New to nVidia: advice sought

I recently bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and after an error-plagued
installation the card was dead within a week. I have vowed to switch to
nVidia but where to start? For a budget of £200-250, what would be best for
my 2.0GHz Pentium 4?

Thanks very much...

Ben

Look for a 6800GT. You'll be very ahppy with it.

DaveL


"Benski" wrote in message
...
I recently bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and after an error-plagued
installation the card was dead within a week. I have vowed to switch to
nVidia but where to start? For a budget of £200-250, what would be best
for
my 2.0GHz Pentium 4?

Thanks very much...

Ben

"DaveL" wrote in message
...

" Look for a 6800GT. You'll be very ahppy with it. "



It will be severely held back by a 2Ghz P4. Perhaps the OP can list his
entire system. By selling some stuff at www.ebay.co.uk , he could use his
budget to do an upgrade of other parts too.

"Cuzman" wrote in message
...
"DaveL" wrote in message
...

" Look for a 6800GT. You'll be very ahppy with it. "



It will be severely held back by a 2Ghz P4. Perhaps the OP can list his
entire system. By selling some stuff at www.ebay.co.uk , he could use his
budget to do an upgrade of other parts too.



Bull****...

"Kill Bill" wrote in message
...

"Cuzman" wrote in message
...
"DaveL" wrote in message
...

" Look for a 6800GT. You'll be very ahppy with it. "



It will be severely held back by a 2Ghz P4. Perhaps the OP can list his
entire system. By selling some stuff at www.ebay.co.uk , he could use
his
budget to do an upgrade of other parts too.



Bull****...

Depends what he wants to play. D3 will see considerable benefit, but older
games may not. I know its not exactly a game, but to demonstrate my point,
my best 3dmark01 score was just over 20,000 with my old 9700Pro. My new GT
(at stock) raises the score by only perhaps 500 points. That's because my
XP @ 2400MHz is still CPU limited.

Chip

Depends what he wants to play. D3 will see considerable benefit, but older
games may not. I know its not exactly a game, but to demonstrate my point,
my best 3dmark01 score was just over 20,000 with my old 9700Pro. My new GT
(at stock) raises the score by only perhaps 500 points. That's because my
XP @ 2400MHz is still CPU limited.

That's because 3DMark01 isn't a good benchmark for showing off new
hardware.

You don't buy a 6800GT so you can play Quake III. You buy it for the
new games. Or for the old games at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF.

"Cuzman" wrote:
It will be severely held back by a 2Ghz P4. Perhaps the OP can list his
entire system. By selling some stuff at www.ebay.co.uk , he could use his
budget to do an upgrade of other parts too.

I have got:
- 2.0GHz Pentium 4
- Windows XP SP2
- 768MB DDR RAM
- 2 HDDs: 38GB (5GB free) and 74.5GB (58GB free)
- 450W Q-Tec Power Supply Unit
- 17" Dell CRT monitor
- NEC DVD burner
- Plextor CD burner
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster CT4780
- Really not sure about the motherboard. It has P4XFA written on it. Could
be by Jetway (?). It's a couple of years old, but I don't know much about
it.

I'm aware that the CPU is likely to a limiting factor if I get a really
top-end card, but I do enjoy games like Doom 3 and Far Cry. When my ATI
Radeon 9800 Pro was working (that's for about a week), Doom 3 played pretty
well with my set-up, although I was not maxing everything out. I don't
think I'm quite ready to upgrade the CPU yet, unless you are horrified by
what a limiting factor it is, and how Half Life 2 will be a disaster unless
I change it! :-)

How would you be tempted to tinker with this set-up, and which card should I
be looking at? A 6800GT? All advice and opinions gratefully received...

"Yeremein" wrote in message
...
Depends what he wants to play. D3 will see considerable benefit, but
older games may not. I know its not exactly a game, but to demonstrate
my point, my best 3dmark01 score was just over 20,000 with my old
9700Pro. My new GT (at stock) raises the score by only perhaps 500
points. That's because my XP @ 2400MHz is still CPU limited.

That's because 3DMark01 isn't a good benchmark for showing off new
hardware.

That's what I just said.

Chip