Geforce 4 TI 4600 or GeForce 6600 (not GT)

[LordTerrin]

Hey guys,

I have been researching this one for a while. I just bought a Geforce 6800, and I'm kinda disappointed. My ti 4600 ran half-life 2 at about the same speed, just with less features and dx9 support. I really didn't notice $278 worth of difference though. So I'm here to ask a simple question.

I can sell my geforce 4 ti 4600 for about $130 - $140 on ebay, and buy a geforce 6600 for about the same price, give or take a few bucks. I cannot find a single benchmark however that contains both cards. Can anyone give me some help? I love the performance of the 4600, it's really nice for dx8 stuff, would I be able to get about the same performance out of a stock 6600, or would it be better or worse?

I don't see that dx9 is ALL that much better than dx8, but it'd be nice to have.


-LT

 

[platinumike]

I cant remember where I saw the benchmarks but the 6600 or anything in the 6 series more then doubled anything in the ti series. You must not have the right drivers or something, or something isnt setup right in bios, you should see a huge performance gain.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Are you really CPU limited, maybe?

Edit: My 6800GT is easily twice as fast (or more) as my "old" 9700 Pro in almost everything, and that itself was already almost 2x the speed of the Geforce 4's, if I remember correctly.

 

[LordTerrin]

nope, I have an amd 64 3000, but I'm just wondering, because the ti 4600 is a really fast dx8 card. Can anyone get me the physical specs for both cards?

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: LordTerrin
I can sell my geforce 4 ti 4600 for about $130 - $140 on ebay,

What alternate eBay universe do you live in?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: LordTerrin
nope, I have an amd 64 3000, but I'm just wondering, because the ti 4600 is a really fast dx8 card. Can anyone get me the physical specs for both cards?

A 6600 should absolutely demolish a Ti4600.

We're talking 60%+ across the board.

 

[Zambien]

Originally posted by: LordTerrin
just with less features and dx9 support.
-LT

What do you mean by less features? I have a 6800 and I run HL2 at 1600x1200 with everything on high and 8x anis filtering (of course i did unlock the closed pipe, shader, and o/c'ed). There's no way you could do that with your 4600. I could see 8x6 with everything set to low maybe.

 

[Concillian]

Physical specs:
Ti 4600:
1200 peak megapixels per second fillrate
2400 peak megatexels per second
10.4 GB/sec memory thoughput

GeForce 6800:
3900 peak megapixels per second
3900 peak megatexels per second
22.4 GB/sec memory throughput

 

[Ryland]

Let me into the universe that I can sell my BFG TI4600 VIVO card for $130 in That would make my life much easier...

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Are you really CPU limited, maybe?

Edit: My 6800GT is easily twice as fast (or more) as my "old" 9700 Pro in almost everything, and that itself was already almost 2x the speed of the Geforce 4's, if I remember correctly.

2x? The 9700 pro was between 2-3 times fast, with old drivers, not it may be 4 times as fast as a ti4600.

 

[OmnipotentSpleen]

i think what LordTerrin means is, the difference between a Ti4200 and a 6600 really aren't that extreme. extreme being, being able to play from med/low detail to high/max detail. I have a ti4200, and i'm able to play doom3 at 10x7 medium, or 8x6 high and HL2 on MAX detail at 10x7 (60fps). So really, for a $250 card, you'd only be able to up the resolution or add high AA/AF. Maybe this logic doesn't make sense to you guys, but that's one of the reasons why I still game with my Ti4200. It plays every game at high detail at "decent" resolutions. the point is, games are just as playable on high quality on a Ti4200 as they are on a 6600, AA, AF, and high resolutions aside.

(note: the 6600GT is EXACTLY twice the specs of a Ti4200. 2x memory bandwidth, 2x filrate, 2x the pipes, etc)

 

[uOpt]

My understanding is that HL2 invests most of the graphics card performance in shaders.

If you run on the GeForce 4, most of the advanced shaders will be scaled down or turned off.

So I could easily imagine arriving in the same ballpark of speed, but you have to understand that the quality degrade substancially.

The 4600 is a very fast card for the hardware units it has. The newer cards get so much faster by having hardware support for advanced API features.

 

[Hyperlite]

I just saw a similar conversation on the EQ2 forums...this guy was trying to figure out why his ti4200 wasn't as fast as a 9600pro :roll:

he was complaining about lag in EQ2...

A64 3500+
1gig RAM
and a ti4200???? what is he thinking...

 

[Pete]

eBay the 4600 for $140 and be happy with a 6800 for $140. Your 6800 is either (extremely) limited by your CPU, or you're just not noticing the IQ improvements in HL2. The 6800 should be much faster in other games, too. It's basically clocked the same as the 4600, but it's got three times the pipelines and twice the bandwidth.

BTW, the 9700P was only 2x faster than a 4600 with AA+AF. Without them, it was about 40% faster, IIRC. 3-4x faster sounds like a bit of a stretch, but I guess it's possible, given the 9700P starts out with twice the bandwidth, then has the added bonus of faster AF and greater AA compression.

I don't think a 6600 will be much faster than your 4600, and if you're not impressed with the DX9 effects the 6800 has to offer, why go through the trouble of switching to what's essentially a DX9 version of your card?

This is all purely hypothetical, though, as I think nVidia won't be selling AGP 6600s for a while. So the only realistic upgrade path you have with nVidia is a 6600GT or a 6800. A 6600GT is pretty close in speed to a 6800, and it sells for about $50 less than what you paid for your 6800. It doesn't look like you'd avail yourself of the 6800's potentially greater speed by unlocking the extra quad, so if you can return the 6800 at no cost, you might try a $225 6600GT (still way overpriced compared to the $180 PCIe version, as it's brand new).

But something else is limiting your performance, sa a 6600GT would only make you feel better for having paid less, not for being faster than a 6800 (which it isn't). What CPU, MB, and RAM are you using, LordTerrin?

 

[OmnipotentSpleen]

Hyperlite, as I do recall, when the Geforce 3 was released, Everquest 2 was the game that would make owning a GF3 worth it. So a Geforce4 should run the game fairly well in theory.

 

[Avalon]

Isn't his Ti4600 forced to run the DX8 codepath?
If that's the case, imagine it trying to run the DX9 codepath, then spot the difference between that and your 6800. If that doesn't impress you, I'm not sure what will.
If you could overclock your 6600 a bit, you will probably be happy with the price of it, though.

 

[LordTerrin]

that's the main thing... you know, I played it under dx8 for like 9 hours straight (right when it came out.) The next day I bought a 6800, and like OmnipotentSpleen so kindly stated, I didn't see a $250 difference. My girlfriend was really the one to point it out to me... she said "yeah, it looks better.. but... $250 better?" This is why I think I'm gonna stick to dx8 for a while longer... it just doesn't seem worth it!

This is also why I assumed maybe if I could sell my gf4 for even $100, then buy a plain 6600, why is everyone talking about 6*8*00?, for maybe like $150 or so, it would make MUCH more sense.


-LT

 

[Rage187]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: LordTerrin
I can sell my geforce 4 ti 4600 for about $130 - $140 on ebay,

What alternate eBay universe do you live in?

 

[LordTerrin]

I was looking at a post a few weeks back that had a geforce 4 ti 4600 with tons of extras, in the original box, etc etc etc...... it went for like $130.

 

[Concillian]

GeForce 6600 is:
2600 peak mpixels per second (1200 for the ti4600)
2600 peak mtexels per second (2400 for the ti4600)
8.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth. (10.4 for the ti4600)

 

[uOpt]

Anandtech has the explanation in their second part of the half-life 2 test for mid-range cards.

And yes the Ti 4600 runs it surprisingly fast and not overly ugly.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Concillian
GeForce 6600 is:
2600 peak mpixels per second (1200 for the ti4600)
2600 peak mtexels per second (2400 for the ti4600)
8.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth. (10.4 for the ti4600)

Memory bandwidth seems off by a lot.

-Kevin

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: Concillian
GeForce 6600 is:
2600 peak mpixels per second (1200 for the ti4600)
2600 peak mtexels per second (2400 for the ti4600)
8.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth. (10.4 for the ti4600)

Memory bandwidth seems off by a lot.

-Kevin

Its not, the vanilla 6600 uses 128bit memory clocked at 550mhz. My ti4600 is clocked at 660mhz.

 

[OmnipotentSpleen]

Originally posted by: Anandtech
If you've got a NV3x part your Half Life 2 performance isn't too bad so long as you stay far away from the DX9 codepath; as a DX8 solution, the NV3x GPUs do just fine, there's actually no reason to upgrade unless you want better image quality, since the frame rates they will provide are pretty high to begin with. The same can actually be said about the GeForce4; we found the GeForce4 to run Half Life 2 extremely well in DX8 mode, and the image quality is quite good. Be warned, if you are upgrading from a GeForce4, you are going to want to go for something no slower than the Radeon 9700, otherwise you will get an increase in image quality but a decrease in frame rate.

 

[big4x4]

BTW, ti4600's go for like 60 + shipping on ebay. If you can get 140 more power to you