7600 gt or 2 6600gt

iceman7311

OSNN Senior Addict
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which one will perform better? i have looked for benchmarks and there are nno that compare the two. ncan some one help me figure out the differences?oh and currently the 7600 gt is going for 175 at the egg and another 6600 gt is 115 at the egg. on ebay 6600gt's are going for 60-80 which covers the difference between the cards.
 
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This is getting to be a pain in the butt. Too many cards, too many critical variations. They do not want you comparing older model cards to the new ones. It can be embarrasing for them. Newegg is up to about 512 different video cards for sale.

I built the attached spreadsheet from multiple nvidia pages to get a feel for the relative speeds without benchmarks. I'd like to add 5700-5900 and some GE4 and GE3 cards but this killed over an hour already.

Also look at my post here for some other considerations on SLI vs single board. http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php?t=81643

As on the other post speeds are comparable. The SLI setup has an advantage on speed in mosrating categories assuming your games get a full 50% speed boost in SLI mode. The 7600 will run cooler and is less demanding on the PSU.
The 7600 supports HDR (High Dyn Range, prettier).

WATCH out for various model variations (GT, GS, LE, SE, etc).

You can always go to 3dMark05 search their data base for the 2 cards then find a set of identical machines that are not overclocked. It's what I've been forced to do. Tomshardware is letting us down.
 
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Yeah the one I put in attchements under advanced but never showed up because .xls is not allowed by the site...

:yowch:

I zipped it.

Had some time to hit futuremark. No 3dmark05 scores for the 7600GT but...

The 3dmark06 is ~3100 for the 7600GT w/AMD64 @ 2200.
The 3dmark06 is ~2600 for the 6600GT SLI w/AMD64 @ 2200.

These are stock clock speeds. OC'ing did little for the 6600GT SLI pair. Going to a same clock speed X2 chip does buy you another 20% in the benchmark.

Looks like the 7600 GT is the obvious choice.
 
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in those test that you found do you know what settings the 3dmark was running at? oh and most of the people who say the 7600 gt isn't a good buy say it doesn't have enough memory bandwidth . what type of gamming situations does more bandwidth help?



Edit:eek:h and by chance do you know the formula for calculating memmorey bandwidth?
 
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Some of the memory bandwidths were in that excel spreadsheet I added the rest. Formula is approximately data bus width x clock frequency / 8. You can double the memory bandwidth by going drom ddr2 @ 500mhz to ddr3 at 1000 mhz or you can double the memory data bus width from 128 to 256 bits.

The 3dmark06 were 1280 resolution which is why the scores seem so low. My X800xl and AMD 64 3700 only gets about 1700 on that test. :(

Memory bandwidth helps in all games. The higher the texture quality setting in the game the more data that has to be swapped in and out of memory. And the more often the screen gets updated (FPS) the more data that has to be accessed per second. So it helps max settings and Frames per second.

The 7600GT has a little less memory bandwidth than a pair of 6600GT's in SLI mode will have. The 7600GT has half the memory bandwidth of a 7800 or 7900 GTX. When the price somes down something has to give. The 7600 Gt has 128 wide memory the 7800/7900 have 256 bit wide memory.

WATCH OUT FOR THE memory bus width and clock speed on the card you buy. Every damn card I look at in the lower end products has different setups. A given card number say a 6200 could have 64 or 128 bit wide bus. If the bus is wide they use slower cheaper memory 500 mhz instead of 633 mhz. It varies by manufacturer and by model.

Like I said above. Picking a video card is getting damn hard. I see why tomshardware gave up on their video megatest.

There are 816 different video cards on newegg as of this evening.
 
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well i've been looking into the 7800gs and then just now to see the price for the 7600gt i was like wtf, not only is it $100 cheaper than the 7800gs, BUT, it seemed that the clocks speeds where far higher.

So i thought hmm i'm getting a 7600gt instead, but then i saw it whoa i said whoa, sneaky bastards, the 7600gt is ONLY a 128bit v/card, so no way i thought.

The reason being that possible future games wont even be able to run on a 128bit v/card soon, the 7800gt is a 256bit varient, so if you can afford it i'd get the 7800gs instead. its more future proof, i'm not sure of the effects on playing a game in 128bit or 256bit right now, and maybe someone could explain it, but i know a few yrs ago you had to get a v/card upgrade as everquest all of a sudden stopped supporting 64bit cards in one of their updates.

So it is entirely possible a similar situations could evolve here to.

Just a word of warning
 
the 6800gt may even be a better bet than the 7600gt, sometimes the most powerful cards from an older class quite often outperform the low end cards of a new class like the 6800gt vs the 7600gt (which is a budget card).
 
i cannot get the 7800 gs because it is agp only. and in the benchies the 7600 gt beates the 6800 gs by about 600 points in the 3dmark06. but this brings up another question, the 7600 gt has a bandwidth of about 24 gb/s and the 6800 gs has a bandwidth of about 32gb/s(i think). so what are the other differences in the two cards that makes the 7600 gt win all other benchmarks?(they also have the same number of pixel pipes)


Edit: are there any 7 series cards that can be unlocked for more pipes?
 
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Good point lancer I went back and added some more info to my comparison sheet.

The 6800 has more pixel pipes and a wider memory bus. That means it might do bettter at higher AA/AF settings and at higher screen resolutions (>1024x768) than the 7600GT.

The 3dmark06 is ~3100 for the 7600GT w/AMD64 @ 2200.
The 3dmark06 is ~2600 for the 6600GT SLI w/AMD64 @ 2200.
The 3dmark06 is ~2650 for the 6800GT w/AMD64 @ 2200.

NOTE - AA is turned off for these tests!
Benchmark Settings:
Default Settings Yes
Program Version 3DMark06 Revision 0 Build 2
Resolution 1280x1024
Anti-Aliasing None
Texture Filtering Optimal Optimal
Vertex Shader Profile 3.0
Pixel Shader Profile 3.0
Force Full Precision No
Disable Post-processing No
Force Software Vertex Shaders No
Force Software FP Filtering No
Disable HW Shadow Mapping No
Color Mipmaps No
Repeat Count Off
Fixed Framerate Off

Isn't it a shame you can't take one of each home and return the ones you don't like. I can find no way of getting a complete comparison between these different card options. Futuremark benchies don't cover everything that's important to gamers.
 
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The 6800 GS is a POS. Brain dead version of the 6800GT. They cut the pixel pipes by down to 12. That's a kiss of death for high rez or high AA/AF. The 7600 GT makes up for it by running the clocks 25-30% faster which it can doo because it is a lower power technology.

Lancers point was that the "last generation" top of the line may often be a better buy than a brain dead version of the current generation cards.

A brain dead last generation will be pathetic compared to a brain dead current generation.

Case in point. My X800XL was a major disapointment compared to my old 9800PRO. Speed increase was not there even though the 3dmark05 benchmark numbers looked good.

You didn't think I was going to all this trouble for you did you ICE?

I have an ulterior motive. I've saved enough to ditch the x800XL and now that after 3 months ATI has working drivers for the X800XL I can sell it and not feel guilty.

I'm shopping for myself too and going nuts because I have no reliable way of comparing boards. I'm trying to come up with a system. It is not going well.

Nvidia is not even posting pixel and vertice fill rates for the 6800 series cards anymore. I'm having to digthem out of old reviews.
 
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well alright, lee how much are you planning to spend on your new card? if it is withing my price range i will buy the same card that you get because you are like the smartest guy i know(even though i dont really know you).



Edit:i began wondering why your would put that spreadsheet together for my thread. I thought you must have some reason for doing it.
 
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its because he secretly wants you ice haha.

And ice you kept on saying 6800gs 6800gs, i was not talking about the 6800gs but the 6800GT which would most certainly be a faster card than the 7600gt/gs.

The 6800GT can be had for $200 now the same price but it is a faster v/card for sure, or you can get a 7800gs (which is a strange card as it is actually a good gs varient for once). This is what i am planning on getting, only because i just don't want to upgrade my system to pci-e.

Now the reason the 7800gs is so good is that it is pretty much identical to the 7800gt, the difference being the slower agp port and some hci (or whatever its called) chip that allows the card to run from a pci-e design to and agp design, so it isn't the usual crappy GS cards setup.

Its probably the last AGP card to ever be made, i doubt they'll make any more perhaps... perhaps the 7900 will have one, its possible, as it seems a lot of people just haven't switched to the pci-e system yet, as that often requires an entirely new system. mobo, v/card, cpu, sometimes new memory. so a lot of people, myself included are waiting till their present pc's are just too old and slow then the jump will be made.

Unfortunately its not a jump that can be made piece by piece, but that has to be an entire expensive makeover.
 
lancer said:
Unfortunately its not a jump that can be made piece by piece, but that has to be an entire expensive makeover.

Actually you can. The Asrock MB with ULI chipset has a real AGP and a real PCI-e on it. Unfortunately I bought the ECS Via 890A which has a fake AGP on it and when I realized my 9800PRO was choked to death on the new MB I was forced into a quick PCI-E video card purchase which I botched.

My budget is going to be $300. After studying the choices for 5 months all I know for sure is the X800 and X1600 families are really bad choices.

Here it is, the completed Nvidia spreadsheet.
I highlighted my safe picks in Blue. One for each price category in AGP and PCI-e. The picks shown in Black are due to missing information.

Some reasons for my choices:
-I never buy top of the line current generation$$$$$
-AGP is dead. Do not spend over ~$200 on AGP so the 7800GS got cut.
-The 6600GT AGP is a fine card but is overpriced due to dwindling sources.


Now the bad news...
--I have to repeat this for ATI. :-(
--Everyone is going to rip me a new one over my personal choices.


PS Tonight's count is 785 different video cards listed on newegg.
 
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well what are you going to get because the 6800 gt's aren't being make any more, you don't want to buy a top of the line car(7800 and 7900) and you don't like the 7600 gt or the 6800 gs and don't like ati?
 
Either a 7900GT or a 7800GT probably.

I was going to Compusa today to see what the vertice speeds were for those 2 cards since nobody posts them but ended up doing yard work instead. The vertice rates are usually printed on the boxes.

If they have really butchered the vertice fill rates my next choice would be the7800GTX (last years top of the line). Near the same performance as the 7900GTX but $120 cheaper.

Spreadsheet now includes an ATI comparisons tab. ATI seems to be at least $50 more for comparable ratings on Nvidia.

I have not done a shader comparison on the Nvidia vs ATI so I'm not sure a head to head comparison is possible. Also, many of the older ATI cards have a major disadvantage compared to Nvidia on OpenGL FPS. The latest ATI cards have programmable feature that are allowing OpenGL optimized shaders to close the gap with Nvidia.

This would be a good point for SAZAR to jump in with the latest shaders/OpenGL info. HINT!

I also need to research why ATI dropped the vertice fill rating on the X1000 series cards.

PS I have not ruled out an ATI GPU, just "Genuine" ATI crads because of their offensive attitude. (Note - Genuine ATI is built by Sapphire.)
"We'll give you $50 for the $300 video card you bought last week that is not compatible with Audigy or your computer if you buy a $500 card instead."
I would consider, ASUS, Powercolor, Sapphire, etc. with an ATI GPU.
 
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Theres not much point going for the 7800GT atm when then 7900GT isnt priced much more, i dont know about the US but its only about 30-50 pounds more here in the UK.

The 7900GT has the best price performance ratio when considering a graphics card atm. However ATIs X1800, and X1900 allow AA with HDR, and the X1900 is possible more future proof due the the concentration of GPU power on pixel shader processing.

However id prob go with the 7900GT.
 
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