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PCI-E Graphics card upgrade recommendation for single core PC?

Tool

Tool

Tool

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8 Aug 2003
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Can anyone recommend me a PCI-E graphics card upgrade for below £125? Ideally £70-£80! PC spec below!

Please note my LCD monitor has a max res of 1280 by 1024.

I'm looking to play COD4, PES2009 and Far Cry 2 in the near future at native res. Would my PC with any GFX card upgrade run Far Cry 2?

Not worried about AA & AF.

What's the best bang for buck card atm for single core CPU's?

Thanks.

Abit AN8 nForce4 Ultra | AMD Athlon 3700+ | ATI x800XL
Corsair 2GB PC3200 | Maxtor 250GB | Win XP SP3 | LGL1980Q
 
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More and more games are demanding a dual core these days, so I'd take some money from your budget to invest in one. A cheap second hand X2 and 8800GT shouldn't set you back too much.
 
oweneades said:
Given that your monitor has a max resolution of 1280x1024 and you don't are too much about AA/AF then the 8800GT 256mb on this week only for £47 ish would be quite a good option.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
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Nice spot as like I said I only play @ 1280 by 1024 so don't need a beast.:)

The 8800GT 256MB is looking like the card I will buy.

With this card added to my system, will it play Far Cry 2 at this res?

Thanks.
 
Tool said:
Nice spot as like I said I only play @ 1280 by 1024 so don't need a beast.:)

The 8800GT 256MB is looking like the card I will buy.

With this card added to my system, will it play Far Cry 2 at this res?

Thanks.
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I don't see why not although you may have to sacrifice some texture quality to get smooth framerates. (depending on what you want as a average framerate)

TBH though given that the game isn't out yet its hard to give a confident answer on whether you will be able to play it or not.
 
a tad overkill for the moment but i would go for a 4850 tbh but only if you can get that 3700 overclocked to around 2.8ghz.

i wouldnt look at any card with less than 512mb these days. any of the cry games need LOTS of gfx ram to run smooth. 1280x1024 really isnt that small a res when it comes to games like crysis.. i cant see farcry2 being any less demanding.

as already said the 3870/4670 are good cards (cheepest of either you can find they perform quite similar)

i recomend you look at crysis benchmarks and see how what cards perform before you commit to a card. should give you a good idea of what you will need.
 
oweneades said:
TBH though given that the game isn't out yet its hard to give a confident answer on whether you will be able to play it or not.
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Fair point.

This new card should keep me going for a bit to play the odd title.

My current system is 3yrs old now, so I'll probably need to buy a complete new system in the next 6-9 months anyway.
 
TheMorningStar said:
a tad overkill for the moment but i would go for a 4850 tbh but only if you can get that 3700 overclocked to around 2.8ghz.

i wouldnt look at any card with less than 512mb these days. any of the cry games need LOTS of gfx ram to run smooth. 1280x1024 really isnt that small a res when it comes to games like crysis.. i cant see farcry2 being any less demanding.

as already said the 3870/4670 are good cards (cheepest of either you can find they perform quite similar)

i recomend you look at crysis benchmarks and see how what cards perform before you commit to a card. should give you a good idea of what you will need.
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Another interesting post! Yep, 1280 by 1024 isn't that small a res!

Oh jeez, which card should I go for?

The thing is, I'm not a big gamer. The last games I played was the original Far Cry and HL2 when I bought my current PC 3 yrs ago with my ATI x800XL.

A 512MB card does make sense but only if I upgrade the rest of my system which I won't do for another 6-9 months.

The 8800GT will run COD4 fine won't it?

If the 8800GT won't run FC2 well then I'll have to wait until I buy a new system.
 
A second hand 8800gt 512mb would be much better

I know guy with a similar build to you & hes running a 7600gs 256. & he gets 80 fps average on cod 4.
 
I'm quite tempted at the 4670 now. Decent blend of cost, performance and low power consumption.

Definitely not going to rush into buying one.
 
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Tool said:
I'm quite tempted at the 4670 now. Decent blend of cost, performance and low power consumption.

Definitely not going to rush into buying one.
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If you look around you can get a 9600GT for not much more than the HD4670. The 9600GT is to put it simply faster in all games at all settings.
 
PCI-E Graphics card upgrade recommendation for single core PC?
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This is an interesting question, I'm looking for similar for my brother's Dell. He simply cannot afford a full upgrade and so needs the best (cheap!) GPU for a Pentium 4 (3.0). (currently X300, XP, 17" monitor).

I was told before that you would not get the best out of an 8800GT with a single core cpu, so was looking at maybe an 8500/8600 instead (or 3650/3850).

Does anyone know how you would find out, which is the best graphics card that will not be held back by a single core cpu? I'm finding it tricky.

The framerates he gets in games makes me shudder. :eek:
 
Rezident said:
This is an interesting question, I'm looking for similar for my brother's Dell. He simply cannot afford a full upgrade and so needs the best (cheap!) GPU for a Pentium 4 (3.0). (currently X300, XP, 17" monitor).

I was told before that you would not get the best out of an 8800GT with a single core cpu, so was looking at maybe an 8500/8600 instead (or 3650/3850).

Does anyone know how you would find out, which is the best graphics card that will not be held back by a single core cpu? I'm finding it tricky.

The framerates he gets in games makes me shudder. :eek:
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The only real way to find out with your particular set up would be to buy a handful of cards and do some benchmark testing on them and keep the one with the highest rating.

Obviously in reality that's not a possibility. Shame though. :D

I'm still keen on the 4670 but a few people I have spoken to have said that this card is overpriced for what it is and has half as many shaders, are clocked lower and often use slower ram for only 30 quid less than a cheap 4850.

I still think my system will be the bottleneck if I buy a 4850. My motherboard also doesn't support PCI-E 2.0 (only 1.1)
 
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