If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
Hello folks looking for some advice.
I was planning on saving up and building a new rig at the start of next year. However I'm sort of impatient to play Bioshock with nice graphics so I'm thinking of just chuck a new graphics card on the credit card and paying it off over a couple of months. I've fallen behind on computer hardware a little the past couple of years so I was wondering if you lot could give me some advice. My current rig is NF4 M/B 2GB PC400 DDR RAM Athlon 64 FX-55 Radeon x850 XT SATA HDDs run in RAID 0 Running Windows Vista 64 1. Is it worth adding a new graphics card to that system, or is the CPU going to bottleneck performance? If the answer to that is yes then: 2. Can anyone recommend a good Card for the £300-£350 bracket 3. How are things going with the emergence of DX10, not bothered to read much about it. Is the change in technology making it a bad time to upgrade graphics hardware? Many thanks. |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
Forgot to say that I'm looking for a PCI-Express one. :-)
|
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
Morgan wrote:
Hello folks looking for some advice. I was planning on saving up and building a new rig at the start of next year. However I'm sort of impatient to play Bioshock with nice graphics so I'm thinking of just chuck a new graphics card on the credit card and paying it off over a couple of months. I've fallen behind on computer hardware a little the past couple of years so I was wondering if you lot could give me some advice. My current rig is NF4 M/B 2GB PC400 DDR RAM Athlon 64 FX-55 Radeon x850 XT SATA HDDs run in RAID 0 Running Windows Vista 64 1. Is it worth adding a new graphics card to that system, or is the CPU going to bottleneck performance? If the answer to that is yes then: 2. Can anyone recommend a good Card for the £300-£350 bracket 3. How are things going with the emergence of DX10, not bothered to read much about it. Is the change in technology making it a bad time to upgrade graphics hardware? Many thanks. So, you want to play BIOSHOCK, on 64-Bit Vista running on an nforce4 with an FX-55 with 2G of DDR400 (you meant PC3200). You need to ditch, in this order: The FX-55 for a dual core FX or a dual core Opteron(185) for the best use of your S939 board's low CAS ram and HT. Assuming your ram is low CAS(2). Replace the x850XT for an 8800 GTS with 640M. 320M is no longer enough, even at low resolutions. ATI's current line is not competitive, IMHO. Since you have a x850 XT you could consider the HD 2900XT, but get a dedicated videocard power supply if you are going to keep your existing power supply (if it is as old as the rest of the box). Let your budget guide you. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
"Morgan" wrote in message ... Forgot to say that I'm looking for a PCI-Express one. :-) The recent crop of high end X2900 series ATI have power draws and heat issues similar to my wife's hair dryer. There's a few other issues with the execution and design of the 2900 series. Personally, I'd be going with an 8800GTX or GTS right now. Bioshock has yet to be realesed. It may be DX10.1 when released. There are no cards as of yet for this. I would wait and see what happens over the next few months if I were you. Your hardware setup is essentially identical to mine, except I run an eVGA 7800GTX OC 512Mb. It runs F.E.A.R at 1280x1024 with everything maxed with no issues. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
8800GTS 640Mb.
The GTX is still in your price bracket but the performance increase isn't reflected. 8800GTS 320Mb versions is the best bang-for-buck but will be slightly limited if you are running resolutions 1600x1200 or the widescreen equivalent. If you have that much money to spend, you could get a CPU or memory upgrade as well. Or better still... Buy a decent P965 mobo (£100) a Core 2 Duo CPU (£130) and 4 x 1GB DDR800 (£120) and a 8800GTS 320MB (£190) and sell your existing kit: FX55 - £60 NF4 - £40 X850XT - £40 So you should be able to get a shiny new C2D setup with a balanced CPU vs Gfx, for less than a £400 outlay. In fact, you could do it for cheaper, it just depends on how far you want to go. [you could get a decent CPU for £100 and a decent mobo for £70. I recommend the 4GB for Vista x64. It's not essential, but it makes things slicker and easier. For modern games, you could really do with 1GB (for OS) and 2GB+ (for game) = 3GB+ |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
"Augustus" wrote in message news:68jyi.3126$vP5.2975@edtnps90... | | "Morgan" wrote in message | ... | Forgot to say that I'm looking for a PCI-Express one. :-) | | The recent crop of high end X2900 series ATI have power draws and heat | issues similar to my wife's hair dryer. There's a few other issues with the | execution and design of the 2900 series. Personally, I'd be going with an | 8800GTX or GTS right now. Bioshock has yet to be realesed. It may be DX10.1 | when released. There are no cards as of yet for this. I would wait and see | what happens over the next few months if I were you. Your hardware setup is | essentially identical to mine, except I run an eVGA 7800GTX OC 512Mb. It | runs F.E.A.R at 1280x1024 with everything maxed with no issues. | Well, considering the release date for Bioshock is listed as TOMORROW, I'd say there is a 100% chance it will not be a DX10.1 game... Considering that the DX10.1 standard was just recently released and all that... And considering that debuting a major release title that will not work on a single piece of consumer hardware on the planet would be preeeeetty stupid (and financially suicidal) on the game publisher's part. CoinSpin |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:31:27 -0400, "CoinSpin"
wrote: Well, considering the release date for Bioshock is listed as TOMORROW, I'd say there is a 100% chance it will not be a DX10. The game supports DX10 for extra eye candy for those who have Windows Vista and a DX10 capable card, but DX10 is not required as that would be, as you pointed out, financial suicide. |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
Thanks for all the replys folks. Ended up biting the bullet and putting a
load of new kit on an interest free credit card. :-) |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
I've been testing a bunch of game cards to use in my
Engineering CAD labs. So far, regardless of mobo and cpu, the top card in benchmarks is the nVidia GF7950 GTO. It beat a Quadro based CAD system by 45% in every benchmark ... and in speed of calculation in a very advanced rendering project. So far the 8800 I have tested has failed in every single project. It crashes, runs slow as heck, or generates all kinds of distortions and color errors. I think that card is a piece of crap, and there is no fix I can determine. I tested all of them in both XP 32-bit, and Vista Business 32-bit. I believe the reason the 7950 is the top card, is because nVidia techs spent time optimizing the drivers for it in XP. Equally, they have kludged the drivers for the 8800s and that has killed those cards. They are not back ward compatible in XP, and the Vista driver needs a lot of work. johns |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Graphics card advice.
On Aug 21, 12:44 pm, johns wrote:
... nVidia GF7950 GTO... Is there any real difference in the many different varieties of that card by different companies? |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Graphics card advice. | Morgan[_3_] | Nvidia Videocards | 15 | August 22nd 07 03:10 PM |
GRAPHICS CARD ADVICE | [email protected] | Nvidia Videocards | 20 | May 3rd 06 10:13 PM |
Looking For New Graphics Card Advice | Dave | Nvidia Videocards | 6 | April 27th 05 02:05 PM |
New graphics card advice | Paul H | General | 5 | November 26th 04 10:50 AM |
Advice for PCI Graphics Card | M | Nvidia Videocards | 8 | October 21st 04 09:13 AM |