Controversy between memory size and video card speed

[danielj]

I would like to choose wisely between memory size and video card speed.My main objective is,for example, to run 32k textures of Mars and Earth with frame rate about 30 fps.In this case,should I choose a Geforce 6600 GT 128 MB or a Geforce 6800 256 MB?The 6600 GT 128 is faster than the 6800 256.
Did someone have these cards and could settle up the question?

[ANDREA]

And I add the other option, i.e. the GeForce 6600 GT 256 Mb (AGP, my card does not accept PCI).
What's the improvement between the 6600 GT 128 and 6600 GT 256?
Is it worth the price increase?
Thank you for your comments, I've to change my card that, as you see below, is at least two generations old.
Bye

Andrea

[Fightspit]

I would like to choose wisely between memory size and video card speed.My main objective is,for example, to run 32k textures of Mars and Earth with frame rate about 30 fps.In this case,should I choose a Geforce 6600 GT 128 MB or a Geforce 6800 256 MB?The 6600 GT 128 is faster than the 6800 256.
Did someone have these cards and could settle up the question?

Go to :
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... index.html
for AGP graphic cards

and :
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... index.html
for PCI-Express graphic cards

Bye !

[danielj]

I know this site and I have read the test.It doesn??t help anything.
The controversy is related to Celestia,only.For games,the 6600 GT 128 is much faster than the GF 6800 256.But Celestia needs memory,and not only speed.

Go to :
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... index.html
for AGP graphic cards

and :
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... index.html
for PCI-Express graphic cards

Bye ![/quote]

[danielj]

There is no review of a Geforce 6600 GT 256,unfourtanetely.

And I add the other option, i.e. the GeForce 6600 GT 256 Mb (AGP, my card does not accept PCI).
What's the improvement between the 6600 GT 128 and 6600 GT 256?
Is it worth the price increase?
Thank you for your comments, I've to change my card that, as you see below, is at least two generations old.
Bye

Andrea

[guest jo]

deleted

[Don. Edwards]

danielj,
Don't be fooled. The 6800 series of cards is faster no matter what. It has more piplines for rendering 3D than the 6600 does, 16 versus 8. That a double in the amount of piplines. Also the 6800 GT's memory is faster. When all this is taken into consideration the only chioce for speed is the 6800 GT. I am sure if you look around you can a good price on a 256Mb model.

Celestia treats your video card just as one of the newer high end games would actualy even harder because no game loads 16k textures into memory. Actualy the most important feature to look for in the cards is memory bandwidth. The higher the memory bandwidth the faster Celeatia can load textures. So look at the specs when it comes to memory bandwidth and you will see that the 6800 series is far faster than the 6600 series in this as well. If I am not mistaken even my GeForce FX 5900 XT has more memory bandwidth than the 6600 does. So look around and look deeper into the specs and what they really mean.

BTW were are you getting 32k full size textures. They are not that easy to make. I should know.

Don.

[danielj]

OK.I don??t know if I can get a Geforce 6800 GT because they are too expensive in my country.Anyway,the 6800 non Ultra PCI-E has 19.2 GB/s in bandwidht while the 6600 GT has 16 GB/s.So I should prefer the 6800,altough it is a bit more expensive.Actualy,the 6800 non Ultra has 12 pipelines,not 16.Even so,it??s better.
But you are talking about the 6800 GT and not the 6800 non Ultra,so if I can??t buy a 6800 GT,should the best cost-benefit be with the 6600 GT?

danielj,
Don't be fooled. The 6800 series of cards is faster no matter what. It has more piplines for rendering 3D than the 6600 does, 16 versus 8. That a double in the amount of piplines. Also the 6800 GT's memory is faster. When all this is taken into consideration the only chioce for speed is the 6800 GT. I am sure if you look around you can a good price on a 256Mb model.

Celestia treats your video card just as one of the newer high end games would actualy even harder because no game loads 16k textures into memory. Actualy the most important feature to look for in the cards is memory bandwidth. The higher the memory bandwidth the faster Celeatia can load textures. So look at the specs when it comes to memory bandwidth and you will see that the 6800 series is far faster than the 6600 series in this as well. If I am not mistaken even my GeForce FX 5900 XT has more memory bandwidth than the 6600 does. So look around and look deeper into the specs and what they really mean.

BTW were are you getting 32k full size textures. They are not that easy to make. I should know.

Don.

[Don. Edwards]

danielj,
Don't count out that 6800 basic soo fast. True it only has 12 of its 16 pipes turned on but for the price it is a winner. One nice thing about the 6800 is that those addisional pipes can be turned on through shoftware manipulation. Most people are able to at least get an addisional 2 pipes turned on while a minority can get all four working. That is somethng that can't be done at all with the 6600 series card as they are base on a totaly differnent chip that has only 8 pipe total. so the 6800 basic has the ability to be tweaked at the driver level to make it better. Somethhng to think of.
Also that memory bandwidth you mentioned is pretty good. My card is quoated to have 22Gb/s bandwidth. The reason some of the older cards seem to have more banswidth than the newer cards I believe has something to do with the speed of the chips but I can't be sure. The change of arcitecture from the 5900 series to the 6800 series made a few changes that kind of flipped things around in some areas. One is the even though the 6800 is often clocked lower than the 5900 and 5950 series it is still a more powerful card even at the lower clock rate. That makes up for some of the differences. I hope this helps.


Don.