Blekk

I am currently looking at a new graphics card, maybe not to buy quite yet because I might be able to sort out the problem with my Radeon 9600 PRO 256Mb.

Anyway the two cards are similar price, but one is ATI and the other Nvidia and I just dont know what to go for.

The first is the GeForce 7600GS 256MB SLI PCI-E DDR2
The second is ATI Radeon X1600PRO 512MB DDR2 VGA DVI TV PCI-E

Any reply is appreciated.

P.S.
I got a 2.2Ghz P4
Kingston 512mb DDR
Maxtor 40Gb IDE HDD
Radeon 9600 PRO 256mb

Partizan

I would go for ATI even if it was only 256MB version, but this one has 512MB, so it is not a hard decision. Consider nVidia only if you are planning tu use SLI, if not, go for ATI.

ATI has similar or better performance, but definitely better drivers and the best support ever (driverheaven.net).

Regards, Partizan

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MIG-31

as both those cards are mid range and i don't think the is to much difference between each card.

even though i have just received my 7900 GTX TDH 512mb card today (one sweet card),i'd opt for the ati card simply for the reason of it being a 512mb card due to it being a little more long term aspects.

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Blekk

Thanks I'll probably go for the ATI then, but when I was looking at a comparison, one site said that the 7600GS 256Mb was made to rival the X1600XT 256Mb so I thought it would be better. But does the 512Mb give the ATI the lead?

hackerx

no 512mb will have no real world effect unless theres a graphic chip powerful enough to make use of it.Theres no performance advantage for the x1600 pro just cause it has 512 mb,infact it might get slower cause of the added latency of the extra memory.

The_Neon_Cowboy

X1600XT @ newegg for $129 after rebate but you stuck on ewy AGP aren't ya.....
those cards are a toss up your other system parts might better benfiut from
the $$$ like sell you mobo / cpu then use th money tawards a 1/2 decent upgrade.
anyways I would start saveing up...

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Fantasma

I would choose the 7600GS as itīs a competitor of the x1600XT, being this card better than the x1600pro

Matth

A bit puzzled by the mention of "I might be able to sort out the problem with my Radeon 9600 PRO 256Mb".

AFAIK, that has never been made in PCI-E format, and the two cards you are torn between are PCI-E - impossible unless you are also replacing the motherboard or building an entire replacement system.

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Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
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Blekk

Ah i see the confusion Matth,

I have a Asus P4V800D-X which is a board with AGP and PCI-E, but I am looking for a PCI-E. I dont quite understand the suffixes of all the ATI cards so would a X800XT 256 be better than a X1600PRO 512mb because it is an XT even though the X1600PRO is in the X1### series?

And Fantasma, thankyou for your post, I thought the 7600GS rivaled the X1600XT (which I know is better than the PRO) but I wasn't sure what the memory did to it.

Im going to get another 512 or 1Gb memory to go in my system at the same time so I dont really need the extra 256 on the graphics card do I?

I know the questions there are quite confusing, but any reply is appreciated.

Thanks for all your help people.

Matth

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html
Feed your choices in here!

The X1600Pro (midrange X1k generation card) does not seem to be a match for the X800's - or even the X700's - surprising the newer midrange seems to be so much behind the older, though there may be cases when PS3.0 support is penalising the newer cards by expecting them to do more.


As for graphics memory:

The lowest currently seems to be 128MB, though throw in double/triple buffering of a large screen, and multiple mipmapped textures, and that would soon be overloaded.

128MB is only for budget / multimedia / light gaming.

256MB seems to pretty well standard.

512MB might help, if texture heavy, using high detal and maximum quality, assuming the card has the raw performance to deliver at those settings

1024MB - yes, you CAN get cards with 1GB of RAM, though I can't imagine much that would require it.

System memory can be used to aid graphics memory, but that does lose some performance, though PCI-E handles it better than AGP.

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

Blekk

Thanks for the info Matth, awesome.

I been on tomshardware before for benchmarks, but never seen this page, this is a real help. Thankyou.

I think I will go for the 7600GS 256Mb, after looking at the benches and this review:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/336/1/

Thanks people for all the help.

Alien1

That depends from the model and the drivers that you are using

and i would not say better drivers
they have their advantages but also their disadvantages over the Nvidia forceware

H3X4D3C1M4L

So true, though ATI drivers have come a long way since the humble beginnings of the Catalyst series

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