Video Card Upgrade Question

Post

Hi Guys,

I have a NVidia 6600GT PCI Express 128 mb video card


This card is on sale near me for 30 dollars canadian.

BFG GeForce GT 210 589MHZ 512MB 1GHZ DDR2 PCI-E HDMI DVI-I VGA Video Card


Will this be a large upgrade? I have a 400 w power supply will this be enough to use it? Will I have the proper connectors?

I have never installed a video card before is it pretty straight forward?



I basically just want to know how big of an upgrade it is. Will this card be able to run SC 2 at 1920x1080 at like low or medium settings?

Jeltz

It's hard to compare two completely different architectures, but let's throw out some stats from wikipedia [1] [2] and see what happens.

Number of shader processors:
-6600 GT: 8+3
-GT 210: 16

Memory interface:
-6600 GT: 128-bit GDDR3
-GT 210: 64-bit DDR2

Memory bandwidth:
-6600 GT: 16 GB/s
-GT 210: 8 GB/s

Theoretical pixel fillrate:
-6600 GT: 2.0 GP/s
-GT 210: 2.356 GP/s

Theoretical texture fillrate:
-6600 GT: 4.0 GT/s
-GT 210: 4.712 GT/s

Looks like the 210 has a slightly better GPU while the 6600 has faster memory. If you're going to see a performance increase at all (and that's not at all certain) it'll probably be relatively small.

The only significant upgrade here is that the GT 210 has a more modern feature set; Direct3D 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 vs. the 6600's Direct3D 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0. The GT 210 also has more memory, built-in audio, HDMI, and I'd guess it has lower power consumption too. So get it if you think the new features are worth it, but don't expect a huge performance boost.

Ryna

The card is on sale because they're quite craptastic. You probably wouldn't even see any improvement over your good ol' 6600GT.

Save up some cash and aim for the beautiful GT 240 or at least the GT 220. With these cards you'll see some bang for your (Canadian) buck.

lowlylowlycook

Hmmmm, isn't the 240 slower than a 8800GT? How much does it sell for?

travathian

It's kinda a dick thing to post the same question in two different forums. Your question was answered already.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=116183

Captain Vash

I don't understand the desire to replace one lame low end card with an almost identically weak low end card.

If budget is a concern, don't throw away $30 on this card, keep saving and buy something good around the $70-$100 price mark.

stopgap

I am also looking to replace my rather craptastic Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO. I think it only has 256mg of ram. Assuming I am eventually hoping to use my next card through directx 11, will a card on sale at around 100 dollars US be able to last? Mind i dont care about supermax resolution, but I do like the shiny.

Ryna

Have a look on Ebay as well.

There's a ton of used 512MB Ati 4870s for around $100, which was and is a very good card..

GrimReaper

Captain Vash wrote: »

I don't understand the desire to replace one lame low end card with an almost identically weak low end card.

If budget is a concern, don't throw away $30 on this card, keep saving and buy something good around the $70-$100 price mark.

The new low end cards can all decode 1080p video using DXVA without breaking a sweat, my ATI 4550 (and before that my 4350) can handle 1080p gpu h264 decoding without any problems and both those cards are low profile passively cooled. (only reason I upgraded from a 4350 to a 4550 was so I could eek out a bit more performance in games.. for example the 4550 plays HL2 Ep 2 at 720p high detail etc without any problem, handles Portal fine with high detail etc too)

Previously the onboard gpu had issues handling video above 720p. (ati hd3200)

EDIT: This is in my HTPC, my desktop pc has a 4870 in it. Obviously I have to go the route of a low end card in my HTPC because the case is low profile so I can only get low profile cards in there and I want as close to quiet as I can so I go passively cooled. (which limits me to the 4350/4550/5450 range)

Captain Vash

GrimReaper wrote: »

Captain Vash wrote: »

I don't understand the desire to replace one lame low end card with an almost identically weak low end card.

If budget is a concern, don't throw away $30 on this card, keep saving and buy something good around the $70-$100 price mark.

The new low end cards can all decode 1080p video using DXVA without breaking a sweat, my ATI 4550 (and before that my 4350) can handle 1080p gpu h264 decoding without any problems and both those cards are low profile passively cooled. (only reason I upgraded from a 4350 to a 4550 was so I could eek out a bit more performance in games.. for example the 4550 plays HL2 Ep 2 at 720p high detail etc without any problem, handles Portal fine with high detail etc too)

Previously the onboard gpu had issues handling video above 720p. (ati hd3200)

EDIT: This is in my HTPC, my desktop pc has a 4870 in it. Obviously I have to go the route of a low end card in my HTPC because the case is low profile so I can only get low profile cards in there and I want as close to quiet as I can so I go passively cooled. (which limits me to the 4350/4550/5450 range)

That definitely makes sense.

I had not considered the 2d side of things.