vga card died... need new efficient one: 9600, 6600, or ?

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:17 am

my venerable all-in-wonder radeon 7500 just stopped working this week, bummer

. i'd like to get a new efficient card, but i also want some bang for the buck. i don't really game, but occasionally i run some flight sims, and i like to have some video power in reserve in case i want to do some light gaming and such. i've seen some older posts that show the radeon 9600 series is very good... i'm just wondering if they are still the current low-power champs? ndivia's 6600 seems to be pretty close, too. i'm thinking of getting a normal (non AIW) card and buying a separate tuner card just to avoid the hassle that is installing AIW drivers (though mine was very stable after a LOT of work).

i don't follow the vga card market as closely as i do the cpu market, so i am thoroughly confused by all the numbers and suffixes (GT, GTX, LE etc). so can anyone recommend a new low-power card? is it still the 9600 or 6600 or is there another choice i should look at?

dddibley · Post by **dddibley** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:32 am

6600GT would be a good choice (twice as fast as a 9600 Pro or XT). Nearest ATI eqivalent would be a X700 Pro. Low end X800 series (GT) is nearly double that again.

I don't believe there's such a thing as 'light' gaming any more

ddd

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:09 pm

dddibley wrote:6600GT would be a good choice (twice as fast as a 9600 Pro or XT). Nearest ATI eqivalent would be a X700 Pro. Low end X800 series (GT) is nearly double that again.

I don't believe there's such a thing as 'light' gaming any more

ddd

A new nVidia 7600/7900GT would probably be the most efficient chips currently on the market.

The X800/6800GS are probably the best bang-for-your buck cards. The X800 run very hot, but can be had for as little as $80 new.

The 6600GT/X700Pro are okay cards, reasonably cool but not great deals anymore. Alright for <$80 if you can find them that cheap.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:34 pm

9600s are still very efficient cards, Xbit Labs measured the 9600Pro to use only 18w load and 9w idle I believe. They are starting to get dated, though. Should be fine if you don't mind playing at low resolutions with no AA/AF, but if you like to turn up the eye candy you'll definitely need something with a bit more power. If you're interested I have a 9600 I'd be willing to let go really cheap.

VERiON · Post by **VERiON** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:35 pm

I was thinking about getting 9600XT few months ago to replace my Radeon 9100. I was thinking about "light gaming" too. For me "light gaming" was: a) I want to spend as little money as I can and run Quake4/DoomIII, b) since I don't play much I don't mind playing 640x480 2xAA. So I've bought ASUS nVidia 6200 128MB AGP. It is passive, runs cool, great linux support, dvi - and it was very cheap. Both games run 30fps, 640x480, 2xAA smoothly. I've also played NFS most wanted - 640x480, 4xAA.

640x480 2xAA looks good on CRT monitor, but if you have an LCD monitor better get more powerfull card and play in native resolution.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 2:01 pm

VERiON wrote:I was thinking about getting 9600XT few months ago to replace my Radeon 9100. I was thinking about "light gaming" too. For me "light gaming" was: a) I want to spend as little money as I can and run Quake4/DoomIII, b) since I don't play much I don't mind playing 640x480 2xAA. So I've bought ASUS nVidia 6200 128MB AGP. It is passive, runs cool, great linux support, dvi - and it was very cheap. Both games run 30fps, 640x480, 2xAA smoothly. I've also played NFS most wanted - 640x480, 4xAA.

640x480 2xAA looks good on CRT monitor, but if you have an LCD monitor better get more powerfull card and play in native resolution.

The 5600/5200/X600/9600/X300 are all pretty similar. The best of these low-end cards have a full 128-bit memory bus with memory faster than PC3200. A used GeForce4 Ti or Radeon 8500 generally have better performance than most of these for <$40.

Another thing to remember is that memory size is completely irrelevant to the performance of these cards. 64MB is fine. 128MB is more than enough.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 4:21 pm

dddibley wrote:6600GT would be a good choice (twice as fast as a 9600 Pro or XT). Nearest ATI eqivalent would be a X700 Pro. Low end X800 series (GT) is nearly double that again.

I don't believe there's such a thing as 'light' gaming any more

ddd

How about a PC baseball game?

HueyCobra · Post by **HueyCobra** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:43 am

flyingsherpa wrote:i don't follow the vga card market as closely as i do the cpu market, so i am thoroughly confused by all the numbers and suffixes (GT, GTX, LE etc).

I was exactly the same a couple of months ago - not only had to learn about the 6 and 7 series, but had to learn the ATi range from scratch (still not there yet

). Here's a quick cheat sheet hopefully you find useful:

GPUReview card comparison

GeForce 6 series
GeForce 7 series

Radeon 300 core
Radeon 420 core
Radeon 520 core

flyingsherpa wrote:so can anyone recommend a new low-power card? is it still the 9600 or 6600 or is there another choice i should look at?

I haven't paid much attention to power efficiency specifically (too preoccupied with passive coolers - yeah I know they're related), so I can only recommend that you read the Power consumption of modern graphic cards thread if you haven't already. Good luck with whatever new card you buy

Cheers,
Huey

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:49 pm

thanks for the replies, guys. i think i'll read all the links here and see if it becomes clearer to me.

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:30 pm

personally, what I'd go for with AGP is a 6800 - lower power consumption than a 6600GT with similar or slightly better performance. The 256bit vs 128bit bus plus more pipelines compensates for the slower clocked GPU and memory. There's even someone selling a Gigabyte passive HS 6800 in the classifieds.

unfortunately/ fortunately all upgrades are on hold as a baby'll be arriving in a month - I'm now a baby stuff geek instead!

mpjohnst · Post by **mpjohnst** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:49 pm

I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP but with an added complication. I currently have an ATI 8500DV 64MB. It still runs fine for what I use it for (i.e. videos, DVDs, emulators, little to no comp. gaming) but that is with a 1280x1024 19" monitor. I've been eyeing the new Dell 2407 24" monitor which should be out soon but the res is 1920x1200.

Will my lowly 8500 power it for the tasks I listed? I have the older 3.0 GHz HT P4 not 800MHz FSB... maybe 533 but I forget. Thanks for the advice. If I need something new, I'd like to stay under $150, for it to be really low idle consumption (on all the time) and good power/watt.
-Matt

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:21 pm

mpjohnst wrote:I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP but with an added complication. I currently have an ATI 8500DV 64MB. It still runs fine for what I use it for (i.e. videos, DVDs, emulators, little to no comp. gaming) but that is with a 1280x1024 19" monitor. I've been eyeing the new Dell 2407 24" monitor which should be out soon but the res is 1920x1200.

Yes, in fact, older, slower cards should be able to run that just fine if they support that resolution. I am pretty certain any ATI card since the Rage 128 will have no trouble running 1920x1200 in 2D (and probably any nVidia card since the TNT too), you might need to use a tweaker to enable it. I know I ran my original Radeon 64 VIVO at 1600x1200, even for some older Direct3D games, and it worked great. The Radeon 8500 DV will have no problem. Just don't expect to play newer games at that resolution with all the eye-candy turned on.

mpjohnst · Post by **mpjohnst** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:24 pm

Thanks, that's great news!

Now if I can only get my Toshiba R100 subnote (with a Trident XP4) to output that resolution for use with my KVM! I brought it into a store to try it out with the existing Dell 2405. Even with powerstrip, the best I could do was sync to 1600x1200 with black bars on the side... but I'm a total noob with PS and I couldn't figure out how to tweak much.

Anyone know of a good powerstrip tutorial for obscure gfx cards?

Thanks again.
-Matt

vga card died... need new efficient one: 9600, 6600, or ?

vga card died... need new efficient one: 9600, 6600, or ?

Re: vga card died... need new efficient one: 9600, 6600, or