So: 6800GS, 7600GT, or a 6600GT?

I am considering upgrading from my ATI X800GTO to an NVidia card of somewhat similar cost, and capability, specifically for SL purposes.

To briefly summarize the specs for the various cards, and their approximate prices from Newegg:

6600GT - 8 Pixel lines, 128 bit, 500 MHz Core, 1000 Mhz Mem, $140

6800GS - 12 Pixel Lines, 256 bit, 450 Mhz Core, 1080 Mhz Mem, $169

7600GT - 12 Pixel Lines, 128 Bit, 580 Mhz Core, 1500 MHz Mem, $190

for purposes of comparison, the GTO has:

X800GTO - 12 Pixel Lines, 256 Bit, 400 MHz Core, 980 MHz Mem, $140

and just for interest:

X850XT - 16 Pixel Lines, 256 Bit, 520 MHz Core, 1080 MHz Mem, $170.

From what I read, SL favours NVidia, and the main reason I am considering this is that I crash once or twice a night, while my wife's system, which has a 6600, seems fine.

I am interested to hear what the TechIntelligensia has to say . .

btw, my system config is an Asrock 939 MB, AMD 64/3000 (running at 2.4MHz) 2 GB RAM, SATA 3 Drive.

Thank you!

honestly nVidia is a sneaky bunch. I know the 6800GS and maybe the 7600GT actually have 16 pipelines but they're disabled on the board. Once someone decides to spend the few thousand for experimentation you can actually get even more out of them once they find out what to mod to unlock the pipelines. But the GS cards are nice because you can simply overclock them and have them perform as good as their GT counterparts even with stock cooling.

Thanks Ron,

In your opinion, would one see a significant improvement in SL by going to a 7800GT or a 7900GT, instead of a 6800GS?

In other words, for a given CPU/RAM and bandwidth configuration (and I think bandwidth is a significant issue at this point, since my wife and I both play SL, and that on a 1.5Mb/s DSL connection; considering getting her her own DSL line, lol) How much difference is 12 Pixel Lines going to make, as opposed to 16, 20 or even 24, in SL?

Another question, where can I get a list of the Secondlife.exe command line switches?

Thanks for the insights!

Well the only signifigance from using a 7800GT or 7900GT for just Second Life would be Anti-Alaising and Ansitropic-Filtering capabilities. If all you play is Second Life a 6800GS would do you fine, but if you play other games and plan on playing other games I'd get a 7 series card. Reason being SL is pretty much 90 - 95% dependant on your CPU & RAM. You really won't notice a signifigant gain.