Leadtek 6800LE inbound @ $149

[charlie]

I just couldn't resist. Newegg dropped the price on it...
In my 24/7 Dothan rig I've been running an x700pro for a couple weeks, and it's "acceptable", but BARELY. My games are a BIT slow. So the 6800LE is CHEAPER than teh x700pro series... and pretty much EVERYONE says 12 pipes is EASY and most say the Leadtek gives up the last 4 to make 16 pipes.

$149, heck WHAT costs $149? x600? Maybe a 9800xt?

So how do you do the "unlocking"?? What is the specific option inside RivaTuner?? How many pipes/ps are there in total??

C

[persivore]

I've ordered myself a 6800LE, which should be here tomorrow. Mine is an Aopen card and not the Leadtek tho. There is some info about unlocking the locked pipes and shaders here

[charlie]

I've ordered myself a 6800LE, which should be here tomorrow. Mine is an Aopen card and not the Leadtek tho. There is some info about unlocking the locked pipes and shaders here

great article, thx!! Now just to keep my fingers crossed

14K '03 with 2800mHz of Dothan powah' would be nice!

[afireinside]

Good luck with that. Took me 2.85ghz clawhammer power with LoD tweaks, 16 pipes, 6 shaders, and 450/950 clocks for 13.5k on my 6800nu... I know your dothan is FAST but I'm not sure how fast it will be when you're GPU bottlenecked...

[Kunaak]

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/gefo...king/page2.asp

there you go.
them 128 meg 6800's are still some of the most impressive budget cards I ever got to play with, good luck on the 16 p and extra VS too.

[charlie]

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/gefo...king/page2.asp

there you go.
them 128 meg 6800's are still some of the most impressive budget cards I ever got to play with, good luck on the 16 p and extra VS too.

Yeah, I remember you and your 6800ASUS, Kunaak... although that beast REALLY WAS a neutered GT with dual power and GDDR3.

C

[Kunaak]

my 6800 Asus was just totally unfair to the 6800 league.
those things are just death machines for killing other 6800 NU's, if your a benchmarker, it's just not fair, haha...
but, asus calls it a NU, so I won't argue with them.

however, I had 4 other 6800's before it.
the first one I had was doing 480/875 on water.
it got 12,400 back when 10,000 from those, was considerd hard, haha...
now Nvidias drivers are so ridiculous that one driver will get you a 1,000 point boost, for no obvious reason...
so my little 128 meg scores are long gone.
but the asus one still remains the top for the 2003 mark.
15,100 I believe...

that card, with a dothan, and dry ice...
16,000 would almost be too easy.
especially with all these new questionable drivers, from Nvidia lately that give the huge score boosts.

I think you can hit 14K rather easy, with alittle effort.

[charlie]

I got the order in before noon, and that usually means newegg will ship the same day, but since it's a Monday, they may be overloaded from weekend orders... so I'll have it by Wed. at the latest.


The Leadtek 6800LE uses a bit thinner HS than their 6800NU and GT/Ultra HS's...
Nice big plate on the ass-end, too!


I'll reserve judgment 'til I see how the pipes and VS react...

But I think that's a LOT of video card for $149.

[Gamer]

are you going to destroy it Charlie ?

[speed bump]

Nice,

Gonna order one tonight hopefully.

Hopefully water on this card and dothan powah is good for about 14k 03.

[charlie]

are you going to destroy it Charlie ?

dunno'... maybe

C

[Kunaak]

I can already tell you how this will go

charlie will get that videocard say maybe wednsday.
he will plug it into his dothan set up, and casually, run a benchmark, just to "see" how his card compares
he will think "ok, thats good" then go and do some gaming that night...
the next morning, he will be doing his email, and get bored for a few minutes, then just look up "6800 volt mods" just for the "hell of it", haha...
he won't do it then.
he will just think...
hmm, those look really easy...
maybe I will just do the Vcore, so I can get alittle more for my games...
thursday afternoon, he will buy the right VR's, and get the soldering iron warm, and do the Vcore... then he will figure "while I am here, might as well do the Vmem too"
he will fool himself at first.
saying he will do just alittle voltage for each, just so he can get some extra speed to play BF2 or some other game like that, with his dothan...
he will.
but then later, he will think "hmm, I wonder what this will do at 3dmark now"
then he will run 3dmark2003 or 2005 for a start.
he will come within like 1000 points of the top score, and get that little "tingle" that moment when you know, the top score for whatever your benchmarking with, isn't gonna be too far away, if you just try alittle.
he will switch drivers.
push the voltage alittle on air... to find he's 600 points away from the top 6800 score.
then that will itch away in his psyche.
he will try to sleep.
but that itch won't go away.
he will think "ok, I'll just reformat, and strip all the extra junk outta bios, and run my OS in skeleton mode, then go to sleep"
it will work... but it won't stop.
by friday morning, he will be staring at the ORB, looking at 6800 scores, getting pissed cause he cant figure out if hes competing against SLI scores or not. so he will think... OK, I need some dry ice.
by then, he won't remember what BF2 is...
he will go through his day, doing whatever, he's suppose to do.
but in the back of his mind, whenever he's got 3 seconds alone, he will be doing math, thinking, "ok if I run 13x250, that would help me in GT1 and GT3, and if I switch to the latest Beta driver, that will help me... now I'll need about an hour to test LOD for the best settings..."

it won't really end.
thats just the begining.

by monday.
there will be a "6800LE WR post" made by Charlie, sometime, before he goes to bed, on sunday night, after 2 days of "Half Sleep", and after he finally runs out of dry ice sometime around 6 AM monday morning...

so it begins.

just watch.
it happens slowly, like a clock ticking away.
but like time, it's unavoidable.
when you got the itch, it doesn't stop.

haha...

[charlie]

lmfao...



(sheepishly agrees) yeah, I guess so...

[fatfreepork]

My Guide
http://www.ocrig.com/index.php/guides/6800-guide/

Also a suggestion is use 71.89 drivers because they give the best performance. They keep the temps down, they let you overclock the most, and are the most stable. You can try 77.72, but they are the assiest drivers i have ever used.

[Xyus89]

I can buy an Aopen 6800LE for 120 euros...
beat that
xyus

[charlie]

My Guide
http://www.ocrig.com/index.php/guides/6800-guide/

Also a suggestion is use 71.89 drivers because they give the best performance. They keep the temps down, they let you overclock the most, and are the most stable. You can try 77.72, but they are the assiest drivers i have ever used.

assiest drivers, lol...

Yeah, thanks for the tips, I'll certainly try them!!

C

[Geforce4ti4200]

good deal. I see video prices dropping a bit lately. by the way give this a spin in 2001 too

[Peen]

I had the GT version and the fan really sucked on it, wonder if the LE uses a more powerful fan =P

I think the LE's have been 149 for awhile now though, I remember Tigerdirect had them for 119 awhile ago

[Susquehannock]

Just reworked my Leadtek 6800nu. The backside piece is just a fancy backing plate - mostly
for asthetic purposes. If you think about it, many 6800 cards only have a plastic
backing plate there.

There isn't much too cool back there with the memory chips on the underside anyway.
Certainly nothing to mount a heatsink on. My card just had thick pads between the
back piece & card.

Now, the underside is another matter. The sink is stamped with raised pads to make
direct contact with the memory chips. Many other 6800 I've seen in the forums only
have a flat sink with thick pads similar to what's on the back of this one.

Oh, should also note that some have told me their Leadtek 6800nu did NOT have
the raised areas for the RAM. So there may be a couple versions of this card going around.

BTW ... was able to drop my GPU load temp by about 27c, and the Ceramique paste
hasn't broken in yet.

For some reason Leadtek saw fit to apply a brushed finish to the entire
surface. Not only that, the GPU contact patch was fairly warped as well. Likely
from the production process when the fan hole and RAM pads were stamped.

You can see images of the mod in this thread ::: http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=396369

P.S. - taking out that fan screen will help quiet the fan, and probably make it run a little cooler too.

[persivore]

I got my 6800LE today, and its modded successfully to 16 pipes and 6 vertex shaders Hopefully when I get better cooling and some volt mods on this thing, so I can get the clocks up a bit. It will only run 345/950. Hopefully I can get it close to stock GT clocks.

Edit: finally broken 11k on stock cooler

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=4126101

[andL64]

ehm, so i m ocing as well as for the wr and now ppl coming to beat me! *argh*

damn everytime you get the same card like me it starts getting my scores beated! last time with the XL remember?

ok lets get the competition started

keep it up u can beat me with dothan @ 2,8 i m sure.

seEn

PS. WR is 13,5k with apporved ones took me some time....

[charlie]

fedex says it's ON VEHICLE for delivery...

but I know from the past that this means the driver will deliver it only if convenient for him, otherwise he'll deliver it tommorrow.

C

[don_vercetti]

well if you can beat 12800, you've beaten my best with a leadtek 6800nu and athlon xp.
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=4091864
no LOD btw.

But if i had a dothan, my gt1 would be a mile higher. If i had a Lanparty rather than an nf7, my fsb would be higher, also getting a slighly higher gt1. If i had a soldering iron, i could voltmod and really overclock this card.

I must recommend trying out various BIOS's, one i tried in particular had slightly looser memory timings. This let me take my memory from 890mhz (reasonable) to 990mhz (V. good for ddr1). Stable at 880.

[fatfreepork]

nf7 and lanparty can do same fsb, just need the right bios.

what vgpu on that for 430:983?

[don_vercetti]

1.4v, in the BIOS.

im using mantarays xt d26, which is purportedly the best. 235mhz is still the highest i can reach, on a cold day. Once i got to 265, in midwinter, with ambient of about 5c, but i've never been able to repeat since. Had nearly 4,000 mb/s bandwidth in sandra.....

What Bios do you recommend?

I suspect replacing the stock nb HSF might be helpful. I guess i'll order one, and see what i can do.

Sorry for the OT btw.