nvidia GeForce 6800 GTO

[pinball111]

getting a dell 8400 with the 6800 gto pretty soon. i was wondering - anyone had major success/failures with certain games? Doom 3? Half Life 2? Star Wars Battlefront? any other prominent game? just curious.

 

[vshah]

err...it should work fine with pretty much anything out there

 

[mdahc]

If you haven't already gotten one and you're familiar with DIY, you might consider building an Athlon64-based system with a 6800 standard or a 6800 GT. You'll pay nearly the same amount of money if not less, and you'll have a much more powerful system. If you must have a Dell machine, why not get one of their Precision 370's with a 64-bit P4 and then buy your own PCIe graphics card (if you're set on 6800's, then definitely wait until resellers stop price gouging the PCIe versions)? It should cost you almost the same amount of money as the 8400 (there are always tons of coupons for the Small Business division's web site), and you'll be future proofing your machine for Windows XP 64-bit Edition next year (although it still won't be as powerful as an Athlon64 machine for games). Their business tech support is also usually a lot better than their consumer tech support since their business clients are their bread and butter. The only thing that might put you a bit over the 8400 (despite coupons and discounts) is the additional cost of a PCIe 6x00, of course, but the 64-bit P4 and the better level of support (not to mention a cooler looking chassis) are worth the extra cost, IMO. Buying a non-EM64T 5xx P4 at this point is hardly worth the time or the money.

 

[knyghtbyte]

Originally posted by: mdahc
If you haven't already gotten one and you're familiar with DIY, you might consider building an Athlon64-based system with a 6800 standard or a 6800 GT. You'll pay nearly the same amount of money if not less, and you'll have a much more powerful system. If you must have a Dell machine, why not get one of their Precision 370's with a 64-bit P4 and then buy your own PCIe graphics card (if you're set on 6800's, then definitely wait until resellers stop price gouging the PCIe versions)? It should cost you almost the same amount of money as the 8400 (there are always tons of coupons for the Small Business division's web site), and you'll be future proofing your machine for Windows XP 64-bit Edition next year (although it still won't be as powerful as an Athlon64 machine for games). Their business tech support is also usually a lot better than their consumer tech support since their business clients are their bread and butter. The only thing that might put you a bit over the 8400 (despite coupons and discounts) is the additional cost of a PCIe 6x00, of course, but the 64-bit P4 and the better level of support (not to mention a cooler looking chassis) are worth the extra cost, IMO. Buying a non-EM64T 5xx P4 at this point is hardly worth the time or the money.

this of course is assuming Longhorn does actually get released on time next year, and that lots of games/software are written to take advantage of the 64bit system, at the moment very little software will truly benefit from the 64bit side of things.

for the OP, the 8400 with a GTO is a lovely machine, i have one and it works beautifully on all games and mine is the more basic spec (3ghz p4 with 1gb 400mhz ram) so if you go with slightly faster p4 and higher performance ram u should notice some improvements on mine, check my specs below. Altho you wont be able to unlock the pipes on the GTO anymore, Dell seem to have found a way around that. you might still be able to OC tho, but be warned it can get a tad hot this card.
Enjoy your machine when u get it

 

[mdahc]

I still say get the Precision 370 if you're going to get one from Dell. Sure there really isn't much 64-bit software for Windows right now. However, the move to 64-bit software gives software vendors the perfect excuse to force an upgrade, which is, of course, the only way they make money. For crying out loud, not a lot has changed between Adobe creative suite 7 and 8, Studio MX 2002 and 2004, MS Office XP and 03. The move to 64-bit is actually a justifiable excuse this time around, and you can bet that all major software vendors, including game vendors, will be recompiling their code with Microsoft's 64-bit compiler so they can tell consumers "looky here, we've got an all new version and it's 64-bit." An established software company would have to be nuts not to take advantage of such an opporturnity, regradless of whether or not any true benefit can be had. There's no question an 8400 would probably work beautifully, but it's already obsolete before you buy it, right? At least with the 370 you get a relevant CPU and better tech support (and the cooler looking chassis).

 

[Lonyo]

AMD will give you better gaming performance, according to most tech sites, so if you are buying a PC for gaming, you might want to consider getting a non-Dell machine.

 

[mdahc]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
AMD will give you better gaming performance, according to most tech sites, so if you are buying a PC for gaming, you might want to consider getting a non-Dell machine.

That's my first recommendation.

 

[knyghtbyte]

for just gaming yes, from what i understand AMD is the option......but if you do other things online, specially surf the web a lot while having music programs running, and the suchlike, the HT on a pentium is actually a decent advantage......mebbe the dual core AMDs coming out will supercede that, but then they aint gonna be cheap are they to begin with?
And for us the end user, the 64bit stuff still isnt going to give an actual noticable advantage till probably a year after at least after Longhorn is released software-wise...but once the compiling an coding is widespread and used correctly then it will be worthwhile......
question is, is it worth buying that now just because in 2 years it might be useful? or are you likely to upgrade again by that time and get more releveant speed technology for the era?...hehe
gotta love computers, if we all had lots of money we'd be buying something new once a week at least to upgrade....LOL

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
for just gaming yes, from what i understand AMD is the option......but if you do other things online, specially surf the web a lot while having music programs running, and the suchlike, the HT on a pentium is actually a decent advantage......mebbe the dual core AMDs coming out will supercede that, but then they aint gonna be cheap are they to begin with?
And for us the end user, the 64bit stuff still isnt going to give an actual noticable advantage till probably a year after at least after Longhorn is released software-wise...but once the compiling an coding is widespread and used correctly then it will be worthwhile......
question is, is it worth buying that now just because in 2 years it might be useful? or are you likely to upgrade again by that time and get more releveant speed technology for the era?...hehe
gotta love computers, if we all had lots of money we'd be buying something new once a week at least to upgrade....LOL

I think either way you are fine, people say the A64's multitasking ability sucks, but it sure is good enough for me!!! I like the A64 in games though yes!

But, in the end, either serves the same purpose, a lot of people just prefer AMD for bang for buck, or raw gaming performance. (me included)

 

[knyghtbyte]

and the moral of the story is...........dont get a Celeron......lol

 

[Solema]

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
and the moral of the story is...........dont get a Celeron......lol

What he said.

 

[knyghtbyte]

Originally posted by: Solema

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
and the moral of the story is...........dont get a Celeron......lol

What he said.

^5 :beer:

 

[Regs]

AMD' 64 Multitasking for general purpose use is excellent. Why are people glorifying the P4 with HT when it offers negligible performance gain with desktop applications? Listening to music while browsing the web will not take advantage of the extra "threads".

 

[VedantR]

The 6800 GTO is surprisingly good. For the price I got it at, I'm quite impressed. I have been able to unlock the extra units (just get RivaTuner 15.3 not 15.2) and have pushed my card to ultra clock levels. So far, I have not seen a tremendous increase in temperature. In fact at Idle, I'm running at 57C and when I get the NV Silencer 5, ill bring this down by maybe 5 - 10 degrees.