Going from a 6800GT to a 8600GTS worthwhile?

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enelson125

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 21, 2004
Messages
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My 6800GT is starting to show its age, so I would like to upgrade it. Unfortunately with my current summer job I'm not getting very many hours so money is a little tight. Would the 8600GTS be a worthwhile upgrade over my current card, or should I just hold out for something else. $150 is nice price, and I don't have some crazy big display either.

Chances are I'll be sticking with my 19" LCD for a while longer which is 1280x1024 max resolution. I'm also considering getting a 22" LCD for my machine which would be at 1680x1050.

Any thoughts?
 
me i am in the same boat personally i am hangin fire till the new refresh due new nvidia gfx card is supposed to be 3x the power of current top gen which for us students means the middle of the road should reduce in price and increase in power lol 8800gts for 1/2 the price now sounds nice lol
 
You're better off spending 30 bucks more and getting a 1950xt or something,unless you really need sub-par DX10 performance. That'll get you through till 2nd gen dx10 cards, and hopefully they have some decent mid-range cards.
 
Several reviews have shown the 8600GTS (not GT) to blow away the X1950XT. I dont know how true this is, but I know that the 8600GTS has something that the 1950 doesnt.... DX10.
 
You would see a major performance increase with an 8600GTS, they are actually a pretty strong card. As long as the rest of the rig is decent, you should be able to max all in game settings on whatever you play at your current resolution. (Other than the few games that support or are patched for DirectX10) As for the future monitor upgrade, I have an 8600GTS (MSI nX8600GTS) and run it @1680x1050 with no problems. I'm playing Oblivion with all in-game settings maxed except for AA, all settings are maxed in F.E.A.R. & Supreme Commander. Older games such as Half Life 2 and Far Cry are cake for this card. A couple other nice things about the 8600GTS are the modest power requirements and HDCP & PurevideoHD compliance. The 128bit memory interface will start to bottleneck the 8600GTS as you take the resolutions higher.
 
Its really baffling that they did not make the card a 256bit interface... Im sure they have their reasons... but I think that once the 9 series cards debut, or perhaps an 8900, we will see a price drop for all cards across the board, making it easier for us that cant currently afford to drop $400 on a card, to be able to obtain an 8800GTX.
 
I feel pretty sure Nvidia is purposefully not releasing a 256bit version because something like that might severely cut into 8800GTS320 sales which are more profitable unit by unit. The increased memory bandwidth/size are really the only things the 8800GTS has over the 8600GTS. The G80 (8800s) are an older, more inefficient design based on the .90 process ... requires more power, produces more heat, and does not have support for the newest implementation of PurevideoHD. But they are a lot faster because they have more memory/memory bandwidth and have more streaming processors unlocked in the GPU.

I bought my 8600GTS about a month ago but strongly considered the 8800GTS. I basically decided that the 8600 would do what I needed and would prevent an unwanted power supply upgrade. Also it supports PurevideoHD (the 8800s do not) which is nice because I'm getting a Blu-ray drive when they drop in price. I would have had to pay ~$200 more for an 8800GTS factoring in the price of the card and a new PSU. But if there had been a 256 bit version of the 8600 I would have paid more to get one in a heartbeat.
 
If having my specs help, I have:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ AM2
2GB of OCZ Platinum XTC DDR2-800 RAM
Aerocool ZeroDBA 620w PSU
Samsung SyncMaster 940B 19" LCD Monitor
(That should be enough to figure out which video card would suit me best I would think)

Any links to reviews pitting the 8600GTS against the X1950XT would be nice.

Currently I am considering the Sapphire Radeon X1950XT 256MB
 
That system is similar to mine. You have plenty of power supply for an 8800, so it comes down to $260 for an 8800GTS or $150 for an 8600GTS. The 8600 will run anything you want to do for now (except DirectX10 games) maxed on your current monitor. It won't necessarily do that at higher resolutions if you upgrade monitors, and might not be able to run any new DirectX10 games that come out in the near future. But on the other hand if you intend to watch HD video the 8600 would do a little better job of decoding.
 
I wish I actually had more hours at my summer job before heading back to college, then I could actually afford an 8800GTS.

If it helps at all my price ceiling is at about $200. That is unless I could sell my 6800GT...hmmm.
 
JLangevin said:
Several reviews have shown the 8600GTS (not GT) to blow away the X1950XT. I dont know how true this is, but I know that the 8600GTS has something that the 1950 doesnt.... DX10.
Click to expand...
what? I dont think the 8600gts can touch the x1950xt. You must be thinking of the x1950pro which does get beat by the 8600gts in some games.
 
If $200 is your budget, go look on eBay and get a 7950GX2. It will give an 8800GTS a run for it's money, and will blow the 8600GTS out of the water. Or better yet, you can find 7900GS cards online for about $100 after MIR, and in almost all cases the GS will be 10-35% faster depending on the game, with the only two exceptions at present being Oblivion and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

If you have an SLi motherboard I suggest spending that $200 on two of these which will hand the 8600GTS' ass back to it on a silver platter.
 
As far as I'm concerned, all you're doing is switching the first two numbers in the title of the card, and NOTHING else. Save a little more for a better card. I went from a 6800 Ultra to an 8800GTS and I'm not doing backflips over the performance gain. That said, sure, grab what you can afford, what's there to lose?
 
JLangevin said:
Several reviews have shown the 8600GTS (not GT) to blow away the X1950XT. I dont know how true this is, but I know that the 8600GTS has something that the 1950 doesnt.... DX10.
Click to expand...

ok I thought your " I have also read numerous reviews on how the 8600GTS will smoke most of the X1950 series cards."

in the other thread was funny, but stating that it's faster than the X1950XT is plain wrong and you're giving other people wrong information.

You stated "several" reviews... please give us 2 that shows the 8600gts blow away the X1950XT... as a matter of fact 1 please.

8600 + DX10 makes me laugh.
 
Well, I ended up getting more money for my birthday than anticipated, so I splurged and got an 8800GTS 320mb.
 
ATIIsBetter said:
I went from a 6800 Ultra to an 8800GTS and I'm not doing backflips over the performance gain.
Click to expand...

You aren't? Because I went from an overclocked 6800GT to an 8800GTS 640MB and I am thrilled with it's performance and image quality. I believe your choice of screen name indicates why you would be saying that the 8800GTS is not all that much better than a 6800Ultra :p (in other words, just plain untruthful, or you have system issues)
 
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