlessly, and noticed straight away that the 2D image quality clearly seems better than the Ti4200 (a card which was renowned for poor 2D quality), so its nice to see that Nvidia has improved the 2D quality of the card.

I fired up Painkiller, a first person shoot em up which is like the Serious Sam series - that is many enemies, and lots of mindless action, blood and guts. Before this, my machine (Athlon 2600+, 1280 Mb RAM, 333 FSB) really struggled with this game, even at 1024x768 medium detail, it slowed down very badly when lots of enemies were on the screen to the point of being almost unplayable IMO.

At 1280x1024, very high detail, the card clearly runs the game much faster than before, still with a slowdown during busy sections, but nothing like what it was - also I think the game might slow down on purpose while you are getting slashed off the knights, because the vision goes kinda funny, and it does look intentional because now I can actually control it when that happens (and I couldnt before). Not only that but unsurprisingly, the game looks far better and is more enjoyable to play.

Unfortunately, due to me being out on the drink tonight straight from work, its unlikely I'll get to have another go until tomorrow night. But I am looking forward to trying Doom 3, Far Cry, The Suffering, Splinter Cell amongst others. I'll let you know how it goes.

* Ti4200 was fanless because the fan had seized up, causing me to nearly burn my fingers when I took it out this morning

 

I have noticed the sound from my mac has doubled since the card went in, all on account of the fact my old card didn't have a fan. This is a shame as the mac happily runs nine fans very quietly.

 

gary, what card did you have before? the 9600pro? i've been wondering if it'd be worth the upgrade, but the price of the mac 9800 is pathetic, considering the only real difference is the BIOS of the cards...

the 6800 ultra looks tempting, but, again, the price is higher than the PC counterpart. not so much of a difference as the 9800, but still 50 quid more than the PC Ultras are going for. and i'm sure the upgrade would be well worth it

 

Mike the last card was OEM a Navida something or other.

The price of the 9800 was well out of my leuge however the price from america is signifcantly better.

It is a far far superior card, but as I say in a G5 which is in essence silient, there is a definate noise increase, which is a shame.