Anyone know much about this VGA Card?

[Khalil]

Radeon X1600PRO 512MB AGP
I like the Nvidia 6800 GS but its twice as much as this card and I am building a computer for my brother with an Asus board I already own that has an AGP port.

[gtucker329]

Decent card. Almost bought one for my brother's computer but the budget was too tight. Uses older GDDR2 memory but the core and memory clocks are pretty good. The only thing I didn't like about the card was no external exhaust port like the X1600XT or X850XT. If he's into gaming I would pick out a card that had GDDR3 memory. However, the card I put into my brothers computer was an overclocked radeon 9550 and it played most games just fine.

[blue60007]

No need to get one with 512MB of memory...it won't do you any good (but if that one has higher clock speeds then get it). If your brother is going to be gaming the 6800GS would be the best choice (of course it costs more though...)

[Khalil]

Originally Posted by blue60007 No need to get one with 512MB of memory...it won't do you any good (but if that one has higher clock speeds then get it). If your brother is going to be gaming the 6800GS would be the best choice (of course it costs more though...)

How come the 512MB wont do any good?
His budget is way tight and I can't fit in the 6800GS which is a far better card. From the specs I am reading the ATI seems to be a better value than the 6600GT.

[discodanman45]

It is no that the 512 MB video card won't do any good. It is just that faster memory is more important then memory size when playing video games. Current video games will not utilize 512 MB of video memory, even at high settings. Having 256 MB of faster memory will actually allow you to get higher FPS. However, in the future, 512 MB might be necessary to play games at the highest settings.

More video memory is more important for video editing and doing image processing. For video editing, more memory is much more impotant then faster memory.

So if your brother is a gamer, i would also suggest a 256 MB video card with the fastest clock speeds. The 512 MB video cards are a new fad, that really are not that important for gaming, well not yet anyways

[blue60007]

Also, I believe it depends on the memory interface. I don't think it can even properly address 512MB if it's only a 256-bit interface. Something like that, can't remember exactly. I've seen comparisons of two exact cards, except one with 512MB of memory and there is no improvement.

[kram 2.0]

The Radeon X1600 Pro about matches the performance of the 6600GT - it's a nice mid-range card. One of the biggest merits about it is the availability of AVIVO, ATI's new rendering interface. AVIVO's power would be readily apparant if you do any movie-viewing.

On a sidenote, there should not be any visible difference between a 512MB and a 256MB card unless you get into high-end cards. Very few every-day tasks and even games would utilize the full 512MB VRAM.

kram

[Khalil]

Thanks guys, he bough the 256MB version. I will post an update to let you all know how it went when we install the card and test it with BF2 and EQ2