6600s and X700's, where do they fall in?

[Cook1]

Ok, where do these guys fall in? I have a 9800 Pro at the moment, and there's no way that I could afford an X800 or a 6800. So I've heard about these little midrange cards and I wonder how there performance is. Will I notice a difference between my 9800 Pro if I upgraded to either? How are they ranked beside the X800 or 6800s, meaning are they WAY lower performance wise or a decent bang for your buck. Another Q, are all the X700s and 6600s going to be PCI-E?



Danke.

 

[imported_JeReMY]

Well, I know they are more powerful than 9800 Xts and are almost as powerful as the 6800 nu

 

[Pete]

First off, why can't you just hit up Anandtech's front page for its X700XT and 6600GT reviews? Or hit up Google or Neoseeker?

Anyway, both are about 15% faster than a 9800P on average, and probably somewhat less so when AA+AF are involved. And the X700XT won't hit AGP for a while. So an upgrade is really not smart from a price/performance perspective. (Say you sell your 9800P for $160 and buy a new 6600GT for $200. That's +30% for a card that's not that much faster.) But you may have other reasons for upgrading (Linux drivers, Far Cry HDR, better OGL performance), in which case $40 isn't that much to pay.

As a general rule, bang/buck always goes down dramatically as you move up the price range. You're basically buying higher resolutions and levels of AA with the pricier cards, but a 6600GT (and even a 9800P) will be pretty darn playable at 10x7 with some AA.

Check out Anandtech's, Hardware.fr's, Hexus.net's, HardOCP's, Xbitlabs', digit-life's, etc.'s X700XT reviews for direct comparisons b/w all three cards.

 

[gobucks]

The 6600GT and X700XT are fantastic cards, but they are not that much more fantastic than a 9800 pro. Will you notice a speedup, particularly in future games? Sure, but not enough to warrant shelling out $200. I'd wait for the first refresh at the earliest. Besides, by then, 128MB cards will be pretty inadequate, and 256MB will be the minimum for mainstream cards, with 512MB being high end. I'd just wait for that.