8800GTX question

[Grunge]

I have been reading many reviews on this card and I am seriously thinking about purchasing this card. The only thing that worries me is the fact that some reviews from users have posted things like "need a dual core processor" My machine is only running an AMD 64 3700+ right now, which is a decent single core processor. I know i need to upgrade and i will soon, but i wanted to buy the card first if i could. My question is will this card function properly with my processor assuming i have all the power specs etc..met. Mainly i want to know if it will work with my pc or will my performance be hindered. I did not think this would be an issue but i do not want to buy a card and then have to do another upgrade to use it. If anyone has any idea please let me know. Some of you may have read my other post about this in the other thread and no one replied im assuming it was because i posted in the wrong category..apologies to those who do not like when people do that.

Thanks,
Grunge

 

[prozac26]

You do not need a dual core.

Games don't use dual cores yet, and the 3700+ is still a good CPU.

You will few less framerates on it compared to a X6800, but you won't notice it, and it's not worth getting a $1000+ CPU.

 

[Grunge]

Ok, Thank you for your help! I think im going to purchase this card.

 

[Sovereign]

Woot! Welcome to the G80 club! 8)

- Nvidia. Think it. Want it. Pown it. :twisted:

 

[locky28]

Have you considered overclocking your 3700+? they get upto 2.7 easily on average and i've seen them running stable at 2.9 constantly. Even get it to 2.6 and you've got yourself an FX-55 on teh cheap , it would be a good compliment to your GTX.

 

[mpjesse]

Some games will do better w/ dual core processors. But now-a-days games are becoming more and more GPU dependent, making the speed of your CPU less important. For example, driverheaven.net recently reviewed the G80 and did a scaling comparison.

On an overclocked 3.6Ghz Core 2 Duo w/ a 1.2Ghz FSB (i think) games were only 1-2% faster in terms of frames. Some none at all.

 

[Grunge]

Have you considered overclocking your 3700+? they get upto 2.7 easily on average and i've seen them running stable at 2.9 constantly. Even get it to 2.6 and you've got yourself an FX-55 on teh cheap , it would be a good compliment to your GTX.

I have thought about overclocking the processor, but never really got around to it. It performs fairly well as it is. But i may do that to see what performance boosts i gain. Wow i figured that dual-core was a huge deal, i had no clue that the frame differences were that minimal.

 

[locky28]

I think if you get a decent after-market CPU cooler you could get something around 2.8ghz (FX-57 speeds) and that would without a doubt help get more out of your GTX, read the lateset article on the front page of Tom's regarding the GTX and you'll see that CPU matters a great deal, frame rate improvements of 61% from FX-60 to E6800

 

[Grunge]

Ok, thats something to think about. It would be nice to get a better performance when playing games such as oblivion. Which BTW does anyone know if you can run hdr and AA simultaneously yet? I had read somewhere that the 8800 couldnt do it quite yet with the current drivers.

 

[locky28]

Yes the G80 cards can render HDR aswell as AA, not sure if what you said about the drivers is true but the hardware is physically capable, can anyone verify that?

 

[Rashind]

Oblivion won't let me enable both HDR and AA on my (single) 8800GTX. I don't know if it's going to be enabled with a patch, or if you really need SLI. =(

 

[Grunge]

Bah! If an ATI will let you we should be able to. Hopefully Nvidia will catch on and update that in the next driver version.

*EDIT* I just read a few more reviews of the card and apparantly some of the other people have benchmarked oblvion with AA and HDR. I wonder how they were able to use AA and HDR simultaneously. Apparantly they had a way to do it. hmmm

 

[Rashind]

I'm reading that you can force AA through the nVidia control panel, and then turn on HDR in-game... at least for Oblivion. I'm gonna go test that right now. Be back in like 19 hours. Seriously, though, I'll post back pretty shortly (it's almost bedtime!) and tell if it works.

 

[Rashind]

Yup, it totally worked. My single 8800GTX was actually very slightly jerky with 4x AA, 16x AS, HDR, and all sliders maxed, though.

 

[Truekeeper]

so, the g80 is highly recomendend ?

I think i will order mine in the next couple of days

 

[Rashind]

I'm certainly a fan of mine. I imagine in a year or two when 8800GTX is low-midrange, I'll plug in another one for SLI action, if there's anything I'm interested in that needs it.

 

[WR2]

Make sure it will fit in your case.

 

[Grunge]

Ok, so its jerky? What are your system specs? I wouldnt think that the 8800 would lag on oblivion maxed out...I hope that it is a driver issue or something because it would be very disheartening to spend 600 some odd dollars and then it lags on a dx9 game.

 

[Rashind]

Grunge,

I've got a single 8800GTX, an E6600 OCed to 2.8 GHz on an eVGA 680i motherboard, and an Audigy 4 sound card.

When I say jerky, I mean the following: when I was playing outdoors (not near an oblivion gate) every few seconds, I would notice a single dropped frame. I didn't run fraps on it or anything, so I can't tell you exactly what it was pulling. I can tell you that I left AA at 4x (and 16x AS), because it's not noticable unless you're really nitpicking.

However, when I forced max performance from the GTX card in the nVidia control panel (16x AA, AA gamma on, AA transparency on, force triliner mipmaps, texture filtering negative LOD bias on clamp, triple buffering on, and forced vsync on) there was a pretty noticable performance decrease. But, disabling AA gamma transparency and forced trilinear mipmaps, negative LOD bias clamp, triple buffering, forced vsync, and dropping the AA back to 4x, it was great again. All this is at 1600x1200, by the way.

If you need to max every single setting, then you'll either want two 8800 GTX cards, or to wait a few months. If you're happy with 4x AA, HDR, and maxing everything it will let you in-game, then a single GTX will do you in nearly every in-game situation. (Again, I haven't been by an oblivion gate yet since getting the new card, so I don't know how it performs around those... the damn things are crazy GPU hogs, though.)

 

[Grunge]

Ok, i misinterpreted you. I am just curious, but do you have any idea what settings the xbox 360 has for oblivion...just for comparison to what pc users can do. I'm not a console gamer myself so im not sure.
I do see what you are saying about the settings and it does make sense. I believe the 8800 will do me in fine.

 

[Rashind]

Unfortunately, I don't know what the settings are in the 360 version. I know that Ars Technica had done a comparison review between the PC and 360 version, so you might check the backlog of articles there. (It may have been in one of the journals, I don't recall. But if it was in a journal, most likely it was opposable thumbs.)

I can tell you that an 8800GTX will blow the 360 straight to hell, though. Plus, if you're playing oblivion, the PC version gives you access to player-created mods, which are great not just for new content, but also because they can add a lot to the game visually. For instance, imperfect water, natural environments, stormier storms, elven cartographers, BT MOD (if you get any mods, get this one)... the list goes on. With the 360 you only get official downloadable content, like horse armor and mini-quests. However, those are also available on the PC.

 

[Rashind]

One more thing, if Oblivion is your game, with an 8800GTX your performance likely to be processor-limited if you're sporting a 3700+. It may be more sensible to drop down to a GTS and try to step up your processor, if you can... or if you come by money for upgrades fairly regularly, do the processor now and defer the graphics card. (I suggest this order because I think the 8800 cards are likely to drop in price more significantly than processors for your MB (socket 939, I presume?.)

Also, WR2 does make a good point. In many mid-tower cases, the 8800GTX wants some of the airspace occupied by the 3.5" drive cages. You'll either want to do some measurements or go with a full tower to be safe, if you have the desk real-estate.

 

[Grunge]

I will check that comparison whenever i have time. Yea, Oblivion is my game, but i do go from game to game fairly quickly so i would rather stick with the GTX. What you say about the order in which to buy upgrades makes sense except for the fact that i can get this card for Christmas, but i can save for a decent processor (correct, socket 939) in a shorter time then i can save for a GTX. By then if i need to i may be able to buy another GTX (i have a SLI mobo). I will need to upgrade my PSU most likely (running only 600watt currently). But that is way in the future, one 8800GTX should suffice for now.

 

[Grunge]

That looks nice. You have a very good system. Do you know what your framerates are? By the looks of your system and reviews i ave read i would say in the 30-40 range while outside a city.

 

[Mousemonkey]

8O Get away, those are just photo's from your camping holiday with the health bars photoshopped on top. 8O j/k

Seriously though that’s truly impressive mate