upgrade or not upgrade?? Please help.

[sleepyhatch]

Hi guys, I have the opportunity to upgrade my video card, I want to hold off on building a new system until Vista comes out.

The system:

Athon XP 2500 Barton
1GB ram Crossiar
ATI 9800pro All In Wonder 128MB DDR

I can trade for a brand new XFX GeForce 6600 256MB DDR card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150086

How does these two cards compare? Will I notice any difference with the GeForce card since it have SM3 and 256MB memory?

My other route is to buy a new card, like GeForce 6800 GS or ATI X800 GTO, but then I will have to spend ~$180 out of my pocket compared to a straight trade for the GeForce 6600. I would spend the money if I get a nice jump in performance compared to the other two cards :lol:

Can you guys tell me how much performance increase I can expect with these cards? I play mostly WoW right now, I might pick up Fear and Oblivion in the near future. If I OC the 9800Pro, will it come even close to the other cards?

Thanks in advance.

 

[PRSguitar87]

I would go with the GeForce 6600 over the 6800gs. I think that your processor would limit the 6800 enough to make the extra upgrade unnecessary. The 6600 will run new games slightly above medium settings, but I think that is all you processor can handle as it bottlenecks the performance of your system. Test your current graphics card to see if it is bottlenecked by your processor already; mess around with the core clock and see if there is an increase in performance as you overclock. If there is then go for the 6600, but don't waste your money on the 6800gs; save it for that new system when vista comes out. I'm going to sell my 128MB xfx 6600gt agp on ebay soon. If you want it we can negotiate a buy it now price and sell it through ebay.

 

[Datman]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/index.html

Read through this, it shows some difference. If you can get the ultra it would be worth it, but the lower clocked 6600 plain core is a little slower.

My vote if you can't wait, get the Ati X800GTO. It offers far better performance than the 9800 & 6600.

 

[sleepyhatch]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/index.html

Read through this, it shows some difference. If you can get the ultra it would be worth it, but the lower clocked 6600 plain core is a little slower.

My vote if you can't wait, get the Ati X800GTO. It offers far better performance than the 9800 & 6600.

From what I can see, the 9800 and the 6600 is pretty close from the bench marks, so I wouldn't really gain much from upgrading to 6600?

I also noticed on the last page where they run Sims 2, the 9800pro is considerably slower then the other cards, is WoW similar to Sims 2 in the sense of GPU processing? In other words, what card is good for Wow :lol:

 

[cleeve]

WoW?

Any card is great for WoW. It's very easy on the videocard.

 

[Banusflakes]

I could be wrong but on my current setup which is not that dissimilar to yours (Athlon XP 2000+ and X700 Pro 256mb 2 Gb System RAM) it seems like the bottleneck is the processor so I'd imagine if you're running a 6800 on a similar setup you'd be wasting a lot of GPU horsepower.

If you plan on doing much gaming you're better off saving a little more for an A64 proc, mobo and video card than dumping more money into the socket A platform. I guess it depends on what you plan on using you comp for.

 

[parlee]

like cleeve said, wow will run well on almost any video card, but if u wanna run it at max details id say an entire upgrade to amd64 would be more worth it for u, at least get a socket 939 amd 3000+, keep the memory and do the 6600 trade, that would yield more perforamnce increase for a very minimal cost, probably close to 200 bux... also what type of memory is it and what speed? if its pc2100 that may be the bottleneck, especially since wow likes a lot of memory, in ironforge at least..

 

[sleepyhatch]

like cleeve said, wow will run well on almost any video card, but if u wanna run it at max details id say an entire upgrade to amd64 would be more worth it for u, at least get a socket 939 amd 3000+, keep the memory and do the 6600 trade, that would yield more perforamnce increase for a very minimal cost, probably close to 200 bux... also what type of memory is it and what speed? if its pc2100 that may be the bottleneck, especially since wow likes a lot of memory, in ironforge at least..

I bought everything about 3 years ago, the crosaire memory was DDR, can't remember exactly what speed it was but I think pc2100 sounds about right, its the one with the LCD on top for activity.

So my processor is where the bottle neck is? I might try to OC the cpu and see what I can get out of the ol beast. If I fry it, then guess I am forced to upgrade :lol: