Which Card is Better - Need Quick Answer

JanusDS

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I'm about to build a budget system and need a quick answer on which video card I should pick (by tomorrow quick). Newegg has a Radeon X850XT OEM card on a Weekend Sale for $164 (I assume the sale ends tomorrow). This is by far the cheapest I've seen this card. They also have a Geforce 7600GT for the same price. Which should I get? The only concern I have with the 850XT is that it doesn't support SM 3.0. Do many games use this today? On the flip side, while the 7600GT supports SM 3.0 it only has 128bit memory bus (wtf, why the hell did Nvidia decide to do something stupid like that). But it has a great memory bandwith possibly making up for the bus size. Anybody having any experience or relevant opinions would be appreciated.
 

cleeve

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Oh god, this had been discussed into infinity.

The X850 XT was a top tier card on release, the 7600 GT is a midrange card, so that's why the bus is 128-bits.

Nevertheless, they both perform pretty much on par. They're both good enough that you'd probably be more than happy with either.

It's hard to declare a hands-down winner because they both win their share of benches... a month ago I would have advocated the X850 XT without reservation, but the 7600 GT has shown it's memory bus doesn;'t hinder it as much as you'd assume, and it's is on the virge of being powerful enough to actually use HDR in games like Oblivion, which is a nice feature.

At this point, I'd probably pick the 7600 GT out of the two. But if you got an X850 XT you certainly wouldn't be dissapointed.
 
I am not familiar with the nvidia card. However, the "THAT" 850 has been slowly dropping in price for several month's now, and as long as they have them in stock, will keep doing so until the bottom price has been reached and they no longer have any to sell. I baught it for 200 bucks, and it's a piece of crap.... don't piss your money away. It stayed on this machine for about two month's, almost rma'ed it once and regret not doing it. KEEP LOOKING FOR ANOTHER CARD. If prozak sticks his 2 cents in, don't listen. He is an ati fanboy.

I build, and co-build machines and a lot of hardware goes through my hands..... I know what I'm talking about !

as I write this, the 850 I own is sitting on the work table behind me.... I removed it last week and put a 7800 in it's place. Way better card.

EDIT: Just came from newegg's site... you are obviously shopping by price. Save up s'more money, get something better than both of those. 16 pixel pipelines at least. Highest clockspeeds not always better, but speed does help. Be patient, look at all the cards you can, take a look at what they have to offer. A 6800gt, or a 7800, 0r a 7900, if you can get up 250-300 bucks, will be your better choices right now. Anything else that is truly any good will be beyond your finances. Anything less, and you are squandering your money.
 

cleeve

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A 6800gt, or a 7800, 0r a 7900, if you can get up 250-300 bucks, will be your better choices right now. Anything else that is truly any good will be beyond your finances. Anything less, and you are squandering your money.

The 6800 GT isn't as fast as a 7600 GT...

the 7800 GT is overpriced, (and the 7600 GT is 90% as good)

and the 7900 GT is at least $100 more.


For the sub $200 budget, the X850 XT and 7600 GT are great cards.
 

Xabbo

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Id have to agree with cleeve. Why would you recommend a 6800gt over an x850xt? Its over priced and the x850xt has better performance. Stick to the 7600gt Janus, its a good performance/price card much as the 6600gt was the last time around.
 

jbscotchman

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I am not familiar with the nvidia card. However, the "THAT" 850 has been slowly dropping in price for several month's now, and as long as they have them in stock, will keep doing so until the bottom price has been reached and they no longer have any to sell. I baught it for 200 bucks, and it's a piece of crap.... don't piss your money away. It stayed on this machine for about two month's, almost rma'ed it once and regret not doing it. KEEP LOOKING FOR ANOTHER CARD. If prozak sticks his 2 cents in, don't listen. He is an ati fanboy.

I build, and co-build machines and a lot of hardware goes through my hands..... I know what I'm talking about !

as I write this, the 850 I own is sitting on the work table behind me.... I removed it last week and put a 7800 in it's place. Way better card.

EDIT: Just came from newegg's site... you are obviously shopping by price. Save up s'more money, get something better than both of those. 16 pixel pipelines at least. Highest clockspeeds not always better, but speed does help. Be patient, look at all the cards you can, take a look at what they have to offer. A 6800gt, or a 7800, 0r a 7900, if you can get up 250-300 bucks, will be your better choices right now. Anything else that is truly any good will be beyond your finances. Anything less, and you are squandering your money.


Thats probably the worst advice I've ever heard. A $170 dollar 7600GT is the best choice at the moment for that price range. 6800GT and 7800GT's are not worth buying anymore since they've been replaced with cheaper, better cards.
 

JanusDS

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FYI...the main 3 games I'd initially be looking to play are Far Cry, AOE3 and Oblivion. Yeah, I know, I'm a little bit behind but currently I can't play sh!t (my current system is 6 years old with no upgrades).
 

Xabbo

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Check this out for oblivion performance.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147127/p-6.html

Remember x8xx series cant use HDR (overrated for the most part) which is why it looks as if its killing the 7800GT. The 7600GT runs this game great. Plus, the x850xt is loud, sucks the juice, and runs way hotter then the 7600GT. I have a similar x8xx card and it drives me nuts sometimes trying to hearing the quieter scenes and the background music.

Ill say it again 7600GT all the way (considering that the cards are priced the same).
 

JanusDS

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Thanks for the info.

How true is what they said about the CPU influence in Oblivion. In the budget computer I am about to build, I will probably go with an A64 3000+ (it's cheap) and maybe try to OC it up to 2.2GHz tops. I wouldn't expect it to be a bottleneck seeing as I'm not going with a top of the line video card either. But if I decide to just leave it at stock 1.8GHz, do you think it would pose any noticable slowdown?
 

Xabbo

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Athlon 3000 isnt budget. Sempron would be considered to be budget. You wont notice any difference as the graphics card will be the limiting factor. The only reason that the frame difference is even noticable between the different clocks is that they are using 7900gtxs in SLI.
 

JanusDS

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Yeah, that's what I figured.

(Btw, the 3000+ at $113 is pretty budget considering some of the insanely priced CPU's out there right now, lol)
 

pauldh

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I build, and co-build machines and a lot of hardware goes through my hands..... I know what I'm talking about !....

Be patient, look at all the cards you can, take a look at what they have to offer. A 6800gt, or a 7800, 0r a 7900, if you can get up 250-300 bucks, will be your better choices right now. Anything else that is truly any good will be beyond your finances. Anything less, and you are squandering your money.
:roll: I gotta say, for a self proclaimed knowledgeable system builder, you offer poor advice. 6800GT now? It would have to be under $140 to be a good buy, not $250. Both the X850XT and 7600GT kick the 6800GT's butt. Plus you left out $200 X1800GTO, $270 X1800XT 256MB, and $320 X1800XT 512MB cards which are some of the best for the price range you mention.
 

pauldh

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X850XT has been as low as $155 shipped. Overall I think it is close enough performance between the two, that I'd grab the 7600GT when priced the same. IMO, Back a month when the X850XT was $35-40 cheaper, it was the better buy without question.

Only problem is, the X850XT is going to easily beat the 7600GT in Oblivion when using fsaa and bloom. FiringSquad review showed the slower clocked X800XL > 7600GT in the more stressful outdoor areas at those settings, so the X850XT should be much better. But the 7600GT allows you to play oblivion with HDR, or at least try it and decide which way you prefer. To me that is probaby the way to go unless you have already seen both ways and know how you'd play (HDR or fsaa/bloom). I know on a 6800U, I get better framerates with 2Xaa and bloom than with HDR, and honestly I can't decide which I prefer more as HDR looks amazing yet the fps hit is huge at times and the jaggies just jump out at me at 10x7 with no fsaa. I lean toward bloom and fsaa because of the better fps, but my countless (and growing) hours of Oblivion are split pretty much 50/50 between HDR and fsaa/bloom. I want a X1800XT - X1900XTX so I could use both with still better fps than I get now.

Anyway, priced the same 7600GT gets my vote. I think I'd look for the $199 HIS X1800GTO deal again as then you get HDR and an incredible Oblivion performance boost over the 7600GT. Moving on up, the next best above that get pricey with the $270 X1800XT 256MB. Where to draw the line is up to you. :mrgreen:
 

Xabbo

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Im not so sure that the x850xt would walk all over the 7600GT. It ties the x800xl with HDR enabled, at least thats what i gather from the text at the top of the page. So you really cant compare the two from those graphs.

With HDR disabled the frame rates of the 7600GT would go up quite a bit. Im not that knowledgeable on the impacts of HDR but i would say at least 10fps increase. Given all the reviews between the x800xl and the x850xt, 10 frames is about the difference between those two.

I bet in a head to head the 7600gt would come out ahead, say at 2xaa and 8xaf, no HDR. This is purely my take on it however. Id like to see a comparison myself.
 

Vile

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If you're concerned about SM 3.0, you should know it's not really used at this point. Sure, it's a nice feature, but don't base your decision on it.

They are both great cards, but if I were you, I'd probably go for the 7600GT, as someone said, its probably a lot quieter and doesn't use as much energy.
Altho, if possible try to save a bit more to get a better gfx card. Never try to go for a cheap gpu if you're going to game.
 

pauldh

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I respectfully disagree, and here is why.

You need to study FS's review. They state the settings in the X800XL 256MB vs. 512MB are exactly the same used as in the main 2X/8X charts. So you can compare them directly. Lets do that:

For example, if we look at the most stressful area...foliage:

1024x768 2X/8X bloom:
7600GT 28.1
X800XL 34.5

1280x1024 2X/8X bloom:
7600GT 20.1
X800XL 25.5


To me, indoors means little as both cards do well. You will have to adjust your detail settings for foliage anyway, unless you change settings each time you step inside & outside. :p

Anyway, the X800XL is beating the 7600GT by 22-25% in the most demanding foliage test when running Fsaa/AF and bloom. Then look at the clock speeds 400MHz core/ 990 MHz DDR for the XL vs. 520 core/ 1080 DDRfor the XT. Shoot, that is a huge clock speed difference. I haven't seen a direct test, but when asked, even Brandon who did the FS review stated in the forums that he'd obviously expect the X850XT to be alot better than the X800XL. It's common sense really with a 120/90 MHz core/mem clock boost.

But again, the down side is no Oblivion HDR for the X850XT & X800XL, which could easily be the deciding factor for many people. And a plus for the 7600GT is it seems to handle HDR as well or better than fsaa/bloom. But no doubt in my mind the X850XT would offer a much better fsaa/bloom gaming experience than a 7600GT.
 

Belac

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The 7600 is a great card, I bought it over the X850XT because it was alot cheaper (at least here in Canada).

I've been running it on high settings at 1024x768 (my old monitors native resolution), with HDR and it looks amazing. I turned HDR off to use AA but it didn't look as good. I'll up my resolution to 1280x1024 tonight probably after studying and see how it plays with HDR on.
 

Xabbo

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Hmmm, ill have to take back my earlier thoughts. I would never have imagined the x800xl beating out the 6800gt so badly, let alone the 7600gt. And you were definetly correct in saying that with aa/af enabled the x850xt would come out ahead of the 7600gt.
 

cleeve

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If you're concerned about SM 3.0, you should know it's not really used at this point. Sure, it's a nice feature, but don't base your decision on it.

Yeah, but what is used on SM 3.0 cards is OpenEXR HDR; and that does make a really noticable image quality diffference. HDR is gorgeous.

The only problem is, it calls for a pretty substantial performance hit, the 7600 GT is on the virge of being playable with it on in Oblivion in high foliage areas.
 

JanusDS

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Ok, how about this one - a Connect3D 1800gto for $178 after rebate (dammit I keep on raising the bar ever so slightly; by the time I'm done I'll be getting a 7900gt). On Newegg, this particular brand lists as 16 pipelines, while the rest of the gto's list as 12. Is this true? Regardless, does this sound like a deal; how does 1800gto compare?
 

cleeve

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A stock X1800 GTO is on par with the 7600 GT, but they are severely underclcoked from the factory.

I have seen a fellow on this board with a Sapphire X1800 GT) that was overclocked from the factory a very modest 75 mhz on the core and 50 mhz on the memory - and it scored identically to my 16-pipe X1800 XL at stock speeds.

The X1800 GTO is an awesome overclocker's card. I don't think it'd be a stretch to get close to X1800 XT performance out of it with a good OC, if you find one with good memory. The 256-bit interface helps alot too.