Which is better? (Graphics Card Comparison)

Wezoin

Ok, so I'm looking into computers for a friend, found what I see as some good deals in Futureshop (to buy and build it seperately for me would be about $700 more than they're selling it for) only thing is graphics card... Theres two computers (one Gateway, one HP) that are identical except for

Gateway has a: NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE 64MB
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=BDL10001591&catid=

HP has a: nVidia GeForce 6150LE (which from what I understand is 256MB shared?)
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=BDL10001638&catid=24014&logon=&langid=EN

I have no idea what to suggest here, both have open PCI-e slots, and he does intend to upgrade it fairly quickly after he buys it, but I figure that'd probably take 3 - 6 months, so which would be best for him right now? (He does intend to play FEAR Combat, AOE3, Dawn of War, America's Army, stuff like that.

The thing thats worrying me is that "64MB" thing in the 7300...

I did however look at http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/it/vga/specification.asp?pro_id=171 which says that the 7300LE supports 512MB...

Also, any comments about the value in those deals welcome.

exoplasm

First of all, I have to say about both of those: WOW. What the hell were they thinking when they made the decisions on those?

High-end dual core AMD CPUs... 2 gigs of RAM... and a crappy integrated video card?!

You're almost better off going to Dell for a $600 computer combo that has a Core 2 Duo and an actual video card, though Dell's consumer desktop quality was REALLY bad last time I used one (8 months ago or so, 3 out of 5 machines were DOA).

However, of the 2, I'd pick the one with the 7300LE. The 7300 is a newer and better GPU so it's going to outperform the 6150LE with any amount of memory (well, >=64MB anyway).

Have him wait til Vista comes out to upgrade the video card, though. Around that time DX10 compatible cards should be a lot more affordable (if he plans to upgrade to Vista), but also the DX9 cards will be even cheaper.

robaal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units

the above list says that 7300LE has 4pp while the 6150 only 2pp.


The RAM in those computers is the slowest DDR2-533 which is kind of crap, OTOH it supposedly doesn't impact performance that much so :shrug:

You can get 7600GTs as low as $130 so if he could stretch the budget that !0% I'd go for the system with the Samsung monitor, as Acer is a bit crap AFAIK.

Wezoin

exoplasm wrote:

First of all, I have to say about both of those: WOW. What the hell were they thinking when they made the decisions on those?

High-end dual core AMD CPUs... 2 gigs of RAM... and a crappy integrated video card?!

You're almost better off going to Dell for a $600 computer combo that has a Core 2 Duo and an actual video card, though Dell's consumer desktop quality was REALLY bad last time I used one (8 months ago or so, 3 out of 5 machines were DOA).

However, of the 2, I'd pick the one with the 7300LE. The 7300 is a newer and better GPU so it's going to outperform the 6150LE with any amount of memory (well, >=64MB anyway).

Have him wait til Vista comes out to upgrade the video card, though. Around that time DX10 compatible cards should be a lot more affordable (if he plans to upgrade to Vista), but also the DX9 cards will be even cheaper.

So you think a 7300LE with 64MB would outperform a 6150 that has access to its full 256Mb? Also, from the looks of it that chart claims that a 64MB version of the 7300LE doesn't exist... Is it possible that that was just a mistake on the part of Futureshop?

robaal

Wezoin wrote:

exoplasm wrote:

First of all, I have to say about both of those: WOW. What the hell were they thinking when they made the decisions on those?

High-end dual core AMD CPUs... 2 gigs of RAM... and a crappy integrated video card?!

You're almost better off going to Dell for a $600 computer combo that has a Core 2 Duo and an actual video card, though Dell's consumer desktop quality was REALLY bad last time I used one (8 months ago or so, 3 out of 5 machines were DOA).

However, of the 2, I'd pick the one with the 7300LE. The 7300 is a newer and better GPU so it's going to outperform the 6150LE with any amount of memory (well, >=64MB anyway).

Have him wait til Vista comes out to upgrade the video card, though. Around that time DX10 compatible cards should be a lot more affordable (if he plans to upgrade to Vista), but also the DX9 cards will be even cheaper.

So you think a 7300LE with 64MB would outperform a 6150 that has access to its full 256Mb? Also, from the looks of it that chart claims that a 64MB version of the 7300LE doesn't exist... Is it possible that that was just a mistake on the part of Futureshop?

More importantly - the 256MB of the 6150LE is most likely only the shared memory as the list says that it doesn't have any RAM of its own.

But the amount of memory is really unimportant. It's not like they're good enough that you'll be able to use high quality textures (ie. I think the interface of whatever memory they might have is too slow for that).

exoplasm

A 6150LE with 2 gigs of dedicated memory still wouldn't be better, mostly because games don't even use more than 128mb of video memory anyway (maybe 256mb on newer games, I dunno).

Trust me, the more powerful GPU > amount of memory. It's like the 6600GT 128MB vs the 6600 vanilla with 256MB... the GT wins hands down because it has a faster memory interface (GDDR3 vs DDR) and the GPU is overclocked. The 7300LE is a whole new generation of GPU over the 6150LE, so it will perform better just from that. It probably also uses shared memory, though, so they can probably both have as much memory as the other.

Either way, neither of those on-board chips are going to be playing ANY game made in the last couple years at really high settings. They are not really for true gaming usage. You can think of it as a good enough for grandma to use Vista or play a random cheaply made 3D flash game, though it won't stop you from playing most games.

Wezoin

Ok, well yeah, seeing as I run FEAR Combat at fairly high settings with my 6200TC, I take it the 7300LE should be able to pull off decent settings... So it'd last a few months...