PC video card help

anarchyburger

anarchyburger

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i need advice on which video card to upgrade to, i currently have a PCI express ati x300/x550 128mb but i need to upgrade to play the newer games coming out. so i need some advice on which graphics card to upgrade to. i preferably want a 256mb card, i dont know if it would be worth it to go with 512mb... i really want to play Crysis, and a few other new games that are coming out

my price point is $150-$200 and preferably want a good reliable ati 256mb card, any suggestions??

thanks in advance
 
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Nvidia 8600-8800 is what I'd look at if I were you. ATI is crap unfortunetly. Given they do make cheap cards but in comparison to Nvidia are no where as good.

Heck the 86-8800's are DX10 cards while ATI is still pushing DX9 cards.
 
[quote name='mr ryles']your not gonna be able to play crysis on that budget[/quote]well i dont need a super high end card, im just looking to play Crysis on low or maybe medium settings

and i heard you need at least a 256mb card with DX10 compatibility
 
[quote name='seen']Nvidia 8600-8800 is what I'd look at if I were you. ATI is crap unfortunetly. Given they do make cheap cards but in comparison to Nvidia are no where as good.

Heck the 86-8800's are DX10 cards while ATI is still pushing DX9 cards.[/QUOTE]

This was true... a few months ago. ATI is making DX10 cards so I'm not sure what you mean by that.

If you want to play Crysis, you're going to need a really good card. A $200 card might not cut it but if you search around, you might be able to find the 320MB 8800GTS for around $250 after rebates which should work fairly well. I know they've gone as low as $230 before after coupons/rebates but I haven't seen one on sale for a while now.

Otherwise, in the $150-200 range, I'd go for a 8600GT or GTS (forgot which one was Nvidia's highest) card.
 
thanks for all the feedback so far...

how much more would i have to pay for an ati DX10 card?

and what recommendations do you guys have for nvidia?
 
Newegg Power Search is your friend man. Also, if you only get a 256mb card id want to SLI that and go w/ atleast 2 gigs of ram so you can run DX10 efficiently.
 
What is the specs of the rest of your system. 200 dollars will be fine for a video card to play Crysis, depending on what resolution and settings you want, don't listen to all that bs about it not being enough, it isn't enough if you want 1920 x 1200 on high, but it doesn't sound like you need that.
 
that nvidia card you recommended looks really good...

the rest of my specs are: 2 Pentium 4 proccessors, both at 3.4ghz and i currently i have 1gb of RAM at the moment but i plan on buying another gig of RAM real soon. and i dont plan on playing it at a super high resolution. the max resolution i can go is 1280x1024

so i think the nvidia card would work for me as long as i get another gig of RAM, its a nice price too...

do you guys think my comp will be good enough to play Crysis once i upgrade it a little?
 
2 pentium 4s or 1 dual core.... anyways you should really get 2 gigs of ram if your getting a 512mb+ card or it wont run stable. i have nowhere near the money to upgrade my pc for dx10 so i just got an xbox for halo 3 :p
 
Oh, dude are you serious. You can cop some DDR2 800 ram for about $65 for 2 gigs. Defintley go with that (don't mix and match Ram Brands)
 
[quote name='martinl1030']2 pentium 4s or 1 dual core.... anyways you should really get 2 gigs of ram if your getting a 512mb+ card or it wont run stable. i have nowhere near the money to upgrade my pc for dx10 so i just got an xbox for halo 3 :p[/quote]btw i have 2 pentium 4s, not dual core.

i have another Question, how do i know what kind of RAM to buy? how do i know which kind of RAM is compatible with my motherboard and computer?

i dont want to buy RAM and then have it not work cuz its not compatible or something...
 
Just download CPU-Z and it will tell you what your memory is.
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php Click Download then run It takes about 10 seconds to call up as it checks a hella lot of stuff on the PC.

If you are looking for DDR2 I'd suggest this...even though it's non-brand type, it is the best memory I've ever bought, because I've overclocked it all they way up to 1000 MHz and it has never failed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-161-677

Video cards are a hard choice to consider because next year, the one you pay now for $250 might be gone or way cheap at like $50-$75. I found a X1950 Pro very cheap at Circuit City Last week for $49.99 and used that as my upgrade because I'm not interested in DX 10 Games yet - I don't care for Bioshock as I rented it on 360 and beat it in 3 days. Some games are just fine on the 360. I mean just last year this X1950 Pro was over $250 bucks. See what I mean....

I had been running with an ATI X700 Pro for like forever but it had run games just over 30FPS at 1024x768 Medium so....didn't matter too much since back then I only had a P4 2.8
 
Buying a new video card blows.

If you don't have Vista, you can't run DirectX 10 so getting a card that supports it might be a waste for you. If you're happy with DX9 (I am) get either an ATI x1950 or an Nvidia 8900gs. Either will run you around $120 and run quite well. Finally you can look at information at:

tomshardware.com (click on the VGA charts)
gpureview.com (they have a nice comparison tool)

If you need DX10, I don't know...

Good luck!


[quote name='anarchyburger']i need advice on which video card to upgrade to, i currently have a PCI express ati x300/x550 128mb but i need to upgrade to play the newer games coming out. so i need some advice on which graphics card to upgrade to. i preferably want a 256mb card, i dont know if it would be worth it to go with 512mb... i really want to play Crysis, and a few other new games that are coming out

my price point is $150-$200 and preferably want a good reliable ati 256mb card, any suggestions??

thanks in advance[/quote]
 
damn, i forgot that you need Vista for DX10...

is it still worth it to get a Nvidia 8600 gts? it still sounds like a decent video card, and i might be upgrading to Vista later on in the future but im not sure about Vista at this point in time
 
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