Serious question, not meant to start a flame-war... 7600GT vs X1800GTO

[news.telusplanet.net]

Ok, I've used ATI cards for years. Can't remember the last other card I
had. But in a moment of weakness, I was doing an upgrade on my home system,
and chose the 7600GT instead of the X1800GTO. In my defense, the X1800 was
25% more money ($230 CDN -> $290).

However, since setting that system up, I've had nothing but headaches.
Oblivion in particular has been a real bugger, and it's getting worse,
rather than better. I get anywhere from 2 seconds to 10 minutes of playing,
then a 30 second lockup. I've gone through 4 sets of NVidia drivers, 2 sets
of motherboard drivers, 2 sets of audio drivers. No joy. Then did some
reading, and it seems the 7xxx series has many issues, primarily with the
factory over-clock that eVGA (my cards manufacturer) and others put on.

So my card's going back tomorrow. I've got another 2 days to exchange it at
the store, then it's dealing with the manufacturer's RMA process, so I'm
going to do it quickly. But my choice would be get another 7600GT and hope
for the best, or switch back to ATI.

The games I'm playing right now are NFS:MW and Oblivion. The rest of my
system, which was built from the ground up about a week ago, looks like:
Intel 830D processor
1GB Mushkin memory (DDR2-5300)
Seagate 320GB SATA HD
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard
Powercolor Theater550 tuner
Windows MCE 2005
Viewsonic VX2025wm monitor (which forces a higher resolution for me than
some of the graphics cards would like)

I don't think I should have issues running the games I'm trying to run, but
I am. Sucks to be me. It also pauses like that during the 3DMark03
benchmark, so I don't think it's just a goofy setup of the game. I'm
downloading the 3DMark06 right now; give that a try. I suspect I'll get the
same. The CPU, motherboard, and GPU all report temps in the normal range
(<60 deg C for the CPU, under 40 for the MB, and under 70 for the GPU). On
thing that was interesting is that the NVidia control panel gives the
ability to overclock out of the box. So I figured I'd try underclocking it.
Cut my clock/memory speeds in half, and still get a "You got errors with
this setting; changing back to factory default". Tried overclocking it just
1 MHz, in case it didn't handle underclocking very well, got the same error.


BTW, I'll be getting a Sapphire X1800GTO, if that's the route I go. Any
comments on how noisy it is would be appreciated. I know there's
after-market coolers for them, but still...

Clint

 

[news.telusplanet.net]

BTW, I've got my stuff packed into an Antec Sonata II case, which has an
Antec TruePower 430.

Clint

 

[Sonoflal]

BTW, I've got my stuff packed into an Antec Sonata II case, which has an
Antec TruePower 430.

Clint

i too thought of a 7600GT card for my upgrade but didn`t like the fact it
had 128bit memory bus. i`ve got an X1800GTO from HIS with their IceQ3
heatsink and fan assembly and i`ve also unlocked the 4 extra pixel pipelines
that are disabled as standard (the card is really a disabled XL). The fan
can be noisy as its temp controlled but on idle its ok. Idle temps for my
card @600core 600mem are 44 degrees and on full load it goes no further than
52 degrees but the fan gets noisy. Its a much bigger card than the 7600GT
and requires a PCI-e power connector too but you get an adapter if you don`t
have one one you psu. Oblivion has an issue with the catalyst drivers
concerning using HDR rendering and FSAA at the same time (ATI cards can do
this, i don`t think Nvidia cards can) and requires a patch from ATI`s
website.

hope this helps.

 

[DDC]

i too thought of a 7600GT card for my upgrade but didn`t like the fact it
had 128bit memory bus. i`ve got an X1800GTO from HIS with their IceQ3
heatsink and fan assembly and i`ve also unlocked the 4 extra pixel pipelines
that are disabled as standard (the card is really a disabled XL). The fan
can be noisy as its temp controlled but on idle its ok. Idle temps for my
card @600core 600mem are 44 degrees and on full load it goes no further than
52 degrees but the fan gets noisy. Its a much bigger card than the 7600GT
and requires a PCI-e power connector too but you get an adapter if you don`t
have one one you psu. Oblivion has an issue with the catalyst drivers
concerning using HDR rendering and FSAA at the same time (ATI cards can do
this, i don`t think Nvidia cards can) and requires a patch from ATI`s
website.

hope this helps.

The x1800gto from HIS or connect3d is the card to chose. Also it
surpass the 7600gt the regular one and not the xxx version from xfx.

Its got every thing you need and a little room for over clocking and
unlocking.

But attention in the future these card will not be able to unlock the
extra pipe because ati is replacing the regular r520 core with on that
has a LE at in the core meaning witch mean that it will be more
difficult to unlock it.

finally those 7600gt score around 5500 points vs 6500 minimum in
3dmark05 with a x1800gto.

I got one from sapphire it was the only one available on the market
but hey it a good card.

For the ati patch my recommendation is that you forget that, has it
will put more stress on the card and reduce the gamming experience on
that kind of card. HDR only is in most situation of the game
acceptable at 1024x764x32 and 76mhz + high details.

i'im on a a3200 939 not oc + 1gig of ram in single channel mode and a
nf4 board.

 

[shawad]

i too thought of a 7600GT card for my upgrade but didn`t like the fact it
had 128bit memory bus. i`ve got an X1800GTO from HIS with their IceQ3
heatsink and fan assembly and i`ve also unlocked the 4 extra pixel pipelines
that are disabled as standard (the card is really a disabled XL). The fan
can be noisy as its temp controlled but on idle its ok. Idle temps for my
card @600core 600mem are 44 degrees and on full load it goes no further than
52 degrees but the fan gets noisy. Its a much bigger card than the 7600GT
and requires a PCI-e power connector too but you get an adapter if you don`t
have one one you psu. Oblivion has an issue with the catalyst drivers
concerning using HDR rendering and FSAA at the same time (ATI cards can do
this, i don`t think Nvidia cards can) and requires a patch from ATI`s
website.

hope this helps.

My X1800GTO IceQ3 never gets noisy - according to ATITray tool my fan
is set to 36% unless the GPU goes above 70'C (which it never does,
maxes out at 56'C). Not sure where this is set (driver or BIOS) but
you can adjust and save the settings using ATI Tray Tool.

I agree (as do my sore fingers!) that it is a huge card - especially if
you're trying to squeeze it into a loaded SFF case like my Sugo SG01-E.

The 7600GT cards are notoriously noisy with stock fans.

 

[Clint]

So I plugged in my Sapphire X1800GTO (another large card, and HEAVY!).
Works great, solves my problems. With this card, the temp never gets much
below 60, and gets just over 70 when running Oblivion with moderately high
graphics settings (no overclocking). I may play with the Tray Tool to see
if I can adjust the fan, as I have had to turn up my speakers when playing
the game, since it's louder than I'd like. But on the plus side, for
everything besides games, it's virtually silent. Ah, well, there's always a
Zalman HS...

BTW, within 15 minutes of getting home with my new card, I had it up and
running in Oblivion. Zero freezing in about 3 hours of playing. It's SOOOO
nice to be able to play without fighting that lockup issue. I also liked
the fact that with the ATI card, for some reason I have many more
wide-screen display options in Oblivion. With the NVidia card, I had
1680x1050 and 1600x960 (I think). Neither of which the 7600 GT could handle
with any sort of graphic candy turned on. With the X1800GTO, I've currently
got it set for 1024x640, which works pretty sweet. I tried it at 1280x800,
but it was a little too choppy for me. I'll probably try tweaking the
settings a bit to get back up to the 1280x800 resolution, though.

Clint

 

[Sonoflal]

So I plugged in my Sapphire X1800GTO (another large card, and HEAVY!).
Works great, solves my problems. With this card, the temp never gets much
below 60, and gets just over 70 when running Oblivion with moderately high
graphics settings (no overclocking). I may play with the Tray Tool to see
if I can adjust the fan, as I have had to turn up my speakers when playing
the game, since it's louder than I'd like. But on the plus side, for
everything besides games, it's virtually silent. Ah, well, there's always
a Zalman HS...

I founf the fan settings and adjusted it a bit and its pretty quiet now. i
can hear my cpu fan over it now. cheers for that.

 

[Clint]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the heat cut-off point is, but I might try tweaking
it a bit. It's only when the fan kicks into high speed that it becomes a
real issue, and that seems to happen at about 70 degrees. And I think I've
got a CPU HS picked out to fix THAT problem. *sigh* I guess it never really
ends. You just move the bottle-neck from one place to the other. First
this part is the noisiest, so you replace/fix it. Then this one is, etc.
You can substitute slowest for noisiest, at your leisure...

Clint