nVidia 8600GT with 1 gb memory. Catch?

C14N

I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card on my second PC to mid-range level and someone recommended I check out either nVidia 8600GT/GTS or ATi 3850 card. I went looking through Komplett.ie and found this nVidia 8600GT with 1024mb of memory and at it's low price of €80 I assumed there must be some sort of catch with the card. Can anyone give me some info or recommend a better card under or around the €100 price tag?

RAM (will be upgraded to 3gb)


Motherboard:


CPU:


Thanks a lot in advance

PogMoThoin

Why do people see 1GB and then think its a steal?

Big difference between that gpu and a 3850, although it has 1Gb that gpu has GDDR2, 3850 has GDDR3 and is about €120 for 256MB and even more for the 512MB one

C14N

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Why do people see 1GB and then think its a steal?

Big difference between that gpu and a 3850, although it has 1Gb that gpu has GDDR2, 3850 has GDDR3 and is about €120 for 256MB and even more for the 512MB one

Well hey, I saw the 1gb for that price and thought "something's not right here" so I asked before buying. If it's an outdated GDDR then I guess that explains it. I might go with the 3850 if my PC can run it

Sqaull20

256mb HD3850 is €70 on pixmania

http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/655748/art/sapphire-technology/radeon-hd-3850-256-mb-pci.html

Your cpu is a little weak, but either HD3850/8800gs would give great performance

8800gs €84

http://www.dabs.ie/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4YNV&SearchType=1&SearchTerms=8800gs&PageMode=3&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=0

C14N

Well I would like 512mb (although the Asus card would certainly get a good chance from me) but I don't know if my PC could run that much. I'm not too fussed about cost btw as long as it's reasonable enough

Sqaull20

What Dell do you have?

C14N

Sqaull20 wrote: »

What Dell do you have?

Dimension 9150. My current card is Radeon X600 Hypermemory 256mb is that helps

Sqaull20

The Dell 375w psu is more than capable of powering both those cards.

Your system cant take a Core 2 Duo, the chipset is compatible but the voltage regulator on the motherboard isnt.

You can get a Pentium Dual Core 9 series, but they are not worth it.

Either card will do fine, but will be bottlenecked alot by your cpu.

C14N

Sqaull20 wrote: »

The Dell 375w psu is more than capable of powering both those cards.

Your system cant take a Core 2 Duo, the chipset is compatible but the voltage regulator on the motherboard isnt.

You can get a Pentium Dual Core 9 series, but they are not worth it.

Either card will do fine, but will be bottlenecked alot by your cpu.

When you say "bottlenecked" do you mean "become almost utterly futile"?

Sqaull20

C14N wrote: »

When you say "bottlenecked" do you mean "become almost utterly futile"?

Depends on the games, Call of Duty 4 for example requires a dual-core processor to run well.Others like Unreal 3, Bioshock, World In Conflict, Company of Heroes, Battlefield 2142 etc will run fine on single core.

You wont be wasting money if thats what you are thinking

Those cards will give you a great performance boost.

C14N

Sqaull20 wrote: »

Depends on the games, Call of Duty 4 for example requires a dual-core processor to run well.Others like Unreal 3, Bioshock, World In Conflict, Company of Heroes, Battlefield 2142 etc will run fine on single core.

You wont be wasting money if thats what you are thinking

Those cards will give you a great performance boost.

No don't worry I'm not going to be using this for new games set to high, it'll be mainly for videos and pictures and stuff with medium level games thrown into the mix. I'm buying another new PC for that sort of stuff anyway. I think I'll go with the Asus, are you sure that it'll work with my setup because I don't want to buy it and be left with a card that doesn't work?

TerrorFirmer

I wouldn't bother with a 3850 or an 8800gs, they are too good for such an old processor. I would just get something like this, no point spending more money when the CPU will limit any gains, and besides that, even an 8600GT is literally 3 or 4x faster then a X600, you'll notice a massive improvement.

Always choose DDR3 over DDR2 on video cards, 256mb of DDR3 is faster then 512mb of DDR2 (that's basically 256mb of 1400mhz memory vs 512mb of 800mhz, see the difference), a card like the 8600GT cannot even make use for beyond about 350mb due to the limitations of the cards architecture - only the very high end cards need that much memory, I game on 1920x1200 and so far, apart from Crysis, 384mb on my 8800GS Sli is proving to be adequate for any game at max settings on mentioned resolution. A 512mb DDR3 8600GT is worthwhile if you got one cheap, a 1gb 8600GT using DDR2 would actually be slower then a 256mb DDR3 8600GT however. It's all marketing gimmicks.

EDIT: Just noticed the 3850 is only 70 euro, very good price. Might as well get that, even though it'll be bottlenecked, it'll hold better resale value and would even be a decent budget gaming card in a new machine with a better CPU.

C14N

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with a 3850 or an 8800gs, they are too good for such an old processor. I would just get something like this, no point spending more money when the CPU will limit any gains, and besides that, even an 8600GT is literally 3 or 4x faster then a X600, you'll notice a massive improvement.

Always choose DDR3 over DDR2 on video cards, 256mb of DDR3 is faster then 512mb of DDR2 (that's basically 256mb of 1400mhz memory vs 512mb of 800mhz, see the difference), a card like the 8600GT cannot even make use for beyond about 350mb due to the limitations of the cards architecture - only the very high end cards need that much memory, I game on 1920x1200 and so far, apart from Crysis, 384mb on my 8800GS Sli is proving to be adequate for any game at max settings on mentioned resolution. A 512mb DDR3 8600GT is worthwhile if you got one cheap, a 1gb 8600GT using DDR2 would actually be slower then a 256mb DDR3 8600GT however. It's all marketing gimmicks.

EDIT: Just noticed the 3850 is only 70 euro, very good price. Might as well get that, even though it'll be bottlenecked, it'll hold better resale value and would even be a decent budget gaming card in a new machine with a better CPU.

Well with my CPU will I notice much of a difference between the Asus 350mb card and the ATi one? The chances are highly stacked against this going into another PC btw since I'm going to be getting the 4870 for my new one

TerrorFirmer

C14N wrote: »

Well with my CPU will I notice much of a difference between the Asus 350mb card and the ATi one? The chances are highly stacked against this going into another PC btw since I'm going to be getting the 4870 for my new one

With the 2.8Ghz Pentium IV, no, the CPU will limit you sooner then either card would reach it's maximum potential. With a better CPU, the 8800GS is the better card and good for most games at maximum or close to maximum settings at moderate resolution (1680x1050 downwards)

C14N

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

With the 2.8Ghz Pentium IV, no, the CPU will limit you sooner then either card would reach it's maximum potential. With a better CPU, the 8800GS is the better card and good for most games at maximum or close to maximum settings at moderate resolution (1680x1050 downwards)

So I'm better off going for the 8600GT with the 256mb DDR3 like you posted because I won't be able to see a difference between that and a higher quality card on this PC anyway?