My opinion on the graphics cards (which isn't likely to change any time soon) is that nVidia cards have a lot of flash and glitz but don't do the job quite like the ATI cards. I've had a Gigabyte 9600 XT for years now and it's served me much better than any of the nVidia cards I've had. At the stock speed, without any modifications at all, it's been able to run Call of Duty, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Guild Wars, and even Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 without so much as a hiccup at good quality settings.
I keep hearing everyone say that the GeForce 6600 GT is the true 'bang for your buck' value-type card if you're looking to build a new rig now. I've seen the benchmarks, and I think it's safe to say that it's a respectable card. And for its price range, yeah, it does perform very well but I think that a lot of the time people tend to discount solutions that are a little bit different. I've seen a total of one single, solitary recommendation to go with ATI over nVidia at this point and it doesn't look like much of anyone is willing to budge regarding their position on the best value card right now.
Being an ATI kind of guy, I have to question whether or not there is a similar, viable ATI offering. Obviously, the x600 and x700 series of cards get beaten senseless by the nVidia 6600GT - but the x800 line is another matter. I started looking around Newegg and I found this vanilla x800 card by MSI for only $150 after rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127176
It seems to be a good enough card. It's price, after the rebate, would likely be less than or equal to the 6600 GTs available today which cost somewhere in the range of $150-200. It's even got 12 pixel pipelines as opposed to 8 - and that's got to account for something, right? It seems to me that this may be the true value card as opposed to the 6600 GT unless I'm mistaken. There don't seem to be any sort of reviews or benchmarks involving this card at all so I can't be sure, but with what it's offering I would think that it would be able to perform competitively with a 6600GT.
Am I right? Would this card be a viable option when stacked up against a 6600GT, or am I just dead wrong? :beard:
I keep hearing everyone say that the GeForce 6600 GT is the true 'bang for your buck' value-type card if you're looking to build a new rig now. I've seen the benchmarks, and I think it's safe to say that it's a respectable card. And for its price range, yeah, it does perform very well but I think that a lot of the time people tend to discount solutions that are a little bit different. I've seen a total of one single, solitary recommendation to go with ATI over nVidia at this point and it doesn't look like much of anyone is willing to budge regarding their position on the best value card right now.
Being an ATI kind of guy, I have to question whether or not there is a similar, viable ATI offering. Obviously, the x600 and x700 series of cards get beaten senseless by the nVidia 6600GT - but the x800 line is another matter. I started looking around Newegg and I found this vanilla x800 card by MSI for only $150 after rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127176
It seems to be a good enough card. It's price, after the rebate, would likely be less than or equal to the 6600 GTs available today which cost somewhere in the range of $150-200. It's even got 12 pixel pipelines as opposed to 8 - and that's got to account for something, right? It seems to me that this may be the true value card as opposed to the 6600 GT unless I'm mistaken. There don't seem to be any sort of reviews or benchmarks involving this card at all so I can't be sure, but with what it's offering I would think that it would be able to perform competitively with a 6600GT.
Am I right? Would this card be a viable option when stacked up against a 6600GT, or am I just dead wrong? :beard: