GeForce 8600 series or ATi HD2600 Which would you buy?

the 8600, but I suggest saving a little more money and getting the superior 8800GT.

Answer #2 is correct - 8800 GT is getting top reviews - but $250 price tag. Ouch!

You should compare the two you are interested in here:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html

Compare the boards on the game(s) and resolutions that you want. Although the HD2600 is not listed, the HD2600 XT *is*. It seems as if the nVidia board is slightly faster both at low and higher resolutions, and it also seems to be about $10 cheaper (newegg).

From what I have read, DX 10 graphics boards are *not* ready for gaming. *All* the reviews that I have read claim that the DX 10 video boards (except for the 8800 series) are not capable of DX 10 gaming. If you are upgrading just to get a DX 10 board, these reviews (and I) advise you to wait until the next gen DX 10 boards arrive. The 8600 GT you buy today will not do a good job with the DX 10 games that arrive next year. If you need to upgrade now, consider a better speed per dollar DX 9 product (like the X1950 Pro at newegg) and plan on upgrading to a DX 10 board next year or the year after.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/

hi mate

i would personally go for the ATi HD2600,as i reckon the geforce cards are overpriced compared to the ati equivelents

however if you can afford it go for the Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB PCI-E,this is a awesome card with amazing specs,compare this the nvidia geforce 8800gtx has just 128 stream processes(replaced pixel pipelines in direct x 9) were as the ati radeon 2900xt hd has a massive 320 stream processes

compare the two cards you listed the GeForce 8600 series has 32 stream processes compared to the ATi HD2600 which has a massive 120 stream processing units,this is nearlly as many as the nvidia king the geforce 8800gtx

so on pound to pound performance the ati hd2600 is the card you should buy,and with a massive 800mhz core clock and 512mb of ddr3 memory running at 1600mhz you have quite a performer

hope this helps

good luck mate !

8600GT hands down, the HD2600 seems to have had nothing but poor reviews unfortunatly. However as stated above, the 8800GT costing around £175 here in Britian is incredable, even giving the 8800GTX a run for its money! If its an 8600GT you are after, the preclocked Fata1ity one is VERY cheap, something like £90 and its excelent bang per buck. My friend has this and it runs UT3 and Crysis pretty damn well

I would definitely go for the ATI HD2600XT. You can get a sapphire from ebuyer for around £65. I have one myself and they have higher core and memory speeds than the 8600. They perform a little slower than the ATI x1950pro, however, it is a DX10 card. I have tested it on full high settings with HalfLife 2 and Oblivion, and Call of Duty 2. 95 fps with HalfLife 2 on max detail. Can`t be bad can it?

geforce is way better than ati. their this thing called a pipeline on the graphica card and a pipline is the type of chips it has on the graphics card. and ati dosnt coem otu with good piplines, they do but not all cards have godo piplines. geforce is a very good brand workds good on all games espicaly the 8000 series with DirectX 10. so go with geforce 8600. heck why dont u spend a little bit mroe and get the next one up. www.tigerdirect.com

GeForce.

Neither, get the new 8800GT, it blows those two cards out of the water.