Originally posted by: Captante
I'm not saying your suggestion of going with the Asrock motherboard with a C2D & sticking with the 6600GT for awhile is a bad one, it would make a lot of sense if the OP wasn't mainly interested in gaming performance, but he'll get a much greater increase in 3D performance with a faster video card then a new CPU & motherboard, further he'ed have to invest in DDR2 RAM which ultiimately would make going the new CPU route cost quite a bit more as well.
2 things:
1st off, the pc 400 (ddr) ram is what I am still using in this DUAL VSTA board, I could do DDR2, but differences by most accounts would be slight for the money difference, (meaning I already owned the ddr, would have to sell at a loss and buy ddr2 which is not free...) I dont think the perfomance gain is that much in ddr2 over decent rate ddr, least on this board, again if I didnt already have even 1 or 2 sticks of ddr, then the loss & cost of upgrades is minimal... FWIW, this Asrock, it supports using up 2 sticks, of Either ddr or ddr2, cant do both at same times, and if you do matching sticks it will do dual channel, which I just added the 2nd ddr(pc400) chip lately.
I been basing my assumptions and findings of real experience, on what I would see in differences if I had the best and greatest motherboard and system out there and swapped cards, in other words, from reviews and benchamrk sites like this. (not sure I seen them on anandtech, but I have this, at tomshardware... the VGA benchmark chart that included some lower older geforce's up to latest ones, with even some AGP versions, tossed in there. See link a little lower Now, Ill edit this later, if I could locate the older chart (ill keep looking) where they had ti4600's up through 6800 cards and higher.
BTW, Im just having to go from memory and remarks, but the 6600gt (mine was the 128 meg version by XFX) and ti4600 128 by the company that was hot for a while they closed the doors since oh about 2 years ago? I cant remember 3dfx? anyway, seems to me, the perfomance testers even said they were near same, I think the 256 meg versions are probably better, but not terribly.
here is the 6600gt with the 7800gs (actually had the AGP version in the cart for the 7800gs both listed, will have blue bars in the charts). Big jump on a boards that didnt hold the AGP cards back hardly at all if any.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics....elx=33&model1=540&model2=543&chart=228 if you look in there you see where the 7600 card falls in, not much above the 6600gt imho. I chose the benchmarking program from the list, you could select game performance charts and all that, to show different outcomes with AA and resolutions you know.
FWIW, I think I posted my benchmark from each of the cards I tried in the p4 2.4 machine with PCmark 03 free version, I have to find the links, and it is at home. havent posted this machine yet, but I have it on the pc at home (results that is of the tests in pcmark03).
Great getting your guy's opinions, I value the discussion BTW. thanks.
