Battle of Old, Cheap ATI's

Which card should I choose?

  • x850xt pe

    Votes: 6 24.0%

  • HD2600xt (GDDR3)

    Votes: 19 76.0%
  • Total voters
    25
S

superkdogg

Gawd
Joined
Oct 14, 2004
Messages
743
Hey, this is another one of those "Which one should I use" threads, so if those make you have a seizure or otherwise annoy you, please look away.


I have had an x850xt PE for a long, long time now (flashed GTO^2). It has an aftermarket cooler on it and clocks about 10-15% higher than the stock PE speeds.

I recently was looking for a cheap card that will play some games and came across the now-finished deal on Newegg for an Asus 2600xt that cost $28 after shipping and rebate.

The 2600xt doesn't appear to OC that well.

The rest of the rig in question is a A8N-Sli (the one with two x16 lanes) and an Opteron 144 that clocks about 2.8 or so with 1.5 GB of DDR400.

I won't be using any of the HTPC capabilities like the HDMI out with sound or any of that, nor hardware decoding, etc. This rig is just for cheap gaming.

It looks like the cards offer pretty similar performance, with the biggest difference being that one card is DX10-capable (but not really 'capable') and the other is DX8.1 or whatever and not even true DX9.

The way I'm looking at it, a DX10 game would probably cause me to adjust the settings down a ton on the 2600xt so that it might as well be running old shader paths, and the x850xt has more power.

Basically, in a nutshell--Is it stupid to choose the 4-year-old card over the 1-year-old card for any reason?
 
Something tells me the 2600 should be faster than the X850. It's several generations ahead of the X850.

I was using the X800XT (same card, lower clocks) until last spring and it while the card lasted me many years, it was unbearable towards the end. Crysis looked worse than many much older games in SM2.0 mode and ran extremely poorly. Many other games also looked very bad due to the lack of SM3.0. It ran Oblivion at like 20% - 30% the framerate of a 4850... Many new games require at least SM3.0 to even start.
 
X850XT is true DX9.0 but its SM2.0 only support (or SM2.0b) wil hurt you both right now and even more so in the near future.
I believe the 2600XT is faster but even if it wasnt I would opt for it instead of the X850.
 
The x850 is a decent card, and it's definitely DX9, it’s just DirectX9b instead of DirectX9c which means no SM3.0. The only game I ran into that wouldn’t work on my old X850 card was Grid. The games that did run on it still ran great, including CoD4, WoW, and especially source based games like TF2, etc.

Just keep using the X850 IMO unless you find a game that straight-up requires SM3.0, or until you find an awesome deal on something better. No reason not to use what you have now and wait for a great deal to pop up.
 
Its not as cheap, but the 3850 can be had on newegg for $75 AR, and the 9600GT is $80 AR. If you want to play anything recent, those two are hard to beat in price/performance. Would be a huge upgrade over the X850 or 2600xt. You could save some more if you bought a used card..
 
I'd just keep your x850xt unless you need to play a game that requires SM3.0, but you will probably want to upgrade your entire system at that point. Some games that require SM3.0 that I know of off hand are BioShock, Rainbow 6:Vegas, Grid, Mass Effect, etc. I sold my x800xt and picked up a used x1950pro for $40 to play Mass Effect, Vegas, and BioShock.
 
If you can find an old x1900xt for about $30-$40, that would be a decent purchase. I am using mine right now since I sold my 8800GTS 512 and am awaiting the arrival of a GTX 260.

My x1900xt 256mb plays call of duty 4 @ 1900x1200 everything maxed sans AA, smoke effects and depth of field---does 40-60fps just about all the time.

Everyone's other opinions are also quite good.
 
Thanks for the opinions and advice, guys.

Buying something new is not an option right now, even though I know there are good deals out there around $100, sometimes less.

What I didn't mention when I made the OP was that whatever I don't pick will go to my brother for another cheap gaming rig for him.

I think I'll put more time into trying to OC the 2600xt and see where it gets me. I'm also still a little stuck on the fact that any game that needs SM 3.0 (and thanks for clearing up my error on DX versions-you guys are right and I knew it as soon as I read it) will also be too demanding for the 2600 to play well anyways. I have a 19" CRT Samsung that does higher rezs, but my main monitor is a 17" LCD with 12x10 native rez, in case that matters for anybody.
 
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