Graphics Nvidia 6600 GT or Radeon 9800 Pro?

Hi all, just wanting some advice, I'm contemplating upgrading a graphics card in my fairly new system from a mx440. I've got about £150 to spend at most.
Current system is:

Athlon xp-m 2500+​

512Mb pc3700 ram​

DFI lanparty revB motherboard​

I've seen the agp version of the leadtek 6600GT for £145 on offer, for the next week at least (Link).

The other option i've considered is a Radeon 9800 pro, most of which also seem to be about the same price.

As i'm no graphics card buff i thought i'd turn to you guys for some advice.
so basically any thoughts on the two options (or any other options).

Thanks in advance,

BSH​

 

Hey Welcome to the forums and enjoy your stay.

Go with the 6600gt as it is more faster and has more features making it future proof.

IMO, go with the xfx 6600gt agp and it has a good bundle aswell and dual DVI baby
XFX 6600 GT (BOTTOM OF THE PAGE)

 

I've got an XFX 6600GT and it rocks! Shader model 3.0 in Far Cry

 

HEY CRAYFISH, what setting do you play far cry on?
and any other games?

 

I play all my games at 1024x768 without AA or AF, so detail settings per game are as follows:

Far Cry: Very high
Hl2: All highest settings apart from reflections on reflect world
Doom III: High quality
Richard Burns Rally: Highest quality


Those are the most recent games I've got.

P.S
I have an XP3000 and 1GB RAM

 

I'd would stick with the 9800 because you dont even know... It might not be pwoerful enough to handle the 6800. you should go with the the 6800 if have more ram, or even better- a better processor

 

Definately the 6600gt. Faster, more features, perhaps lower power draw (not sure). This coming from a formerly ATi guy who just ordered his own yesterday.

 

To be honest if your limit was £100 and you couldn't go any further it would have to be the 9800 Pro. But with your limit you should definatly go for the 6600GT...

BTW, I have a 9800 Pro and been happy with it for months (Funky blue and bronze Hercules for under £100) and a mate just got the 6600GT for £140ish, very impressed.

 

well i have a 6800GT and i couldnt be more happy with it and when shader model 3.0 kicks in all currect ATI cards will be out in the cold (even more so)

 

Go for the 6600GT definately (unless you have a weak psu - im not sure how much power the cards draw). You may also want to invest in mem and get a gig as this will benefit gaming significantly.

 

It draws less than 75W

I agree, I know of one person who had issues running the settings that I have specified in my 6600GT AGP review here. He installed an extra 512MB of RAM and all of a sudden he could run at the settings that I had specified.

 

2 questions can all 6600gt's work in sli? and whats the pcx for? is this something to do with bandwidth some one said for servers or something and/or does this mean they are meant to beable to run in sli?

 

I think you can get 2 AGP card in SLi, but need a $400 mobo from alienware if i remember correctly - im not sure if these are widely available or if they've scraped the idea, but i do remember reading about it.

The only feasible option for an SLi setup would be via PCI-E. PCI-Express is the new PCI connection on mobo which is due to replace AGP because it allows for greater bandwidth and i think there was also something about power aswell but cannea rem. PCI-E Sli enable mobos are widely available at the mo. Most are AMD64 one in the form of NForce4 Ultra, and ive heard of one P4 mobo that has support for PCI-E SLi (this was a while ago so things may have changed). I think most PCI-E enabled mobos also have AGP slots to use with ure old gfx card if you so wish.

You would also require a PCI-E gfx card that allows for SLi (there are some PCI-E that dont have SLi capabilities iirc).

Basically, if you have SLi in mind, then you need to spend a fair bit more.

 

PCI-X is not PCI Express. PCI-X is only really found on servers for using things like RAID cards that need more bandwidth than standard PCI can offer. These may be replaced by PCI-Express (PCI-E) in the future.

PCI-E can supply more power to the attached card, which is why PCI-E gfx cards generally have only one or no additional molex connectors. SLI is only available on PCI-E as it allows 2 cards to share the huge bandwidth it offers (twice as much as AGP). SLI is an nvidia development, and therefore only nvidia cards have it, although ATI are supposedly developing something similar. Pretty much all nvidia PCI-E gfx cards have an SLI connector (small one on the top edge), but you need an SLI motherboard as well (one with 2 PCI-E 16x (or rather 8x) gfx card slots).

Hope that all is right, made sense and is of use to someone....

edit: oh and i think all PCI-E 6600gt's at the moment have an SLI connector, but you need 2 exactly the same (same manufacturer etc) to use them in SLI

 

OK you definately cannot use AGP 6600s in SLI. It's a PCI express feature and it just doesn't work on AGP. I got my XFX 6600GT today and it really is excellent. Can't run games at the settings biggles described in his article, but I only have 512MB RAM.

 

The 6600GT seems to really benefit from an extra 512MB of RAM - I was plesantly surprised by the differences.

 

From 512MB to 1GB?

:edit: just realised what I put in my last post and realised.

 

As for my orignal commetn about AGP in SLi - basically Alienware had developed a mobo that used 2 AGP gfx cards, but this was more than a year ago. Ive also found out that they never actually released it and went for dual PCI-E. I also think that that allows for any dual PCI-E gfx cards. Remember tho, this mobo is one of a kind am not sure if its avaiable for individual sale at all.

Not entirelly true - the Voodoo 2s had SLi . Yes, the newer PCI-E mobo's that have dual slots for SLI are only currently for NVidia as they did develop it for PCI-E.

Thanks for the correction Alistor - am about to change my last post with the mixup in PCI-E and PCI-X

 

yes but the voodoos had a different SLi tech which worked completely different from that of nVidia's SLi interface

 

Thanks for the advice, i think the 6600GT is by concenus the better option.
As my ram is a single module it shouldn't be too hard to upgrade, at least when i get some money to, if i work out how much i have i may be able to order it at the same time.
hopefully i'll order it in the next few days,

thanks again,
maybe i'll be a more frequent poster intead of lurking now

BSH​