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Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by bengreenwood on Sun Nov 4th at 6:10pm 2007

Hi,


I'm thinking about buying a Geforce 7600 based card, specifically this one:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/EVGA+GeForce+7600GS+256MB+AGP+?productId=26952

Basically at present I have a 256mb Avanhard Radeon 9550. It's a piece of junk. My system restarts randomly if I use it for more than 6-7 hours, and if I play graphics intensive games like HL2, that drops to 2-3 hours.

So I'm wondering, would the restarts happen less often with the Geforce 7600 card? I'm currently using an old GF2 in it, and the restarts don't seem to be happening anymore. Of course though I want something a bit more powerful for games.

BTW yes my system/ graphics card is out of warranty.

My system is:

ASRock K8Upgrade-1689 Motherboard
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
CPU Speed: 1999 MHz
1.5gb ram

Thanks for any help.





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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by RedWood on Sun Nov 4th at 6:56pm 2007

Are you sure your system is not over heating?

I don't know what your budget is but if your playing games why not get something a little more powerful.


Reality has become a commodity.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by reaper47 on Sun Nov 4th at 8:57pm 2007

Don't you want to get a future-proof card instead? Maybe you can "repair" your system and it might be a good choice if you want to get a quick fix without buying a new mainboard/CPU etc (although I even think there are better cards in the price range)

But on the long run, it's probably a very good moment for a full upgrade (the Geforce 8800 GT that came out a week ago is the best price/value graphics card in years and some games this season are absolutely worth the upgrade).

In other words: If you have some money saved, or if you can wait just a little longer, you can save the cost of the 7600 GS and invest the money into a new gaming system fast enough for the coming 2 or 3 years.

Don't hurry this decision just because you're pissed with your current card.


Why snark works.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by bengreenwood on Sun Nov 4th at 10:24pm 2007

lol Reaper you're right, I certainly am pissed with it. It annoys me, it's such a piece of crap. The bloody company that buys it, "Avanhard" are folded, I think. I mean, I did a google search for it and all that came up was an old Spanish site with broken links that barely worked.

And you know, it says on the box you get hardware DVD playback. Yeah right. I downloaded all the proper software from ATI and when I put my Avanhard driver CD in the CD authentication software didn't recognise it. Not exactly encouraging is it?

Actually I remember someone on the net telling me a while ago that only ATI are supposed to make their own cards or something. Maybe that's why it sucks.

I dunno, maybe you're right about the price/ value thing. So I wouldn't mind buying something really cheap like a 6200, anything as long as it's better than a GF2 for god's sake! But that 7600 is only 50 quid. The 6200 is like 25..

And Redwood I don't think so, I'm using a GF2 in it now and it's fine, the restarting is gone. Funny how the performance in games isn't actually that different either. Well not that funny, it makes me think that ATI card sucks even more.

BTW thanks for the info guys, it's useful.





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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by Crono on Sun Nov 4th at 11:12pm 2007

If you're going to skimp out on the chipset, you need to at least get a lot of video memory.

Even if the chipset is slower, if you have quite a bit of video memory you'll actually have all the higher resolution textures available, which will make things run faster. (This also applies to texture maps)

The 7600 with 512MB isn't too bad, a friend of mine has it. But, honestly ... you might as well spring for the GF8. They're in the same price range and having support for newer games would be nice. The GT is the best bang for your buck, but if you're strapped for cash, the 8600 aren't too bad and are the same idea as the 7600.

Lots of manufacturers make ATI chipset cards. Only a handful are actually good though. (Same thing with anything in computer hardware)

Then again, you probably wont notice any performance increases with any cards because you're interfacing them with an AGP slot.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by bengreenwood on Mon Nov 5th at 12:19pm 2007

I thought the GF8 was PCI Express only? BTW Do you think I'd see much of a performance increase over my 9550 if I got a 7600 or even a cheaper 6200?

I mean, would there be much difference between the 7600 and 6200? The 6200 seems a lot cheaper, especially when you consider the memory it comes with like you suggested. Price is a conisderation. I don't want to spend too much because I might as well just buy a new system otherwise.





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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by reaper47 on Mon Nov 5th at 6:18pm 2007

Well, if I suggested saving the money for a full system upgrade I didn't mean that it's reasonable to torture yourself with a super-slow 5-year old card if the upgrade is currently no option. Just google and compare the card's performance for the games you plan on using it for.


Why snark works.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by FatStrings on Mon Nov 5th at 6:40pm 2007

i'm running a geforce 8800 GT and i love it, actually 2 of em



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by RedWood on Mon Nov 5th at 7:13pm 2007

? quote:
I thought the GF8 was PCI Express only? BTW Do you think I'd see much of a performance increase over my 9550 if I got a 7600 or even a cheaper 6200?
I mean, would there be much difference between the 7600 and 6200? The 6200 seems a lot cheaper, especially when you consider the memory it comes with like you suggested. Price is a conisderation. I don't want to spend too much because I might as well just buy a new system otherwise.


This should answer a lot of your questions about whats better than what. http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html


Reality has become a commodity.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by bengreenwood on Mon Nov 5th at 7:42pm 2007

I'm intrigued by what Crono said about the AGP slot meaning I probably won't notice a performance difference between cards. It's funny because when I tried the GF2, it wasn't actually that much slower at HL2 than the 9550. The draw distance was much less for some scenery but apart from that there wasn't much in it.

Is there like an upper limit as to what you can get out of an AGP slot? If so there's not really a lot of point in me buying a 7600 as opposed to a 6200.





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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by Crono on Mon Nov 5th at 7:46pm 2007

Between the two cards you may not notice a huge difference, because the cards themselves will be idle a lot of the time because of the poor bandwidth. That isn't to say you wont get a performance increase, but the cards will perform worse than if they were on a faster bus.

AGP 8X slot: 32-bits wide, maximum speed of 2133 MB/s
PCI-E 16X slot: 64-bits wide, 4 GB/s

A standard 16x PCI-E slot can go at least twice as fast as 8x AGP.

There's also PCI-E 3.0 slots which can get like 8 GB/s.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by Naklajat on Tue Nov 6th at 4:35pm 2007

At least on my system, there's definitely a noticable performance difference between a 6800 Ultra AGP and a 7800 GS AGP. The video card manufacturers have made sure that cards available in AGP editions don't max out the AGP bus.

SLI systems on PCIe 1.1 have no more bandwidth per card than an AGP 8x slot, they split the PCIe 16x bus into two PCIe 8x connections, 2GB/s each. I haven't been keeping up with the hardware scene lately but I remember when the first PCIe 32x SLI motherboard came out and how big a deal it was cause people could finally have 16x + 16x SLI and it turned out the 7-series cards at the time showed little or no improvement over 8x + 8x, with the exception of the double stacked GX2, IIRC.

A 7600 will be a lot faster than a 6200, assuming you want to play games at resolutions above 320x240 that is.


=o



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by reaper47 on Tue Nov 6th at 6:49pm 2007

I'm not foolish enough to argue with Crono on hardware issues, but from what I heard the impact of bus speed is ignorable compared to the general performance gain.

here's a typical test.

Same for DDR speeds.

That doesn't mean that there aren't any differences and maybe special cases where you'd notice. But it's more in the 5% range than, say twice as fast or whatever you could think when reading about 16 bit vs 32 bit bandwidth.


Why snark works.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by Crono on Tue Nov 6th at 9:48pm 2007

I kept reading 6800 ... dammit.

As far as the cards themselves go ... nevermind, the 7600 will outperform a 6200 (Though a 6800 would most likely outperform a 7600).

As far as the bus goes, it's just a sort of "in theory" type situation. A lot of manufacturers have, no doubt, worked vigilantly to get a more efficient throughput on the cards with slower buses. It's also true that the faster bus, or wider, isn't always better. It's about specific timings and junk.

However, I still find it hard to believe that a person using an AGP slot 7600 is going to get the same performance as someone using a PCI-E slot 7600, with otherwise identical systems. Then again, people are only going to test the stuff on products using D3D9. image

Sloppy code is the reason why they're performing the same. Developers don't understand how to optimize graphics throughput. I think they complained so much about having to do this themselves, that there is some sort of batching manager built into DX10. Then again, Microsoft isn't know for stellar code either *sigh*

To answer the original question ... again ... out of those two cards 7600 will be better.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Buying a Less Unstable Graphics Card
Posted by Buzzard_Bait on Thu Nov 8th at 1:23am 2007

Heres a great site to compare different video cards. Hope it helps.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?PHPSESSID=cccd68863b830a352cd334508e9723de






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