Nvidia 6800 vs. ATI X800 (AGP)

For SL, do either of these cards suffer a notable feature or performance deficit by comparison to the other, i.e. is ripple water an available option with both?

I know on the Windows SL client there are a number of reasons to prefer Nvidia cards, but I haven't heard any complaints specific to the Mac ATI cards.

Hmm I have the Nvidia card, on Windows, though not the ATI at all. I would suggest doing research into ATI OpenGL issues, as that, as far as I know, is what causes the problems with SL & ATI. Doing a quick google, on ATI, OpenGL, and Mac, turns up some problems as well, though I didn't delve deep enough into it to make any sort of informed statement on the matter.

As far as I know, ATI is not known for having very good OpenGL drivers, relative to its competitors. I am unsure if the popular Driver alternative many people use solves this issue, and if it is available for Mac.

It looks like the prices between the two are pretty close, NewEgg.Com is a good place to check, as well as Outpost.Com (Fry's Electronics), and even CircuitCity.Com (They do price matching plus 10% of the difference). Whatever card you get, I recommend one with atleast 256MB of memory, it makes a surprisingly big difference, as I discovered when SL thought I had a card with only 128MB of memory for a while.

I hear that SL has or had some issues with memory cards with 512MB of memory, so might want to check on that too. Regardless, few games need that much memory, 256 seems to be the current sweet spot.

Hi Myrrh, here is something off another forum, why NVidia is better at the moment than ATI:

/111/e0/98998/1.html#post984444

If you are undecided, and nothing speaks more for one than the other, tzhis may help...

Nvidia 6800 is better for SL, as of now SL seems to like Nvidia cards better, with ATI you cannot even enable the agp mode under video preferences, even though it IS an AGP card. (donno if they fixed this or not).

If it is a PCI-e 6800 and X800 they should relatively be the same.

I say Nvidia for SL. Even though both cards are basically equal outside of SL.

If u want card information check out this website. compare the numbers.

http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/

I have recently bought a new laptop with the Nvidia card and I'm getting on average 15-30** all the time. Sometimes I get 50+ frames. I've been more than happy with it.

**The fps may also have something to do with my 2 Gigs of RAM.

Thanks for this!

Now I know what to expect when I swap my FX 5200 for a 6800 GS

Though I must add, I will be getting an AGP 6800 GS, which is apparently about 10% slower...

my MacBook has the ATI X1600 .... it runs everything in SL fine... no problems at all, and yes you can even checkmark the AGP thingy...

i cant tell any difference video performance wise between it and my Windows computer that has a geforce 6800 in it.

The difference in speed with the NVidia 6800 GS between the AGP and PCIe versions is due to the chip: the AGP version uses a different chip from the PCIe version. It uses the 130 nm scaling, not the newer 110 nm type like the PCIe version does. However, except for clock speed, the specs are about the same. And performance too, plus or minus differences you would have to run benchmarks on to notice...

The 6800 GS in test produces to all intents and purposes the performance of the 6800 GT, which was until recently the Top Performer that NVidia had, but at half the price, and an order of magnitude more than the straight 6800 ...

And apparently, around the same speed as the X1800 from ATI (lots faster than the X1600)...

That's good enough for me

I did have massive problems with the Nvidia 6800 Ultra on my dual 2.5 G5, constant flashing and pixellisation effects when I cammed around, resulting in my eventually swapping it out for an ATI X800XT which I've been happy with ever since.

I posted some long threads on the subject at the time, faultfinding across several AGP cards from both manufacturers.

This may have been due to early release Nvidia drivers though so may have been fixed now.

I directly compared the Nvidia 6800 with a basic 5200, there was a huge increase in speed there (odd pixel effects with both though) and the X800 gives essentially the same performance as the 6800, plus it is an audibly quieter card I must say.

Aww, I just got my 6800 Ultra in this week's mail! The flashing and pixelisation you describe sounds similar to the longstanding Mac 5200 SL bug which Linden Lab have yet to address beyond keeping it on their acknowledged issues list for the past year.

In whatever case, the 6800 should make a world of difference compared to my stock 5200. The fact that you've noted an audible difference in volume levels between the Nvidia and ATI cards leads me to believe you were running older drivers, as all the comparisons I've read of both cards note a fan speed moderation issue which has since been remedied to provide parity between both.

I'll post a followup after I've had opportunity to use my new card for a bit. You have no problems enabling ripple water or AGP mode on your X800?

Thanks so much for the reply, Dee!

Hi Myrrh

Well the 6800 is indeed a lovely card ( physically it's a seriously impressive beast too ) I dearly hope it all works for you and, if they got around to writing proper drivers for it rather than the hacked 5200 ones which it had back then, then that may well be the case.

I haven't kept up with the LL bug list but that timeframe of the 5200 bug you mention sounds about right to be the same issue that I raised and yowled on about for months, hee hee

I did get an email from Apple recently well over a year after the fact, stating that the problem was no longer reproducible, that may well mean it's been fixed, hope so

The rendering and general activity speed of the 6800 compared to the 5200 was like night and day, you'll notice a massive boost !

Ripple water and AGP acceleration are all absolutely fine on my X800, no problems in evidence at all, either inside SL or out, although, I sometimes suspect there is maybe a slight rendering 'drag' with the ATI compared to the Nvidia, but it's too subtle and subjective to be sure from memory and I do also have a funny lagstorm whenever my partner wears a particular high prim type of hair

Hi Myrrh.

I had forgotten you had an Apple... my experiences were based on Windows Linux also has funnies, on my setup, with the 6800 gts I have, but the frame rate compared to my FX 5200 (yes, me too) IS like night and day! AND textures load SO much faster!

And since the linux client is something for masochists anyway, one more funny doesn't hurt...

Enjoy!

Hiya Angel!

Yeah, just about everyone who replied overlooked that this was a Mac-driver specific question.

As to the linux client being for masochists? Well, it mightn't be fully functional but compared to the Mac client I get the impression that it's a heck of a lot more stable!

I nearly quit SL outright when its instability finally peaked at a sustained half-dozen or so kernel panics per hour over the past month.

Hopefully my new RAM and videocard will make all the difference.

(...something about friday afternoons and emoticon overload...)