£300 budget

[PoliticallyCorrect]

My friend would like to purchase a new graphics card for gaming. the type of games he will be using it for are ogame and WoW on full settings and at high resolutions. He would like it to also be future proof. I am after some recomendations that would suite this guys needs. thanks again people.


--Jonny

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Does he have an AGP mobo or a PCI-E one, mate, and what system spec does he have now?

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

Does he have an AGP mobo or a PCI-E one, mate?

sorry, yes that would be usful. he has one PCI-Express slot.

--Jonny

 

[Alexrose1uk]

None of the cards available right now are 'future proof' as Nvidia have only released there first DX10 card, and ATI are releasing R600 first quarter of next year.
Dependant on what hes got now, I'd buy a X1950Pro 256MB for £135, then keep the other £165 to upgrade at a later date if he finds he needs more juice. The x1950 pro isnt much slower than my x1900xt 512mb, and I play wow all settings on high except draw distance including full AA/AF and still get high fps at my playing res of 2048x1536, which his monitor likely doesnt support (by high I mean 20+fps in lagforge on an old, highly populated server, 40+ in dense areas, and 60+fps in most areas)
He can also get the slightly faster (but not much in it) x1900xt 256MB for ~170.

PS. Make sure hes got PCI-E 16x not a 1x slot

 

[Noxis]

8800GTS - Job Done.

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

thankyou for the feedback guys, i believe he currently has onboard. i had the x1950 pro in mind too, it has good overclocking potential to my understanding ?

--Jonny

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Yep, + Crossfire 2 (no more external dongle, just buy a second card)

Going for a 8800 series is completely overpowered for what he wants and plays, when he can get a card that will be a huge jump for less than half, and then upgrade with the remaining £165 for a card from one of the DX10 refreshes from ATI/Nvidia. Personally Im waiting to see DX10 from ATi anyway, as whilst Nvidia say they have DX10 done properly, didnt they also say that about DX9, and SM3, yet they could do HDR+AA at the same time like ATI, and the FX5 series cards had awful DX9 performance compared to the rivals at the time.

 

[PoliticallyCorrect]

Yep, + Crossfire 2 (no more external dongle, just buy a second card)

Going for a 8800 series is completely overpowered for what he wants and plays, when he can get a card that will be a huge jump for less than half, and then upgrade with the remaining £165 for a card from one of the DX10 refreshes from ATI/Nvidia. Personally Im waiting to see DX10 from ATi anyway, as whilst Nvidia say they have DX10 done properly, didnt they also say that about DX9, and SM3, yet they could do HDR+AA at the same time like ATI, and the FX5 series cards had awful DX9 performance compared to the rivals at the time.

that's a good case, see a post about that from a few weeks ago, it was very indepth. what would you say the power requirements are for the x1950pro ?

p.s. how was your birthday ?

--Jonny

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Not bad mate, not bad. Drum kit was EQ'ed a little too loud, but aside that, supports were rubbish (expected) but DF themselves were great

Power requirements wise I'd take a guess at a semi decent 400W, as there are people running X1900XT 512MB on about that, and the x1950 is meant to draw less power, but being honest, thats only a guess.
Overclocking wise, I'd heard it was good, but just had an argument about cards in another thread so Im not gonna jump to any conclusions, because I dont particularly feel like arguing here too