Originally posted by: guoziming
Okay so here's another cheap graphics question. I have a system with an AGP 4x bus and I need to decide between the ATI 9550 and the Nvidia 6200. the 9550 has 256MB DDR memory with a 128-bit bus. The 6200 is the BFG OC variant with 256 DDR memory. I don't really play many games, with the exception of Counter-Strike: Source. My question is, which one of these cards will play better on my crappy system? I do plan to overclock as much as possible, so thoughts on that would be nice.
Since we don't know "how crappy" the thing is, your question is a little problematic. The Radeon 9550 is
much slower than the 128 Bit Geforce 6200, and lacks the Shader 3.0 capabilities, as well as some other features. However,
neither one is a "Gaming" VGA card, not really. For much of anything in the way of game play, you must either spend more money, or shop in a used parts market.
Although it is now outdated, the 6600GT is still holding its own pretty well when a Price/ vs. Performance ratio is calculated (the 6800GS currently has the top spot in that calculation), and it's not truly way beyond the 128-Bit 6200 in price ($35-40, maybe less, difference, at MSRP). I've seen the 6600GT's on shelves in Brick & Mortar stores, like CompUSA, for $100-120, so keep your eyes open! You also should be able to locate a Radeon 9800Pro, or 9800 XT, still new, but discounted now, with its omission of Shader 3.0, and those are decent cards that now ought to be affordable, even on ordinary retailers' shelves.
To really see how poor the Radeon 9550's performance actually is, go to Gpureview.com and compare the 9550 to its bigger brother, the 9600 Pro (which is roughly in the same speed category that the Geforce 6200 occupies). Regarding the comment about where the Ti-4200 ranks with the 9550, it should be faster, and the 64 Bit Geforce 6200's are slow, but the 128 Bit 6200 is faster than a Ti-4200 at stock speeds (I've actually compared the two here on a system of mine, and both 4200/6200 can OC about the same amount). The limited scope of the raw numbers at that comparison site are pretty good about comparing cards from the same family, but not across chip set origins (the raw numbers would have you believe that nVidia's FX series were twice as good as they truly were, when racked next to ATI's R 9xxx's).
There are sites where you can see various benchmarks compared on a lot of VGA cards, like THG (I know, I know!), but one thing that they do is include some seminal cards from prior generations, but tested against modern benchmark standards. Adrian's Rojak Pot also has some broad-scale comparisons. The Geforce 6200 (in 128 Bit guise, not the badly crippled 64-Bit versions), isn't a "bad" card, but is overpriced compared to "better" cards (better for games, like that stronger big brother, the 6600GT, or its still better sibling, mentioned already, the 6800GS).
Facebook
Twitter