Morning,

After finding out I need a new graphics card to play any kind of decent game I am not sure which to get out of the following: -

ATI Radeon X800 GTO

or

Nvidia Gefroce 6800GS

help me decide!!!

I am a big ATI fan, but at the moment I think the 6800 series from nvidia gives better overall performance.

6800GTS cards can be had for reasonable money these days, and if it is Q4 / Doom3 engined games you where looking to play, then the Nvidia options are better as they handle openGL better than ATI's.

Image quality, higher resolutions and directx / direct3d games the ATI is superior. I am guessing your board is AGP so that narrows the market slightly as well at the moment.

If you go trawling round the web, you will find the ati and nvidia camps scratching each others eyes out.

Toms hardware has some useful pointers and reviews here

cheers

Fluff'

i have only just got my pc upgraded so i'm gonna have to check whether i'm AGP or PCI-E first, then make sure then installed a high enough power pack to run them, oh the joys of PC ownership!

Bugger I may have a problem!

My powerpack is only rated at 300W and need 350 for the 6800GS, that limits my options a lot. Damn

to be honest, you would be better uprating the psu, you don't have to go silly, you can get a good spec psu for around

Ah PSU cheaper than I thought!

That is about the same price as overclockers for the 6800GS as well,

thanks for that Fluff!

Watch out for some 'cut down' cards that have big spec numbers but then different letters, for example the nvidia 6800GT is the genuine article, but GS, LE variants are somewhat knobbled, and you would probably be better off getting a 6600GT instead (approx £100 from www.ebuyer.com).

You also need to consider the motherboard chipset and the sort of games you want to play. For example there is an incompatibility between some VIA chipsets and ATI gfx cards that means that some older games (e.g. Medal of Honor (sic)) either won't play, or VPU recovery kicks in erroneously and turns the display off randomly.

I have used loads of different gfx cards over the years, and always used to prefer ATI, but lately I have had a number of problems with their mid range offerings, and have converted over to nVidia. If you are wanting to play Doom3, Quake 4, Half Life 2 etc at reasonable frame rates and with reasonable levels of detail, don't spend anything less than £100 on the gfx, but as Fluffmeister says, check whether the motherboard is AGP or PCI-E. If you want to play something like F.E.A.R. with details turned up, don't go for anything less than a 7800GTX

I cannot afford the 7800GTX, i've checked it and it's definately AGP, just shopping around for the best prices for the 6800. Have compared the 6600GT and the 6800GS and the framerate is alot better on the 6800GS, eg F.E.A.R. @ 4 x antiliasing and 16 x anistropy using 1280x1024 the framerate is 25 on the GS against 15 on the 6600GT, which is good compared to the 6800GT which is 27, can't find comparison against that and the 7800.

I've got a (PCI-E) X800 GTO and it's OK but probably a 6800GS would beat it, so if prices are similar I'd go for that. I think also that Nvidia drivers are more stable than ATI's at the moment. The GTO is definitely old technology, no shader model 3, but this was reflected in the price when I got mine. Only other consideration is cooling - the 6800GS's are allegedly very noisy and my Gecube GTO has a very quiet copper cooler with a heatpipe. You should upgrade your PSU anyway !

7600 range from NVidia is out fairly shortly. This will knock the prices of the better cards down