Bad News

[Flu]

So I guess my dad didn't get me a vid card like he had said he was going to before today (for my bday) so um.. i guess i will continue to run 15 fps in 1.6, and will not be able to play source/raven shield for a lot longer than expected.    

[Maveric]

bummer dude, sorry to hear that....

[SK_CROW]

Well you can always get a job and buy your own card.  

[E.J.FUDD]

149.00   this will without a doubt keep you in the grove

half the price but still worthy of pullin it of..

so down here in the americas, one saturday for about 6 hours and a lawn mower would GIT~R~DUN.

[Impolite]

Or this, which will beat either of those cards for only $124 and free shipping: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102362

Oh, and it's from Newegg.  TD IS TEH DEVIL!!!!!  

Oh, and a job is a good idea...  Nothing more satisying than getting a piece of hardware you have worked hard for.

[Balaso]

I dunno, getting a piece of hardware for free while doing absolutely nothing for it is extremely satisfying!      

[E.J.FUDD]

impolite...
1st its a radeon..
2nd..its 128 mb..the one is a 256mb...everything is else primarily the same
3rd..its a radeon..

td has never slighted me, though ive only order about nine things...and free shipping was included....

[Impolite]

impolite...
1st its a radeon..
2nd..its 128 mb..the one is a 256mb...everything is else primarily the same
3rd..its a radeon..

td has never slighted me, though ive only order about nine things...and free shipping was included....

Yes, it's a Radeon, which means it will run all things Valve faster than a comparable GeForce since Valve actively works with ATI to make it so...  I use both Nvidia and ATI, but you can't deny that CS (that being the game we run in this division) is faster on ATI hardware.  Just like Nvidia walks away from ATI in Doom3 because ID works with them.  But we don't play Doom3.  

Do I need to post my 700 fps (in 1600x1200) screenshot from 1.6 to show you that the 9800 is a pretty capable card?

In answer to your second point...  Memory on a video card only matters in that the card needs enough to load the entire texture set into video RAM.  Running higher resolutions and higher details requires more RAM because there is more information to store.  If you don't have enough video RAM you end up swapping texture data in and out over the AGP or PCI-E bus which is much slower than the direct RAM interface.  Avoiding these texture swaps is the only way that more video RAM will speed your card up.  Neither a 5500 or a 6600 non-gt is capable of running games at the resolutions the 9800 pro can, so the extra RAM is nothing but a selling point.  It will give zero benefit to your fps.  The cores on both of those cards are slower than the 9800 (FAR slower in the case of the 5500).  The 9800 will walk all over them.  Want proof?

Here's a HL2 graph showing the 5900xt and the 9800 pro.  The 5900xt is much faster than the 5500, which is a slightly enhanced 5200.  The 9800 is getting 101.9 fps, and the 5900xt is getting 26.9.  About 1/4 the performance.  

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=4

Here's one showing a 9800 xt and a 6600.  The XT is faster than the pro, but not hugely so.  The 9800 xt is getting 114.2 fps in source, and the 6600 is getting 81.4 fps.  A 9800 pro is 10% to 15% slower than an xt, so it would be around 95-100 fps.

In 1.6, the scales will be even farther in favor of the 9800 since the only thing helping the 6600 come close to the 9800 in source is the more advanced shader engine in the 6600 (it's a generation newer).  In 1.6, where advanced shaders are not used, the raw processing power and far greater memory bandwidth of the 9800 will decimate either of those two cards.  

Here's a link showing the theoretical max performance of, oh, about every card made in the last 5 years.  http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2195&p=5
To pull the interesting data out, here you go:

9800 pro memory bandwidth: 20752 MB/sec
6600 memory bandwidth: 8392 MB/sec
5500 memory bandwidth: 6104 MB/sec

9800 pro multi-texture fillrate: 3040 million pixels per second
6600 multi-texture fillrate: 2400 MP/s
5500 multi-texture fillrate: 1080 MP/s

There's more info, but that should give a decent idea of how the 9800 pro compares to the 6600 and 5500...

The 6600 GT is the lowest Nvidia card that is worth bothering to look at these days.  It's a pretty nice card.

Any questions?    

[Balaso]

damn...

[E.J.FUDD]

can i get fries with that?

[Impolite]

That's what you get for trying to hold an electronics conversation with an engineer.  I AM THE UBERNERD!!!!

 

[E.J.FUDD]

good because now you have been sequestered by fudd to be on call @ anytime to be the expert in this field, for i will have many questions as i bring new equipment to build my new super system.

[Impolite]

good because now you have been sequestered by fudd to be on call @ anytime to be the expert in this field, for i will have many questions as i bring new equipment to build my new super system.

Oh!  Playing with other peoples money!  My favorite!  So when do you want to start, mr. guinea pig, er...  test subject... ummm....  Friend!   That's it, friend!