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How well does the 6600GT compete

O

Ojannen

Member
I am looking to upgrade my video card. My current card is a 2 year old 9600 pro. I am limited to AGP because I do not have the money to upgrade to an nforce 4 board. I am currently runing on a socket 754 VIA chipset Chuttle, 1 gig of ram, and amd 3200 64. I found someone that will buy my 9600 for about $50 which puts the 6600gt in my price range.

I am very picky about how I play games. I absolutely do not care about graphics or graphic quality. If I had my choice, I would always run at 1024x768, no AA, or filtering, with most quality setting turned down to give me the best gameplay. If I bought a 7800GTX, I would still do this. The big reason I am considering an upgrade is because I am having to move to 800x600 to maintain framerates over 75 when playing games like DoD:S and Serious Sam 2.

Will I be able to use the 6600gt for another year to year and a half at the settings I want? or will I be required to move to the 6800GT or GS or X800XL?

thanks

 
The 6800gs isn't on agp yet. I would wait for them to come out as they perform similar to 6800gt's and ~200 bucks.
heres a review on it Text
 
i did a similar upgrade. i upgraded from a 9600non pro to a 6600gt agp. the difference was night and day. i could have all graphics set to high in fary cry except no aa/af and the game would run very smooth. it is a very good upgrade imo.
 
I made the exact same upgrade you're thinking about doing. I bought a Best Buy 9600pro for $99 After Rebate on Black Friday 2 years ago. Just last week I bought the PNY 6600GT for $99 After Rebate from Newegg on Black Friday. Guess what my price point is for buying a new card? 🙂

I installed the card 2 days ago and I'm very pleased with it. I mainly play City of Heroes and Age of Empires III these days, so I'll give you my improvements on those games. First, the rest of my specs:
AMD 64 X2 3800+ (Overclocked from 2.0ghz to 2.4ghz, so I guess that puts it around a 4400+ or so?)
Asrock Dual939-Sata2
1GB RAM
XP Pro

City of Heroes:
9600Pro - 1024x768 with most of the settings turned way down - ~20 frames per second average
6600GT - 1280x1024 with the settings turned all the way up (except for AA) - ~55 frames per second average

Age of Empires III:
9600Pro - 1280x1024 with all of the settings way down - ~30 frames per second
6600GT - 1600x1200 with most of the settings way up - ~40 frames per second

I use FRAPs to get a general estimate. Sorry I don't play first person shooters to tell you how they perform, but I'm extremely happy with the improvements I've seen. Most of my frames per second scores went up at least 100% when playing at the same settings.

Hope that helps,

CK
 
Originally posted by: InlineFour
i also bought a zalman vf700 copper for greater overclocking capabilities and to lower the noise coming from the fan.
Click to expand...

Does that work well on the AGP version? How much did you find it for?

My old 9600Pro was passive cooling and when I first upgraded the noise was killing me. Now 2 days later I must have adjusted and it sounds very quiet again so I suppose it's not a huge deal.

CK
 
Thanks for the input.

One last question is how does it perform for the doom 3 engine? The only two games I can forsee buying in the next 6 months are serious sam 2 and quake 4. I already know what the performance on ss2 through playing on a friends computer. I am a little concerned with how the 6600 will handle the doom3 engine. Note that I will still be using the same config as I posted up top but will also be playing on fps maps, not the standard ones. If the doom 3 engine caps the framerate, will I be able to acheive the max framerate with no drops?
 
Its a decent upgrade if you get the 6600gt not the 6600. Doom3, Q4,HL2 will be quite playable. But you're going to have to drop resolutions and drop AA/AF for newer games like FEAR and BF2. A decent card but its not going to cut it if you are a big gamer.
 
I would drop the extra 25-50 bucks on the 6800NU (vanilla, non GT, non Ultra), it'll give you more headroom for the doom3 engine and future games.

The one I have:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...etails.asp?EdpNo=1004009&sku=P450-8606

These cards are drying up, so if you're thinking of getting one act quickly. It's the best bang for the buck for under $200.

Anything with a fan is obviously going to be louder than passive cooling, but with your settings the vf700 on the 6800nu shouldn't need to be set that high. 1600rpm (5v setting, they include a limiting adapter with it to set it at that speed) is pretty close to inaudible with the case closed.

-z
 
vga charts http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20051202/vga_charts_viii-10.html

though it doesn't make sense what u said about always turning down settings in persuit of gameplay.... it used to be true, but now the top cards are so fast at 1024x768 that no settings would phase them. eesp the 7800gtx...60fps with fsaa etc isn't hard at all, these days the top cards aim for 1600x1200 and above after all and 1280x1024 is standard resolution of even cheap 200 dollar 19" lcds these days.
 
In respone to 0roo0roo, I am still on a CRT for several reasons. The big two are my inabilitiy to find a 19" lcd that runs at 1600x1200 and 1024x768 (for gaming). I am on an 18" viewable CRT and I am running at 1600x1200 at 75htz. My other problem is cost per inch. I find it hard to justify doubling the cost of a monitor (150 to 300+ dollars) for only an additional inch of space. If you have ever watched pro cs players play at something like CPL, you will notice that many play at 640x480. The tournament machines all have 6800gts and can support much higher resolutions. The players started playing on 640x480 5 years ago, and for someone who has played that long, a change in resolution is a big deal and makes the game feel very different. Less important is the fact that minimum framerate is much more important than average or maximum framerate. Looking at the tomshardware quake 4 review, the 7800GT at 1024x768 on ultra gets an average of 106 fps. It neglects to say the frame rate with more than 3 players on screen with multiple simultaneous explosions. My guess is that a 7800GT would be barely playable on that setting.

Back when they were first released the 6600GT was said to be very close to the speed of the vanilla 6800. Is that still true with the new game engines or has the 6800 pulled ahead? My real question is: is the vanilla 6800 hunreder worth 30-50 dollars more than the 6600GT? I believe I can get a 6600gt for less than $130 after rebates.
 
I have a 6800 Vanilla AGP card. I know mine is a bit faster than a 6600 GT. I have 16x/6x pipes working, core runs fine at 400mhz (don't know how it will go) and memory will do alittle more than 900mhz. Remember the memory is 256 Bit wide compared to the 1000mhz 128 Bit wide 6600GT.

I am actually almost close to a 6800GT in performance. The core is faster by 12.5% and the memory is slower by 10%. So, maybe the faster core will actually bring it to GT levels or maybe alittle higher in a couple area's.

If you can get a AGP that will unlock to 16x6x, then you will definitely be above a 6600GT. Its the 6600GT's 500mhz Core that brings it close to the 6800NU in some area's.

The 6800NU memory oc's pretty darn well for 2.2ns. Mine does at least 900mhz and I have seen others go to 950mhz and even saw one do 1000mhz.

Even if the 6800 NU is only 12x5x pipes, upping the core to 350mhz-400mhz will make sure you are well ahead of a 6600GT. OCing the memory will make it that much better than the 6600GT.

This is my experience anyways. Results may very 🙂


Jason
 
Those are some pretty impressive numbers for 8xaa and 16Xaf, almost unbelievable with a 8pipe line card there n3wb, what are your CS stress test scores like?
 
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