What an odd graphics card. Why would they create something like that? 😕

I know, right? 🤣

That was part of the reason I was drawn to it. I think it was a sort of end-of-life card, and they had a surplus of 6800XT GPUs lying around. Performance wise, I would guess it could probably take on a 7300GT. 😒

Tetrium wrote:

What an odd graphics card. Why would they create something like that? 😕

There's nothing really odd about it, it's pretty much the same as an Asus 6800LE. You can try Your hand at unlocking pipes with Rivatuner and maybe
get a full 6800 out of it.
Realistically these should have been marketed as a 6700 perhaps, as I bet a 6600GT performs better.

Imperious wrote:

There's nothing really odd about it, it's pretty much the same as an Asus 6800LE. You can try Your hand at unlocking pipes with […]
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Tetrium wrote:

What an odd graphics card. Why would they create something like that? 😕

There's nothing really odd about it, it's pretty much the same as an Asus 6800LE. You can try Your hand at unlocking pipes with Rivatuner and maybe
get a full 6800 out of it.
Realistically these should have been marketed as a 6700 perhaps, as I bet a 6600GT performs better.

Not really, a 128MB ASUS 6800LE is still uses a 256-Bit memory interface. The 6800XT I have only has a 64-Bit Interface. So a 6800LE would probably blow this card out of the water.

In a way it's similar to another card I had... A Biostar 6800XE https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1819/geforce-6800-xe 🤣

I remember the performance of that card being very lackluster as well, and there's a chance it may actually be more powerful due to it's 128-Bit memory interface, despite the fact that the 6800XT has a faster core clock and one more vertex shader.

It seems Biostar has a strange habit of making weird budget graphics cards.

Usually weird is a good thing..but maybe not in this case 🤣
64-bit memory bus was pretty poor in those days already.

Tetrium wrote:

Usually weird is a good thing..but maybe not in this case 🤣
64-bit memory bus was pretty poor in those days already.

Well, given that I spent the equivalent of $6 US on it, I couldn't have gone too far wrong. 😀

So back to my original question, do you think this card would be adequate for a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, or should I rather consider putting it into a something even slower?

Totempole wrote:

Hi Everyone […]
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Hi Everyone

As the title indicates, I have a 6800XT AGP which has been "collecting dust" in my cupboard for some time now. I got it for a really good price with some other cards, but can't decide what type of machine to fit it in.

It's a Biostar 128MB/64-Bit DDR2 version. This one to be more specific: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16814141075

I haven't tried to benchmark it, but I don't think it would be a huge amount better than a Geforce 6200 AGP, and it's probably even weaker than an AGP 7300GT.

I was thinking of putting it into something like a single core 478 Pentium 4 3.2GHz or maybe even a single core 775. It's probably a little underpowered for a Dual Core AGP machine, and for that I have a Radeon 4650 AGP earmarked anyway.

I also have an Athlon XP 3000+ with a 9800XT in it at present. Would the cut back 6800XT be a better option, or would putting it into one of my 478 P4's be a better choice?

Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance. 😀

I suggest a build similar to this: Win98 Socket 939 Voodoo 2 SLi Build! (a.k.a. Glide Overkill)

- high end single core 754 or 939 CPU (I use a 3800+ running at 2.4GHz)
- 754 or 939 VIA or ULi mainboard (use nforce only if you plan to run XP exclusively, but that would be a shame since such a machine makes a really fast and stable win98 rig)
- 1GB of ram (more then that and you won't be able to run win98se)
- IDE HDD (for better win98 support)
- 80+ certified 350 or 400w PSU

The athlon XP will bottlenech the 6800XT. As it is, the 6800XT is good for running winXP games up to 2005 at 1280x1024 with medium, high or ultra settings depending on the game and the framerate you're comfortable with - or win9x games at 1600x1200 or higher, max settings with AA and AF. Games like dungeon keeper 2, expandible, black and white 1 and alike prefer win98 over XP, and you will be able to run them all out at over 100 fps on the aforementioned setup.

I'd advise against an intel build simply because the 939 3800+ and higher are easier to cool and power. For a nice beefy intel setup (I'd recommend at least a pentium 4 650/651) you'll need a good aftermarket cooler and a 450w or greater 80+ psu - and a i865 based intel machine is just as capable as the AMD build I described above, and boards like the Abit AS8 have excellent win98 support. Just stay away from cheap crappy intel boards, and if you do go intel, get a LGA 775 board with the i865 chipset. Don't go the socket 478 route. Fast 478 pentium 4's (3.2 GHz and above) are harder to find, significantly more expensive, require lots of research to get a good mainboard that won't fail after a couple of months, require expensive cooling solutions (they get silly hot) so the machine won't melt down or pop a MOSFET (tuniq tower 120 is socket 478 compatible) and requier a beefy PSU of 500w or more, 80+ certified.

The build I linked above now uses a X800XT (since it's quite a bit faster then the 6800LE I had in it, easier to find and cheaper) and I've had no issues with it whatsoever. I've even been able to OC the CPU to 2.8 GHz using a Deepcool Gammax 300 cooler and a 450W FSP PSU.

This 6800XT will not be bottlenecked by an Athlon XP, with 64bit memory bus it and 8 pipelines this will preform between a 6200 and a 6600 LE

6800 with 64bit? that's just sad, that's a 256bit GPU, it kind of feels like my old X1550 32bit.
and the clock is also really low, 533MHz (effective)...

unless you are going to play games much older than the card I don't think the performance will be impressive (2005 card with memory bandwidth lower than a geforce 256 DDR from 1999, now I know that the gf6 is a lot faster than that and more efficient but),
honestly I think I would prefer using a 6200 128bit, at least is balanced card and uses less power.

At this point it's just a case of making use of it in its current form rather than just shelving it. I plan on using it for very old games anyway (Prior to Doom3). So I guess it should be fine in a 3.2GHz P4 then?

@candle_86 - I'm pretty sure it would still outperform a 6200 by a decent margin (especially the 64-Bit variant), and would probably perform comparably somehere between a 6600LE and a 7300GT.

Totempole wrote:

At this point it's just a case of making use of it in its current form rather than just shelving it. I plan on using it for very old games anyway (Prior to Doom3). So I guess it should be fine in a 3.2GHz P4 then?

@candle_86 - I'm pretty sure it would still outperform a 6200 by a decent margin (especially the 64-Bit variant), and would probably perform comparably somehere between a 6600LE and a 7300GT.

You're right. I am kinda eager to see how it will actually perform 😀

I'd say, go for it! And do some benchmarks 😁

Totempole wrote:

At this point it's just a case of making use of it in its current form rather than just shelving it. I plan on using it for very old games anyway (Prior to Doom3). So I guess it should be fine in a 3.2GHz P4 then?

@candle_86 - I'm pretty sure it would still outperform a 6200 by a decent margin (especially the 64-Bit variant), and would probably perform comparably somehere between a 6600LE and a 7300GT.

I can see it performing bellow a 6200 128bit (a 500MHz model) in some cases, the 7300GT is not even close.
memory bandwidth on these cards is really critical, I had a 7300GT 64bit once and the performance drop was huge

for games prior to 2004 the p4 3.2 would be really fast, you could probably do it with less CPU, but it really depends...
I think as others mentioned, Athlon XP, some P4, sounds right... also Athlon 64 would work... basically, typical AGP 1.5v stuff

Tetrium wrote:

You're right. I am kinda eager to see how it will actually perform 😀

I'd say, go for it! And do some benchmarks 😁

I'd love too. I'm not big on benchmarking, are there any tools you would recommend? I'll post the results here. 😀

SPBHM wrote:

I can see it performing bellow a 6200 128bit (a 500MHz model) in some cases, the 7300GT is not even close. memory bandwidth on t […]
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I can see it performing bellow a 6200 128bit (a 500MHz model) in some cases, the 7300GT is not even close.
memory bandwidth on these cards is really critical, I had a 7300GT 64bit once and the performance drop was huge

for games prior to 2004 the p4 3.2 would be really fast, you could probably do it with less CPU, but it really depends...
I think as others mentioned, Athlon XP, some P4, sounds right... also Athlon 64 would work... basically, typical AGP 1.5v stuff

Well, I don't have a 128-Bit 6200 to compare it with, but I do have one of these XFX 512MB 64-Bit 6200's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16814150125) for performance comparison.

If you can recommend a good benchmarking tool, I'll run it on both from a 3.2GHz P4 and post the results here.

The issue is that with a 64bit bus above 800x600 its not the core config handicapping it, its the memory bus, it wouldn't matter how fast the core is if the memory is crippled, and that is 533mhz DDR2 64bit, its memory subsystem is just as fast as a 6200 64bit.

The only benchmarking tool I have available to me right now, is a copy of 3D Mark 2006 from back when I had just bought a shiny new 6600GT. 😀

I'm going to start by testing the 512MB/64bit XFX 6200 AGP and then fire up the 128MB/64bit Biostar 6800XT AGP, which I would imagine would be at least slightly faster. I'm going to use default settings and a resolution of 1024x768.

Finally, just for fun, I'm going to test the Dell Radeon 128MB/256bit 9700TX (The card that was originally in the machine) for comparison.

Will post back soon. 😀

UPDATE:

Test Results:

After running through the 3D Mark 2006 Benchmark, I'm both shocked and amused by the result. Tests were run on a Socket 478 3.2GHz Pentium 4 HT, on an Intel 865GLC mainboard with 2GB DDR400 RAM. All tests were run at 1024x768 screen resolution:

The lowest scoring of the three card was actually the the 6800XT by a narrow margin.

3DMark Score: 488
SM2.0 Score: 203
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 140
CPU Score: 939

Next came the 6200. HDR/SM3.0 is unsupported on this card.

3DMark Score: 512
SM2.0 Score: 240
HDR/SM3.0 Score: N/A
CPU Score: 941

Finally, and unsurprisingly the 9700TX came out on top, but not by a massive margin:

3DMark Score: 670
SM2.0 Score: 317
HDR/SM3.0 Score: N/A Also unsupported on this one.
CPU Score: 940

So not quite what I was expecting, but good to know.

Something that I should point out is that in the visual tests, (Return to Proxycon, Firefly Forest etc.), the 6800XT appeared to be getting roughly double the framerate of the 6200, so imagine my surprise when it scores lower. 🤣

Totempole wrote:

The only benchmarking tool I have available to me right now, is a copy of 3D Mark 2006 from back when I had just bought a shiny new 6600GT. 😀

Just to let you now :
ALL 3DMark programs up to 3DMark 06, can be downloaded from futuremark's legacy site with Advance keys posted there for free : LINK

agent_x007 wrote:

Totempole wrote:

The only benchmarking tool I have available to me right now, is a copy of 3D Mark 2006 from back when I had just bought a shiny new 6600GT. 😀

Just to let you now :
ALL 3DMark programs up to 3DMark 06, can be downloaded from futuremark's legacy site with Advance keys posted there for free : LINK

Thanks, I just realized that a few minutes ago. In hindsight I should probably have benchmarked on an older version of 3DMark. 😢

At any rate, the above test gives a reasonable indication of what to expect from these cards.

candle_86 wrote:

This 6800XT will not be bottlenecked by an Athlon XP, with 64bit memory bus it and 8 pipelines this will preform between a 6200 and a 6600 LE

Yeah, my mistake, I hastily read past that part... this "6800XT" is basically like the geforce 6500 performance wise isn't it? In witch case OP is much better off with the 9800 XT

I think the story behind these things is they use partly defective chips, like some 6800LE cards (got two of those, one unlocks perfectly fine to 16p, the other artifacts when unlocked) and nvidia decided to make money of them. They should have named these something else.

how is SM3 unsupported on the 6200? the card is supposed to support it

also, can you confirm the 6800XT runs at 300/533? and what about the 6200 clocks?