x1600 or 7600GS

**JMF** · July 30, 2006, 04:57 PM

I'm trying to decide whether to go for a Radeon x1600 512mb or a GeForce 7600 GS for my new PC.

Is there any substantial performance difference in these cards and would they hold up well to Medieval II or something like Oblivion?

thanks.

**Shaun** · July 30, 2006, 05:12 PM

Yes, I would go for a 7600GS, although I would rather go for an upgrade to PCIe, as none of those cards are really that fast, due to the fact that they are AGP.

**War Bringer** · July 30, 2006, 05:32 PM

Whatever you do, do not get the 7900 series, they are extremly good cards, but the 7900 chipset is plagued by many flaws. Anything that uses shader model 3.0 causes the card to go bonkers after you quit the program.

**Shaun** · July 30, 2006, 05:43 PM

I think he still has an AGP board, and there is no current 7900GS (the AGP varient of GeForces), the highes AGP GeForce is the 7800GS, which I would rather have than the 7600GS, but JMF was asking wether to get a 7600GS or X1600.

**leg167** · July 30, 2006, 06:30 PM

Yeah, I'm thinking of getting a X1600 as well(or maybe X1300)...I'm reluctant though, because I really want to spend my money well so that I would get a far greater performance than my present radeon 9550 on RTW. I especially want to be ready for M2TW.

**Shaun** · July 30, 2006, 07:09 PM

If you want to be ready for MTW2, I suggest getting at least an X800GTO, or an X850XT or even better an X1800XTX, these are all very good priced cards, and are also all PCIe, so as you can see the time to upgrade has never been better or cheaper.

**Hadrian** · July 30, 2006, 07:13 PM

The Radeon X1300 is one of the worst performing VC's on the market, it's absolute under performing junk. The only good thing about the X1600 series is the 512MB of memory for that version. Head to head the nVidia 7600GS just destroys both those VC's in every benchmark and in every way. 7600GS is far more OCable as well. www.legitreviews.com has a great article on two of those specific cards and the 7600GS dominates the X1600 and is definately the better of the two. Right now, ATI only competes with nVidia on the extreme upper end of the VC market....hope this helps.

Neither of these two VCs are going to perform very well with MTW2 running. That game will surely require more for its higher end settings...

**leg167** · July 31, 2006, 09:54 AM

Well, thanks for the advice. Although I don't favor nvidia, i guess i can consider it. Yeah, I don't have a pci-e port, only agp, and I find it annoying that many of the pci-e cards are so much cheaper than their agp counterparts. Anyway, I don't want to spend an awful lot of money in getting a high-end vid card, I'll be satisfied to play M2TW with mediocre graphics settings.

**JMF** · July 31, 2006, 09:56 AM

Thanks for the advice guys but how does the X800 GTO 512Mb compare with the x1600 or 7600GS?

Would a 6800xt 512Mb be better?

The thing is I want something that will run MTW2 and Oblivion at a high (but not necessarily the highest) quality. I'm also on a budget!

If anyone has any thoughts please go ahead!

**sunsmountain** · July 31, 2006, 01:13 PM

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2746&p=6

X800 and X850 are old technology cards, I would not consider them unless their price is ridiculously low.

You can run Oblivion at Medium Quality, 1024x768, HDR and at least 30 frames per second only with an X1800XT or higher.

Below that:
1. X1800XT
2. GF7600GT x2 SLI
3. GF7900GT
4. GF6800GS x2 SLI
5. 7800GT
6. X1600XT x2 CF
7. X1800GTO
8. GF7600GS x2 SLI
9. X1600Pro x2 CF
and then you fall below 20 frames per second.

You can run Oblivion at High Quality, 1280x1024, HDR and at least 30 frames per second only with an X1900XT or higher.

What I would do, since you have AGP: Get a cheap Radeon 9700/9800 or GF6800 below $100, and wait 1 year till July next year when the really good graphics cards start rolling out and upgrade your entire system. A new power supply is needed for those 200 W graphics cards, but they will bring Oblivion to its knees.

**JMF** · July 31, 2006, 02:33 PM

Thanks for the link- very helpful. Actually I'm upgrading my entire PC and was aiming to get a PCI-e card anyway. At current UK prices I think the GF7600 GT is going to be the best bet given my budget.

Thanks everyone for the help- I can never quite keep up with all the changes!

**Hadrian** · July 31, 2006, 05:18 PM

Excellent post by sunsmountain, and he really is the man on the cutting edge of gaming technology on this forum. Incinerate is solid also....very helpful post, my hat's off to you sunsmountain.....