Nvidia 6800 GT Coming Soon?

[duffman9000]

The 6800GT is a much better value than the 6800 Ultra. The $599 6800Ultra costs 20% more than the 6800 GT at only $499 however the 6800 Ultra is generally much less than 10% faster in most cases but demands a 20% higher premium.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2113&p=1

Read the article and think about the benchmarks in some cases the 6800Ultra is no faster than the 6800GT and when it is it only beats the 6800GT by usually 3-5 Frames per second. Actually if you average the Performance gain that the Ultra has over the GT it really is only about
5-8% which litterally translates to a less than 5 FPS difference which is unoticable in the grand scheme of things.

Wrong, the Ultra is ALWAYS faster than the GT. And it is not usually by 3-5 frames. The only time a GT is close to an Ultra is when a factory OC'd GT is compared to an Ultra at reference speed. The GT is still more popular because most can be OC'd to Ultra speeds. More and more Ultras are coming factory OC'd though. Most GT's can easily reach these speeds and more, but under normal circumstances only the Ultra's can hit Ultra Extreme speeds. I've come close to hitting UE speeds, 440/1100, with water on the core, but without water on the mem i'll never hit 1200. It's not impossible but not easy and i see no reason to voltmod since it wouln't really make a big difference. See my sig

The 6800 Ultra 's MSRP is $499.99. When i bought my GT i held an Ultra in my hands. Little did i know that would be the last time i would see one in retail.
You think 599 is bad? I've seen a pci express 6800 Ultra go for "only" 679 at GameVE... and peeps are dying to build SLI systems.

Less than 5 frames performance difference? Yes we can tell the difference! PC GT's don't do opengl triple buffering(don't know about mac's) and 5 frames can be the difference between running at 60fps, or dropping to 30fps.

Don't worry about getting an Ultra. For gamers that are adventurous and don't care about dual dvi, just overclock your GT. With the G5's awesome case cooling you should be able to hit 425/1100 easy.

 

[invaLPsion]

Don't worry about getting an Ultra. For gamers that are adventurous and don't care about dual dvi, just overclock your GT. With the G5's awesome case cooling you should be able to hit 425/1100 easy.

And how exactly would you overclock an Nvidia card on a mac? Is there a program you know of?

 

[duffman9000]

And how exactly would you overclock an Nvidia card on a mac? Is there a program you know of?

I hope you dudes have such a program! On a PC it's only one registry entry.
I don't game on a mac. My only mac is a first gen PowerBook G4 with a craptastic 8meg ATI GPU.

 

[Little Endian]

Yes there is a Program available to Overclock GPU for the Macintosh Platform however as of yet it does not support the 6800 series Cards.

http://67.163.88.215/overclock/mbtoolkitpage.html

As far as Duffman9000's arguments go I find them invalid. THe 6800 Ultra is only marginally faster than the GT. I have tried both the 6800GT and Ultra on a Friends Athlon XP 3200 PC as he had originally got the 6800GT from Compusa but traded it in for a 6800Ultra under the TAP agreement.
Did you even read Annandtech's Benchmarks before opening your mouth?

Also I am comparing the 6800 GT to the 6800 Ultra not the $600+ Ultra Extreme which is not even available on the Macintosh.

 

[duffman9000]

Yes there is a Program available to Overclock GPU for the Macintosh Platform however as of yet it does not support the 6800 series Cards.

http://67.163.88.215/overclock/mbtoolkitpage.html

As far as Duffman9000's arguments go I find them invalid. THe 6800 Ultra is only marginally faster than the GT. I have tried both the 6800GT and Ultra on a Friends Athlon XP 3200 PC as he had originally got the 6800GT from Compusa but traded it in for a 6800Ultra under the TAP agreement.
Did you even read Annandtech's Benchmarks before opening your mouth?

Also I am comparing the 6800 GT to the 6800 Ultra not the $600+ Ultra Extreme which is not even available on the Macintosh.

Yes there is a Program available to Overclock GPU for the Macintosh Platform however as of yet it does not support the 6800 series Cards.

http://67.163.88.215/overclock/mbtoolkitpage.html

As far as Duffman9000's arguments go I find them invalid. THe 6800 Ultra is only marginally faster than the GT. I have tried both the 6800GT and Ultra on a Friends Athlon XP 3200 PC as he had originally got the 6800GT from Compusa but traded it in for a 6800Ultra under the TAP agreement.
Did you even read Annandtech's Benchmarks before opening your mouth?

Also I am comparing the 6800 GT to the 6800 Ultra not the $600+ Ultra Extreme which is not even available on the Macintosh.

Your friends Athlon XP 3200 is a huge bottleneck. On a system like that an Ultra and a GT would peform the same. But we're talking about an Ultra or GT running on a dual G5 right? Presumably the mighty G5's wouldn't create a bottleneck, right? Yes i did read the benchmarks. I read them MONTHS ago. Look at the drivers they using. Look again and ask somebody that knows about pc reviews before you open your mouth.
Your friends puny XP 3200 can't drive the cards like OC'd winchesters or Athlon 3800/4000+/FX53/FX55's can. On low end systems the CPU becomes the bottleneck. On high end OC'd systems the GPU once again becomes the bottleneck.
Do you even understand what i said about opengl triple buffering and how 5 fps can mean the difference between 60 fps and 30 fps? Those benches never run with Vsync enabled either.

You said:
"The 6800GT is a much better value than the 6800 Ultra. The $599 6800Ultra costs 20% more than the 6800 GT at only $499 however the 6800 Ultra is generally much less than 10% faster in most cases but demands a 20% higher premium."
"Read the article and think about the benchmarks in some cases the 6800Ultra is no faster than the 6800GT..."
The Ultra's MSRP is/was $499. Did you even read what i said? Unfortunately the shortage has created price gouging. The Ultra Extreme floats around $549 IF you win the weekly drawing from eVGA to be able to even buy one.
Yes the GT is a much better value for most Mac users. You initially said an Ultra is usually "no faster" only to turn around and say it is usually less than 10 percent faster. That is a more valid statement. The GT is a better choice for Mac users since most of them would never dare to OC their cards. But for those that will they should get an Ultra.
What about dual DVI? Most pc GT's don't come with dual dvi and knowing Jobs' he would skimp on that too.

How about a more recent review?
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2196
Still using old ass drivers though.

 

[Little Endian]

Uhh lets see with the link you provided:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2196&p=8

Jedi Knight Open GL based, and everything on the Mac is OpenGL based from the ground up or ported from Direct X. Do you know how to do math? First graph shows 102.9 FPS for Both Ultra and GT. Even when the 6800 Ultra is shown in it's best light it only has a 4.4FPS Gain over the GT. So that would be 0%-6% faster depending on settings.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2196&p=7

same here with Halo the Ultra only shows 3.8%- 6% gain over the GT.

UTK2004 has the 6800 Ultra being only 3% faster except at High Resolutions wth AA enabled and AF enabled do we see a 10% gain so the fact that I said 10% was a great overstatement since in the majority of cases it is much less than that.

Only in Doom 3 do we see an up to 12% gain but only when AA is enabled.

Also the Mac Version of the 6800GT is Dual DVI not to mention DDL for $499.


The performance Gain of the Ultra is 0%-12% at best and if you average the scores from the Game Benchmarks you really only see a 5-7% gain at best so my statement of "not any faster in certain cases" is true and so is my statement about "generally less than 10% faster"

I understand how in theory that the 6800Ultra is considerably faster than the GT however what I care about is RealWorld Performance so if you can find some benches done with the latest drivers that Show the 6800Ultra hailing a solid and consistent 10% plus lead over the GT then please post it. I mean at least a 10% average gain across different Game or Application Benches not just in best case scenarios. Regardless what I really care about is how the 6800Ultra compares to the GT on the Macinstosh Platform in a complete OpenGL enviroment and when running games ported or built accordingly. I am also interested in how the two cards would compare in non Gaming Apps like Motion or Cinema 4D

 

[duffman9000]

Uhh lets see with the link you provided:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2196&p=8

Jedi Knight Open GL based, and everything on the Mac is OpenGL based from the ground up or ported from Direct X. Do you know how to do math? First graph shows 102.9 FPS for Both Ultra and GT. Even when the 6800 Ultra is shown in it's best light it only has a 4.4FPS Gain over the GT. So that would be 0%-6% faster depending on settings.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2196&p=7

same here with Halo the Ultra only shows 3.8%- 6% gain over the GT.

UTK2004 has the 6800 Ultra being only 3% faster except at High Resolutions wth AA enabled and AF enabled do we see a 10% gain so the fact that I said 10% was a great overstatement since in the majority of cases it is much less than that.

Only in Doom 3 do we see an up to 12% gain but only when AA is enabled.

Also the Mac Version of the 6800GT is Dual DVI not to mention DDL for $499.


The performance Gain of the Ultra is 0%-12% at best and if you average the scores from the Game Benchmarks you really only see a 5-7% gain at best so my statement of "not any faster in certain cases" is true and so is my statement about "generally less than 10% faster"

I understand how in theory that the 6800Ultra is considerably faster than the GT however what I care about is RealWorld Performance so if you can find some benches done with the latest drivers that Show the 6800Ultra hailing a solid and consistent 10% plus lead over the GT then please post it. I mean at least a 10% average gain across different Game or Application Benches not just in best case scenarios. Regardless what I really care about is how the 6800Ultra compares to the GT on the Macinstosh Platform in a complete OpenGL enviroment and when running games ported or built accordingly. I am also interested in how the two cards would compare in non Gaming Apps like Motion or Cinema 4D

Do you understand what a driver version can do to benchmarks? 61.77's have been outdated for months. Even in that review the 6600GT used newer drivers, incidently those same drivers also valid for all 6800's (and boost performance), but the 6800's were still tested with the old 61.77's.

"Regardless what I really care about is how the 6800Ultra compares to the GT on the Macinstosh Platform in a complete OpenGL enviroment and when running games ported or built accordingly."
What the hell does that mean? Do you understand what opengl triple buffering does and why people oc their cards to stay above that threshold? This wouldn't be a big deal if nvidia would give us back triple buffering. What complete opengl environment are you talking about? I'll take a chance by saying mac users that use nvidia cards also don't have the option whereas ATI users still do. If the Mac's environment is somehow more complete than a pc's then why do opengl games run slower?
As for non gaming apps the difference would probably be nill since most of (all?) the burden would fall on the cpus. For the premium users that pay for the fastest G5's that come with decrepit 9600XT's as stock, it damn better be super fast in non gaming apps.

And... you make it sound like using AA or AF isn't a big deal! LOL...
Well, it is. You don't buy a $400 card to NOT use AA or AF.

 

[Little Endian]

Do you understand what a driver version can do to benchmarks? 61.77's have been outdated for months. Even in that review the 6600GT used newer drivers, incidently those same drivers also valid for all 6800's (and boost performance), but the 6800's were still tested with the old 61.77's.

"Regardless what I really care about is how the 6800Ultra compares to the GT on the Macinstosh Platform in a complete OpenGL enviroment and when running games ported or built accordingly."
What the hell does that mean? Do you understand what opengl triple buffering does and why people oc their cards to stay above that threshold? This wouldn't be a big deal if nvidia would give us back triple buffering. What complete opengl environment are you talking about? I'll take a chance by saying mac users that use nvidia cards also don't have the option whereas ATI users still do. If the Mac's environment is somehow more complete than a pc's then why do opengl games run slower?
As for non gaming apps the difference would probably be nill since most of (all?) the burden would fall on the cpus. For the premium users that pay for the fastest G5's that come with decrepit 9600XT's as stock, it damn better be super fast in non gaming apps.

And... you make it sound like using AA or AF isn't a big deal! LOL...
Well, it is. You don't buy a $400 card to NOT use AA or AF.

Fine then find updated benchmarks that show the Ultra blasting away at the GT with the most current Drivers.

Remember your Original Argument?
"Wrong, the Ultra is ALWAYS faster than the GT. And it is not usually by 3-5 frames"

I am done with this until you can show prove me wrong. Also never did I say AA and AF were unimportant all I mentioned was that even factoring those equations in at hight resolution 1600*1200 and 4X AA and 8X AF and even at those taxing settings the difference is only a 12% max advantage. Also in some Games the Advantage with High Resolutions and AA/AF the Gain is still only 5% or so.

Not everyone has a Display that supportss 1600*1200 and many are willing to run at lower AA and AF multiples if worse comes to worse.

 

[duffman9000]

Fine then find updated benchmarks that show the Ultra blasting away at the GT with the most current Drivers.

Remember your Original Argument?
"Wrong, the Ultra is ALWAYS faster than the GT. And it is not usually by 3-5 frames"

I am done with this until you can show prove me wrong. Also never did I say AA and AF were unimportant all I mentioned was that even factoring those equations in at hight resolution 1600*1200 and 4X AA and 8X AF and even at those taxing settings the difference is only a 12% max advantage. Also in some Games the Advantage with High Resolutions and AA/AF the Gain is still only 5% or so.

Not everyone has a Display that supportss 1600*1200 and many are willing to run at lower AA and AF multiples if worse comes to worse.

I never said the Ultra "blasts" away at the GT. When you buy a highend card you are NOT willing to lower your AF and AA and you don't play at 1024 x 768. There are only a few games that will abuse your system when AA and AF are maxed out. Doom3 and Far Cry come to mind. I'll post something after i get out of my C++ class.

 

[klaus]

Interesting

Well, I noticed you could BTO the 6800 gt today, it may have been like that for a couple of days, haven't checked it regularly, but here's something interesting:

They mention that people who need their system soon, should order the GT, since it's in better supply than the 6800 ultra, and it's 100$ cheaper.

What's the component that's causing the delay? is it the board itself or the GPU?

I'll be awaiting some reviews and some money before I order my GT, or maybe ATI's card will be cheaper. Wonder when that one will hit the streets.

Cu guys

 

[Little Endian]

I never said the Ultra "blasts" away at the GT. When you buy a highend card you are NOT willing to lower your AF and AA and you don't play at 1024 x 768. There are only a few games that will abuse your system when AA and AF are maxed out. Doom3 and Far Cry come to mind. I'll post something after i get out of my C++ class.

Quote:
"I never said the Ultra "blasts" away at the GT"

well you sure acted like it. I also never said the 6800Ultra was not faster than the GT but only that it is marginally so compared to the price difference associated between the two. All I care about is getting this card for my G5 and I will wait for barefeats.com or some other Mac performance website to post benchmarks that would best apply to my situation.

 

[duffman9000]

Fine then find updated benchmarks that show the Ultra blasting away at the GT with the most current Drivers.

Remember your Original Argument?
"Wrong, the Ultra is ALWAYS faster than the GT. And it is not usually by 3-5 frames"

I am done with this until you can show prove me wrong. Also never did I say AA and AF were unimportant all I mentioned was that even factoring those equations in at hight resolution 1600*1200 and 4X AA and 8X AF and even at those taxing settings the difference is only a 12% max advantage. Also in some Games the Advantage with High Resolutions and AA/AF the Gain is still only 5% or so.

Not everyone has a Display that supportss 1600*1200 and many are willing to run at lower AA and AF multiples if worse comes to worse.

Here's one benchmark, 66.81 reviews are hard to find!
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/cs-source_3.html
Yes, only on the more stressful levels does the Ultra really separate itself from the GT. This difference will become more and more evident when newer games come out.
I do admit making a mistake when i said "Wrong, the Ultra is ALWAYS faster than the GT. And it is not usually by 3-5 frames"
I should have added when playing new games and using new Ultra's, since more and more come clocked at 425/1100. More to come...

 

[duffman9000]

Quote:
"I never said the Ultra "blasts" away at the GT"

well you sure acted like it. I also never said the 6800Ultra was not faster than the GT but only that it is marginally so compared to the price difference associated between the two. All I care about is getting this card for my G5 and I will wait for barefeats.com or some other Mac performance website to post benchmarks that would best apply to my situation.

LOL... you did imply that on some benchmarks the 6800 Ultra was "no faster" than a GT. Yeah but that's on older games and on your friends box it would be no faster.
I didn't know that all Mac GT's came with dual DVI. In that case, there is no point in buying an Ultra. Just about any pc GT(not every one) can be overclocked to Ultra speeds. If there is a utility to OC to ultra speeds then get a GT. Besides the extra molex connector ( and associated circuitry), lower latency DDR3 (2.0 ns vs 1.6ns), and core clock, the cards are almost the same.
I know that the 61.77's are still the "official" drivers and that the 66.81(whql) are still "beta", BUT the 61.77's are almost worthless when playing divx or mpeg2 files and the 66.81 are faster across the board.

EDIT: Another benchmark using 66.81's
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/farcry13.html

They use only reference Ultra's, not what BFG, eVGA, and Gigabyte currently ship. BFG was a launch partner and nvidia gave them and other manufacturers some leeway on what their Ultras could be clocked at. Without eyecandy things are pretty close between an Ultra and GT most of the time. I can't explain the huge difference between minimum and maximum fps wise on some levels. The Ultra shouldn't be that much faster. But there are some levels where the Ultra handily beats the GT.
When HDR is enabled both cards get pounded but even though fps wise the difference is small, percentage wise it is a big difference. Not that you can play the game with HDR enabled without running an SLI system at 1600x1200.

 

[Converted2Truth]

There's a guy in the gaming area (under some WOW thread) that is saying that he's got a 2.0G5 with the 6800 Ultra. He claims that when he sets it to 1600x[1000<setting<1200] with everything turned on, that the game slows to a crawl. He says that he thought that the 6800 would take everything he threw at it, but that isn't the case.

WOW isn't THAT cpu intensive, so i'm just thinking... I've preordered this card because i want the best card for gaming. Unfortunately, apple's exclusive rights over the nvidia drivers cause us to be totally dependant on apple for a good driver port. I've sent them a number of emails asking them when they will release a separate driver that's just a straight-over port of the openGL from the PC, without the 30" hacks they've added... for us gamers. They don't respond. It's crap. I am wondering if they are even going to treat this card as a performer, or if they think the card is only for people cutting film on 30". The driver sucks, and i don't want a $500 card that runs a hacked version of the 5200 driver. I've got money says that's exactly what they did. hacked the 5200driver code to push 30" with the 6800 chip. Damn apple, where's the damn driver?

Wondering if i should cancel my order and wait for ATI's answer.

 

[invaLPsion]

There's a guy in the gaming area (under some WOW thread) that is saying that he's got a 2.0G5 with the 6800 Ultra. He claims that when he sets it to 1600x[1000<setting<1200] with everything turned on, that the game slows to a crawl. He says that he thought that the 6800 would take everything he threw at it, but that isn't the case.

WOW isn't THAT cpu intensive, so i'm just thinking... I've preordered this card because i want the best card for gaming. Unfortunately, apple's exclusive rights over the nvidia drivers cause us to be totally dependant on apple for a good driver port. I've sent them a number of emails asking them when they will release a separate driver that's just a straight-over port of the openGL from the PC, without the 30" hacks they've added... for us gamers. They don't respond. It's crap. I am wondering if they are even going to treat this card as a performer, or if they think the card is only for people cutting film on 30". The driver sucks, and i don't want a $500 card that runs a hacked version of the 5200 driver. I've got money says that's exactly what they did. hacked the 5200driver code to push 30" with the 6800 chip. Damn apple, where's the damn driver?

Wondering if i should cancel my order and wait for ATI's answer.

Aye, that's a scary thought. But you must take into account that the macintosh graphics drivers on WoW are currently flawed. BLizzard recommends that all shaders be turned off for the Mac until Apple updates the graphics drivers in 10.3.6, which is widely rumored to increase performance. I will not cancel my order for the 6800GT.

 

[duffman9000]

Nvidia's driver team has been months behind schedule. An official driver that would enable the 6800's OVP was supposed to be released shortly after the launch date. Almost 5 months later the drivers are supposedly almost here. And you guys have to depend on Apple to update drivers? Oh crap...

 

[daveL]

Aye, that's a scary thought. But you must take into account that the macintosh graphics drivers on WoW are currently flawed. BLizzard recommends that all shaders be turned off for the Mac until Apple updates the graphics drivers in 10.3.6, which is widely rumored to increase performance. I will not cancel my order for the 6800GT.

10.3.6 came out today, if you haven't already noticed.

 

[invaLPsion]

Est. Ship dates on 6800GTs?

What are everybody's estimated ship dates on their 6800GTs?

Mine is sitting at "on or before 11/29/04."

 

[Converted2Truth]

11/15/2004

That's if i don't decide to cancel the order. Lately, i've been thinking that i won't. Just cause it's gonna be forever before x800 shows up, and when it does i can always ebay the GT if i don't like it.

 

[shompa]

Can I use a Apple 6800 GT in a PC?
I wish to connect my PC to an Apple 30 inch display.

(today I share a 23inch display between my mac and PC using DrBott moniswitch)

 

[Converted2Truth]

Can I use a Apple 6800 GT in a PC?
I wish to connect my PC to an Apple 30 inch display.

(today I share a 23inch display between my mac and PC using DrBott moniswitch)

The card is not compatible with PCs. The nvidia apple cards come with a firmware verision that is incompatible with PCs. Also, the apple card has extra pins on the PCB which allow it to connect to the PSU without running Molex connectors to it. PCs don't have the extra AGP extension socket for this feature. Perhaps there is a way that you could jimmy-rig the card to you're PSU, and then you could flash the ROM of the card. But even then, PC's don't have drivers to push 30" displays. nor will they until there is a 30" to push.

 

[Converted2Truth]

What are everybody's estimated ship dates on their 6800GTs?

Mine is sitting at "on or before 11/29/04."

Holy crap! Are we the only two who have preordered the GT?! Seems like a much better deal that the Ultra if you ask me... but dang.. i can't believe the lack of interest in the GT

 

[klaus]

The card is not compatible with PCs. The nvidia apple cards come with a firmware verision that is incompatible with PCs. Also, the apple card has extra pins on the PCB which allow it to connect to the PSU without running Molex connectors to it. PCs don't have the extra AGP extension socket for this feature. Perhaps there is a way that you could jimmy-rig the card to you're PSU, and then you could flash the ROM of the card. But even then, PC's don't have drivers to push 30" displays. nor will they until there is a 30" to push.

You are right about the card not being compatible with pc motherboards but you CAN drive a 30" of a pc. There are people on the Apple Discussion boards who are doing it, but you need a highend videocard, the ones for professional 3d and workstations, not sure which type, but you could check it out for yourself, it's under the display's for 2004.

They may not have dual ddl ports, but they sure have one

 

[Little Endian]

You are right about the card not being compatible with pc motherboards but you CAN drive a 30" of a pc. There are people on the Apple Discussion boards who are doing it, but you need a highend videocard, the ones for professional 3d and workstations, not sure which type, but you could check it out for yourself, it's under the display's for 2004.

They may not have dual ddl ports, but they sure have one

There are several Nvidia Quadro FX Series Cards and Nvidia Fire GL cards that support DDL and can drive the 30" Cinema Display on a PC. However these cards that support DDL for the PC are usually priced well over $1000 and are meant for high end workstations. The 6800Ultra DDL series are currently only available for the macintosh and is the most cost effective option if one is so linclined to run at such high resolutions.

 

[Converted2Truth]

From what i understand, there are NO 30" displays out there other than apple's. And apple's 30" uses dual link DVI for signal. If you were to try and push it with a vcard that didn't have DUAL link dvi, then you'd only light up the bottom half of the monitor.

I don't care how much you pay for a fire-gl or whatever, they're not gonna push a 30" without dual link dvi