8800gtx/gts

[SPARTAN VI]

In the market for an 8800GTX. They can be had for about $550 after a couple coupons over at Dell.

Couple things holding me back though..

1- Abysmal driver support.
2- Graphical glitches (distant rendering turns to gray fog).
3- Price.

Anyone here using a 8800GTX with Medieval 2?

[King Edward I]

i will be in just over a month!

[belson]

Well, I don't have a 8800gtx, but over on the Hard|Forum someone had some major issues in M2TW when running the 8800 in SLI.

Also, where did you get those nifty coupons for Dell that you mentioned? I would love to get the Xbox 360 bundle at a discounted price.

[SPARTAN VI]

Well, I don't have a 8800gtx, but over on the Hard|Forum someone had some major issues in M2TW when running the 8800 in SLI.

Also, where did you get those nifty coupons for Dell that you mentioned?

Yeah, I'm a regular at [H], even talked to Kyle Bennett about getting M2TW in their next videocard benchmarks. He said something along the lines of "definitely maybe."

But yeah, if you go to dell.com. Search for the 8800GTX/GTX add it to your card, you'll instantly save 15%. That'll bring the price down to $593 or so.. makes for a warm deal. Then hop over to ebay and buy a stackable 10% off coupon for $2 or $3 to bring it down to around $530 USD. Now that's [H]ot!

Oh, and of course, I found that deal in the [H]ot deals at [H]

[eventhorizen]

According to Tomshardware.co.uk anything less than a Kentsfield will bottleneck the 8800 series.

One thing is for certain: you need bleeding edge horsepower to get the most out of DX0 hardware. If you are in the market for a high end card, you'd do best with an entirely new system.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/11/29..._uk/index.html

Ofcourse its a nice bottleneck to have, but I hope your not putting off upgrading your Athlon by buying this thing, especially for a processor hungry RTS.

[SPARTAN VI]

According to Tomshardware.co.uk anything less than a Kentsfield will bottleneck the 8800 series.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/11/29..._uk/index.html

Ofcourse its a nice bottleneck to have, but I hope your not putting off upgrading your Athlon by buying this thing, especially for a processor hungry RTS.

I can't justify spending over one thousand bones on a new pc at the moment.. especially just for M2TW. Hearing whispers about DDR3 is making my head hurt. I don't want to get burned by jumping on AM2 or LGA775 just when DDR3.. it will probably require a new socket.

In any case, I figure buying a 8800GTX for $530 or so, then selling my X1900XT will make for a decent hardware upgrade without breaking the bank. I've used this method at least a dozen times now and it always makes my upgrades look like I had an extravagant dinner rather than a hardware upgrade.

Not to mention, I'm sure I'm hitting my GPU's maximum capacity far sooner than my CPU's bottleneck.

[eventhorizen]

I can't justify spending over one thousand bones on a new pc at the moment.. especially just for M2TW. Hearing whispers about DDR3 is making my head hurt. I don't want to get burned by jumping on AM2 or LGA775 just when DDR3.. it will probably require a new socket.

In any case, I figure buying a 8800GTX for $530 or so, then selling my X1900XT will make for a decent hardware upgrade without breaking the bank. I've used this method at least a dozen times now and it always makes my upgrades look like I had an extravagant dinner rather than a hardware upgrade.

Not to mention, I'm sure I'm hitting my GPU's maximum capacity far sooner than my CPU's bottleneck.

If DDR3 requires a new socket, then you will need a new mobo regardless of whether you get a new CPU or not.

Point im making is that your CPU WILL bottleneck your GPU, because the 8800 is such a complete monster of card. You will end up unlocking its potential just at the time it becomes old news.

If you are not interested in performance, and just want to show off, then by all means do what you are doing, but its a waste of money as you wont see any real difference between the X1900XT and the 8800 series, because the rest of your system is just far too feeble to cope with the demand.

Just to clarify, you wont be hitting you GPUs limit before your CPUs bottleneck, because the 8800 series uses floating point processors instead of shader pipelines, and will be the first card available that is able to devote 100% of its power to any series of tasks. Infact it will be able to handle complex tasks that have not been legislated for yet.

Upgrading from an X1900XT to an 8800GTX, while you are not running either an Athlon or Conroe, is I am sorry to say, a foolish waste of money.

Ironically, you will probably end up shunting processes from CPU to your 8800 card once driver support allows it, to ease up your bottleneck.


I agree, this card is an absolute monster, and there is no denying this. But it is designed for Vista and DX10 and will only show its real power when backed up by cutting edge enthuisiast components.

Its made to fit into a Kentsfield 4-core system, in anticipation of Vista, so when january comes a few lucky rich guys can really push everything to the limit.

Matching it with anything less than an extreme E6700 is going to cripple it.

Intels 45nm architecture comes out early next year, dropping the price of the Kentsfield I presume, so why dont you save your money untill these things drop in price and you can make a system that actually lets you run these components somewhere near their potential?

[belson]

Town Watch - The best overclock of a E6600 I've seen is at anandtech.com. They got it up to 4.0GHz (from 2.4GHz) on air (with an after-market cooler.)


A bottleneck is defined by dictionary.com as a point or an area of traffic congestion; or a hindrance to progress or production. Take this for example. Bob, Mary, Kelly, and Tom all work on an assembly line. Bob can handle 6 parts per minute, Mary can handle 5, Kelly 3 ppm, and Tom 5 ppm. Even though everyone else can handle over 5 ppm, Kelly slows down the line so that the whole line can only do 3 ppm. So even if you replaced Mary with Mike who can do 8 ppm, the line is still at 3 ppm. Thus Kelly is the bottleneck.

This roughly applies as such. (I know this isn't a perfect example, but you get the idea.) If someone has a processor that can handle 70fps, ram that can handle 80fps, and a video card that can handle 120fps, then the game will run at 70fps. Even if that person gets a video card that can handle 200+ fps like the 8800, the game will still run at 70fps. Thus the processor is the bottleneck.

[PyrrhusIV]

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 v Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Conroe.

Nice test high end test, comparing a Dead Generation top of the line AMD Proc vs a New Highend Intel. FX-60 is for Socket 939, they should of put a AM2 processor in there.

Also, not a soul alive can tell the difference between 126 FPS and 201.

[lakonian]

guys what u have failed to miss is currently there is NO processor that wont bottleneck a 8800 GTX.

i got one for myself with a pentium D 805, bought it for the system b4 core 2 duo but saying as everything atm bottlenecks it i might as well overlock the **** out of this cpu to around 3.8 on air and wait until the e6600 drops to a 100 bucks or.

ill fork out around 200 for a top of the line one to stop bottlenecking it in around 4 months and by then if im struggling maxing any game with the nw cpu voila full steam ahead! CHOO CHOO

oh and the 805 at 4.0 ghz on air like tomshardware i have the same cpu number exactly and coller beats a FX 60 and costs so little right now go ahead and buy it just make sure u get a good cpu v soon

[SPARTAN VI]

Getting a new CPU, new RAM, new motherboard is a project I'm not willing to do right now. Whereas installing a new GPU takes less than 2 minutes.

[Stealth-patriot]

hate to say it man, but those cards are basically just test runs for the full product.. the 8 series cards that are available on the market really arent any better than the 7 series, infact the 7950gt is actaully more powerful in a number of ways. I have heard alot of bad stuff coming from the 8800s that are available right now, people need to wait awhile until they have fully stable cards available.

[SPARTAN VI]

More "powerful" on what basis? Powerful in terms of stability, driver support, and image quality (in some cases) probably yes. Powerful is terms of shear rendering power, most definitely not.

In any case, I ran the benchmark again using eventhorizon's guidelines. Same units, same map, no fog, and "huge" unit scale.

1680x1050 2xAA 8xAF, medium shadows, everything else maxed:
2006-12-10 14:00:31 - medieval2
Frames: 10834 - Time: 300000ms - Avg: 36.113 - Min: 14 - Max: 52

I dipped down to 14 when I zoomed in on the action, but eagle eye cam plays perfectly fine.

Of course, this is only in the grassy plains. I can't expect the same performance in a city siege. I took a screenshot, but M2TW reformated it to 1024x768 badly distorting the image.

[Stealth-patriot]

Well, stability more than anything. I dont see how the heck your getting a fps dip like that. Whats your gpu and cpu clocked at? Oh, and just take up some of the eye candy and lower the game resolution. As for the gpu issues, sorry pal but looks like your stuck until developers get there heads out of there butts..

[Ronin]

How can you guys afford cards like that?

I can't afford to upgrade my 6800GS but to be fair it's an awesome card and I probably don't need to upgrade it just yet.

[SPARTAN VI]

How can you guys afford cards like that?

I can't afford to upgrade my 6800GS but to be fair it's an awesome card and I probably don't need to upgrade it just yet.

Having a job bro!

This is my first job! Get paid $14.75/hour to do wire transfers, technical support, and various other check processing and funds transfer operations. A year and a half ago, when I didn't buy my car yet, I'd gladly blow this cash on a new rig...

Well, stability more than anything. I dont see how the heck your getting a fps dip like that. Whats your gpu and cpu clocked at? Oh, and just take up some of the eye candy and lower the game resolution. As for the gpu issues, sorry pal but looks like your stuck until developers get there heads out of there butts..

It seems to happen when I move the camera over the enemy army and zoom it. It seems to hitch for half a second while loading the textures and meshes for the other army. I don't know if this is necessarily a problem, perhaps I'm the only one doing these benchmarks as if I were actually playing the game rather than just standing still and letting the numbers roll. Zooming in on the action to see those finishing moves and admire the detail CA put into these character models.

But seeing as how I'm getting better performance using my settings at eventhorizon's benchmark guidelines, I wonder how things perform during city sieges.

[chris63]

Hi Spartan,

I recently changed my 7800 ultra for a 8800 GTX (Leadtek).

Other main specs are 4000+ (slightly overclocked), socket 939 A8N32SLI Deluxe motherboard + 2 Gb RAM....

All I can say is that MTW2 is just now tremendous. I use 1600 x 1200 to play on 21 inch screen.......it was just impossible with 7800 ultra.

I didn't test frame rates, as their is no need of testing it.......no problems even during siege, when slow frame rate bug occurs.......it keeps on being playable.

It is possible to switch 16 x AA on driver (enhancement mode which didn't exist) and 16X anisotopic filter. I also have access to detail/quality options I hadn't with 7800 ultra.

And image quality is much much better than with 7800......due to tricks used by nvidia with serie 7 to enhance performances despite a loss of quality in filtering

I use the very first public nvidia driver released and have no problems at all with MTW2.

Don't worry about bottleneck : GPU is bottleneck at 1600 x 1200.

[SPARTAN VI]

Hi Spartan,

I recently changed my 7800 ultra for a 8800 GTX (Leadtek).

Other main specs are 4000+ (slightly overclocked), socket 939 A8N32SLI Deluxe motherboard + 2 Gb RAM....

All I can say is that MTW2 is just now tremendous. I use 1600 x 1200 to play on 21 inch screen.......it was just impossible with 7800 ultra.

I didn't test frame rates, as their is no need of testing it.......no problems even during siege, when slow frame rate bug occurs.......it keeps on being playable.

It is possible to switch 16 x AA on driver (enhancement mode which didn't exist) and 16X anisotopic filter. I also have access to detail/quality options I hadn't with 7800 ultra.

And image quality is much much better than with 7800......due to tricks used by nvidia with serie 7 to enhance performances despite a loss of quality in filtering

I use the very first public nvidia driver released and have no problems at all with MTW2.

Don't worry about bottleneck : GPU is bottleneck at 1600 x 1200.

Excellent! You wouldn't mind taking part in the benchmark eventhorizon set up for us would you? Download FRAPS if you haven't already, launch it, then run M2TW. Your A64 4000+ is nearly identical to my 3700+.

This would be a near perfect comparison.

Benchmark details are as follows:
Custom battle at the grassy plains, morning, huge unit scale. 1280x1024 6xAA 16xAF everything maxed and let's see what you get.

HRE:
4 units of landshnekt, 4 arquibsuiers, 4 basilisks, 2 halber militia, 2 dismounted gothic knights, 3 teutonic knights, and 1 general.

vs.

Scottland:
Random scottish stack.

Looking over this, I think I forgot to put in 3 more units of basilisks. I'll rerun the benchmarks, although I seriously doubt it will have a detrimental effect on my benchmark.

Hit F11 to start the benchmark and run it for about 5 minutes. You can set it in FRAPS to shut off in 5 minutes if you'd like.

Once the battle or benchmark is over, go to C:\FRAPS\FRAPSLOG.txt and your results will be in there.

You have a nice card but I would consider a 8800GTX slight overkill... FPS's require awsome graphics cards. Strategy games need good CPU's and RAM as well as an average graphics card.

How much more demanding is MTW2 exavtly in comparission to something like HL2? Because I can run that with max everything on my machiene and still achieve a healthy 50-80 Framerate.

(I'm telling you the 6800GS is good bang for your buck).

My buddy and I were playing M2TW on our LAN the day we got it. He has a 6800 vanilla and 3200+. Game ran like crap at first, so he stepped it down to 1024x768 and normal unit scale. 6800GS should be considerably better than the vanilla 6800, as it's almost at 6800GT spec. Still, the "bang for buck" card to get now wouldn't be a 6800GS. More like a 7900GS, 7600GT, or X1650XT. Heck, few months ago the X1900XT 256mb was selling like hotcakes at $240!

[Ronin]

My buddy and I were playing M2TW on our LAN the day we got it. He has a 6800 vanilla and 3200+. Game ran like crap at first, so he stepped it down to 1024x768 and normal unit scale. 6800GS should be considerably better than the vanilla 6800, as it's almost at 6800GT spec. Still, the "bang for buck" card to get now wouldn't be a 6800GS. More like a 7900GS, 7600GT, or X1650XT. Heck, few months ago the X1900XT 256mb was selling like hotcakes at $240!

You underestimate my card. It's not how new it is, it's how well the environment it functions in is.

My card outperformed the 6800GT on various online tests and came close to the performance you'd see in a 7800GTX. I keep the case clean and cool, do regular defrags and make sure I have no viruses or errors on my disk.

For a series six card which I bought a year ago for $380 it isn't too shabby. I can run both RTW and HL2 at full graphics with no slow down unless i'm in a battle with over 8000 units in RTW and thats still only when I zoom in with added mods to increase visual performance.

[chris63]

Excellent! You wouldn't mind taking part in the benchmark eventhorizon set up for us would you? Download FRAPS if you haven't already, launch it, then run M2TW. Your A64 4000+ is nearly identical to my 3700+.

This would be a near perfect comparison.

OK , I 'll do when i have some time (must soon leave now), by the end of the afternoon.

Probably, 1280x960 and 1600x1200 benchmark results will be almost the same (as 1280x960 is a very low resolution for the 8800 GTX, and the CPU is then the bottleneck, if it can be talked about bottleneck with such frame rate : but you can anyway have every kind of filters turned on, and it still works fine).