Best card for £~250

[Magma2k]

I bought one of the HIS ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 256Mbs that were on special offer here a few weeks ago on a bit of a whim whilst doing some upgrades, I'm starting to think it was a slightly unwise choice though.

The rest of my system is a fairly good spec:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ / 3Gb GeIL Value - nothing overclocked yet, but I'll get to that soon!

So I'm thinking that it might be letting the side down slightly. If I were to bite the bullet and give myself a budget of, say, about £250 for a new graphics card, what would be your picks for the best to go for? I want to be able to play F.E.A.R and similar at decent widescreen resolutions (Samsung SM-215TW screen), really...

Starting to wish I'd kept the box for the ATI now, as it'd make it much easier to auction off!

 

[melbourne720]

X1900XT or a 7900 GTO - shame the latter has gone up in price, although it is still a good card by all accounts.

Differcult price to pitch for. For that money, you should really be able to get a next gen card, but the cheapest 8800 GTS is £350.

Maybe get an X1900XT and then upgrade for the refresh of the DX10/8 series cards/ATi equivilent.

 

[Boogle]

7900GTO is pretty good. Ideally one with 1.1ns memory, since then you can just flash the BIOS to a GTX bios. Flashing the BIOS also gives you even more OC headroom (it increases the voltage), so ye, good value are the 7900GTOs.

7900GTX for £200 or less? Yes please.

 

[melbourne720]

I thought there might be some a bit cheaper, but you see what I mean about the £250 price point.

There should be an 8600 GT out by the time you can use the DX10 stuff in Vista, so that gap should be filled.

 

[Boogle]

I thought there might be some a bit cheaper, but you see what I mean about the £250 price point.

There should be an 8600 GT out by the time you can use the DX10 stuff in Vista, so that gap should be filled.

Very true. Best to either go under and save, or over and splurge

 

[Magma2k]

Hmm, seems a tricky time to buy then.

I guess I'll make a judgement call whether to up my budget and future proof myself, or stick it out on the 1650 a little while and upgrade in a few months after DX10 is sorted out. I'm getting quite fond of Vista, though, so I'd be reluctant to go with an 8800 until the drivers are sorted...

 

[Magma2k]

Incidentally, is there any indication of when the drivers for Vista might be coming out?

 

[HangTime]

Pricing on 7900GTO has started getting a little silly of late. I bought one when they were £158, but the way things are now it's hard to recommend one ahead of the cheaper x1900xt-256.

 

[dante6491]

btw, do amd like 3gb of ram... auction of one stick for £80 and et the 8800gts
otherwise those gto's are very nice

 

[LoadsaMoney]

(rules is rules).

Yup rules is rules unfortunately so id edit your post there, competitors pricing is not allowed either.

 

[Magma2k]

btw, do amd like 3gb of ram... auction of one stick for £80 and et the 8800gts
otherwise those gto's are very nice

How dya mean do AMD like 3gb? Sorry for the n00b question, I haven't dealt with desktop hardware in years (I'm a 3rd line server engineer in the daytime), so I'm a little unfamiliar with the little tips and tricks at the moment!

The RAM seems to be fine, though... I started off with 1Gb and F.E.A.R ran like a pig... now I'm up to 3Gb it's much happier running at higher resolutions. Can play at 1280x960 with most eye candy on at 30-50fps whereas that was totally unplayable before (<10fps).

Vista doesn't seem to be very impressed, though. My RAM is still the thing letting me down on the performance scores... everything else is getting around 5.5 and that RAM is stuck on 3.9 (which is the same as when I had 1Gb)... perhaps I should look into overclocking it?