Alternative to Nvidia Gforce 8600 card?

Question

My set up for now:

AMD Athalon XP 1800+
1.53 GHZ and 512 MB Ram.

OS: XP 64

I'll be upgrading the processor and the ram (which is not a problem at all and fairly cheap) so I do not need anyone to say I need a new PC. But for Video Cards I'm looking at at NVIDIA GeForce 8600 card. I'm wondering if there's anything better or just as good as it but for a better and/or matching price. This is mainly for the game Bioshock and for DV editing. Thank you.

Just some quickie details:

Processor I'm upgrading to: AMD Athalon XP Processor 3200 and socket A 462.

Upgrading to 2GB Ram.

Answer 1

Athlon XP is on socket A format and that means motherboards with AGP slot ONLY!

If you can not wait for the Geforce 8600 AGP variant, you could consider the 7600GS AGP variant.

I doubt if your motherboard could support the fastest XP 3200+ (Barton) that runs on 400fsb. Your board may just be capable of supporting 266fsb or 333 the most.

Your motherboard and new processor would most likely bottleneck the faster cards like 7900GS, X1950 pro or 7950GT even if you overclock the processor.

Answer 2

If you have to have DirectX 10 and Vista NOW then the Nvidia 8600 GT or ATI HD 2600XT are both decent.

However if you dont have Vista and DirectX 10 then you should go for the Nvidia 7600 GT/ATI X1650XT which preform just as well but are around $20 cheaper.

For the same price as the 8600 GT (or maybe a few dollars more) you can get the Nvidia 7900 GS or ATI X1950GT which offer slightly better preformence.

Beware of the 8600 GTS! It is as powerful as the 7900GS but more quite more expensive!

Answer 3

If Direct X 10 isn't important, then get either a ATI Radeon x1950 Pro or an Nvidia Geforce 7900gs.

If Direct X 10 is important, I'd save up for the 8800GTS 320mb as the performance gap between the 8600GT (and the GTS) is a lot. If you get the 8600 GT it might not be fast enough for BioShock.

Personally, I'd get the 8800GTS 320mb.

Answer 4

Well since you're running XP there's no need for DirectX 10 hardware support.

The Radeon X1950 Pro and Geforce 7950 are both faster, but slightly more expensive.

The new Radeon 2600XT performs and costs about the same as the 8600GT.

The GeForce 7600GT has almost identical performance to the 8600GT but costs about $30 less

Answer 5

You could look at the ATI Radeon cards. Do you have a PCI Express X16 slot? If you will never use DirectX 10 you might also consider the 7000 series cards.
Graphics card gaming performance charts:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=399&type=expert&pid=1
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1595&Itemid=40&limit=1&limitstart=2

Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

How to pick the perfect graphics card
http://www.pcmag.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2150316/pick-perfect-graphics-card

DirectX 9 vs 10
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/directx-9-vs-directx-10-worth-upgrading-to-vista-for-243099.php


Common Video Card Buses and their Max Bandwidth
http://www.directron.com/expressguide.html
PCI 132 MB/s
AGP 4X 1,066 MB/s
AGP 8X 2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 16x 8000 MB/s

CPU gaming performance charts:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html

CPU Benchmarks
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/index.php

Misc. notes 8000 series cards:
The 8800 Ultra is twice as fast as the 8600 GTS.
The 8600GTS is about 15% faster than 8600GT
The 8600GTS is 2 1/2 to 3 times the speed of the 8400GS.
The 8400GS is too slow for gaming.