Should I upgrade to 7800GTX?

[EL_BaRTO]

Hello. I currently have a 6800GT 256MB VGA. I am planning to upgrade to a 7800GTX. I am not really on a budget, BUT I am not stupid to dish out too much money for something. My question: Is it really worth it to upgrade to a 7800GTX? Should I keep my 6800GT for another year? My 6800GT does pretty well at handling even the toughest games out right now. As a gamer, I really want to keep up with hardware, so just wondering if it is worth the upgrade. Some say that it really isn't worth it because the difference of the speeds are minimal. Anyways, just wondering. For those who reply, thank you.

[hockey man]

I wouldn't upgrade. The 6800 is a great card. Maybe go with 2 gigs of ram.

[saphalline]

A 6800 GT vs a 7800 GTX!? Hahahaaa! No contest! :p The 7800 GTX rips right through the poor 6800 series! Let's take a look at the specs...

6800 GT, NV40, 222 million transistors, 130nm
16 pipelines, 6 vertex processors
350MHz core speed
500MHz GDDR3 RAM @ 256-bit = 32GB/s bandwidth
core points = 5600

7800 GTX, G70, 302 million transistors, 110nm
24 pipelines, 8 vertex processors
430MHz core speed
600MHz GDDR3 RAM @ 256-bit = 38.4GB/s bandwidth
core points = 10320

I won't even get into the core differences between them, but suffice to say that the 7800 GTX has more behind it and it's more efficient, making it one of the most powerful processing units... ever!

It's up to you if it's worth the money to upgrade, and of course another gig of RAM like hockey man mentioned will help in today's and next year's games, but I'm just saying... the 7800 GTX is pretty darn powerful... ;)

[EL_BaRTO]

Thank you for your reply and input Saph. Hmmm gonna have to translate your response to my wife. Gotta persuade her that the 7800GTX is better. She still thinks it's not worth upgrading. IF I am going to buy the 7800GTX, then I'm gonna plan to sell my 6800GT to help compensate for the 7800GTX's price a bit. I don't mind the price, but as a husband, I gotta let my wife know. :( . Anyways, thanks again.

[hockey man]

I don't mind the price, but as a husband, I gotta let my wife know.

I'm so glad I'm single! Best of luck.

[DigitalJ]

Not to counter the remarkable well of knowledge that is Saph, but I'd check the benchmarks, personally. If you're a gamer, and the 7800 gives you (and these are arbitrary numbers) 120fps over the 100fps you get from the 6800, it ain't worth the cash. According to Maximum PC, 70fps is the minnimum requirement for "smooth" gameplay. No matter how many pipelines, transistors, or vertexes, the human eye simply isn't capable of registering an additional 10fps or 20fps once you get up that high.

Having said that, I just checked the benchmarks at THG (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050622/index.html). Even the 7800 isn't going to pump out that magical 70fps on the newer games if you turn all the goodies on. If you don't turn all the goodies on, your 6800 will do just fine.

Example:
Doom 3 (1024x768, no AA, 8xAF) - 7800 = 117fps; 6800 = 110fps
Doom 3 (1600x1200, 4xAA, 8xAF) - 7800 = 53fps; 6800 = 43fps

HL 2 (1024x768, no AA, 8xAF) - 7800 = 72fps; 6800 = 69fps
HL 2 (1600x1200, 4xAA, 8xAF) - 7800 = 69fps; 6800 = 51fps

Then again, if you're not on a budget, buy a couple of 7800's and send me one :)

J

[i an not a nerd]

Hmmm, but If you get an SLI mobo.... and 2 7800 cards in SLI.....

[saphalline]

These are all good points that have been brought up. And in fact, some of the extra power in the 7800 GTX won't be fully realized until SM 3.0 becomes more heavily used. Until then, the estimated 90% more power in a 7800 GTX vs a 6800 GT won't be released. However, you can still turn on a few more extras and/or increase the resolution a bit. ;)

For the price difference, you're looking at selling your current 6800 GT for about $270-300 (standard 10% discount on a used vid card at stock speeds) and buying a 7800 GTX for about $470-490. So is it worth it? That's up to you... ;) :p

Some of the enhancements made to the G70 vs the NV4x: Pixel pipelines are now 20% more efficient at handling PS 3.0 shader algorithms, the texture units can calculate 2 non-colored textures per clock cycle or 1.5 colored textures per clock cycle (vs 1 and 1 on the NV4x), and most stencil buffer instructions can be completed in a single clock cycle in addition to double-sided stencil instructions added to the G70's repertoire. :eek: Ok, so maybe that's Greek to most of you, but I think it's cool! :cool:

[DigitalJ]

You're a trip, Saph. Care to let us mortals (or at least this one) in on where you get all this stuff? ;)

[pop pop]

He has pointed ears and green blood. His organs are all in the wrong places. He is from the planet Vulcan and knows everything about computers. We have never seen him in person, but an intrepid noob captured a picture of him on the street. Here he is...Saphalline!

[saphalline]

Care to let us mortals in on where you get all this stuff?The internet! And computer mags. Any mortal (or not) can get this stuff! :D Most of it can be found with Google searches. Just do a search for "G70 vertex processors" or something like that and see what sort of hits you get. I usually have to do multiple searches of this kind to get all the info on all the GPU's/VPU's and CPU core architecture data.

What I really want to know is where pop pop got that pic!! :eek:

[DigitalJ]

Yea, cuz "G70 vertex processors" is the first thing that pops into my head when I'm staring at the Google page :)

I say again, you're a trip, dude ;)

[Orion]

You should try living with him...I have no problems with it since I understand it all (I've been exposed to this stuff from him since high school) but my wife just gets this odd look and then says "ah, you're talking about the alphabet again!" (think of all the acronyms she hears us talk about)

On the google searches-was reading The Register and they pointed out an odd result when you do a google search for "failure"...humerous

Orion

[poppy]

On the google searches-was reading The Register and they pointed out an odd result when you do a google search for "failure"...humerous
Orion, that is humorous. So the legacy of his term in office will be "I had the number one spot on Google!"