GeForce 6600GT or Radeon 9800 Pro

nvm, going with radeon 9800 pro, but 1 more question, can it run doom 3 on highest settings? my comp is 2.40 ghz with 1gb RAM

I'd go with the 6600GT, but it's ur call.

yeap,
the geforce is MUCH better

nvidia is better in my opinion

Check out "benchmarks" and user reviews on both cards.
Buy the card that appeals to your budget.
In todays gfx card market there is literally such a close % difference of performance you prob wouldnt even notice. Go with the card you are comfterable with. The 9800 pro is one of the best bang for your buck cards on the market. But thats up to you and your wallet. Price v.s performance

Cheers

kevin376 said:

nvm, going with radeon 9800 pro, but 1 more question, can it run doom 3 on highest settings? my comp is 2.40 ghz with 1gb RAM

Click to expand...

i don't think there is any card that can run doom3 on the highest settings (ultra)... if i am correct, they made it for a 512mb card... but then again people say they can run doom3 on 1600x1200 on Ultra... i can't tell you if you can from personal experience because i'm not going to try it

I have been looking up benchmarks on different sites that claim R and Nv gpus can run doom 3 at 1600x1200 using aa and a.

However they are only getting 40 -50 fps avg. - who wants a slideshow when u are playing games lol.

Turn off aa and af and set the res to 1280x1024 then u are getting 90-100 fps - according to Hard|Ocp

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQy

My 2 cents
Cheers

Could be true.

souton said:

i don't think there is any card that can run doom3 on the highest settings (ultra)... if i am correct, they made it for a 512mb card... but then again people say they can run doom3 on 1600x1200 on Ultra... i can't tell you if you can from personal experience because i'm not going to try it

Click to expand...

I think that is correct, however, one of my friends claims that his dad's new X800 can handle it.

Personally I am 9800 pro fan. good choice.

Radeon might be better but there is a minus of course.. The ATI gfx card's drivers are nothing compared to nVidia's Forceware. I have a few friends with radeon 9600 and 9250 who seem to keep having new problems every week with their gfx cards.. one of them can't play absolutely any game for over a year now..

:grinthumb but anyway i'd give the new 9800 pro a try...good choice :grinthumb

it all depends for what drivers the games are build. i know for a fact that farcry will run a lot better on any ati card than nvidia just because it was optimized for that kind of card. another thing that you should ask yourself is the manifacturer of the card. in my biased opinion, i would go with 6600gt but i heard that x850 pe can kill 6800 ultra so i am considering my opinion

From my perspective - I have always been an ATI fan.
I have never really had many issues with their drivers.
If the driver installation is proper and the removal of old drivers from the other graphics card and the registry is all cleaned up- then you shouldnt have a problem. Here is a tool I have used in the past.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3214.html

Its called driver cleaner. Give it a try to remove any old forceware or Catalyst drivers.

On the other hand the new detonators for Nv based cards are hard to compete with. They are written to optimize the gameplay and performance of most newer DirectX and Open Gl games.

Either driver should be removed before a software installation of either product. You should also use a registry cleaner of some sort as well.

Play on Ultra

Ok the truth is that card prolly wont play doom3 at ultra cuz my friend has a radeon 9800 pro 256mb card that freezes when he tries to play doom3.. but then again... he has 56k for internet so i doubt hes updated his drivers.. or even thought about it... It runs beautifully on high though... it kind of makes me sad that i dont have that good of a video card... and ironically hes borrowing doom3 from me.....

slavster said:

it all depends for what drivers the games are build. i know for a fact that farcry will run a lot better on any ati card than nvidia just because it was optimized for that kind of card. another thing that you should ask yourself is the manifacturer of the card. in my biased opinion, i would go with 6600gt but i heard that x850 pe can kill 6800 ultra so i am considering my opinion

Click to expand...

??!!?....??

The difference

Ok im going by what the old saying used to go to clear up the confusion for
Easy

ATI cards are more optimized for openGL thus making some of the games that are more openGL based then.. ??? sigh i forgot what invidia optimizes again..

Oh well here... Games can be optimized for a video card
Farcry im guessing was optimized for openGL which is the driver powering the ati video cards

There are other games that are optimized for.. crap wait for edited version of this post... which is the driver mainly powering the nvidia video cards

Most games are optimized for one of these drivers.. although some have been optimized for both

if that didnt solve ur confusion.. im sry but i tried to explain

Dafriz said:

Ok im going by what the old saying used to go to clear up the confusion for
Easy

ATI cards are more optimized for openGL thus making some of the games that are more openGL based then.. ??? sigh i forgot what invidia optimizes again..

Oh well here... Games can be optimized for a video card
Farcry im guessing was optimized for openGL which is the driver powering the ati video cards

There are other games that are optimized for.. crap wait for edited version of this post... which is the driver mainly powering the nvidia video cards

Most games are optimized for one of these drivers.. although some have been optimized for both

if that didnt solve ur confusion.. im sry but i tried to explain

Click to expand...

ATI has better D3D performance, nVidia has better OGL.

Drivers for both have their strengths and weakness, as of late, Nvidia is having more than their share of bugs.

Don't favor companies and don't generalize models... And not all ATI and nVidia cards are equal. It really isn't fair to clump together all the Radeons vs all the GeForces.

I'm pretty certain the 6600GT will out perform a 9800 at Doom III. If not because it is a faster card, because Doom III is heavily optimized for nVidia GPUs. And this will play a big role in future gaming, as the Doom III engine will probably be used in any upcoming games. Then again, Half-Life 2 is optimized for ATI GPUs... Same story for ATI.

Does that mean Doom III will run crappy on a 9800? Not at all. But I'd be careful with the detail settings if I were you. To bump it up to full, you really do need the BEST video card out there, and neither one mentioned is it.

And about 'bad drivers"... A lot of the problems you experience with games are because of the games theirselves. nVidia has had some notorious and almos ledgendary problems (infinite loop is a good one), but so has ATI. The blame game doesn't get very far here though. I dream of a day that PC games work 100% of the time.. heck, 85% would be nice.

lol.. well said

I am beginnning to hate this term "optimized" Why cant gpu companies just say we cut out all the pretty and functional parts of the software and focus the hardware capabilities on the actual resolution game play and fps

I have a bfg 6800gt oc in this box and a Radeon 9800 pro in another...this box always works...the box with the 9800 has an issue with killing signal to the monitor, causing reboots and lockups...I guess my vote will go to the 6800gt!

WildTurkey101 said:

I have a bfg 6800gt oc in this box and a Radeon 9800 pro in another...this box always works...the box with the 9800 has an issue with killing signal to the monitor, causing reboots and lockups...I guess my vote will go to the 6800gt!

Click to expand...

Check the mobo chipset drivers.
A vid card will not terminate a signal to the monitor.
A motherboard will. Bios issues -Software/driver conflicts.
A reboot has never been caused by a video card in the history of p.c's.
More then likely power supply- underwattage not enough power.
Lock ups? Could be Memory related- Not enough of it - or could be the software interface between the o.s and the board otherwise known as drivers.
The mobo northbridge/agp software installed correctly? (via sis intel# Nforce)
Try swapping boards vid cards and ram dimms see if the problem is the board itself.
Try a format. and get away from windows xp if you have it . 2000 pro is the only x86 o.s u will ever need. Try not to blame hardware for your lack of hardware/troubleshooting knowledge.

Well all the drivers are recent, I don't run xp on that box and it is a freshly built system. Clean HDD, new psu, I don't have any extra memory modules to try unfortunatly thats the only thing this box needs. As far as troubleshooting knowledge I believe I know enough to troubleshoot issues as that was what I did professionaly until I became disabled. I don't however keep up with certain hardware manufacturers as well as I should because I never intended to buy their products, just in this case I didn't want to spent the money needed for a decent p4 system and a 6800gt.

My apologies for that last post of mine.
Im sorry to sound off like that at you. I never meant it that way.
1 out of 4 posts people are always blaming problems on the the new part they just bought on a whim. They havent taken the time to research it and see what way it will interact with their current hardware config - sometimes they keep old stagnant drivers from older hardware on the o.s lol - so they just go buy it cause it the best and "must be the best cause it was the most expensive on the place had" - rich yuppies lolol. A good carpenter never blames his tools

Cheers

PreservedSwine said:

ATI has better D3D performance, nVidia has better OGL.

Drivers for both have their strengths and weakness, as of late, Nvidia is having more than their share of bugs.

Click to expand...

Exactly, ATi is supposed to be better for D3D, nVidia for OpenGL.

And as far as I know Far Cry runs in D3D by default, although you can change it to OpenGL. I had a 9700 Pro in my machine and now have a BFG 6800 GT OC, and with both cards D3D ran much better with this game, I had a lot of problems running it with OpenGL. That's not to say OpenGL is worse in all games, as MOHAA, Call of Duty, and others run great on either card. I dare say there's not enough difference in either ATi or nVidia, in equal performing cards, to tell the difference.

As far as who has the best drivers, I haven't had an issue with either one, they both perform pretty good for me. I must say I kind of like ATi's strategy of releasing one driver a month, and no beta drivers. With nVidia, seems like there is only an official driver every four months or so, with a new "leaked" beta driver almost bi-weekly, or so it seems.