Is GF 6800 Ultra still any good?

[Slava]

Guys,

I've been away for almost a year (family problems) and I am out of the loop. Of course, I've heard/read about PCI Express, SLI and all that but I seem to be unable to find any meaningful reviews / comparisons of how GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP) compares to the latest (single) PCI Express cards. Basically, my question is whether the 6800 Ultra is hopelessly obsolete or it still holds its own. Any comments/links would be greatly appreciated.

Another question I had is this: I need to build a decent *gaming* box for someone on the smallest budget possible (the box should run World of Warcraft at 1024x768 or 1152x864 with all or most eye candy turned on and a decent frame rate - anything over 20 fps). In case anyone has an existing build written up, could you post it here please?

Thanks much in advance.

 

[prozac26]

No point of buying a 6800Ultra now, the price on it is horrible. If you still have the card, it's still a good card, but not worth buying.

 

[raven_87]

Yes, the 6800U is still a decent card. However if your looking to just run day to day applications and WoW while maintaining decent frame rate, your not going to need anywhere near a card of that caliber. You could pull 30FPS with max eye candy on a 6600GT @ 1024x768 without dropping to much $$

 

[Slava]

Ahem... I must have been unclear. I am not in the market to buy a new video card. My PC has the following specs:

Abit IS7 Motherboard
Pentium 4 with HT at 3.0 Hz
1 Gb of PC3200 dual-channel RAM
120 GBx2 SATA Hard Drives
256 Mb eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP)

Personally, I run World of Warcraft at 1600x1200 with everything turned on and I get 30-50 fps depending on the area and the amount of action going on. I am happy with that. But I am thinking about building a new PC for myself and wanted to know if I should. So I'd like to know if my PC with its 6800 Ultra is still a good enough machine.

As for the second question, my girlfriend got heavily into WoW but her Radeon 9800 PRO is dying (I had it overclocked and it's running on its last legs these days). Her Dell is also obslolete (it has an Pentium 2.4 GHz, AGP 4x motherboard, a 20 (twenty) Gb hard drive and it cannot have more than 512 Mb of RAM). So I would like to build a new box for her on a budget... Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Anoobis]

If I read you right, give her yours and build yourself a new one. Combine the small amount she wanted to spend on her new system (as payment for your old one) with the amount you were considering for a new system for yourself and put together a new setup for you.

Wait until the end of July as prices for AMD chips will drop and Intel's new Conroe will be available. See which one best suits your needs and go from there.

OR

Buy her an X800GTO for her system, and keep yours and upgrade it later once real comparisons have been made on AMD's and Intel's offerings.

 

[cleeve]

6800 Ultra is at least as good as the 7600 GT/X1800 GTO, which are great cards under $200. In AGP it's about as good as the 7800 GS***

So yeah, the 6800 Ultra is still a powerful card.

WoW? WoW is pretty easy to run, no need for a new box for her, just get her a better videocard... an X800 GTO is a good deal, or a used X800 XL or 6800 GT on ebay would be under $150.

If you're going to buy new, migrate your old system to her like Anoobis said, and get yourself a new PCIe system with a new videocard...



*** (at stock clockspeeds, not overclocked)

 

[prozac26]

So Cleeve, how's your X1900 doing?

 

[cleeve]

Pretty nice. Runs hot tho.

 

[Slava]

Thank you, guys. Very helpful comments. I am glad you are still here, Cleeve. I was afraid that if I came back after all this time I would not see any familiar names. Looks like most of the old gurus are still here and I am still and addict

 

[cleeve]

Good to see you too, Slava!

 

[raven_87]

Cleeve just so you dont get mad, I'm going to let you know now.

My new sig is going to say

"X800 GTO is a good deal, or a used X800 XL or 6800 GT on ebay would be under $150. "

Becuase thats literally in every thread LOL........I'm about crying becuase I just realized it lol........luv ya buddy LOL

 

[cleeve]

Heheh.

True. True.