Gaming with GeForce 6600 GT

[Jeremy]

ATI X1800 Beats 2x7800GTX In SLI

[suryad]

Actually 3dmark scores mean jack...check out more reviews from beyond3d, driverheaven, xbitlabs, firingsquad. While the ATI card has less pipelines...16 compared to 24 from Nvidia, the performances are more or less the same overall because the ATI has a slight edge at really high resolutions with AA and AF enabled....whereas the Nvidia just beats the pants off of the ATI at OpenGL based apps. But being that there are more and more games running on DX instead of OpenGL I guess that is not much of an impact. I am interested in seeing next gen engines like Unreal Engine 3 and the Stalker game engine being run on these hardwares.

[nmX.Memnoch]

ATI X1800 Beats 2x7800GTX In SLI

Actually 3dmark scores mean jack...

Especially when the card is HIGHLY overclocked. From the article:

The creative Fin, managed to bring a regular 625MHz core and 1500MHz memory X1800XT card to the dizzying heights of an 877.5MHz core and memory clocking-in at 1980MHz. Before you rush of to throw USD600 ATIs way make sure you understand that to reach such levels of performance, you would need a steady supply of dry ice to keep your baby from setting your desk alight. The above mentioned setup, using an AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (clocked at 3617.5 MHz), achieved the impressive score of 12278 in 3Dmark05, a score that beats the SLI dual Geforce 7800GTX setup using the same processor.

[jeeva]

As of my statement, 'till I know of Avivo and the HDTV introduction using h.264 codec in Europe (I know you overseas have it allready, but using the inefficient MPEGII codec) I want to spare some money, with AOE III trial I have seen, that's it's pretty good playable on my 6600 GT and I'll try out also UT 2k7.

A note to the mods, E-Mail notification actually doesn't work correctly at least for me. Sometimes I get one some times not. And I have also read about the e-mail flood protection and that doesn't apply for me nor have I any Spam filter activated on this account.

[suryad]

You guys can check out the hexus.net article on performance of the ATI as well. It is a great part with an all new architecture no doubt but I would wait till the Nvidia gets released with 512 mb of memory as well so that will be a fair comparison with the ATI cards.

[quinriva]

Based on the little Swiss flag there I imagine your in a similar boat te myself when it comes to buying graphics cards; that being they're a lot more expensive then in the US.

Graphics:

Bassically, unless your really on a budget SLI isn't worth it. Yeh spend $200 odd dollars (I'm guessing) and you'll get a reasonable improvement, but remember that nVidia doesn't share memory (so 2*128Mb = 128Mb still, not 256Mb). If you have the money your best bet for a speed boost will be to purchase a 7800GT. They're a s*** load cheaper than the 7800GTX's and they not much more than the 6800 GT's. Plus they will give you a pretty big performance boost. Currently the best pop for the buck is the 6600GT's or believe it or not the X800's (normal or Pro I can't remeber). In in case this will most certainly give you the biggest performance boost in games. SLI is nice but only if you want 3 (I love my dual 22" pureflat CRT's) or more monitors or if your running 2x7800GTX's. As far as ATI goes - don't. Yes there products are as good in some cases and at the top end even better than nVidia's offerings but not on a price comparsison. It will be 6 Months before they catch up with nVidia Price wise, hell some of they're cards are still a little under 2 months away from release (28 November). If you're willing to wait 6 months then it would be worth it but for now stay well away from ATI (the X1600 goes for about the same price as a 6800GT and compares in performance to a 6600GT, a bit better performance sometimes, much better AA but the perfomance just doesn't compare to the similarly priced 6800GT).

On the CPU front.

The Athlon 3200's (current core) are still one of the best out there if you overclock. They overclock more than the 3000 and can reach the same clocks as the overclocked 3500 and the 3800 (They all have an upper limmiter which can be reached by all three chips - though not the 3000). For you howerver it wouldn't be worth the upgrade - unless of course you where using an old socket 754 mobo which I am assuming your not. The Athlon 3800 X2 is good if your dooing a lot a multithread and parrallel tasks (and so you can play games and do encoding at the same time - don't neglect this feature; it sucks not being able to use your comp just because your encoding something. The altneraitive is to do all your encoding on one of your old computers that you didn't give to your sister/mum/wife.) This is probably the best money bet if your serious about upgrading your CPU. This will probably get you through the next couple of waves of new games too. My socket A 2800 is still seeing me through, but I'll upgrade by Christmas.

PSU.

I been a bit out of touch as of late, but I believe that Antec do a pretty decent 5xx Watt NeoPower. I wouldn't go near Superflower with a 6' pole, but that's just me. I vaguely remember that one of these actually BLEW UP in an Anandtech or Tom's Hardware stress test. Superflower were sure p***ed when they published those results!.

Now here's the biggy for Unreal 3 (and I'm guessing Quake 5, Half-Life 3 et al.) Many of the next gen engines including Unreal 3 (ie. UT2007) are using a Novodex Engine for physics calculations. This is the software interface for Aegia's new PhysX chip basically a physics processing unit (PPU). Sony's playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution are also using this (as far as I am aware, although I am unsure of the XBox360); so you can expect all ports of Sony games (do Nintendo ever port to PC?) to utilise the PhysX chip. This will be a must have for all of 2007's titles. And weighs in at a hefty $250 - $300.

I'm assuming that you are of course using 1Gb of RAM. Anything less would be just silly.

But will what you have run AOE III and many of 2006's games? In short - YES. You may not be able to run the all with lovely AA and AF, and for many of them some of the settings will have to be turned down to Medium if you need to achieve 1280x960 (or if your one of the nasty people who like the 5:4 1280x1024 resolution). Hell I still get beutiful frames in games like Dawn of War with many of the settings on High, and I'm running an old GeForce4 Ti4200, granted I don't have shader 2.0 and smoke effects make me die (how I hate the last mission in GTA:SA the one with the burning building) but I put up with these small anoyances at least for another two months until I'm working Full time again and have enough money to buy a new computer. **** I hate shadows too, shadows and smoke just kill my comp - but oh the joys of Corsair XMS CAS 2 RAM!

[jeeva]

Sure of that from Super Flower? I read through 5 Reviews also from THG and never seen any probs, the only issue is that I have to send it back, b/c one of the leds at the backside is no longer illuminating.

I have a Socket 939 MoBo, the CPU is overclocked to 2007 MHz, I want to do some compiling (Gentoo Linux) and I let some time past 'till I go for new Hardware.

The competitor for the 6600GT is the X800GT, allthough it is a little bit more expensive it has standard 256 MB and 256 Bit memory bus, unlike 6600GT with 128 Bit.

[quinriva]

I'm not sure where I read it but it was a reliable site. It may have been a one off thing but I generally don't trust build quality on cheapo Power Supplies. The what you pay for is what you get works very well with power supplies. Gennerally a generic one will cost AU$40 and a decent one like the Antec 480W NeoPower will cost AU$180. The Superflower 500W sits at $120. Not crap, but certainly not the quality you get from Antec, Thermaltake, Coolermaster etc.

Oh Btw there is a X800GTO2 (read GTO squared) that uses the same board as a X800xt. It's cheap and with a bios flash can become a X800XT! I would buy it but it's not available in Australia.

Yeah it's probably not worth upgrading your processor to anything other than an 3800 X2, but you wouldn't get that much of a performance boost and the X2 4400 is too expensive.

[Thai3g_Eclipse]

Oh Btw there is a X800GTO2 (read GTO squared) that uses the same board as a X800xt. It's cheap and with a bios flash can become a X800XT! I would buy it but it's not available in Australia.

Not quite but close. The X800GTO2 from Sapphire is actually a X850XT with a different BIOS. Currently it is the best "Bang for your Buck" out of ATi's house right now, as it has a 100% conversion success and some people are even able to overclock it further and will run exactly like a 'real' X850XT.

[jeeva]

I paid 140$AU (calculated) for the PSU. I have now decided to definately wait, next budget goes to a PDA or cell phone, I now see what I can do, but I saw myself not often gaming, but rather reading websites, viewing TV or installing Linux, so I wait for the next Platform, when it "feels" slow.

[prathapml]

tested email notification. Looks fine.