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video card upgrade
I have a PC with an AMD 64 3200+, 1GB of RAM and an NVidia 6600gt and I want to know if it would be worth upgrading to an Nvidia 7600gt? It's only around $100, would it be worth the upgrade?
Comments
I figure this ought to tide me over for a couple years until I can afford and am ready to upgrade my entire box and go with the wonderfulness of PCI-E.
As a sidebar, I replaced the 9800 with a Geforce2 MX I had lying around. I was amazed by the range of games that could actually run on it. Even HL2 ran at a reasonable rate, although the texture detail was poor. All things considered, damned impressive for a 7 year old card. Consider me a convert.
What I meant was just that. A card that has 128mb and a 128bit interface for around $100 is no where near as powerful as it needs to be to run next generation games*. Even if you make the argument that a thrifty card is better, the low end GeForce 7 series cards are actually at the same price as their GeForce 8 series counterparts. The more powerful the cards become, the more they cost (and the closer to the price of the GeForce 8800 you become). I was entirely on board with GeForce 7 cards until all manufacturers stopped selling their highest end cards for stupidly low prices.
*As far as concerns about performance, I draw concern about the leap from E1 to E2 to be great. My 6800 Go Ultra 256mb with 256bit interface ran HL2 with no problems at all, but because I have a 20" monitor, I could only run HL2 at a screen resolution of 1280x800. Despite this, the card came to stutter with HL2: E1 and had a very difficult time going any further than 1024x768 with meager settings in FEAR. The 7600 card will be capable at running E2 for sure, but without copious settings like antialiasing and antistrophic filtering, not to mention strides in HDR lighting, available.
The last card that was at a reasonable price was a 512mb 256bit 7900 for $150. They no longer offer cards this powerful in the GeForce 7 family. If you're going to buy the last AGP card for $250, you may as well pay a trivial twenty bucks more for a PCIex16 slot, more powerful core clock speed, faster memory interface, and despite it being worthless (forever?), an added bonus of DX10 compatibility.
This stuff only matters to people who are crazy enough to spend so much on a video card that you could get a DS and a handful of games for the same price. I think I'm going to upgrade my 5900 to a 7 series and then I'll be able to play these awesome new games without having to upgrade for a few more years.
*NVIDIA no longer advertises 512mb models on their website for the 7000 cards.
This is all well and fine. However, I do not see any problem with paying a small premium for a card that will take advantage of things like HDR lighting, particulate effects, and further the immersing universe for games like Half Life 2; a game which specifically capitalizes on the cinematic effect.
I recently did the same this year: upgraded from a GeForce 5200 FX to a GeForce 6800 (Ultra, I believe?). I have been playing Call of Duty: UO multiplayer and found that the end of last year, I kept getting my butt kicked and was getting so frustrated! I've played that game since it came out. Either I screwed up something with my computer making it slower, or too many other players have upgraded and gained the advantage (I refuse to believe it is because others were better at the game than me.