6200 AGP - good budget card?

[kw87]

So I was reading a thread in here about the 6200 for PCIe and it sounds like a decent little card. http://tweaknews.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6439. Has anyone had any experience with the 6200 for AGP? I'm thinking about upgrading as I just want something that has DirectX 9 support. I'm not really familiar with video cards and the one I have right now GF4 ti-4200 is OK but only DX 8.1 (a ti-4200 just sold on eBay for $43 - seems high, but still, maybe I could get $30 for it) In another post here I read that the ATI X300 is bad news which seems to be the equivalent of the 6200. Your thoughts? The goal here is to stay under $50. Thanks!

kw
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Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent

[Google]

[[KoG]^weaZel]

That wouldn't be a bad card at all. But if you could afford a little more I would go with the 6600 is at all possible. But if you can't do that the 6200 will serve you well.
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I tweaked and it tweaked back! So I Tweaked some more!

"Barney is like the Michael Jackson of PBS." - James Tybeerious

[kw87]

So the 6600 looks like a pretty sweet card. In some cases it's about the same price as a 6200 and in other cases it's twice as much. There seems to be such a wide range for the 6200 card. Is there something I should be looking out for? Do I need 256MB of video RAM? Will it even use it? It looks like I can get a 6600 for about $90 and a 6200 anywhere from $30-$80. Any ideas on how to know if I've found a good one?
_________________
Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent

[fussnfeathers]

Too much RAM is not a question..........the more you have, the better, generally speaking. Newer games definitely can use 256mb, but above that, it's touch and go. I can definitely say that my current games benefit from 256mb over 128mb, no question.

I believe (and I could be wrong) that the 6200 only has 4 pipes, while the 6600 has 8. This alone will make a huge difference in performance, so you'll want to research that. Make sure that the card you buy has the maximum number of pipes per brand (ATI makes better use of the pipes, so a 16 pipe ATI will perform as well as, if not better than, an nVidia board with 24 pipes).

The 6600 also runs at higher clock speeds than the 6200, which again will make a big difference, but not as big as the pipelines.
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Big enough to scare you

[kw87]

So what is the ATI equivalent (generally speaking) of the 6600? I'm not completely set on nVidia, I just don't really know anything about ATI. And is the x300 the about the same level as the 6200?
_________________
Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent

[canus]

i currently have a 6200tc in one of my computers and its not a bad little card. i do have the pci-e version but it can run prettymuch anything but on low. it can play BF2 on low at 1024 at about 40 fps. HL2 on full and about 30fps, and quake 4 on 800 at low at about 15-30fps. it not bad for about 45bucks

[Xal]

X1600Pro, costs less than $100 and outperforms the 6600 by a fair margin. I have one and it runs Quake 4 at medium at 1024x768 at about 30-40fps, FEAR, medium @ 30-40fps and HL2 max at 1152x864 @ 70 -100fps. Not the best card but for the price it is quite a beast. You may want to look at the X800 series too, for just a bit more you could get a last gen high end card and they perform even better than the X1600.
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1gb Powercolor Radeon HD 5850 @ Stock
X-fi Extreme Audio PCI E
Nexus 600W Silent PSU
Nexus Fans
Custom case

[kw87]

I ended up going with the Gigabyte Silent 7600GS for $99 after rebate at newegg. In the benchmarks I saw it did very well for the price plus it's silent! It also supports all of the latest versions: DX9, OpenGL 2.0, and the like. I haven't put together my new system yet but when I'll do I'll have to post some benchmarks to let you know how it is. Thanks for the advice.

-kw
_________________
Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent

[Xal]

Sweet, nice choice

Benchies will be great
_________________
Phenom II x4 955 @ Stock
Asus M3N78-EM
4gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 667 @ 800
1gb Powercolor Radeon HD 5850 @ Stock
X-fi Extreme Audio PCI E
Nexus 600W Silent PSU
Nexus Fans
Custom case

[kw87]

As promised here are my scores from 3DMark06:

3DMarks 2309
SM 2.0 Score 895
HDR/SM 3.0 Score 800
CPU 1879

I love this card! It performs great and is completely silent. I have a side case fan that blows right on it which keeps it cool. Eventually I'll probably get another one when they're cheap and have a nice SLI configuration.

Thanks!
kw
_________________
Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent

[Xal]

Nice, not bad scores for the price at all

Enjoy
_________________
Phenom II x4 955 @ Stock
Asus M3N78-EM
4gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 667 @ 800
1gb Powercolor Radeon HD 5850 @ Stock
X-fi Extreme Audio PCI E
Nexus 600W Silent PSU
Nexus Fans
Custom case

[kw87]

So today I used Nvidia's GPU control panel to overclock my 7600GS and my 3D mark score went up to 2713!

Old core: 450 Mhz
New core: 498 Mhz

Old mem: 400 Mhz
New mem: 463 Mhz

The control panel is pretty nice. It has a button for "Find Optimal" that I used and it found the new clock settings. Pretty easy OC! Just wanted to let you all know in case you may want to give it a try if you haven't before.

kw
_________________
Pentium D 805 2.6 @ 3.8GHz
Asus P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition
240GB RAID 0 SATA
2 GB DDR2 666 @ 766MHz
Gigabyte 7600GS Silent