Maximum PC

VC=Video Card

He's saying that if you buy the bundle in the store, you pay full price for Doom3 ($54.99), but then $54.99 gets deducted from the video card price. Therefore, if you return the card, you don't walk away with a free game.

Online however, you pay $299 for the video card and it's the game that gets discounted. Doom3 rings up as $0.00, so I wonder how they handle that kind of situation. They're obviously not going to willingly let someone keep a free video game - my hunch is they would refund the $299 you paid minus the cost of Doom3, regardless of how it rang up.

Thanks for the review link. I may do this since I want the games and can get a few $$ for my old card still.

Yeah, I don't think Best Buy would make it too easy to keep the game for free, but if someone were to raise a big enough stink about the technicalities (as in the previously explained case of buying online), I'm sure it's possible to get away with it once. Then there will be a half-page of fine print next time there is a similar offer to cover Best Buy ass .

It might be worth a try, but I would never raise too much of a stink because I remember how much I hated customers who caused scenes. They usualy got what they wanted though! Punk-asses.

i was planning to buy the game and the card, then sell the game and my old card, but it's too much of a hassle really just to switch from Leadtek to BFG and also make a few bucks.

Anybody notice the one on Best Buy's site has one fan and the one on BFG's site has Two fans for cooling?

http://www.bfgtech.com/6800OC.html

Just noticed also the one in the paper ad is the Dual cooling fans. I am going to go check this out @ Best buy tomorrow and see which it is. I am interested in this offer.


Dave

It has 2 fans and you need a 4 pin connector to power it. Supposedly it requires a minumum 300 watts power supply.

It also looks like it has a heatpipe.

Well, I went to Best Buy and got the BFG 6800oc and the free copy of Doom 3. I did some benchmarks before and after to see the difference.

Below was my system specs BEFORE upgrading to the BFG 6800oc card:
OS: Win XP PRO
Monitor: 17" Viewsonic VX710 LCD
CASE: Lian-Li Aluminum PC82
PSU : 550w Antec TruePower
MOBO: Intel D850GB (has 4x AGP slot)
PROC: Intel 1.7 GHz Pentium 4
RAM : 512MB Samsung RDRam
IDE1: 100 GB Western Digital
IDE2: 20 GB Western Digital
IDE3: Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM Drive
IDE4: TDK 12x10x32 CD-RW Drive
AGP : Gainward GeForce 2 Ti/200
PCI1: [empty]
PCI2: [empty]
PCI3: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer
PCI4: [empty]
PCI5: [empty]

The below results were using the Nvidia 61.77 Drivers

Before the Upgrade
3Dmark01SE
4322

3Dmark03
201
Note: it would only run the first test out of the four.

After the Upgrade
3Dmark01SE
9947 (2nd run was 9978)

3Dmark03
7863 (2nd run was 7937)

Timedemo Tests for Doom 3 w/ the BFG 6800oc since my other card would not run it:

Med 640x480 28.9 fps
Med 800x600 29.5 fps
Med 1024x768 29.2 fps
Med 1280x1024 28.4 fps

High 640x480 25.1
High 800x600 27.3
High 1024x768 26.6
High 1280x1024 26.5

I did have a problem with going out onto Mars (between the airlocks walking on Mars) in the game Doom 3 and the sky being really blocky and I couldn’t see where I was going very good. Big Black Blocky Boxes is what it looked like. I installed some older drivers 61.21 (that came with the card) and this solved that problem, but the game ran slower I noticed. I am going to see about some different drivers and see what the results are with them. Using 61.76 drivers now and they work fine without the black blocks problem.

I have not rerun the benchmarks since I found these 61.76 drivers work better in Doom 3. I did notice the 61.77 do run smoother than the 61.76 drivers do. I was able to play at 1280x1024 at high settings (with the 61.77 drivers) and now have to go back to 1024x768 and high settings (with the 61.76 drivers) to be able to play.

I think my limitation (bottleneck) now is my CPU being only 1.7GHz and 400 MHz bus speed.

I have not tried Far Cry yet. I want to also try Aquamark and after I find it on my discs I have to go thru I will run it and see how well it performs.

For the people that was wondering how Best Buy did this deal. They charge you $299.99 for the card and when they scan Doom 3 a window pops up on their register saying this is a bundle deal and puts Doom 3 as $54.99 and reduces the card price to $245.00. I paid $323.99 total with tax.


Dave

i did get mine oc'd to 365/805 with stock cooling. i am waiting for rivatuner. if i can enable the 4 extra pipes on my card then ill think about keeping it, if i cant, which is more than likely because the programmer says you have less than a 50% chance of it working, if i cant, im stepping up to a 6800gt from evga.