Shopping for a new graphics card

[disturbed1]

So, I don't play any games on the PC, but my girlfriend does. She's been hinting around that's time for a little upgrade. The graphics card is the weakest link. It's easy enough to poor over the specs to pick the best one, but a little user input never hurt.

PC -
AMD 3000
1gig DDR 400 (1T timing)
Nvidia FX5500 128 (AGP)

Games -
Call of Duty 2
Need for Speed Most Wanted, and Underground 2
The Sims 2

The FX5500 plays the above OK but I can see that it needs some improvemnt. The card has to be AGP, and less than $150 would be nice.

The part that confuses me, is an Nvidia 6600Gt and 6800 are about the same price, so which one is actually better? And what about ATI, the 1600Pro is in the same price range, but I can't find many reviews on the card.

[ZippyP.]

6800 is slightly better (10%). As for the 1600, I can't find it on the chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html

[rallynavvie]

I have a 6600GT and have played CoD2 on it plenty well so I can certainly recommend it. As to the differences between the 6800 and the 6600GT there are some numbers for speeds of things on the card but I'm guessing the added pixel pipes of the 6800 may not make as big a difference as people though?

[Treebeard]

I second the 6600gt. I have played COD2 all the way through and it looks great. if your stuck on an AGP card that is probably the best bang for buck solution

[disturbed1]

Just ordered 2 ati x1600's. Guru3d has the test results that show it, for the most part, above a 6800, and slightly below an x800. Plus the avivo sounds interesting.

I almost ordered a 6600GT, but every review, and user report talk about overheating and artifacting. These cards will be going through 2-3 hour gaming sessions a couple of times a day. I just don't believe those cards are upto that with the stock coolers.

[Soltaris]

You could always get the newest, fastest, AGP card on the market

The NVidia GForce 7800 GS has an MSRP of $349 USD though
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=783

[waheed]

I also have a 6600GT (PCI-E version). Never had a problem with it so far. Will play the latest games quite smoothly.

[disturbed1]

It seemed to me that the 6600 and 6800 series was hit or miss. I read many reviews that stated no problems, and quite a few that stated overheating and artifacting problems. Granted there were more no problem reviews, but too many reviews stating the same problems of overheating and artifacting to make me want to buy one brand over another. Plus, a friend of mine went through an ordeal with MicroCenter and no less than 5 BFG 6800GTs. All had artifacting problems after 10 minutes of use. Of course, all of these problems could be numerous other PC/Hardware problems and not related to the cards at all.

The 7800 series would be nice :P but not on this upgrade since it's still an AGP card. When I do another MB/CPU upgrade I'll build an SLI or Crossfire solution. Just didn't want to sink more than $150 in the PC at this time.

The FX5500 plays Need For Speed Most Wanted, Call of Duty 2, Serious Sam II smoothly just fine, at 640x480 no eye candy so even a GeForce 6200 or Radeon 9200 would of been an upgrade

Just hope this x1600 turns out ok. Third ATI card I've ever owned, compared to 10-12 Nvidia cards. Plus I really want to play around with the AVIVO features.

[Faustus]

If its a 6800 non GT vs. a 6600GT then I'd take the 6600GT.

Both good cards though.

[rallynavvie]

Plus, a friend of mine went through an ordeal with MicroCenter and no less than 5 BFG 6800GTs.

That's the problem. BFG is inundating the market with their cards and I've seen more problems with them than most every other video card manufacturer combined. Two of my friends also had serious problems with BFG cards, one the card itself fried and the other took his board and everything connected to it when it went. Of course BFG swears that it was something else in his system that caused the meltdown and so he didn't get a dime from them

[disturbed1]

Well they came in, and I've had a week or so to play around. Got to say I'm more than happy. Don't know if it's better than a 6600GT or a 6800, but it suites our needs just fine.

The x1600 plays Need For Speed Most Wanted at 1024x768 with all settings maxed. Other games are just fine too. So all in all, it was a good buy.

Don't know anything about the AVIVO though. ATI has no, or at least not enough information about this feature. I downloaded the Xcode AVIVO encoder. It is faster than real time encoding, with CPU use swinging from 50-100%. HD WMV playback uses ~20% CPU. If the encoder had a few more options, it would be great for simple re-encodes.

I can say that the picture quality of my XVids look better on the TV out, and on the monitor. Which is just most likely an ATI color setting compared to Nvidia's color setting, rather than an actual hardware or GPU improvement.

After a 3 hour round of NFS, the card hit a max temp of 53 degress, so no heat problems either.