Out of touch gamer looking for new card :)

M

mechoption

New Member
So, life/work... interrupted my gaming for a while and now I find myself lost in the world of video cards (thinking of my lovely over priced ATI 9800 PRO :P)

Anyway, I think my machine is decent except for my video card? I'm running:
ASUS P5NSLI mobo
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.6 GHz
4? GB DDR2-SDRAM (well, I have 4 installed but windows says 3 and PC Wizard says 4?)
SATA2 harddrives (x2)
Win XP Pro
500W PS
and....NVidia 7900GS :)

Now I'm not sure if SLI 7900GS is the way to go, or should I upgrade instead? I forsee Vista and Directx 10 in my future so I'm thinking a D10 card. But from my understanding my 7900GS is better than some 8000 series Nvidia cards?:confused:

I'm happy with Nvidia or ATI (although I'm leaning towards ATI as my 7900GS with the latest drivers puts black and white to my TV (non-HD), but if I install the superstar (in my opinion) 93.71 Nvidia forceware drivers then I get colour back on my TV)

Anyway, my current rig does Crysis in "medium" :o quite well, but I'd like to bump that up to "high" with high fps. Any recommendations on a PCI-E 1 (mobo doesn't support PCI-E 2) video card that would be a decent jump on the 7900 GS but won't break the bank? Or should a 7900GS run Crysis better than medium? and I mean with decent fps? Maybe then a swath of updates is in order :rolleyes:
 
How much do you want to spend?

There is the 8600, which one of the lower DX10 cards, then the 8800GT, 8800GTS and 8800GTX.


I SLI two GTs and it's great, but its up to you and what you want to spend.



I'm not really familiar with ATI, so.
 
I've heard about two 9600gt's are the best in SLI (percentage wise ). I was reading newegg reviews on my card and that's what one fellow said.
 
If you can get a 4870 for 200US?? (I live in NZ) Diff get it, I got one and its flippen awesome. And with your other specs, it could handle crysis quite well.
 
your windows is only seeing 3Gb of ram because you have a 32-bit OS installed i think.

as for the grafic's card, the 4850 and 4870 are nice cards :) so is the 9800gtx.
 
First of all it depends on what case and power supply you have. Some of the newer cards are very large, 11" long large. Make sure you measure everything and figure out what can fit good. For the power supply...500w you have is just at the bottom of workable. The new cards draw a lot of power and can tax a Bargin low watt power supply. With a budget of $200-$300 you can get a nice card that will play the new games nicely. If I were you I would not go with anything less than a 9800 GTX+. Here are a few good cards for good prices.

XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+ for $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150314

EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 for $280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130398

VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 for $255
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129113
 
ScOuT said:
First of all it depends on what case and power supply you have. Some of the newer cards are very large, 11" long large. Make sure you measure everything and figure out what can fit good. For the power supply...500w you have is just at the bottom of workable. The new cards draw a lot of power and can tax a Bargin low watt power supply. With a budget of $200-$300 you can get a nice card that will play the new games nicely. If I were you I would not go with anything less than a 9800 GTX+. Here are a few good cards for good prices.

XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+ for $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150314

EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 for $280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130398

VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 for $255
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129113
Click to expand...

Damm, was a typo/brianfart my power supply is only 400W :(. I guess I'll be needing a new PS now too:eek: I can fit 11" in my ghetto case no probs, worst case scenrio I move my harddrives around and do a little hack sawing and have the end of the card between my harddrives.

I'm leaning towards the HD 4870 now as it seems like a solid performer without SLI. Besides, I think I need to maintain my Nvidia - ATI switching history :) Plus Nvidia's total lack of support for non-HDTV's has turned me off Nvidia lately.

PS: Just re-installed Far Cry (after playing it before on my ATI 9800 PRO) and I'm loving it at all full graphics settings :) I think it plays better than Crysis does on my current system :(
 
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