Video Card Upgrade

[Seekermeister]

Since I can't afford to buy the best and newest video card, I'm trying to decide which options give the most bang for the buck. CompUSA has this available

http://www.compusa.com/products/product...Pn=Verto_GeForce_6800_Ultra_Video_Card

Which appears to have the best performance in it's price range, but I would like to have some input from others...what do you think?

 

[LouPoir]

Nice card for $100 - Big upgrade over your 6200 -

Also for consideration is the ATI X800XT and the X850XT -


Lou

 

[Seekermeister]

I understand that alot of people like ATI cards, but I tried a couple of them in the past and had problems. Perhaps I just had bad luck, but I'm accustomed to Nvidia cards and feel more comfortable with them. I think that all of the Nvidia cards that I have had were PNY, and have had fairly good luck with them, but does it make any significant difference who made the card?

 

[Seekermeister]

I guess that it is irrelavent, because I just called the local store and it's not in stock. Apparently, it hasn't been for a long time. It would be nice if they kept their website up to date. Now, I'm going to have to find something else within my price range. The problem with that is that even with a somewhat higher price, I haven't been able to find anything to compare in performance.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you're in the US, you could always buy used from the FS/FT forum, like a ( 6800 for $59 shipped ).

disclaimer: yes, that's my FS/FT post

 

[trigun500]

Where does one find a x800xt or x850xt for around $100?

 

[Seekermeister]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If you're in the US, you could always buy used from the FS/FT forum, like a ( 6800 for $59 shipped ).

disclaimer: yes, that's my FS/FT post

Although the card runs on the hot side, I might accept that, but if the bracket that you referred to as being unusuable due to the size of the card, is a PCI slot, then I couldn't use it, because I can't afford to lose a slot. Another problem is that due to the Gigabyte designations, I would find it difficult to compare it to anything else on the performance charts that I have been using.

 

[Seekermeister]

Since I struck out on the 6800 Ultra, I've been looking at this one

http://www.compusa.com/products/product...de=340768&Pn=GeForce_7600GS_Video_Card

The problem is that the comparison charts that I have found, seem to skip over this model. Does anyone know of a chart with it included?

 

[Seekermeister]

If no one no anything about a chart, does anyone know anything about the card themselves?

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
If no one no anything about a chart, does anyone know anything about the card themselves?

Wikipedia knows all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_7_Series#GeForce_7600_GS
There's even a chart near the middle of that article.

 

[Seekermeister]

See below. I hit the wrong button.

 

[Seekermeister]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
Thank you, I would never have thought about checking Wikipedia. But, there is one question that it doesn't seem to answer. This card is listed as "PNY GeForce 7600GS Video Card, 8x AGP, 512MB DDR". The numbers on the memory doesn't seem to jive with their chart, it just says that it has a 128 bit memory interface, and nothing about 512MB DDR.

Can anyone expain this to me?

 

[Ruptga]

I really am no expert on vid cards, so I can only guess. My guess is that PNY or whoever actually assembles the end product can decide how much memory will be put on each card. I know they have say in how many and what kind of ports (DVI dual-link, DVI, VGA, HDMI) go into their cards, but I don't know if that extends to how much memory is on a card. What I do know is that nVidia says their 7600GT has 256MB, so the cards with 512 are probably set up that way as a marketing thing (eg. noob looks at 256 card for $100 and a 512 for $200 and takes the 512 card because it must be twice as good) when in reality the bus size (64/128/256bit) and the GPU itself are definately more important than memory size.

Here's the link about what nVidia says about the 7600GT, they probably have something about the 7600GS too, I just didn't see it.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7600.html

 

[Seekermeister]

You are probably right, but the problem is that I have no way of judging what, if any, effect that has on performance compared to other cards with less memory. The numbers given for the card on the Wikipedia chart are not at all impressive, unless you went to the GT model, and I can't because I have to have AGP.

 

[The Green Bean]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If you're in the US, you could always buy used from the FS/FT forum, like a ( 6800 for $59 shipped ).

disclaimer: yes, that's my FS/FT post

Thats a ridiculous price. I bought a GT for $465 a couple of years ago

 

[John]

PNY Technologies and NVIDIA have launched the new Verto GeForce 7600GS AGP8 based on the awarded winning NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series graphics processing units (GPUs). The company says the PNY GeForce 7600 GS is the ideal solution for anyone with an AGP8X motherboard looking to upgrade their machine to play new games and use Windows Vista when it is released next year.

"With this new GeForce 7600GS, PNY Technologies expands its range of competitively priced AGP graphics cards" said Jonathan Filleau, PNY Technologies Product Manager for Verto consumer graphics cards. "Designed for high performance gaming this graphics card will enable gamers to enjoy superb performance on their AGP8X platform without breaking the bank."

7600GS AGP review

 

[Seekermeister]

John,

That's an interesting article, and useful to compare the card to it's predecessor, but it still doesn't answer the question regarding the effect that the extra memory would have over the other 7600 GS cards with half the memory...or would it make any difference at all?

 

[John]

That card wouldn't be any better if it had 1GB of memory, therefore don't let the extra memory (256 vs. 512) be the deciding factor.

 

[Seekermeister]

I vaguely recall a discussion in the past elsewhere, where that it was said that the 6200 that I have could be "unlocked" somehow, I think with Rivatuner, but I got lost just looking at it. Is that something that could be done with other cards? In other words, could it be tuned in a fashion that it could take advantage of the extra memory?

 

[Bill Kunert]

The 6800 might prove to be faster than the 7600GS due to having DDR3 memory vs the DDR2 memory of the 7600GS. I have a 7300GT with DDR3 memory and it's faster than a 7600GS. It's much faster than 7300GT's with DDR2. It's also a card that only cost me $90 shipped but is only available as PCIe. I'd go for the faster memory.

Bill

 

[Seekermeister]

I just finished downloading a copy of Rivatuner, but haven't had time to do anything with it. But, I did notice from the pictures on their website, that it had sliders to control both the memory and core clock speeds. I'm wondering if this card would overclock better due to the size of the memory?