No improvement in 8 months? Please recommend

[duane]

Hi guys. 8 months ago I bought a 6800LE at OCUK after reading your recommendations. It's been a great card and really rocks!

Now, I'm looking again to buy another graphics card for around £85 or so. This time for a PCI-E system. The most obvious card for that price is the 7600GS. I'm not too familiar with ATI, but ~£85 seems to get me only the older X800 without SM3 etc new features.

Looking at online benchmarks, the 7600GS is about the same speed as the 6800LE (even before unlocking pipelines). GPU is a bit more powerful, but the narrower memory bus compared to the 6800LE makes the speed even out. And the unlocked 6800LE speeds ahead (even if you get only 1 extra quad).

So what to get? It seems to me that 8 months down the road, £85 doesn't get me anything faster than the old 6800LE? No improvement in price/performance ratio! Or am I missing something? What's the best deal for ~£85? I'm looking to buy new, no secondhand please.

 

[kbc]

To be quite honest, I can't really see any major improvement if your budget is £85... perhaps a 6600GT - which is probably on par with your current card. But for PCI-E, 7600GT would see a huge boost, other than that I can't see any real benefit of you upgrading until you increase the budget.

But I'll see what others have to say.

 

[duane]

Thanks kbc. The strange thing is that the budget is exactly the same as 8 months ago (for the 6800LE), and I find I can't find anything to beat my old card. I though some advancements would have been made in terms of performance given the time that has past - especially witht the launch of the 7600 series, and also ATI's new offerings.

Either that, or OcUK was really doing a great deal on the 6800LE 8 months ago - come to think of it, that was really bargain basement for a card with a 256bit memory interface. And there's no equivalent super "deal" now.

I'll consider up to £100, but no more than that. Any one have suggestions to make?

 

[gtir666]

I know what you mean, you just gotta push your budget up to get better performance, luckily for me i flashed the bios of my vanilla 6800 with an xfx ultra bios and unlocked to 16pipes and 6 vertex shaders it works "ok", minor artifacts in oblivion, i can live with that baring n mind the amount of money id need to spend to better its performance.

I picked it up for 75quid off ebay but would need to get a 7900gt for 235quid(thereabouts) for a worth while improvement which is fine, but makes you wonder what youll pick up for a bargain price in years time and game technology hasnt moved on that much?

 

[duane]

Yeah... they 6800s were really a bargain a few months after the 7800 was released. Prices were low because there was the 7800 up there, and there was also the possibility of unlocking pipelines. Maybe we will see great bargains again when a 8xxx card appears.

In the mean time, I'm seriously considering the 7600GS. Same performance, but without the hidden cost of all the extra electricity bills!

 

[Vegeta]

for £85 you can get x800 (sometimes xtpe's) cards from members market which is a fair improvement over a 6800le.

 

[tbz_ck]

It seems the performance mainstream is where the deals are to be had at the moment. Particularly the X1800XT 256 for only £170 inclusive from here.

I know its way over your budget, but I would seriously consider it if you want to go to a PCI-E system as it is a top card for the money.

Alternatively, check the members market for 6800 Ultras on PCI-e, they come up every now and again, and should be about at your budget level.

New though, low end budget cards are not good value at the moment IMO.

 

[duane]

Thanks everyone. I went for the Leadtek 7600GS in the end. Couldn't afford to spend more than £100 inc delivery for a graphics card. On the upside, at least it runs silent and will consume less electricity than my old 6800LE.