Originally posted by phatosealpha
Well, most of the vanilla 6600s with 256 MBs of ram use slower 500Mhz ram, while the 6800 with 128 MB use slightly faster 700Mhz ram. Additionally, the 6600's use a 128-bit memory bus while the 6800's use a 256-but memory bus. The 6800 therefore has less memory, but has considerably faster access to it.
This is of course refering to the non-gt versions of both cards. The gt versions both use fast GDDR3 ram, but the 6800gt has the 256 bit bus while the 6600gt has the 128 bit bus, meaning the 6800gt again has faster access to memory.
as for gt models or sli i dont really care, im not geeky enough to buy a setup like that. but back to thre memory thing, whats the difference performance wise? i know more memory means bigger textures and less swapping them back and fourth between system memory and the vid card (a perforance saver iirc). but what kinda boost would i get using a card with faster memory over a card with more, slower memory. im gonna buy a 6600 256 meg card (pcix16) for about $150, a 128 meg 6800 sells for about $50 more is the latter card gonna be worth the extra $50 or will i get more bang for my buck with the former? as soon as my paycheck shows up im ordering parts.
