New Video Card: XFX Geforce 6800XT
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 1:56 pmWell, I’m finally done with ATI’s poor driver support. For 12 months I’ve waited for fglrx drivers to improve, and to no avail, they still suck as bad as the day I installed my Radeon 9600 Pro. And, to no actual fault of DRI’s (they work as fast as they can), my card is not yet supported by the DRI R300 driver, as documented earlier.
So, I’ve replaced it with a new video card: XFX PVT42KUDE3 Geforce 6800XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP for only $110 after rebate. It’s not worth buying a top of the line card, as AGP is already dead, and my next system will not be able to use it; plus, this is card is a good three or four times more powerful than the one I have now.
Hehe, same card I got.
It comes in tomorrow so I’ll tell you how well it goes in HL2 and in Linux.
[...] Update:October of 2005 I bought this card, under the impression that ATI would support it under Linux, and they have failed. They did not give any help to the DRI R300 project, nor did they improve their fglrx drivers. On October 11th of 2006, I have replaced this card with a Geforce 6800XT. Permanent Link [...]
Alright, now that I’ve got my card, let me rephrase what I told my friend in an email after installing it:
- It’s freaking long, and barely fit into my case. It’s rear is about 1.5 inches from my first HDD.
- It didn’t sit right in the PCI slot, so I had to slightly bend the metal ending by the ports to make it fit cleanly into my case.
- It has an LED behind a half-clear “XFX” logo thing on it, that’s dim and pointless.
- They added an entire bar of aluminum across the edge of the video card JUST for the logo.
- The S-VIDEO port is proprietary. It uses a special cable. If I try to plug it into a TV, it’d never reach. Ever.
- The fan sucks on it, and not the good way.
- It’s louder than my 5700 Ultra.
- The fan blows out the side across the memory chips, and opposes the front intake fan of my case, disrupting air flow. Now there is a battle of hot and cold air near my HDD’s.
- The heatsink is wrapped in some plastic stuff that’s supposed to channel air flow. God does it feel cheap and seems to insulate the heat.
- And finally… the PCI slot cover is actually black, with ugly yellowish/greenish DVI ports. Ugh…
But other than that, it’s performing roughly as good as my 5700 Ultra. Actually, it may be performing worse because I now feel some lag (on a localhost’ed game) when I play Counter-Strike:Source against bots. I don’t recall that happening with the 5700 Ultra. Maybe it’s just Windows XP? Whatever.
I’m probably not buying another XFX card. My next purchase is going to be a BFG Tech card or an eVGA. At least BFG Tech knows how to make modest looking cards, not some insanely weird looking gamer crap. And they look like they’re normal size, not like this gigantic beast.
Or hell, if AMD fixes up ATI and their crappy Linux drivers, I may get some form of ATI card. Who knows.
Either way, good luck with your card. Hope it fulfills your video needs.
1) Its not that long, actually. Thats what a full length AGP card looks like. Its about 3-4 inches from my HDs, and I only have a mid-sized tower
Only ricers have windows in their cases, so who cares what color it is
2) Your case must suck, fits fine in mine
3) It has a LED? Woah
4) That bar of aluminum is a brilliant idea… I wish all cards had it. Makes it so much easier to press the card down into the slot.
5) That isn’t as proprietary as you think… lots of cards include those plugs so you can plug either a composite or a SVideo cable in.
6) The fan is the standard Nvidia fan design, and it actually works better with that giant plastic sheath, as to draw air across the memory chips
6) Its as loud as my 9600 Pro’s dinky little fan
7) Nope, both Nvidia and ATI use that design because it works better
Also, both BFG Tech and XFX are gamer companies. They take the stock Nvidia reference designs, tweak them slightly, and thats it. This XFX card is no different.
Also, that lag you’re experiencing is most likely a bug in CS:S.
Why are you playing CS:S if your not a gamer?
oh well, i just got my card too… 6800XT but mine is PCI-e which means it has a different heatsink (bigger) with a picture on it.. i thought the black looked rad, especially with my black case.. green.. meh, would have gone with black or gray, tired of white
It does make my case a little louder with the fan, but not noticably…
only thing that confused me was…
the PCI-e version i have is openGL 1.5, while your AGP version is openGL 2.0
wtf? both same price…
mine runs Quake 4 and FEAR flawlessly, but with BF2 and CS:S (internet games) i lag quite a bit now for some reason.. it says “problems with connection” on BF2… never happened before upgrading from my lame 6600LE..
im getting another of these 6800XT’s to go SLI.. wish me luck
Your situation is better than mine. I’ve bought XFX 7800GS Extreme since 23/03/2007, and it’s never worked.
I use ASUS P4P800 Deluxe with Enermax Infiniti 720W, but no graghic after turn it on.
Local shop that I bought(Umart Online) said it must be my computer’s problem. I asked XFX customer support and after I gave them serial number. It came up with “Sorry, service is unavailable.”
So I think XFX should match with Matsonic, ECS, or any other mtf motherboard.
Do not try to buy XFX if you are computer enthuasist.
By the way, I came to this forum by Google, just want to cmplaint.
Ohhhh 7800GS 425 A$ cannot work…wtf?