6800LE Vs 6600GT

[roadie]

I have been looking into this over the past few days. The cheapest prices I have found are £150 for the 6600gt, £140 for the 6800le and £120 for an ex demo 9800pro (all agp).

Out of all of these the 6600gt is the best performer at stock settings and I reckon that it could be overclocked ~10% too. The 6800le is probably the same speed as the 9800pro but of course there is the chance to softmod it to be a 6800gt or np. Is that chance worth the risk and an extra £20? I am not so sure as I picked up a 256bit 9800se as my last card which, I softmodded to a 9800pro. It showed artifacts in dx9 tests but was flawless in unreal tournament 2004. However it died.

So a choice between a 9800pro and a 6600gt. Is the extra £30 worth it in the long haul? I think it is because of the extra fillrate as, fillrate = performance . The memory also seems to be conservatively clocked too so that can aleviate the bandwidth concerns. Then of course there is the sm3 feature set.

Of course everyone is going to have their own opinions on this subject but could it be that the 9700pro at £95 is the best bargain of them all?

[MurphmanL]

Hmm..
Was thinking of upgrading my 9700 Pro to a FX 5950 Ultra as they seem to be handling current affairs quite well pulling around 40 - 50 fps in most games at higher settings. As I never play above 1024* resolution and rarely use AA or AF a FX 5950 U might do well to serve me for a while, where I can also sell the 9700pro which has the artic cooler and get around £70 off the 5950 cost...
Hmm a hard decision to make

[mike_w]

Hmm..
Was thinking of upgrading my 9700 Pro to a FX 5950 Ultra as they seem to be handling current affairs quite well pulling around 40 - 50 fps in most games at higher settings. As I never play above 1024* resolution and rarely use AA or AF a FX 5950 U might do well to serve me for a while, where I can also sell the 9700pro which has the artic cooler and get around £70 off the 5950 cost...
Hmm a hard decision to make

If you never play above 1024x768 and never use AA or AF, then the 9700 Pro is fine! For the price of a 5950 Ultra, you can get a 6600GT, which would be a much better choice. Generally, the 6600GT is better than a 9800XT at lower resolutions, but the higher resolutions, especially with AA and AF, make it struggle and so it doesn't fare so well against the 9800XT. But if you're not playing at high resolutions, then the 6600GT would be a decent card, but ultimately a small performance boost for the money (£150ish)

Since the 68xx series is new, I reckon that there should be a decent price drop after Christmas (or at least I hope so!), but I don't think the last generation high end is going to drop much since it has already dropped quite a lot. The best bet would be to wait after Christmas and see how the prices are then. Hopefully, the 6800 and 6800GT will become more affordable, and the 6800 is a fair bit better than the 6600GT.