8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

[The Laughing Man]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Not to belittle the guy but he was on here asking advice about which GPU to buy, chances are the last thing he wants to be doing is messing about trying to flash the BIOS of the GPU, along with the risks that doing so entails.

[camper.]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Hardly risky. For me it was as simple as booting up with DOS and typing "nvflash bios.rom". You don't even have to flash. Bottom line is, it's the same card with lower clock rates.

[System]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Meh, should have saved money and gotten an x1950GT and flashed it. You could have gotten the 512MB version for a similar price I think.

Excuse me if I'm wrong but what exactly is the advantage of having 512 mb vs 256 mb on the same model cards?

From what I heard, people with an 8800 gts/gtx get the same FPS basically - Comparing cards with similiar clocks that is..

[=98=]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Excuse me if I'm wrong but what exactly is the advantage of having 512 mb vs 256 mb on the same model cards?

I believe that a higher amount of memory means that the card can cope with more textures at once, as the data which is due to be processed can be held in the memory until required by the GPU. With current games, the difference between a 8800gts 320mb and 8800gts 640mb is very small since there are no games that require so much texture processing.
This in turn means that you can play games at a higher resolution. The more pixels on the screen, the more processing that is required. Thus, larger amounts of memory means more instructions and data can be held for the GPU.


Hope thats right....:hmm:

[Stormy{CAN}]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Hope thats right.

Close enough.

[camper.]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Excuse me if I'm wrong but what exactly is the advantage of having 512 mb vs 256 mb on the same model cards?

From what I heard, people with an 8800 gts/gtx get the same FPS basically - Comparing cards with similiar clocks that is..

You can play at higher resolutions, higher anti-aliasing levels, and fit more textures into GFX memory which is miles faster than the standard. I kinda regret getting a 320MB 8800GTS. All of those things drain memory like a whore does population paste.

[James_Patterson]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

You can play at higher resolutions, higher anti-aliasing levels, and fit more textures into GFX memory which is miles faster than the standard. I kinda regret getting a 320MB 8800GTS. All of those things drain memory like a whore does population paste.

Well correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the gfx card ram have to go through the pc ram before it can do this? So couldn't you just buy more RAM for your PC to compensate? Probably not.

Anywho back on topic.
So I have a Sapphire x1950pro 256mb.
Who thinks i should play the overclocking game of doom with it?

[solofowaffles]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

only if u feel prepared.

[=98=]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Well correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the gfx card ram have to go through the pc ram before it can do this? So couldn't you just buy more RAM for your PC to compensate? Probably not.

I think it would be possible to do this, but the bus speed between RAM and GPU would be hugely limiting, and thus it would hold the graphics card back. The graphics RAM (usually GDDR3 (maybe GDDR4)) is extremely high speed and is able to supply the GPU with instructions and data when needed with no hold back.
The only time when system memory is used is with cards that feature things such as "Turbocache" or "Hypermemory". However, they are usually crap!

[camper.]

Re: 8600gts v.s. hd2600xt

Well correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the gfx card ram have to go through the pc ram before it can do this? So couldn't you just buy more RAM for your PC to compensate? Probably not.

Anywho back on topic.
So I have a Sapphire x1950pro 256mb.
Who thinks i should play the overclocking game of doom with it?

Nope :)

GFX memory should be modular. Would help me