ATI 9600 to GF 6800 GS?

hi all, I'm thinking about upgrading my vid card from an ATI 9600 to a GF 6800 GS. I was wondering, should I do it? lol

How much FPS increase would I see? I have an AMD 2900 Socket A ( yes old stuff ;) ) and 1 Gig ram. How is advanced haze with the 6800? Any anomolies with the 6800?

the 6800 gs is a magic card, its a fairly big jump from the 9600.

dont expect too much out of the card playing lomac, as its mostly cpu that does the work, you will however notice bigger improvements with other games.

so say you played farcry with your 9600, then you got the 6800, it would be a massive step forward, but when you compare them both when playing lockon, well the difference will not be as great but the 6800 will still come out on top.

you cant go wrong with a 6800 gs

Thx for the reply Evil!

Yeah, good points. Yeah if it runs Lockon only marginally better, it won't be worthwhile. Something to think about...

Old stuff, but still good.

Try to OC your AMD as much as you can

I'm running mine on very stable settings. I have Barton 2500+ (166x11) @3200+ (200x11)

Huge boost in LockOn.

Sounds good Shaman! I've considered this, but I have to say, my mobo doesn't have a good reputation for overclocking (Chaintech 7NJL6). So I would need a good way to measure stability.

I have used Prime95 on it extensively, with the current settings and it seems rock solid with the settings now, but in Lock On I sometimes still get lockups. So I would need something that would only test my CPU/Memory, right? The thing is, I suspect it's my old 9600 causing Lockon to crash my system.

I shifted from an ATI 9600 to a 6600GT couple of months ago & even that made a big difference - overcast days dont make any appreciable difference, to the FPS, turned the water up a bit. Still CPU limited (3.2Ghz) so big cities bring the FPS down, but the graphics card itself keeps up.

HOWEVER: I have way more graphics "glitches" than I had with the ATI card (there is a long thread about a cloud bug that I haven't had).

I can't run heat blur - initialy it just wouldn't render correctly, then I updated the drivers & it renders OK, but about 20% of the time if you look at the heat blur it bring the FPS to < 1/sec. So no heat blur.

Also, every so often (5% of the time) something (I think it's either the F16 model or the AIM-9 model) brings the frame rate to a halt. Look everywhere except where that thing is & get good framerates, but as soon as that point/thing comes into view - everything comes to a halt - till it leaves the field of view. This never happened with either of the 2 previous cards I've played this game with.

Quake 4 & GTR play great, Far Cry won't render properly.

(I had to modify the case to get more air through, but that was always going to happen.)

Next time I buy a card it'll be an ATI.

How bout at ATI X800XL?

Thanks Weta, awesome info!

Yeah, I'm looking for good prices on the X800 XL, but so far I found it around cdn$ 400+ where the 6800 GS goes for cdn$ 270. If the prices were lower for the X800 XL, I would definately go ATI.

About overclocking, mobo stuff: does anyone know how FSB Spread Spectrum affects LO? I had to default all my settings yesterday, and FSB Spread Spectrum is on now, and my fps is up a bit more than usual. It's quite possible it's something else, but just wondering.

http://www.rojakpot.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?Lang=0&bogno=115

spread spectrum is used when you have problems due to EMI/ Electro Magnetic Interference or something like that, all it does is regulate the mobo/psu so that it doesnt stay on 1 frequency for long thus the interference is lessened a great deal. most new psu's have a thing built into them so that the cables leaving the psu are shielded to stop any EMI

Also spread spectrum itself can cause problems, especially when overclocking.

Unless you are having problems with EMI, leave it turned off, you WILL know if you need it turned on as you will have loads of interference.

I would like to change too my graphic card, ATI 9600 XT, but if I' don't have a fast processor (P4 2,4 GHz with 1Gb RAM) so.... do you think it's better changing processor and motherboard first in order to gain fps in lomac?

With a 6800GS you will see improvement, but as pointed out my some others here, you will then be cpu limited.

And because you will just have bought an AGP card, you will have to buy a new videocard when upgrading to a new CPU.

So unless you plan to buy a new system all together, i would advise to buy a new cpu/mobo/videocard combo instead of just the videocard...