Next generations of low end graphics cards

I remember the x1600 as more of an alternative to the 7300GT...
the x18/9k GT,GTO,PRO were certainly nicer ;)


well, my old 6100 IGP performs adequately on windows 8.


I still think the GT 520 is better for basic usage/HD video...

4000 series are stuck with catalyst 12.6 legacy.
 
Truth is I would have been running a geforce 8200 mobo for years if nvidia hadn't cancelled it. The idea of turning off a compatible GPU and using the IGP when not gaming was awesome, I thought I'll definitely get that, then boom, it bombed badly.


Funny you mention the 6100, I'm comtemplating a choice between two AM3+ mobos, one with geforce 6100 (renamed geforce 7025) and one with 760G (radeon 3000).
Both are made by Asrock, have ideal slot layout and IDE.

I wonder which is better electrically made and if taking the X2 to about 3.6GHz would be a good idea.
 
I have a GeForce 8200 motherboard still in-use as my TV gaming rig. ASUS M3N78-VM. It has a Phenom II X4 and a GF 560Ti in it. I don't buy boards without onboard video anymore, though it's pretty hard to do that anymore anyway.

I have also used GeForce 6150. These are basically nForce4 with a GF6/7 IGP that has only 2 pixel pipelines. Best with XP IMO. The southbridge can be buggy, resulting in no NCQ. They do not have AHCI. So they suck for SSDs which you could want to use in the future. The 760G is the better bet since you'll get SB700 or newer.
 
I wouldn't say X1600 was nice.

But actually X1600 Pro with GDDR3 was quite a decent card.

I remember the x1600 as more of an alternative to the 7300GT..

Indeed. ;)

X1600 Pro is perhaps scores wise (3D Mark, etc) a little bit slower than 7300 GT (or perhaps at that time ATi cheated less than nvidia, not to mention image quality where some frames per second could have gone to too :mrgreen: ) but with it I have played games like Quake 4, F.E.A.R, FarCry, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, NFS Carbon, all good games that can be played even today. ;)

7300GT is perhaps the best low-end card in history given how good it was to play with it everything...
 
760G on paper is a lot better,
the IGP is based on the HD2400 (DX10), but with UVD disabled (the full version is called 780G),
also this is a full am2+/am3 chipset, with the higher speed HT and all of that... the 6100 was designed for k8, with HT at 1000MHz...

I bought my first 6100 MB in 2005 I think, the one I'm currently running is from 2007, with the 6150SE (basically the same)

it's funny, but the 6100 is still supported by the latest NV driver, HD3000 is only supported by 12.6 legacy and lower.
 
Maybe if they hadn't priced X1600XT at up to $250 initially. Crazy nonsense just like they tried with X700.

Yes it was too much below the high end in performance. 7300GT could be a very nice one, it could unlock to 7600GS (which itself was dramatically slower than 7600GT so I hated it)

Later on I remember reading about nvidia doing a 65nm geforce 6200 chip, as a kind of internal development and testing thing. This went nowhere, I can't find any mention of it and wonder if it were ever true.
 
But actually X1600 Pro with GDDR3 was quite a decent card.
Do we have an echo going on here or what? These cards came out at $200 and were ripped apart right here on this forum. They are decent in that they function, but they were pathetic at the launch pricing.
 
Do we have an echo going on here or what? These cards came out at $200 and were ripped apart right here on this forum. They are decent in that they function, but they were pathetic for the pricing.

price went down quickly I think,
 
it's funny, but the 6100 is still supported by the latest NV driver, HD3000 is only supported by 12.6 legacy and lower.
For gaming that's probably a problem. For example my 3850 can't run Skyrim correctly and AMD doesn't care. But I think there's more to that story anyway since it has never run the game properly. Of course a GeForce 6 is pretty useless for almost everything recent.
 
Do we have an echo going on here or what? These cards came out at $200 and were ripped apart right here on this forum. They are decent in that they function, but they were pathetic at the launch pricing.

Could have been a little bit more voicy about this generation pricing. :LOL: Which is the worst in history given that the market shrinks and they do nothing to stop it from sinking and world economic crysis which doesn't help either.

price went down quickly I think,

If I'm not mistaken I bought X1600 Pro for 100-110 $ back then, in the end of 2006. ;)
 
For gaming that's probably a problem. For example my 3850 can't run Skyrim correctly and AMD doesn't care. But I think there's more to that story anyway since it has never run the game properly. Of course a GeForce 6 is pretty useless for almost everything recent.

It's certainly more comfortable with old NV cards,
you are probably right,
but

that's Skyrim with the 6100
http://i48.tinypic.com/14mwh7n.jpg
:LOL:
 
it's funny, but the 6100 is still supported by the latest NV driver, HD3000 is only supported by 12.6 legacy and lower.

Yes. It was recently dropped, though, last month. 304.x is the last driver for geforce 6/7. On linux this is maintained with changes made for compatibility on newer kernels and X server versions till 2017 :p

The card I'd really want is the gtx 650 (but still too expsensive), it would be a good later drop-in.
 
Yes. It was recently dropped, though, last month. 304.x is the last driver for geforce 6/7. On linux this is maintained with changes made for compatibility on newer kernels and X server versions till 2017 :p

The card I'd really want is the gtx 650 (but still too expsensive), it would be a good later drop-in.

on Windows 306.97 WHQL supports 6 series,
I'm using 306 with the 6100 on windows 8 (it's the default driver from windows 8, or maybe win update, I didn't install manually)
 
Could have been a little bit more voicy about this generation pricing. :LOL: Which is the worst in history given that the market shrinks and they do nothing to stop it from sinking and world economic crysis which doesn't help either.
I did whine a little but mostly I just didn't buy any of the cards this generation or even suggest them to anyone really. ;) They are priced much better these days though. I expect next generation to see nice high prices again as usual.

The problem I see though is people latch onto the HD 4800 / GTX 2xx era pricing. That was a special case price war that the IHVs got into. AMD had little market share at the time and desperately wanted some. NVIDIA wasn't going to sit back and watch.
 
it's funny, but the 6100 is still supported by the latest NV driver, HD3000 is only supported by 12.6 legacy and lower.

nVidia dropped its support since yesterday http://www.anandtech.com/show/6408/nvidia-releases-31033-beta-drivers-geforce-6-7-series-moved-to-legacy-status

Thou those old cards including ATi counterparts don't get any improvements for years. Even when it comes to UVD if there could be any support thru new codec. For the most of time it might be some bug fix here and there and thats it (and they do same with legacy driver too).

Main difference is that ATi jumped onto three year product life cycle bandwagon and thus obsoletion comes much quicker than with nvidias products. Even HD5000 could come to obsolete list this year if they wish for. But probably because HD6850 is whole year younger and still share same architecture, and they rebranded HD5770 to HD6770 they'll keep support HD5000 series for a year more.

Nvidia does much more product rebrands in their offerings, so supposedly that way support needs to last longer :rofl:


If I'm not mistaken I bought X1600 Pro for 100-110 $ back then, in the end of 2006

Even that was mush when it was compared to 7300GT performance and its lower price. Only bad thing that 7300GT was extremely limited availability (probably because bucks-performance ratio)

In fact what ATi did in those X1600 days was relying on their marketing hype, and they were doing that in such sick manner not having real mainstream dx9.0c card until they released RV570 rejects as X1650XT. That was serious and hasty ATi's try to catch up with 7600GT performance while not relying on two year old products based on piled up RV423 stocks.

Thank god they failed so heavily with R600 so we saw this architecture in HD3870 (RV670) in early 2008 for same 150$ and even HD4800 was popularly priced while budget cards as HD3650/HD3450 (and predecessors HD2600/HD2400) were offered at insanely hig prices comparing their value. But these days are long gone. Budget cards are merged into APU segment.And so nVidia and AMD must rip us off in upper mainstream segment. While nvidia's performance in rip off tasks is just much better.
 
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well, that's a shame for my 6100 :LOL:
still, it have at least a driver from one week ago, released after Win8 with everything working properly.
while the AMD/ATI equivalent (x1100) is probably stuck with a Win Vista driver from years ago
it's hard to talk about improvements, but testing a few Forceware 3xx with the 6100 I had some clear differences on Skyrim.
I think it's crazy that a high end card from 2009 (4890) is already in "legacy support" for AMD, Nvidia from now on it's seems at least will keep the support for the 8800, which is more acceptable given how bad the 7 series are nowadays, but the 8800 and higher are still adequate,

but yes, I would think that the 5k series support is going to be dropped only when they decide is time for the 6 series to go, which is good for my HD5700.

7690m and lower are VLIW5; I also think that some OEM desktop parts are rebranded 5000/6000 series as 7300-7600.



Nvidia was also asking some pretty high prices for their 8600 cards, and performance was not always great (I've owned a few 8600 cards, unfortunately these were the most unreliable cards I have ever owned)
 
We may see low end cards for the next generation of AMD chips. Whilst it is an area where they probably won't spend too many resources I can still see the advantage in having them for the various laptop configurations which come with switchable graphics etc. I guess there wasn't a point in doing the first generation 28nm cards but for the second generation Sea Islands it may make sense with greater volumes. Perhaps it would be good for those new All in One touch computers?
 
I half-expect AMD will just leave Cape Verde in production through 2013 to serve as a low end discrete card and hybrid crossfire solution for Kaveri. It is only 123mm2.
 
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