[Pc_Support] Re: 600GT or 6800LE?

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 20:14 -0400, Jason Boxman wrote:
> I believe the difference is the 6800LE has 256-bit memory bus (but still DDR1 
> RAM) whereas the 6600GT only has 128-bit.  The 6600GT has a faster memory 
> speed and core speed, though.

It all depends.  At the GPU core, here is the breakdown
[ From AnandTech:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238 ]

                 Fab    Vertex   Pixel      Memory
                ------  ------   -----    ----------
GeForce 6200    0.11um    3        4      64/128-bit
GeForce 6600    0.11um    3        8        128-bit
GeForce 6800    0.13um    6       16        256-bit

>From there, you can play games with the configurations.  E.g., the
"GT" (as well as Ultra) editions have DDR3, instead of DDR, the former
having clock rates much higher than the latter.

Ironically, I haven't seen a 6600GT DDR3 with more than 128MB of RAM,
but the 6600 DDR is available with 256MB.  The AGP 6200 is typically
available with 128MB of RAM, the PCIe variants are 128MB for the
original, 16, 32 and 64MB for the "TurboCache" (64, 128, 256MB "main
memory" usage).

If you were buying last fall, or even earlier this year, I'd say go for
the 6800GT.  But given the new 7000 series, I'd say spend as far under
$200 as you can, and upgrade when the prices fall, or a "value" 7000
series comes out.

I'm kinda kicking myself for buying a GeForce 6800GT at the beginning of
April, instead of waiting a couple of months for a 6800Ultra 512MB for
not much more, or even the 7800GTX for a little beyond that.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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