upgrading from 9700pro, help please

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grethor

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 1, 2004
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I plan on upgrading my videocard in the next couple of months and I'm thinking that the 6600gt is the way to go,. I have a 9700pro and I'm wondering how much faster is the 6600gt is over the 9700pro? Also i've got an athlon xp ( system specs are gaming rig in sig ) and would the 6600gt be bottlenecked by the cpu? Would I be better off sticking with the 9700pro?
 
from what i have seen from my brother's 9700pro and p4 2.4, newer games run very nicely. i don't know how the 2.4c compares to your processor or how ram effects the performance (he has 1gb in dual channel but 2 different pairs of 256 sticks of different speeds), but the 9700pro is certainly a good card and i hope to inherit it when he gets a new one
 
grethor said:
I plan on upgrading my videocard in the next couple of months and I'm thinking that the 6600gt is the way to go,. I have a 9700pro and I'm wondering how much faster is the 6600gt is over the 9700pro? Also i've got an athlon xp ( system specs are gaming rig in sig ) and would the 6600gt be bottlenecked by the cpu? Would I be better off sticking with the 9700pro?
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I have a very similar setup and I'm pretty much convinced that I won't have the need to upgrade for at least another 6 months. HL2 and WoW run great, and those will be the focus of my attention for quite some time. When I eventually do upgrade, it's going to have to be a complete new rig because my new CPU will be bottlenecked by my 9800Pro and a new Videocard will be bottlenecked by my old CPU. The only way to get the best bang for the buck is to upgrade both.
 
Keep your 9700Pro. The 6600GT is only a little bit better than a 9800Pro/XT, which is itself only a little bit better than the 9700Pro. That computer is fairly well balanced in terms of CPU/video.
 
I would say just save the cash and see whats out in the 2Q of this year.The 9700Pro is still a Very good card. And a 6600GT while being better, isnt gonna have you passing out in awe with the power diffrence.
 
grethor said:
I plan on upgrading my videocard in the next couple of months and I'm thinking that the 6600gt is the way to go,. I have a 9700pro and I'm wondering how much faster is the 6600gt is over the 9700pro? Also i've got an athlon xp ( system specs are gaming rig in sig ) and would the 6600gt be bottlenecked by the cpu? Would I be better off sticking with the 9700pro?
Click to expand...

I did almost the exact same switch, went from a 9700 non pro (flashed to pro@deafult pro speed) to a 6600GT. I didn't notice much of a change in HL-2, but there was some (like not getting the low dips I had been experiencing before and being able to run with 8xAF on). Most noticeable is Doom3 (of course) and also MOH Pacific Assault (which basically sums up what games I currently play :D), it actually made more of a difference in MOH than Doom3.. Before MOH was unplayable (getting sub 30fps on average) and after the switch I got an average of 40-45 which all of the sudden made that game totally playable, even with 8xAF on.

BTW, the resolution I play the above games at is usually 1024x768, the CPU was an AXP T-Bred 2600+ (now upgraded to an AMD mobile @ 2.5Ghz :D)..It was my experience that the 2600+ was bottlenecking the card (especially at 1280x1024 which I also use from time to time) and I saw a nice performance boost when upgrading to the XP-M....you should however be ok with a 2.2Ghz Barton.

Sure, the 6800nu might be a better choice if you manage to get a good card that can unlock, but in my case I had $300 to play with and decided to go with a $100 CPU (XP-M) and a $200 vidcard (6600GT) instead of putting $300 on a 6800 which probably wouldn't have given me the boost I got (since the CPU would be a serious bottleneck)..but you are in a bit of a different situation (having a stronger CPU than I had) and it might be better to save up some more and get a 6800?
 
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