Looking for a video card...

[boran_blok]

between the 6600 and the 9800 Pro there's no question about it that the 9800 is better, but the 6600 GT is about equal, but since the prices of that one are higher i'd go for the 9800 Pro

[thorfrog]

I will never....ever by an ATI card again. GEFORCE 6800 woohoo.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

According to the local comp shop, it's still up in the *$400-500 range, so no 6800 for me.

* Canadian money. %20 less than american.

[Thermodyne]

atomannj said:
I will never....ever by an ATI card again. GEFORCE 6800 woohoo.

I have run both, and never had any trouble. ATI drivers are a little more difficult, you must remove the original cards drivers before you pull the card, of it will blow up on install.

On a side note, you can get a lot out of older cards with tweaking. I'll run some before and after benches on a old mid level system and post the results.

[Thermodyne]

OK here is a set of bench results from an old system. Its an XP3000/266 (about 3 years old) and a ti4600 card. Cheap leadtec I think. NForce 2 Abit board and 512 megs of cheap ram. All of this stuff was purchased from the bargin bin a couple of years ago. Cooling is stock with a single case fan and the OEM cou heat sink and fan. Base Bench Results

Not bad, but nothing to get worked up about.

[Thermodyne]

First step is to OC the system. 2.32GHz is a very doable jump and should work fine with stock cooling.
XP 3000 @2.32GHz

[Thermodyne]

System was running a little hot (78c) so I backed down to 2.28Ghz for the 3D benchs. A $15 dollar COU heat sink would fix this, but I'm not spending any money on this

3D marks at 2.28GHz