Graphics Card Advice?

[dontpannic]

Hi all - looking at getting a new graphics card for xmas - I have a budget of £100. I can get the PNY GeForce 8800GTS for £94.99.

The rest of my system is:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (soon to be upgraded to the 5000+)
2Gb DDR2 533 RAM
PCIe slot.

What sort of frame-rates are you guys getting at what resolutions with what cards?

Cheers,
Nick

[Psycho29]

Couple months ago I bought a Nvidia Geforce 8500GT. This card is great, and I only spent $110, Im sure you can find one for 100 or very close to that range. This card has great quality and It is a DDR2 512. Wish you luck.
~Psycho

[S14 DRIFT]

DDR2 is OLD hat now. We're on DDR4 or 5 or something (or was that RAM, can't remember), and even budget cards come with DDR3 now. DDR3 ty!

Spent 5 mins searching and came up with these :

GeFore 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-108-OK)
ATI 4830HD 512MB (Till Thursday price only) (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-100-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938&name=Powercolor%20ATI%20Radeon%20HD%204830%20512MB %20GDDR3%20TV-Out/Dual%20DVI/HDMI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail)
GeForce 9600 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-067-BG&tool=3)

Tbh you won't get much guts for £100ish, so my advice to you is to save those £100 and wait until after Christmas, when we're either going to get reduced prices for new years and/or new hardware, which in turn will make stuff like the GTX260 look "old" and be reduced in price

[Byku]

Check http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=completemax ;). You'll see :thumb:. Btw. For LFS CPU is really important :razz:.

Answer to post below: Hey S14 Drift ;P... i know :D... it was an absolute horror but finally i bought a new pc and that's a different story ^^.

[S14 DRIFT]

Lol@Entry #12.

Min FPS : 3.
Max FPS : 12.

:D

[JasonJ]

Might I suggest you don't get a nVidia 9600 GT 512MB DDR3 I have one and to cut costs they seem to have removed the ability to do do proper and decent AA. It can be overrided with nHancer but then it goes from 100+ FPS to 45 FPS mush.

I wish I'd spent a few bucks more on something else. It was supposed to be best value for it's time, but the corners they cut makes my eyes bleed.

[Mazz4200]

Might I suggest you don't get a nVidia 9600 GT 512MB DDR3 I have one and to cut costs they seem to have removed the ability to do do proper and decent AA. It can be overrided with nHancer but then it goes from 100+ FPS to 45 FPS mush.

I wish I'd spent a few bucks more on something else. It was supposed to be best value for it's time, but the corners they cut makes my eyes bleed.
Huh, really ? I was thinking of getting one of those. It got a pretty good write up in Tom's Hardware.

[S14 DRIFT]

Nothing negative on OcUK's famously good client base (check the reviews from people who have bought them, not just those who get them for a day :razz:)

Jason, maybe it was your card/driver/combo :x:shrug:

[Mazz4200]

Ahh, yeah, this is where it all gets a bit confusing for us not tech-heads. The performance and subsequent reviews seem to depend on which brand of card you get. With just a quick look it seems the XFX one gets good reviews but the Asus one's are pretty mediocre.

I am looking to upgrade right now and need some advice, but i don't wanna hijack someone else's thread, will start my own in a bit...

[JasonJ]

S14 DRIFT - I've tried various Drivers for it.

Here is the issue: (comparing with 8800GTS)
http://www.lfsforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=65520&d=1220601272
Thread (http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=915118#post915118)

With that card I happen to get little white shimmering on tops of barriers and walls and other certain objects. The average novice wouldn't notice or probably even care, but it drives me absoultely wild. It's like having a perfect game with someone dangling white hairs around your face like Chinese water torture. I'm a bit of a perfectionist at times.

The standard nVidia Control panel only allows up to 16xQ AA and it still has this issue, BIG TIME.

The nHancer allows custom AA settings way over what nVidia CP wont do and I can remove the issue quite significantly with nHancer high AA combined setings, however it reduces my FPS to a meager 45 FPS.

My FPS is usually on 100-200, everthing maxed @ 1650x1080, full server. Dynamic LOD reduction to 0.5

My angle on it is that to produce the 9600GT they remade a 8800 with instead of 680 million transistors they only used 505 million to save costs. With that they had to leave out some power and ability. Look I'm probably wrong but I got a mate that has an 8800GTS and he doesnt get the issue, and I do. So I wish I'd got the 8800 instead. Or went for a ATI.

Some people wouldn't notice it, some games don't have the issue, but I manage to notice a shimmering on most of the barriers and fences in LFS, it's not a texture shimmering, but an OBJECT edge bad AA shimmer.

It's a great card, don't get me wrong. It plays all the latest games on high/max. But it's one small problem that actually ruins my entire experience in LFS. A 50 dollar extra injection would have been well worth it to me. Instead I went for the cheaper option and now I am paying for it. - every frikin day.

Good value card, but you may not like the after taste if you are a complete obsessive perfectionist like me. I've been messing with it for months, spent countless hours and still can't solve it. Everything else is great about it. It just this one stupid thing with tops of walls and barriers.

[dontpannic]

Thanks guys, on a lot of other reviews I've decided upon an ATi Radeon HD 4830 512Mb GDDR3 :) Thanks !

Nick

[JasonJ]

Yummy. :D

Good luck.