Purchasing a new video card

H

Hot Sauce

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2005
Messages
154
I'm looking to buy a new video card strictly for gaming. The most I'll spend is around 200$.

I saw this Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR AGP VGA DVI-I TV Out Video Card OEM for 170$, and an eVGA E-GEFORCE 6600GT 128M DDR3 AGP8X VGA DVI HD OUT VIDEO CARD for 186$. Which one looks like the better deal and which one is the better card? What is overclocking, and how can I do it? Remember I want a video card strictly for gaming

I'll put down my specs if it helps

AMD Athlon XP 2200+
1.81 GHz, 768 MB of DDR ram.
Currently using a Sapphire Radeon 9000 Atlantis Pro (the fan is busted)
AGP 8x Gigabyte Motherboard
60 GB Hard Drive
350 Watt Power Supply (will I have to get a new one, for a new card?)

I'm not very computer savvy, so please try and bare with me :confused:
 
I would recommend the 6600GT. My brother has one and it's a very respectable card. You might not be able to play at uber-high resolutions with all the bells and whistles on, but at its price range I don't think you could find a better card. As far as overclockablility, he doesn't like to OC so I can't comment on that. All you need though is Coolbits2. It just adds a tab in your driver control panel to which you can adjust your OC sliders.
 
Theres one more card that my pop's found.

Asus GeForce 6600 AGP 8X 256 MB DDR DVI TV-OUT. 176$

How does this compare?

I've also got a couple questions. I have DDR memory, but the 6600 GT says DDR3. Will there be an issue with compatibility? And this Asus GeForce 6600 is 256 MB compared to the 6600 GT with 128, is there a big difference?
 
If the 6600GT had 256MB of ram it would be perfect. While its 128MB of memory may hurt it in future game titles, it is still faster than a regular 6600 clock for clock.
 
The GDDR3 is the ram on the card, it doesnt matter what kind of ram your system has. (they dont even make gddr3 for system memory anyway)

I'm pretty sure the 6600gt will still be faster than the regular 6600 despite the 6600 having 256 ram. But someone else might want to confirm that.
 
Okay, so right now its a toss up between the 6600 or the 6600 GT, depending on performance. The 6600 is, also 10 bucks cheaper :p
 
Hot Sauce said:
Okay, so right now its a toss up between the 6600 or the 6600 GT, depending on performance. The 6600 is, also 10 bucks cheaper :p
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Definitely go with the 6600gt. I would NOT try and go with overclocking yet if I were you. First you got to learn a little more before you go crazy and maybe damage your video card.
 
Like bbeach said, they are two seperate things. GDDR3 is simply memory on the card used to store game textures and what not - it has nothing to do with your system ram. You don't have any compatibilty issues to worry about.
 
Okay thanks guys, I think I'll probably go with the GT. There is one other concern I have, and that is RAM and my power supply. I have a cheap 350 watt power supply right now, and only 768 MB of ram. Will I need to upgrade either?
 
I would go with the 6600gt, it is faster and has DDR3 instead of DDR1.

The extra 256 ram on the 6600 wont make up for the fact that it is a good amount slower than the 6600gt.

edit: 350w should be enough for that system, unless its just a very bad PSU, do you know what brand it is?

768MB ram is decent, alot of people are still using 512. If you have 1 stick of 512 in there already you could match it with another for 1 GB. Or if you have 3 256 sticks you could just add a 256 stick to make 1gb. Either way shouldnt be very expensive and you'll probably notice the difference in games like bf2 or far cry.
 
Hot Sauce said:
Okay thanks guys, I think I'll probably go with the GT. There is one other concern I have, and that is RAM and my power supply. I have a cheap 350 watt power supply right now, and only 768 MB of ram. Will I need to upgrade either?
Click to expand...

I think you're fine as far as your power supply. Use the PSU calculator to discover the recommended amount of wattage needed for your system. As far as memory, I would try to upgrade to at least 1GB as it's pretty much considered the minimum, with 2GB quickley becoming the recommended with newer and upcoming titles.
 
You'll probobly be fine with 350W. I ran my whole system, water cooler and all, of an Antec 350W for a few weeks before I upgraded to a True480 just to be safe.
 
My dad has an extra 256 stick of ram that was incompatible with his motherboard, so I'm probably going to use that.. and to answer bbeach's question, my power supply is a "Pow Max" which.. I think is pretty crappy.
 
6800nu should be close price wise, and you should be able to unlock at least some of the piplines, and that would do better than the 6600gt.
 
I couldn't find a 6800 to look up on, plus I don't know how to unlock pipelines. But yeah, my power supply is a Pow Max, so I'm a bit worried about that.
 
^^Agreed.
Try and find a 6800 card. They are a solid solution and have a 256bit interface compaired to the 6600gt's 128.
 
Everyone seems to be referring to the new egg.com site for cards. The 6600GT is 30 dollars Canadian on the site than in local stores where I live. I live in Canada, do they ship there?

Are they brand new components?
 
Well if B&M (local) is cheaper, then go with local. Heck, it makes returns alot easier too.
 
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