8600GT is it worth it?

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 02:08

Since when was Anandtech a naughty link? People link to their benchmarks (including the pages) all the time around here and so far as I am aware their site doesn't have links to competitors who ship to the UK. :confused:

Leave the moderating to the moderators, if an admin or moderator wants me to host them elsewhere then I will.

But seriously, since you threw a hissy fit on MSN and I blocked you am I now to expect that you'll follow me around the forums acting the goat?

Tom|Nbk · 19 May 2007 at 02:09

Ulfhedjinn said:
Since when was Anandtech a naughty link? People link to their benchmarks (including the pages) all the time around here and so far as I am aware their site doesn't have links to competitors who ship to the UK.

Leave the moderating to the moderators, if an admin or moderator wants me to host them elsewhere then I will.

I wasnt talking about the content on the site LOL, the fact you hotlinked the images from there site which isn't allowed *smack on hand*.

Also quit with the little ninja edits LOL. Oh noes you blocked me, Jesus it's affected my life so bad I can't go on

, whatever will I do, Also not following you, you wish

, just happen to co habit frequently in the same Hardware forum as you

.

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 02:10

Tom|Nbk said:
I wasnt talking about the content on the site LOL, the fact you hotlinked the images from there site which isn't allowed *smack on hand*.

Well it doesn't say anything in the FAQ unless I missed it? :confused:

Tom|Nbk said:
Also quit with the little ninja edits LOL. Oh noes you blocked me, Jesus it's affected my life so bad I can't go on , whatever will I do, Also not following you, you wish , just happen to co habit frequently in the same Hardware forum as you .

Yeah, we've "co-habited" on the same forum for a long time now but you never went out of your way to backseat moderate me. I'm not going to call it coinsidence, but I'm quite close to calling it trolling (which oddly enough actually is in the FAQ.)

So, where in the FAQ does it say anything about hotlinking? I just took another look and it's not there, if a don would like to clarify this I will gladly host those images on ImageShack or something.

P.S. Big hug for derailing the thread.

Tom|Nbk · 19 May 2007 at 02:21

Perhaps it's been taken out the rules now, I seem to remember being forced to re host images in the past after hot linking, perhaps it never was a rule and my memory is clouded and Don's preferred if you hosted your own, Im not sure. Personally I always host images and never hot link.

Nevermind, back on topic Id say the 8600GT isnt worth it, shop around and you will find a X1950 Pro for the same price as one.

Big.Wayne · 19 May 2007 at 02:29

Ulfhedjinn said:
So, where in the FAQ does it say anything about hotlinking? I just took another look and it's not there, if a don would like to clarify this I will gladly host those images on ImageShack or something.

Off Topic:

It's not an overclockers.co.uk rule, its general 'netiquette' not to hotlink.

The people who host the website/images get charged for the bandwidth, so in essence its theft! :eek:

Its fairly easy to use a service like Imageshack to host the images for you.

Tom|Nbk · 19 May 2007 at 02:30

Big.Wayne said:
Off Topic:

It's not an overclockers.co.uk rule, its general 'netiquette' not to hotlink.

The people who host the website/images get charged for the bandwidth, so in essence its theft!

Ahh well thats basically what I was trying to Imply

.

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 02:36

Big.Wayne said:
Off Topic:

It's not an overclockers.co.uk rule, its general 'netiquette' not to hotlink.

The people who host the website/images get charged for the bandwidth, so in essence its theft!

Its fairly easy to use a service like Imageshack to host the images for you.

Maybe I'm just rude.

Big.Wayne · 19 May 2007 at 02:40

Tooks said:
. . .

nVidia GT= 540MHz/GPU - 1400MHz/Mem

nVidia GTS= 675MHz/GPU - 2000MHz/Mem

Cheers Tooks,

So you can overclock the GT to GTS speeds, thought there may be a hardware difference as well apart from the clocks?

Cyber-Mav · 19 May 2007 at 03:02

just hotlink, its not like the coppers are gonna come down to your house and slap you up

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 03:13

Think it definitely comes down to bandwidth limitation on the 8600 Series, Nvidia were mad to do 128bit, but it seems to me that ATI and Nvidia could both afford to go easy on the GPU in current games and focus on memory.

8600GT
Core Speed: 540MHz
Memory Speed: 1400MHz
Memory Interface: 128bit
Fillrate: 8.64Gtx/s
Memory Bandwidth: 22.4GB/s

8600GTS
Core Speed: 675MHz
Memory Speed: 2000MHz
Memory Interface: 128bit
Fillrate: 10.8Gtx/s
Memory Bandwidth: 32GB/s

7900GS
Core Speed: 450MHz
Memory Speed: 1320MHz
Memory Interface: 256bit
Fillrate: 7.2Gtx/s
Memory Bandwidth: 42.2GB/s

X1950Pro
Core Speed: 575MHz
Memory Speed: 1380MHz
Memory Interface: 256bit
Fillrate: 6.9Gtx/s
Memory Bandwidth: 44.2GB/s

Source: Wikipedia.

Cyber-Mav · 19 May 2007 at 03:27

interesting fill rate results there.

from my calculations the 8600 series works out to be 16 pipeline cards, and the x1950pro as we all know is a 12 pipeline card.

shocking how x1950pro has 4 times the memory bandwidth of the 8600gts yet its performance advantage is not 4 times as big.

good efficiency on memory bandwidth usage from the 8600 cards. now the main question is: will there be a 8600gt for agp users?

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 03:39

I know it's off topic, but I think I just worked out the following from the specs of R600 and G80.

8800GTS
Fillrate: 24Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 64GB/s

8800GTX
Fillrate: 36.8Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 86.4GB/s

HD2900XT
Fillrate: 11.8Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 105.60GB/s

Is this accurate? HD2900XT has 16 ROPs clocked at 742MHz (11.8 billion texels/sec)? If the above is right then it looks like R600 wallops G80 in memory bandwidth but is severely limited by its fillrate. :confused:

Feel free to confirm this or to correct me because I find it a bit baffling.

Tabasco · 19 May 2007 at 03:47

Thanks for the replys all.. didnt think i would get this many

also i want this card for playing games.. i cant afford 8800 as of yet.. and wanted to get me somthing for the time being and it seems .. most of you would say getting the ATI card would be better? .. and the fact ive never used an ATI card.. kinda makes me feel a little uneasy but i guess theres no harm in trying

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 03:48

Tabasco said:
most of you would say getting the ATI card would be better?)

Personally I would say the X1950Pro is superior here, and I am quite sure it's down to the 256bit memory.

Seems to give it more than enough leg-up over the 8600 Series in the vast majority of games.

Tabasco · 19 May 2007 at 03:49

i think i read some where in this Thread that X1950Pro is not a DX10 card.. now does DX10 make any diffrence to games what so ever?

Tabasco · 19 May 2007 at 03:55

Thanks for the quick reply Ulf.. ok im shooting to bed.. ill be back in few hours to see what else has been posted

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 03:56

Tabasco said:
i think i read some where in this Thread that X1950Pro is not a DX10 card.. now does DX10 make any diffrence to games what so ever?

That's correct, the X1950Pro can only support DirectX versions up to 9.0c. DirectX 10 is pretty much brand new technology and is far from being widely implimented, but the first couple of DirectX 10 games are due out this year.

Personally I wouldn't worry about DirectX 10 just yet, since not only will the DirectX 10 games coming out be able to run on DirectX 9.0c hardware (albiet lacking eye-candy), recent benchmarks of Call Of Juarez and Lost Planet have shown that you really need top of the range hardware to play DirectX 10 games even remotely decently.

I would just choose the card that offers the best DirectX 9.0c performance for the money.

Tabasco said:
Thanks for the quick reply Ulf.. ok im shooting to bed.. ill be back in few hours to see what else has been posted

You're welcome. Good night.

Cyber-Mav · 19 May 2007 at 03:57

Ulfhedjinn said:
I know it's off topic, but I think I just worked out the following from the specs of R600 and G80.

8800GTS
Fillrate: 24Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 64GB/s

8800GTX
Fillrate: 36.8Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 86.4GB/s

HD2900XT
Fillrate: 11.8Gtx/s
Bandwidth: 105.60GB/s

Is this accurate? HD2900XT has 16 ROPs clocked at 742MHz (11.8 billion texels/sec)? If the above is right then it looks like R600 wallops G80 in memory bandwidth but is severely limited by its fillrate.

Feel free to confirm this or to correct me because I find it a bit baffling.

yes your right there, thats the problem with the card, its got the memory bandwidth thanks to its 512bit memory interface and high speed vram but fill rate is lacking.

whe fill rate is low then that means it can;t put enough pixels to the screen fast enough especially at a high resolution. this is why they are trying to do shader level AA so that they try to use less fillrate by having to make multiple passes over the same scene which shafts fillrate and memory bandwidth.

odd though, why bother with 512bit memory interface if the card doesn;t have the fill rate to use it. its like slapping a 512bit interface and high speed ddr4 ram on to a 6600gt. :confused:

if people like us can work that out then why can't the heads over at amd do the same?

looks like they got their butts sorted out for this mess up:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39287051,00.htm
sack the entire lot i would. :rolleyes:

Darkwave · 19 May 2007 at 04:05

Cyber-Mav said:
odd though, why bother with 512bit memory interface if the card doesn;t have the fill rate to use it. its like slapping a 512bit interface and high speed ddr4 ram on to a 6600gt.
if people like us can work that out then why can't the heads over at amd do the same?

That's precisely what I am wondering. Stuff like ROPs, TMUs, shaders and texels/sec and memory bandwidth tend to go over my head so I don't often get into this sort of detail. I let benchmarks do the talking for me.

In this case I'm seriously wondering how AMD can screw up like this if even I can figure out where the weak link is.

Now I'm actually more convinced that magic drivers won't help R600 as much as people hope.

Tom|Nbk · 19 May 2007 at 04:13

Without a doubt the card is leaking and is slightly inefficient, remember Prescott and its efficiency?, how bad this is? no body knows, but at least with some decent drivers we can see the scale of the problem and if it will severly affect the R600 for the future. The AA method is not resolved how it is on the G80 this is why it takes such a hit, Im annoyed that AMD took the route of "let's push shader based AA" when only around two games use it on the market and are two of the worst coded games to come out in a long time :confused:

makes no sense, but personally Im going to wait see what develops and then think whether it's time to give up and move on.