A few q's before I buy..

[Moltisanti911]

I'm looking to buy a Gainward GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB from right here on this site, yet what kind of PSU should I buy to pump that, 2 SATA hdds, [email protected], 8gigs of ram with all 4slots used and a CT Aud2plex?? Also, i'm using a 1920x1080 monitor for gaming, what kind of frame rates should i expect on the newer games? Like COD5, GTA IV etc..

On a side note, what kind of config would equal a PS3 for gaming with its 1.8teraflops of fp performance? 2x280s? Or even less than that?

Thanks in advance....

 

[jak731]

firstly, consoles and pcs can not be compared due to many reasons

secondly, whats your budget and what are you moving up from?

PSU somewhere around 400W

 

[Moltisanti911]

400w isn't too much, i imagined it would be more like 600w.. I have around £200 to spend and I much prefer Nvidias. The 1024megs of DDR3 grabbed my attention mainly (coupled with 256bit mem addressing it should be good?), most importantly though, I need to play games at 1920x1080.. something which my 7500le has NEVER been able to do. lol.

 

[miniyazz]

On a side note, what kind of config would equal a PS3 for gaming with its 1.8teraflops of fp performance? 2x280s? Or even less than that?

IIRC, the PS3 has 3 8800 GTXs in SLI, but like jak731 said, they're not really comparable - the games have different quality settings for PS3 and they're optimised for PS3 (whereas PCs have all different hardware in) for starters.

Btw, you'll give yourself a better upgrade by getting a newer, faster CPU than upping a 9800 to a pair of 280s!

 

[Sipha]

A good quality 400w PSU will be more than ample

 

[miniyazz]

400w isn't too much, i imagined it would be more like 600w.. I have around £200 to spend and I much prefer Nvidias. The 1024megs of DDR3 grabbed my attention mainly (coupled with 256bit mem addressing it should be good?), most importantly though, I need to play games at 1920x1080.. something which my 7500le has NEVER been able to do. lol.

And for playing at 1080p, it would depend on what games you're planning on playing! Some are more CPU-intensive than others, but your processor is weaker than the graphics (if you get the 9800) and chances are you'll need to upgrade that before taking the graphics any higher. What's the budget?

 

[Sipha]

IIRC, the PS3 has 3 8800 GTXs in SLI

PS3 Graphics chip is the RSX and is based on 1x nvidia 90nm 7800 chip. However it does work slightly differently.

 

[Moltisanti911]

IIRC, the PS3 has 3 8800 GTXs in SLI, but like jak731 said, they're not really comparable - the games have different quality settings for PS3 and they're optimised for PS3 (whereas PCs have all different hardware in) for starters.

So if ur looking on one screen with a PS3, another screen with 2x280s and both with res 1920x1080 would the PC screen have better texture quality?? Just curious..

Btw, you'll give yourself a better upgrade by getting a newer, faster CPU

Maybe so, yet i'm looking to up my frame rates on PCSX2, and the CPU never hits 100%.. which obviously means i need a better GPU. Also need a better motherboard than my 945gl based one. Might have to start selling my body..

 

[Moltisanti911]

What's the budget?

200 smackers.. i know, i know.. it would b easier if i had a couple of grand so I could get a Nehelam based triple channel DDR system.. mmm...

 

[miniyazz]

PS3 Graphics chip is the RSX and is based on 1x nvidia 90nm 7800 chip. However it does work slightly differently.

OK my bad. Don't know where I picked that up from.. looks damn good for a 7-series though!

So if ur looking on one screen with a PS3, another screen with 2x280s and both with res 1920x1080 would the PC screen have better texture quality?? Just curious..


Maybe so, yet i'm looking to up my frame rates on PCSX2, and the CPU never hits 100%.. which obviously means i need a better GPU. Also need a better motherboard than my 945gl based one. Might have to start selling my body..

It would seem, hell yes!

And what graphics are you upgrading from? Because yes currently the GPU might be the limiting factor, fair enough, but with a much more powerful GPU the CPU will hold you back. If you could get a C2D 8400 (or lower end and overclock) as well as a decent graphics card you'll have no problems until you start trying to play Crysis or other newer games. But you might be needing to upgrade the motherboard for that anyway, which complicates things..

Wiki reckons FFX runs at over 60fps with a mid-range graphics card (8600 quoted, much cheaper than 9800) with a 3GHz C2D system. No mention of quality settings, if there are any.

 

[bru]

I'm looking to buy a Gainward GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB from right here on this site, yet what kind of PSU should I buy to pump that, 2 SATA hdds, [email protected], 8gigs of ram with all 4slots used and a CT Aud2plex?? Also, i'm using a 1920x1080 monitor for gaming, what kind of frame rates should i expect on the newer games? Like COD5, GTA IV etc..
Thanks in advance....

i can only assume that your processor is a c2duo 6300 , rahter than a p4 630, being that you call it a duo and list its clock speed as 1.8Ghz.

if that is correct then i would sugest you overclock the processor and stretch the budget an extra eleven quid for this.

of course if you really want 1024Mb of graphics memory you could go for the Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (90-C1CL55-L0UAY00Z) instead or a cheaper 4850 with only 512Mb of memory to keep it within budget.

 

[Zarf]

He might find 512mb limiting at 1920x1200.

450W + PSU will be fine. I've got a 500W gigabyte Odin hich lets me monitor real time usage, and my Core2Quad 6600, 8800GTX, raid0 raptors barely peaks at 300w under benchmarking with everything stretched.

 

[Moltisanti911]

Think that my best option right now on the processor side is to save a little more, buy a motherboard and oc my current C2duo 6300.. yet what i would want out of a motherboard is upgrade potential, and dual Nvidias preferably. Not saying I definitely won't buy an ati yet have always preferred nvidias, ever since my Gainward GS ti4800 which i clocked to very high speeds according to 3dmark.. also had a 9800pro just after that, which i bought from here for around £350 and sold a month later for £300. Also was a very good graphics card.

The current 9800 series i relish tho, with a shader proc as well as the main graphics proc. Also the face recognition technology for my HD videos sounds perfect. As i thought, the 1024megs with 256bit bus would help my 1080p reach full potential. I'm kinda set on this card, even with such a small budget.

Also, concerning the motherboard, do I have to buy an SLi based one to use dual Nvidias? I heard somewhere i could get a BIOS upgrade to allow a xfire one to register SLi???? Hope so, otherwise the choice is very limited.. the Nforce7 boards are over a ton for starters..!

 

[LoadsaMoney]

PS3's based on the old 7800 or 7900, so 2x 280's would totally obliterate it, and some.

 

[psychas]

P4 would be terrible bottleneck for 280 specially pair of them

 

[reflux]

The current 9800 series i relish tho, with a shader proc as well as the main graphics proc. Also the face recognition technology for my HD videos sounds perfect. As i thought, the 1024megs with 256bit bus would help my 1080p reach full potential. I'm kinda set on this card, even with such a small budget.

Also, concerning the motherboard, do I have to buy an SLi based one to use dual Nvidias? I heard somewhere i could get a BIOS upgrade to allow a xfire one to register SLi???? Hope so, otherwise the choice is very limited.. the Nforce7 boards are over a ton for starters..!

A 9800GT is a poor choice for gaming at 1920x1080. The card just doesn't have the power. And the 1GB of onboard RAM will make no difference whatsoever to 1080p video playback. It is not a demanding use of a modern card.

A much better choice would be a Radeon 4870, GeForce GTX260 or better - if you're set on Nvidia, one of these is a good choice:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-008-ZT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=927

For SLi, you need an Nvidia 650, 680, 750, 780, 790 series board, or an Intel Skulltrail board, or an Intel X58 board (but only some of these support SLi and it takes i7 only). The only Nvidia boards worth bothering with are the 790s, but they're very expensive and take DDR3 only. The only boards that run CrossFire and SLi are the Skulltrails and X58s.