palit 8500gt sonic ddr3, is it good?

[agawtrip]

anyone has the palit 8500gt sonic ddr3??
how is it??
i've read lots of comments about 8500gt(stock clock) and all of them say it is a bad, weak card especially for gaming. is the sonic/overclock edition would make any difference?

how about the 7600gs?? which is better?? stores here only have these cards and lower /older models (8400gs, 3450, 7300gt). which should i get?

 

[HOOfan 1]

For Gaming? None of them. The 7600GS is the only passable card for even attempting to play a game...but most games released in the past year would have that card begging for mercy.

Try to find an online vendor that will ship to you.

 

[agawtrip]

thanks for your comments and suggestions.

i've seen 8500 gt playing the witcher on youtube and more videocards of the same level (7600gs, 1650pro) playing cysis and other modern games. i don't know if those were edited vids but it's so suprising.

 

[IlllI]

what is your budget

 

[agawtrip]

8500gt sonic ddr3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM
128 bit, 600 MHz core clock, 1.2 GHz memory clock, 16 stream processor

8600gt 1GB ddr2 DDR2 SDRAM
128 bit, 540 MHz core clock, 800 MHz memory clock, 32 stream

i calculated the memory transfer rate and 8500gt sonic has 19.2 GB/s while the 8600gt ddr2 has only 12.8 GB/s.

looking at the numbers, 8500gt sonic ddr3 wins, except for the stream processors. what's with that?? what does it do? how it will affect the situation?
pls help me clear my mind. hehehe
i dont have anymore options here, it's between 8500gt sonic ddr3 and 8600gt 1GB ddr2.
sorry for myself

 

[ViRGE]

agawtrip, the short answer on stream processors is that they're the part of the video card that processes shader programs, one of the biggest bottlenecks in graphics rendering today. The more you have and the faster they are, the faster the card generally is. It gets a bit more complex than that (particularly when comparing different architectures), but that's all you really need to know on the matter.

Anyhow, even though the 8500GT has more memory bandwidth available to it, the GPU itself is heavily neutered compared to the 8600GT(roughly half the performance). It has far more bandwidth than it can effectively use, and while the 8600GT has less bandwidth it will still easily outperform the 8500GT. With that said, is there any reason you're getting that specific 8600GT? The optimal setup for one is 512MB of GDDR3, not 1GB of GDDR2. The extra memory is wasted, the card isn't fast enough to effectively utilize it, while the faster memory improves performance.