256mb 6600 vs 7300GS

[ctid]

Simple question, complicated answer I'm guessing . Which out of these two cards is best? They are both around the same price and I'm assuming the 7300 will be better for gaming but am not sure.

TIA

[herulach]

i would have though 6600, as the low end models tend to be utter dross, but ive never seen any benchies on the 7300 so cant be sure.

[ctid]

The 6600 has more pixel pipelines but the 7300 has a higher core and memory clock. This is why I dont know which to go for.

[Tobeman]

I would have thought a 6600, as far as I'm aware the 7300 is to the 7-series what the 6200 was to the 6-series, a method of displaying something without gobbling up system mem

If you can it might be worth streching to a 6600GT. Although for nearly the same price some of the ATI X8xx series may be within your price range, and as far as I know the majority of these out-perform the 6600GT, but won't have support for some of the fancy technologies such as Shader Model 3. I think I'm right in saying this..

[dureth]

I'd say go for the 6600 as it should be quicker at stock.

[Mattstarky]

If your up for a bit of overclocking. You could match the 7300's GPU and Mem speed. theres loads of overhead in 6600's.

[sawyen]

yea, second to that... 6600 can rev pretty high given the right cooling, but I suppose the gain isnt as substantial...

A 6600 at 540MHz is roughly similar to one at only 500MHz...

DDR2 should see you to about 900-1Ghz tops..

[ctid]

I got a 6600 today. I had a choice between 128mb for £60 and 512mb for £70 so I went for the 512mb. I got 2853 in 3dMark05 with it after clocking it from 300/550 to 384/719. This is on the stock cooler. I might get a better cooler later on but its good enough for me atm.

[sawyen]

funny it only hit 384... I was expecting it to reach 470+MHz no less..

[ctid]

I used the auto max clock finder in Coolbits 2. Is there anything which would allow me to get it higher?

[Applecrusher]

Manually moving the slider up to 500+...

[sawyen]

Test whether it passes the Nv test.. then run it on ATI tools again to look for artifact.. if its totally screwed, artifacts shud immediately appear in like less than 20 secs..

I would be suprised if the 6600 core cant even take 450MHz.. Most ppl I know get to run their chips right up to 530ish.. on average anyways..

[ctid]

It passes the Nv test and ATi tools one with no errors. Will try pushing it tonight. Temp is only 32C at full load.

[sawyen]

32C is pretty peanuts tbh..

Try upping it to 450ish and test it out with increments of 10Mhz till you hit a wall...

If your board allows AGP volts mods like mine.. bringing it from 1.5 to 1.6V gave me an extra 30ish MHz, tho I never bothered to use it as it heats up the card way waaay too much..

[ctid]

My card is PCI-E so the voltmod wouldnt work

I'll try at 450 now. What temperature should I be stopping at?

[ctid]

530/730 looks like the most I can get without artifacting. Will better cooling let me go higher or is this the cards max? The max temp I have seen from this card is 49C.

edit: Just ran 3dMark05 and got 3427 . Big increase from the stock card.