GOOD IDEA OR BAD IDEA? 8600gt+DDR2800vs7800gt+DDR2667

[Sergio43]

I just built a new budget rig, geforce 8600 gt XXX edition plus amd X2 and 2 gigs of ram ddr 800 its the OCZ silver edition or something like that, its got this nice looking silver heatsink, anyway the timings are 4 4 4 15 i think, and well I`m not that much of an enthusiast I just wanted to play crysis on medium and now I can do that.

The thing is a friend, who actually is an enthusiast saw my budget rig and liked my RAM cuz he`s only got DDR2 667 on his sli motherboard, and he asked me if I wanted to trade my 8600 gt and DDR 2 800 for his old Geforce 7800 gt and his 2 gigs of kingston DDR 667 (hes got an 8800 now).

Now, I`m not an expert, so I`m not sure if it is a good idea to do that, my stuff is new, his is used, but his 7800 gt should be faster than my card, so I`m not sure what to do. Hope you can help me out =]

By the way, my pci express is 8x, so I dont know if that would bottleneck my 7800 gt making the trade useless.

 

[bs6749]

I wouldn't do the trade for several reasons.

First, 2 gigs of DDR2 800 can be found for less than $50 after mail in rebates.

Second, the 7800GT is only one tier above the 8600GT in Tom's review of video cards (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/03/best_graphics_card/page6.html) meaning that you will likely see little (if any) increase in performance. Also, your friend could probably sell his 7800GT and get an 8600GT without spending too much, he might even make some money out of the deal since there are lots of mail in rebates on the 8600GT.

That's just my 2 cents.

 

[wingsofzion]

bad trade, you'll be downgrading anyway ya look at it. your basically trading a new card and new memory for an old card and old memory. your friend could easly upgrade to your PC's level at very little cost. You gain nothing from this trade but watching your friend get one over on ya. All he really wants is your memory cause like you said he has a 8800 which basically smokes your 8600 and his old 7800. A 2GB kit of DD2 memory cost at most $90 bucks. So your making a $250 worth trade of parts (your 8600GT + DDR 2 800 memory) for something that cost $90 bucks. Tell your "friend" to start collecting change out his sofa and just buy him better memory.

 

[Shadow703793]

Bad trade