Is it worth it?

[lifeblood]

I have an Radeon 9600 XT. I don't do any video encoding or anything like that. Games are the most stressful thing I put the video card through. I played Doom 3 at 800x600 but the game failed to keep my attention. I have not played HL2 yet, but I'm big into Guild Wars which works fine. If I get a new card like a 6600GT, will I really see any difference? My CRT can only support up to 1280 x 1024 max.

If I do upgrade I'm leaning toward nVidia because I occasionly use Linux and nVidia has the better Linux drivers.

 

[KeepItRed]

Why not just use ATI Tool or Catalyst to overclock your XT?

 

[n7]

You will see a difference going to a 6600GT.

If you want to do an even better upgrade, look into the X800XL.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: n7
You will see a difference going to a 6600GT.

If you want to do an even better upgrade, look into the X800XL.

:thumbsup:

Better yet, pick up one of the great deals on the x800xt's and PE's, or hit the FS/FT forums for some really bargain priced 6800GT's.

Getting any of these cards will give you a HUGE performance increase. Heck, I was blown away by my 9800 Pro to 6800 upgrade, so it will only be a bigger jump for you!

Nat

 

[ramulack45]

how much you willing to spend?

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: lifeblood
Games are the most stressful thing I put the video card through.

Excpet for professionel 3D games are the most stressful thing you can do to your videocard. Video encoding is all about CPU power.

 

[lifeblood]

Price is dependent on video improvement over what I have. I'm willing to pay in the sub $200 range. I just noticed ATI has some referbished X800 Pro cards for $199 but I did want to aim towards nVidia.

 

[jb20thae]

What's the rest of your system like? I'm about to go from a 9700 non-pro to a 6600gt w/ VIVO today and will do before/after 3dmark runs. I will also be going from 1g of pc2100 ram to 1g of pc3200 ram today and will do separate before/after checks.

 

[raildogg]

get this. nothing comes close to matching this card's performance at this price

link

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: raildogg
get this. nothing comes close to matching this card's performance at this price

link

Except for the 800xt deals that keep popping up for the same or cheaper

 

[jb20thae]

Well, going from pc2700 to pc3200 (800fsb motherboard) did almost nothing to my 3dmark2003 scores. Changing the 9700 out for the 6600gt bumped my 3dmark2003 score from 4200 to 7200. HOWEVER, the nvidia card seems like crap compared to the ati. My machine has been rock solid for as long as I can remember, once I pulled the ati drivers and installed the nvidia my machine went to hell. It freezes, locks up, had to reinstall BF2 b/c it would crash back to the desktop, and graphics in BF2 look worse (though settings are higher) than they did on the 9700 (image tearing at distance, poor aa). And the video capture software is worthless. I suppose an OS reinstall would help but that shouldn't be necessary.

 

[coomar]

did you run drivecleaner before installing the nvidia card

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn

Originally posted by: raildogg
get this. nothing comes close to matching this card's performance at this price

link

Except for the 800xt deals that keep popping up for the same or cheaper

And except that the OP needs an AGP card, not PCIe

 

[jb20thae]

Originally posted by: coomar
did you run drivecleaner before installing the nvidia card

I was going to but it's my understanding that nowadays an uninstall is thorough. If running a drivercleaner doesn't fix it I'll never buy another nvidia product. What about the jagged edges? Is that an AA thing? Should it not be set to application controlled?

 

[munchow2]

If you don't play many games, then spending a lot on GA is probably not worth it. As far as I know, guild wars isn't really a GPU intensive game although you can make it GPU intensive if you turn everything up to the max. Nevertheless, I'd recommend you wait until the new r515/530 comes out and see how those stack up to nvidia.