Worth it to upgrade?

[digerati]

I am currently using a Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mb agp card that I flashed to a 9800xt. I added a better cooler and it has been running great for the last year or so.

Lately I've been itching to make an upgrade, and I happen to have a friend who is willing to buy my 9800 for slightly less than retail (about $140 or so) so I started looking at new cards. I'm not a bleeding edge type of guy who needs the absolute fastest, but I do want my money to actually get me some decent performance increases.

The two cards I've set my sights on are the x800 Pro and the 6800 GT, both AGP versions. My question is, given their cost, would I see significant performance improvements over my 9800? If so, which of the two would be the better choice? Can the x800 Pro be flashed to an x800 XT like my old 9800 was? How about the 6800GT?

I am not looking to make a huge system upgrade right now, which is why I'm sticking to AGP rather than moving up to PCI-ex. Whatever card I get, if I get one, would need to last for at least another year or so.

I play a mix of sports games (Madden2k5), MMOs (City of Heroes, Matrix Online), and FPS (eagerly awaiting Battlefield 2) and like to play at high resolutions with a decent amount of bling on.

So is it worth upgrading from a 9800Pro/xt(flash) to an x800Pro or 6800GT? or am i better off just waiting for a major upgrade somewhere down the road?

Thanks!

 

[LordOfLA]

You will see a significant jump in performance - espcecially from the 6800GT - which would be my recommended upgrade for this generation of technology.

 

[ShepsCrook]

You will see a difference, BUT, I think you can wait. Your 9800 still plays all of the latest games pretty well. So it still has life left. I have a 9800 Pro AIW, and an X800Pro (OCed to XT-PE speeds), and I see a great difference, but nothing that can't wait.

 

[VenomXt]

i have a 9700 pro and mine still does the job really well so. Wait hehe

 

[digerati]

I've decided to go with the 6800GT and found a leadtek on newegg that has a huge cooler on it that gets great review for cranking up to ultra speeds.

I can afford the lost PCI slot for the cooler (my flashed 9800pro already does that anyways) but I noticed that the specs for the leadtek show only openGL 1.5 support, an MSI card that costs about $20 more has openGL 2.0 support.

Does that make any difference at all?

 

[melon]

Does Asus make a 6800GT? I'm generally pretty pleased with the cards they make.

Melon

 

[unknown_user]

i would stay with the 9800 pro but if you whant something better than that go for a nvidia 6600

 

[Tuffgong4]

I've decided to go with the 6800GT and found a leadtek on newegg that has a huge cooler on it that gets great review for cranking up to ultra speeds.

I can afford the lost PCI slot for the cooler (my flashed 9800pro already does that anyways) but I noticed that the specs for the leadtek show only openGL 1.5 support, an MSI card that costs about $20 more has openGL 2.0 support.

Does that make any difference at all?

the leadtek does have 2.0 support. don't worry about that. Also I honestly thinnk you should wait at least til maybe some new cards get announced.

I have the 6800GT and I'm very happy with it. But for me it's overkill. I only really play CS Source and it does the job very well and I upgraded from a Geforce4 4200. So it was a big upgrade. The 9800 to 6800 upgrade is big but I would wait a little longer to upgrade because the next cards might push prices of the ones out now down.

Also if I were buying a card right now I would look into the x800xl for agp. they are scarce right now and overpriced compared to the actual retail price but I would get that instead. I love my 6800GT but in my case I only really play a hl2 based game which the ati cards do better on

 

[LordOfLA]

Why all these suggestions to wait? If you wait for the next big thing you'll never buy anything

If you got the money go for the 6800GT. You will see a big difference, you will be pleased with your purchase and you will be able to play all the games your 9800 can and more. I have to admit that my 9800pro is starting to chug a little on the current itterations of my favourite games.

 

[trainmaster77]

I've decided to go with the 6800GT and found a leadtek on newegg that has a huge cooler on it that gets great review for cranking up to ultra speeds.

I can afford the lost PCI slot for the cooler (my flashed 9800pro already does that anyways) but I noticed that the specs for the leadtek show only openGL 1.5 support, an MSI card that costs about $20 more has openGL 2.0 support.

Does that make any difference at all?

if yer gonna get an agp 6800gt get BFG ..tech support is the absolute best and with lifetime warranty and telephone support you cant go wrong

 

[digerati]

Ok, thanks for all the suggestions guys, I greatly appreciate it.

However, all these suggestions to "wait" have gotten me thinking along a different line. I've crunched the numbers and made some guestimations and it seems that for about the same amount of money that it would end up costing me to move from my 9800pro/xt to a 6800gt, i could move from my asus a7n8x deluxe nforce2 mobo, athlonXP 2500+ (oc'd to 3200+), and 9800pro to a gigabyte GA-k8n ultra-SLI nforce4 mobo, an athlonx64 3000+ cpu, and a 6600GT pci-e vidcard.

So my new question is, what would be the better use of money, gaming performance-wise. From my original post you can see what i normally do/play with my system.

What would be the best choice for me? and if i did go the new mobo/cpu route, is the 6600gt pci-e card the best choice at that price point? or is there a different card, ati, nvidia or whatever, that would be a better performance choice. and finally, is the 6600gt a better card than my current 9800pro performance and image qualitywise?


Thanks!

 

[LordOfLA]

I'm slightly adverse to the 660GT. I would still say to go for the 6800GT AGP and wait for second generation PCI-E chipsets. However you could always migrate to athlon64 on an msi k8n Neo2 Platinum board and pack some extra punch into your games that way.

For best performance in games with that I'd recommend UniAN catalyst 5.1 and use the 4.12 catalyst opengl driver for games that make use of opengl. You can search driverheaven.net forums for a link to the UniAN drivers and ati will provide you with 4.12

HTH

 

[Tuffgong4]

at the 160-200 price point the 6600GT is the best you can do. You will see an overall jump in performance with the big upgrade you are talking about but it won't be earth shattering. The only reason I said wait is because the prices of the current generation might fall and I really want to see where the price of the ati x800xl for agp comes in because it's a direct competitor to the 6800GT and "supposed" to be at a price point of 299. Prices and availability for the recent ati cards have been high(former) and scarce(latter) but if you could find a 800xl for 299 you would have a card that is 100 dollars cheaper and competes and sometimes beats out the 6800GT

hell if you went to pci-express you could get the x800xl from ati for 289 from newegg http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-509&depa=1 and you would be getting the same performance of the 6800GT for 100 dollars less that could go to something else.

I have a 6800GT for agp...I love it. but I just want to say the things I said just give more options...