Would 9800pro -> 7600gt be an upgrade? If so, how much?

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Jan 25, 2002
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Well, it's closing in on upgrade time again; my brave ol' Barton 2500+/A7n8x/1G/9800Pro is starting to get a touch long in the tooth.

Two reasons--one, it's just old, and two, I got a 2005FPW monitor which has a widescreen native resolution of 1680x1050. And I likes my widescreen (heh).

At any rate, most of my gaming is still fine (lots of WoW these days, which is pretty friendly to hardware). But I'm itching to play Oblivion and a couple of other new releases, so I'm considering the upgrade thang again. Oblivion should play on the 9800, but I'm not sure it'll like the 9800 at 1680x1050...

So I'm looking at the DFI Ultra-D, a Venice 3200+ (with moderate OC; I am on water), 2G... but I'm unsettled on the video card.

I'm a cheap bastard, basically, shooting for the "high midrange". The 7600GT sounds like a great part, but if it won't be a pretty major upgrade, I'll consider the extra $100 for the 7900GT. Whatever card I get should be able to handle 1680x1050 with aplomb (with that resolution I'm pretty moderate on AA--I like it, but I like smooth framerates better).

Unfortunately, since the brave ol' 9800 pro is missing from modern benchmarks, I have no standard of comparison with new cards. Is the 7600 a big enough upgrade that I'll feel it, or should I save my pennies and go for the 7900?
 
Get the 7900GT. Steal the $100 if you have to. THe 7900GT will run Oblivion at 1680x1050 at full settings with ease. It will perform well on the new games for quite a while.
 
A jump from 9800 to a 7600gt is a considerable jump, not really small and not really huge. One thing I would like to point out is the 7600gt is 128 bit memory architechture which isn't as good as the new standard 256 bit.
 
7900 GT is more then $100 more than a 7600 GT. Look around, you can find a 7600 GT on newegg for $189 USD last time I looked. A 7900 GT is like 320-350. I highly reccomend a 7600 GT, coupled with your new rig, it will be yield at least 2.5 times higher fps in newer games.
 
The jump from Radeon 9800 Pro to GeForce 7600 GT/GS is about 3x fold.
During the heavier scenes instead of 15fps you'll get 45fps.

45fps is a nice 'weighted minimum' fps to have, esp compared to 15fps.

Just how well it will perform depends on the rest of your system.

Is the 7600 GT/GS available in AGP too ?, just like they made a 7800 GS (although the 7800 GS was impaired when compared to the 7800 GT, if they did something similar with the AGP varient of 7600 GT then look out).

I hope nVidia didn't impair it, it only hurts their sales. How many people upgrade to an nVidia nForce 4 platform just to get PCIe x16 video ? (Not many).
 
Hmm. The Egg currently has one card with a $15 MIR (Beware the Evils of MIRs, but still) which puts it at about $175, with the 7900gt at $320. So it's more like a $150-or-so difference, which is a bit more of a big deal--almost twice the money for what, 150% of the performance or so.

So it becomes a question of a) do I want to spend the extra, and b) if so, is it better spent getting an SLI board and the 7600 (for future upgrades) or sticking with the ultra-D and getting the 7900.

Bit of a tough call. I'd like to stick with the next motherboard for a couple more upgrades (x2 chip later on, and a few more vid cards). Hmm. Hmm. If my current board/CPU was more modern I'd push for a simple AGP upgrade, but I'd rather spring for the full x64/PCIe upgrade if I'm going to go through the trouble.

Wish I knew how the "offload physics onto your graphics card" wars are going to go (would make the SLI a bit more tempting) but I think I'd rather keep upgrading single vid cards...

'course, even if NVidia wins that, getting a new vid card for primary and keeping the old one for physics acceleration is kinda tempting too, assuming nonhomogenous setups like that would work.

I hate this part of upgrades. Much more fun once the parts appear and you can put 'em together (heh).
 
If you're worried about spending a lot of money all at once I'd recommend getting the 7600GT with an SLI board. Then down the road when you can stomach it shell out the dough for another 7600GT and you'll have a system that should outperform a 7900GT.
Personally, I'd prefer to get a single 7900GT though and do the same thing with 7900GTs as I just mentioned with the 7600GTs. :roll: I'm really tired right now and don't feel like going into my logic right now. Just so you know I'm sorta cheap too... but its ballanced with me wanting a GOOD system that also has good bang for the buck.
I recently upgraded from an XP2200 (OCd to a 2400)/512/R9800Pro to an X2 3800/2G/7800GT (460/1100). It meets my needs well. The x2 processor came with a free cheapo ECS board, and I think I'm going to replace it with an good SLI board and double up the cards 😀

Not really sure where I was going with this.
-mcg
 
Hmm. The Egg currently has one card with a $15 MIR (Beware the Evils of MIRs, but still) which puts it at about $175, with the 7900gt at $320. So it's more like a $150-or-so difference, which is a bit more of a big deal--almost twice the money for what, 150% of the performance or so.
Click to expand...

The 7600GT is a pretty good deal, ditto the 7600GS at the lower end if you can find it cheap.

But, without going indepth a lot myself, if the 7900GT has an 150% increase in performance (in the games/resolutions you use) for 100% more cost, that is a better bang-per-buck.

7600GT = 100% / $175 = .57 per $

7900GT = 250% / $320 = .78 per $

So if the performance difference is as big as you say, "value" wise the 7900GT is heads and shoulders better. Of course you need then to ask, "How long will I use this GPU" and "Do I plan to transition to DX10 or will I wait until DX10+1" "How much do I really game" and so forth.
 
As you have agp which rules out the 7600gt for the moment as it is currently pci-e only.I would get a 6800gs which is roughly the same performance as the 7600gt becasue you only have a barton 2500 i wouldnt bother with the 7800gs as it will need much juice than a barton 2500 to get the best out of it.
 
I think it's well worth. I have a plain 6600 clocked at 300/550 and its benchmarks are equal to a plain 9800. I have a socket 754 sempron and 512 ram. Considering that my 8 pipe 6600 gt equals a 9800, i guess 7600GT, its 12 pipes and some 500 something gpu and 1400 something memory will give a nice improvemente in performance.
I dont know, some people in this forum just seem to simply ignore money and say: buy a 7900GT
 
ZOMG tired... (16-hour day which started at 2am).

Anyway... that may explain some of my confusion.

Acert93: I may have gotten my percentages confused there. I should have said "200% cost for 150% performance" (most 7900 GT benchies that I've seen have it at about half again the performance of the 7600).

Hmm. I'll chew on it a bit. I'm usually so slow to upgrade things that by the time I would get a second vid card to SLI, SM 4.0 would be out and I'd have faster frame rates but no new features. Hmm. Hm.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback; sounds like I can't go too far wrong.

Dos1986: I have AGP for now, but I'm replacing mobo/cpu for socket 939. I wouldn't bother getting an new vid card for the current mobo/cpu.
 
I would recommend the 7600GT, especially any Golden Sample or XXX or OC version to be on anyones short list of 'bargain' cards
This card is a smoker.
Don't just read the benchies.
See the Killer in action.
Nice.
Sweet.
Thought the X800XL was a killer, but the 7600GT killed that too.

3Dmk '03=
7600GT=12,685
X800XL=10,365
 
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