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Newb Questions

B

bagofmilk

n00b
Joined
Jan 2, 2007
Messages
4
My ancient Radeon 9200 finally died and am looking for a new card. I'm looking to invest under 200 US$ for a card. I've been eye-ing the eVGA 7600GT and 7800GT (256MB) but I am confused at the specs.

I've noticed the 7800 has more pixelpipelines but a lower core clock-speed (thus a lower effective memory clock). Why is the 7800 supposedly better than the 7600? If it is, by how much?

If the 7600GT has a higher clock speed does it have overheating issues?

Also, I have access to a piece of .... card. Since DX10 is coming out soon should I wait for a DX10 compliant card to drop in price and install the POS card for right now or invest in the others?

I do alot of 3D modeling and such (SolidWorks). Should I invest in the a slower but heftier 7600GS (512MB) or either the 7600GT (or 7800GT, both 256MB). Or is there another card out there that might be more suitable?
 
I ASSUME you can run PCIe graphics cards right? Most (all?) Radeon 9200 level cards run in PCI or AGP graphics... Which means the latest PCIe gpu's WILL NOT work in an AGP board!

You might be better off with an ATI Radeon X19xx xxx level card (replace X's as necessary, to get into your price range ;)) as they have better image quality than the 7x00 level nVidia cards.

The 7800 is quite a bit better than the 7600... Core/memory speed isn't everything... The number of pixel pipes has ALOT to do with how fast a card is... 2 cards with 10 and 15 pixel pipes (respectively) both running at 100mhz will have drastically different rendering capabilities. In the simplest of terms, the card with 15 pixel pipes will render an extra 5 pixels per clock cycle, or about 33% faster.

Just as a 1.8ghz Conroe CPU beats a 3.5ghz P4 processor, a 7900 with a slower clockspeed can still beat out a 7600 with a faster one.

The 7600 is quite a bit cooler than the 7800 card, which is hotter than the 7900 card (HEAT: 7600 < 7800 < 7900 this is because the 7900 card was re-designed to run cooler)

If you game, you might as well wait for a cheaper DX10 card, but if you only do 3Dmodeling, there's no point having a Dx10 card (AFAIK).

As far as 3Dmodeling... I'm not TOO versed in this area, but I'm partially certain that most 3D rendering applications use more CPU than GPU power, although this MIGHT be subject to change (with the event of programmable GPU code).

Overall...

7600 card if you're on a tight budget.
7800GS card if you can find one cheap.
X1950 pro level card if you game/want REALLY good image quality.
 
i got a 7600gt here on the forum for like 90 bucks and it runs everything i throw at it..

mal
 
As tempting as 7950 is I am still tight on a budget.

But to answer your question Arc, my mobo does not support PCI-E which I intend to upgrade anyways.

In other words, i'm pretty much rebuilding...

I'm going to upgrade my mobo/CPU/RAM and video so my budget is tight.

I've generally been an Intel-guy so i'm biased towards the core2duos (I can't afford Extreme..) but if anyone can convince me that AMD is more superior, im open for suggestions.
 
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