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[simonp1]

Well my new PC is on hold. Simple reason im going to wait for PCI to become more popular so prices will fall...

So being the born tweaker i decided to buy somthing to spurt my PC a little..

Arrives my new 6600GT. Why, well it's cheap so when i do move to PCI i wont cry about the £300 ( 6800GT ) AGP gf i will have to sell for halve price. Why not 6800LE..well it's only good if you can unlock the extra piplines ( not guaranteded ) ..if not its a lesser card IMO and has less bandwidth..

So before i swapped the cards..BM2001..

9800pro 16523 ( Stock ) shinny GT ( 15406 ) both latest drivers

SHITE..i said in tears..how bad is this going to be you wondered..

Well, as you know im a MOhaa Player ( sad i know ) but true. Mohaa is an openGL based game, so is the GT. In thery i guessed the new card would be better for this game ( he said with fingers crossed ) so i did a few tests

Well certain maps and in certain areas the FPS change. I tryed to ensure that the settings on both cards would be the same in GF set up ( control panels )

Result's, well the 6600gt was better but not massive..the key thing is it ran so smooth. Less clitches, stutter and i felt the quality of the game was better to.

But like any game, the only way to judge is Kills vs Deaths..

Now this isnt easy to compare at all, to many varants, but still has served me well in the past..

My server, with my normal team mates..Normally their is some i kick and others kick me..Well the GT rose above it...i mullered their asses.. 67 kills 15 deaths...said it all to me...

Another server i frag on...same again..not as many kills but top scorer..good?

Now..as i wanted to really play with my PC..i thought i would buy a Netgear DG834 Router. I had the speed touch 330 USB modem before..great for lag...

So easy to set up..really was..time for another test...

Last test..OBJ map..played on a server that i know has the top players on,,normaly i dont score much here...WOW..i owned..made shots i never used to..reaction time seemed so much better, none of this " lag "..so good i got kicked for thinking i was cheating..

So..conclusion..

Benchmarks are great for improving your card, but do not always tell the full story about which is the best card for certain games..

Also...is a router better than a USB modem...OH yes..£60 well spent...

Thanks for reading..

[PilchY]

hehe... i like routers better than modem's....a lot less hassle to set up...

[Naoki Maeda]

Personally I only find benchmark programs good for stress testing your videocard if you was to overclock it and want to check for improvements or artifacts. I never really use it to tell which card is better because the game demos on the benchmarks are just the same things all over again, whereas when your on proper games, its different all the time. You would find that one level is perfectly fine and then you know it, another level that takes your videocard to its limits. Its just all set demos & pieces on benchmarks so you can't really tell much when on games, its all variable so it affects your videocard.

And I would say that ADSL Routers are much better and much more efficient than USB modems. They don't use much CPU power since they would be connected via dedicated LAN port, and its just so much easier to connect online to since once your computer is on, your already there. Not to mention expansion ports for other computers to connect to your network as well.

[Cataclysm=J]

You need to take into account that on the older cards ATI ran Direct X as hardware and NVIDIA ran it as software emluation so the older ATI cards are way more efficent at playing game that rely on Direct X to run whereas the NVIDIA cards had to do twice as much work. Weather this is true in the 6800 i don't know i have a feeling it is but i would always go for the X800 series when i come to buy an expencive card.

[Sureshot]

I read, on Tom's hardware i think, that the current crop of games hitting the market only really require 4x PCI bandwidth and that it will take a while for games to catch up to the technology. I had planned on buying a 6800GT in the new year and expect to get 2 years + out of it by upgrading other components at the same time. Quite a few people I know are playing with 5900 cards and they are still getting good performance out of them, and when did they first come out?

If i was to convert to PCI express, i would have to buy a new AMD chip with a new socket config and the prices are really a bit too steep for me.

[Cataclysm=J]

thke your old graphics card and put both the new one and the old one in the computer to make it much more future proof i know a friend who did that but i don't think windows liked it too much and about you prices trouble for the chip well jan sales are coming up take advantage.

Do you know any really cheap site i'm trying to make a collection for when i buy so i can get each component cheapest from the cheapest site because site tend to be cheap for one component and expensive for another so just get a little of each one.

[simonp1]

Sureshot, PCI is to expensive for now, but will be the only way forward in the coming months.......so i thought its pointless spending £1200 now when i will need to upgrade again soon...so going to wait until the summer when PCI prices have fallen and more products are around.