I need to pick a video card

[Captante]

I've never played Oblivion or FEAR on a 6600GT, but I played both on an A64 3200+ with a 6800GT & while FEAR wasn't too bad, Oblivion got pretty rough even at 1024x768 & medium detail settings in any kind of outdoor combat situation, so I think its safe to say that the much slower 6600GT isn't going to perform very well in that game & anything newer is likely to be even worse.

Don't get me wrong, for $95 the 6600GT isn't a bad card, but at this point its in over its head in new games... also I'm not aware of any problems being reported by anyone that are related to using an ATI graphics cards with Intel system as opposed to AMD & in fact I've built several P4 & 3 Core2 desktops in the last couple months, all of which used ATI cards & had no trouble at all.

Ultimately its your choice what you buy, but if it were my money I'd choose to go another way... good luck regardless.

 

[Captante]

Take a look at this page of the ATI X1650 review posted today on AT which includes performance numbers for the 6600GT ... note that even at 800x600 & medium detail the 6600GT averages about 15fps & anything below 20fps is close to unplayable IMO... FEAR however should be ok as long as you leave AA turned off.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2864&p=6

 

[DasFox]

The 6600 has a faster core and memory, but I'm not sure if the advantage of the newer gpu on a 7600, might be better. If not a 6800 would be a much better choice.

Oblivion is hard on systems. A 6800 is cutting it close, but I have seen 6600s running the game but not on max eye candy settings.

ALOHA

 

[BFG10K]

The X1950 Pro is available in AGP form isn't it?

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: DasFox
The 6600 has a faster core and memory, but I'm not sure if the advantage of the newer gpu on a 7600, might be better. If not a 6800 would be a much better choice.

Oblivion is hard on systems. A 6800 is cutting it close, but I have seen 6600s running the game but not on max eye candy settings.

ALOHA

The 7600GT performs between the 6800GT & Ultra in most games & in some is faster then both despite having a 128bit memory bus ... as I posted earlier I was able to run Oblivion with HDR & medium details @ 1024x768 on my 6800GT & it was ok except for outdoor combat with multiple opponents.

An X1950 Pro AGP would be great if it was available & would most likely outperform even a 7800GS, but I havn't seen any for sale yet.