6600GT or X800 vanilla?

[ShmooDude]

I'm going to be upgrading my computer soon and wanted to get input on my videocard.

Athlon 64 Venice 3000+
DFI Ultra-D
1GB Ram

My primary game is World of Warcraft (which most video cards will run satisfactory, my brother uses a 6600 vanilla not OCed and it stays above 20fps at all times) with a little HL2/CSS, Farcry, Guild Wars sprinkled in. On the horizon I plan to get NWN2 but that's not for over another year and not much is known about what graphics power it will need, but it IS using SM 3.0.

Which would you say is the best in the <$200 bracket?

Leadtek 6600 GT @ $167
or one of the following x800s (recomendations on brand? performance should be roughly the same I would assume, so I'd like a quiet fan/low temps preferably)
Sapphire x800 128MB @ $179-30=$149AR ($164AR for 256MB)
PowerColor x800 128MB @ $175-30=$145AR ($169AR for 256MB)
Gigabyte X800 256MB with passive cooling @ $199-30=$169AR (I like the heat pipe idea but my room gets to 30c in the summer, that may be too hot though my case has 1 front and 1 back fan with 1 more rear slot and 1 HD slot, from the numbers I see people have posted about the 6600GT version (I'll guess that they run roughly the same amount of heat) you get +5-10c on idle)

EDIT: Just gonna go with this price bracket and upgrade sooner rather than later.

 

[Rock Hydra]

out of those, I would choose one of the actively cooled (cooled w/ fan) x800 cards. Those cards have a 256 bit interface over the 256 bit interface, and for effectively 2 dollars more. The longevity of a x800 will be greater than that of a 6600GT.

 

[mwmorph]

Powercolor is a good brand since it is the BBA equalivent for europe so they have a lot of exprience with ATi cards and QC is pretty good. not sure if 256mb helps a x800 but it does have a 256bit bus right? Rule of thumb is that 1mb of memory ber 1 bit of bus. any more is overkill, any less is not using it to the full potential.

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
Powercolor is a good brand since it is the BBA equalivent for europe so they have a lot of exprience with ATi cards and QC is pretty good. not sure if 256mb helps a x800 but it does have a 256bit bus right? Rule of thumb is that 1mb of memory ber 1 bit of bus. any more is overkill, any less is not using it to the full potential.

So Powercolor ~= BB ATI? Good to know

Anyone know about the noise levels of the two cards?

 

[coomar]

if you want to overclock the gpu, the powercolour or sapphire (with their active fans), if your more about noise reduction, get the gigabyte, get an x800

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: coomar
if you want to overclock the gpu, the powercolour or sapphire (with their active fans), if your more about noise reduction, get the gigabyte, get an x800

Its just that I currently have a FX5900 (not dual slot leaf blower luckily) which is fairly loud when going full throttle. I'm hoping that neither of those cards would be that loud...

Also on the Tom's Hardware (granted not the most unbiased site) the 6600GT wins in most everything except high res/high AA/AF which was usually unplayable on both cards anyhow... Anyone have a better source of information or an explanation for this (and/or why its not correct).

 

[zendari]

The x800 with 12 pipes and 256 bit memory is superior to the 8 pipe 128 bit 6600 gt. I have one and I get 4500 3dmarks, almost a stock 6800gt.

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: zendari
The x800 with 12 pipes and 256 bit memory is superior to the 8 pipe 128 bit 6600 gt. I have one and I get 4500 3dmarks, almost a stock 6800gt.

So then are a majority of Tom's Hardware benchmarks just Nvidia biased then?
(X800 is 256MB in the benchmarks)

Just a quick recap (I may end up correcting myself, we'll see)
Note: Removed 1024x768 No AA/AF in most games due to being completely CPU bound

3DMark 2005
1024x768 No AA/AF
6600GT - 3681
X800 - 3802
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 2662
X800 - 3096
1600x1200 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - Failed
X800 - 1936

UT2k4
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 145.0
X800 - 137.6
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 119.6
X800 - 119.0
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 78.5
X800 - 85.9

Half-Life 2
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 65.2
X800 - 74.2
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 63.1
X800 - 75.9
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 38.4
X800 - 54.1

Doom 3
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 61.9
X800 - 46.4
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 43.9
X800 - 38.9
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 28.7
X800 - 26.4

Chrnoicles of Riddick
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 35.7
X800 - 30.3
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 25.9
X800 - 23.0
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 16.7
X800 - 15.5

Pacific Fighters
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 88.6
X800 - 103.4
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 68.5
X800 - 65.6
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 46.2
X800 - 45.8

Overall
1280x1024 No AA/AF
6600GT - 3
X800 - 2
1024x768 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 4
X800 - 1
1280x1024 4x AA/8x AF
6600GT - 3
X800 - 2

Now I know that HL2 is ATI and Doom 3 is Nvidia, not sure about the rest of the games.

However, these are all at stock speeds and clock for clock overclocking the ATI will gain 50% more Fill Rate and 100% more Memory Bandwidth. The ATI also has 256MB of memory.

What brand card card do you have zendari? What's your overclock?

 

[zendari]

This should help you
I only had 128 mb of memory.

Another review

The x800 cards have huge 2.0 ns ram resulting in monster memory overclocks. The core is the x800 XL core, and mine did rather well. You're also saving $20.

 

[shrimpsiumai]

As far as I know, is it even possible to unlock/OC x800 (PCIe)? I only hear people talk about the AGP version.

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: zendari
This should help you
I only had 128 mb of memory.

Another review

The x800 cards have huge 2.0 ns ram resulting in monster memory overclocks. The core is the x800 XL core, and mine did rather well. You're also saving $20.

Thanks, do you think that the 256MB version (or the PowerColor version) will also have the 2.0 ns RAM? Its only $15 more for double the memory so unless that would significantly hurt its overclocking potential I think I would probably go for that. I know on a card this low end the extra memory probably wouldn't make a HUGE difference but I'd bet it'd help at equal clock speeds.

EDIT: Bah, they raised the 256MB versions by $5 since yesterday, proibably still a good deal though.

EDIT 2: Just looked at your second article. It says that the 256MB version has the 2.0ns memory as well. How is your noise level? As I said mine is a second gen leafblowerFX.

 

[ShmooDude]

Also, that appears to be an AGP card. I don't know if they use different parts for that or not.

 

[ShmooDude]

Bump

 

[zendari]

Shrimp, the PCI cards are not unlockable.

Schmoo, which card is an AGP card? I don't think the 12 pipe x800 is even available for AGP, it uses the R430 core. I would personally take the 128 mb version. I haven't seen benchmarks of 128 vs 256 mb, but I don't think this card has the raw power of a 6800 GT to use 256 mb well.

I'm not one to judge noise level, because I really don't care too much about it. This link claims the noise levels aren't too excessive. It's really a smaller fan/heatsink.

Also, looking at the games you play currently, HL2 and Farcry will definitely be significantly faster on the x800 than the 6600 gt.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: ShmooDude

Originally posted by: zendari
This should help you
I only had 128 mb of memory.

Another review

The x800 cards have huge 2.0 ns ram resulting in monster memory overclocks. The core is the x800 XL core, and mine did rather well. You're also saving $20.

Thanks, do you think that the 256MB version (or the PowerColor version) will also have the 2.0 ns RAM? Its only $15 more for double the memory so unless that would significantly hurt its overclocking potential I think I would probably go for that. I know on a card this low end the extra memory probably wouldn't make a HUGE difference but I'd bet it'd help at equal clock speeds.

EDIT: Bah, they raised the 256MB versions by $5 since yesterday, proibably still a good deal though.

EDIT 2: Just looked at your second article. It says that the 256MB version has the 2.0ns memory as well. How is your noise level? As I said mine is a second gen leafblowerFX.

i've had an x800xl, and some x700s, and 6600gts.

the tendency is for ati's to have much quieter fans. i've had the xfx, evga, chaintech and asus 6600gt cards, and well the chaintech and 6600gt have a different fan design which is maybe as quiet as an x800xl, the evga/ xfx were loud as hell.

i've had a fx5900 back in the day, and well i'd say the evga/xfx were even louder. dont know what the leadtek fan is like, but if you get a 6600gt, i'd think about chaintech and asus.

 

[ShmooDude]

In Anand's review the Leadtek was one of the quietest cards comparativly speaking. I'll probably end up going with the X800. Is it just me or is the 6600GT a slightly more efficent card as in theory the X800 should be faster in all respects? (I am kind of prefrenced to Nvidia for various reasons)

The card in the reviewhere show's it being AGP. Also the overclocking didn't seem to show any noticable improvments even though the core clock went up by 12% and the memory clock went up by 60%. Besides the significant improvment in 3DMark03, Farcry and HL2 went up by 6% and Doom 3 by 5% (and that's taking the largest improvment numbers at 1600x1200). Anyone know why this would be?

 

[zendari]

The Geforce 6 series is more efficient clock for clock (or should I say fillrate for fillrate in this case) than the x800 cards are. Note how a 425 mhz 6800 U generally competes with a 500 mhz x800xt card.

As for your question, the article attributes it to the strain of 4x aa/8x af. This is a budget product, you aren't going to get 4xaa gaming out of it. Though I'm guessing that the AGP mention in the article is a mistake. I've never seen this card for sale in AGP form.

 

[ShmooDude]

Mmm, ok thank you for your help everyone. The AGP refrence I'm talking about is from the screenshot of the overclock. It says "Primary AGP card" or something like that.