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ATI AIW9800 Pro or NVidia 6600GT?

J

jtelep

Member
Earlier this week I asked which NVidia card to get, a 5700 Ultra or a 5900 and was pleasently surprised when the answer was: "For another $50 you could get a NVidia 6600GT and really be blown away by the performance." So I thought, cool! If we're only talking another $50 then it's worth it. Now I find myself in yet another dilemma because of what we're talking about spending. I've been playing around with the idea of being able to take video's I've recorded of my kids and turning them into MPEG's to send out to the family in either an e-mail or an invite to my web site to view and know that I need a card that will accept input from a camcorder. I know that the AIW cards can do this and, from what I understand, aren't bad gaming cards either. I've found a ATI AIW 9800 Pro for $265 (which is about another $50 over the original $50 that I was going to pony up for the 6600GT) and I know that this card should last me for quite a while. What I would like to know is, are these two cards about equal when it comes to gaming though? Remember I currently have a GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB and I'm performing a mass upgrade on my system, going from:

MSI K7T Turbo 2 (One of the old KT133A chipsets)
AthlonXP 1700+
384MB PC133
GeForce4 Ti4200
17" Sony CRT
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1

to:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (NVidia NForce 2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T chipset)
AthlonXP 3200+
1GB PC3200
NVidia SoundStorm (integrated audio)
(and, yes the same crappy 17" Sony monitor (I can only afford so much!)

Any suggestions would be more than welcome. Thanks!
 
First off, I hope you're getting a good price on that A7N8X/AXP3200+. I think it would make a lot more sense to go with an Athlon64 at this point, since there is zero upgrade path for an AthlonXP-based system.

Secondly, the 6600GT is about 30% faster than the 9800Pro (there are benchmarks for these cards all over the place; please search).

Thirdly, IMO, you should buy a regular video card and a PCI video capture board rather than paying the same premium for an AIW card. This way, you can upgrade the tuner or video card without losing the other functionality. This has also been discussed to death numerous times in this very forum.
 
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