Sapphire Ati X800gto Or Geforce 6600gt?

[flashystylez]

Hey all,

I have a question for you guru's. Its my nephews birthday coming up, and he wants a few things, one of which is a new video card to replace his 9600 PRO. He complains to me alot of the time not being able to turn on the "eye candy" on alot of games, and sometimes being forced into using 800X600 to play some of todays later games. ie. GUN, Q4. I opted to be the nice uncle that I am to get him one as a surprise. I am so rusty at this point on AGP setups, its not even funny. I am tainted with the SLI bug, lol. I only want to drop around 200.00 total for him. I mean its for his birthday AND christmas gift in one, so yea.. I read a few reviews on each of the cards, The eVGA Geforce 6600GT, and the Sapphire ATI X800GTO. Both seem like decent cards that should fly through some of todays games with ease. I did notice though, that the 6600GT is about 40 bux cheaper. Is it worth it to upgrade to the ATI, or will his current system bottleneck it?? The specs are:

 

---AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2 ghz) *and yes its stock. lol

Corsair XMS 3200 (3X256MB)

Radeon 9600 PRO

Western Digital 120 gig IDE 133 hard drive

 

I think I want to get him the 6600gt for the speeds, but I heard the gto was on the R480 core, so its a masked x850xt with cut pipes..

 

Which???

Edited November 29, 2005 by flashystylez

[swifty11212]

the ati card for sure unless you wanna shave off $40

[flashystylez]

Im not really worried about the extra 40 bux. Im just wondering if it would bottleneck due to the system he has. Would it be noticable to just get the ATI, or is his system out of date to even notice a difference in cards.

[swifty11212]

in the long run the ati will outperform the 6600gt, but with default settings both will be bottlenecked by the cpu. i suggest you overclock it if you can. btw what board is it?

[flashystylez]

I would love to overclock his setup, but thats going further in cost, and I dont feel like really going there, lol. He is using some cheap BIOSTAR motherboard, which oc's zero. And the cooler he has is stock, haha. I just wanted to get him something that would play games alot better than CS:S @ 15 fps, lol. I think with the ATI, he should get at least 50-60 fps on CS:S. I would hope so anyway.

[swifty11212]

I would love to overclock his setup, but thats going further in cost, and I dont feel like really going there, lol. He is using some cheap BIOSTAR motherboard, which oc's zero. And the cooler he has is stock, haha. I just wanted to get him something that would play games alot better than CS:S @ 15 fps, lol. I think with the ATI, he should get at least 50-60 fps on CS:S. I would hope so anyway.

586978[/snapback]

cs:s is direct 3d, so ati will definately do best.

[flashystylez]

cool thanks. I think I will go with the ATI.

[swifty11212]

hope he enjoys that card

[Nagash]

Another vote the X800GTO. Check this out for an overview of the two card's abilities (I selected the PCI-E version of the GTO only because it has more reviews than the AGP version, the AGP version will run identicaly).