• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Buying new graphics card

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2005
Posts
13,810
Location
Netherlands
Hello,

Wednesday i will have my cpu sold and that means i will have enough money to buy (a) new graphics card(s), but im unsure wich to get, my price limit is 310 euro's or bout 200 quid (I think that is).

I have a SLi capable mobo with a nforce 4 intel sli x16 edition chipset and a sli compatible 550watts PSU.

The things i have seen in my range were:
XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB GDDR3, PCI-Express, 2xDVI/HDTV, 470/1370Mhz

Club3D Radeon X1900RX 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express, 1200Mhz Memory, 575Mhz R580

Sapphire Radeon X1900GT 256MB GDDR3, PCI-Express, Dual-DVI/VIVO, Lite-Retail

Gainward GeForce 6800GS 512MB,1,4ns DDR3 ,PCI-Express,"BP6800GS-512-GLH-TV-DVI"


2X XFX GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 XXX, PCI-Express, 2xDVI/HDTV, 590/1600Mhz SLI


Club3D GeForce 7900GT 256MB, GDDR3, PCI-Express, DVI/Tv-Out, Retail

And a lot of geforce 6 series sli combinations.

So my question is, what's the best card/combo I can get for my price limit and for my situation (performance wise) ( ps. i'm a gamer and I like high levels of AA and AF while playing) ?
I'm asking becouse I dont know whats best for performance and I dont know if its so good to put in an ati card in a nforce based pc.
Thanks in advance :)
 
1600x1200 or 1248x1024, highest possible options in any game, prefferably with 4X aa and 16x AF, if a game has 30+ fps after, then max possible AA .
Games like Battlefield 2, doom 3 , CoD2, lots of racinbg games, oblivion, etc...
Hopefully I can do that for my price limit??
 
I'd probably suggest the 7900gt, it doesn't make any difference to performance whether you go with an ATI solution with a Nvidia motherboard or vice-versa but I haven't heard much about those specific ATI cards (the model X1900RX in particular is odd). On that basis I'd be choosing the 7900gt but I'm not quite sure about what sort of resolutions it is comfortable with.
 
Yeah any od those cards'll do you fine, although if you ever plan to upgrade your monitor to a larger size then I'd recommend buying an nVIDIA card so you have the option to go SLI if you need to.
 
I definitely would not get any 6800 GS or any 6xxx series card. These cards just are not cost effective, even in SLI.

Also no point in getting the 7600GT (even in SLI) as you can get a better performing single card for your money.

The 7900GT is quick, but they are having quite a lot of faults at present. Sometimes the faults are blamed on faulty memory, sometimes on faulty cores no one really knows why they are having the high number of faults they are. eVGA have replaced their memory, but time will tell whether the faults will continue. I dont like having to RMA continuously & so they would go off my list.

The X1900GT is about as quick as the 7900GT in current games but with its 36 shaders should hold up very well in future shader intensive games. Also it will run Oblivion better if thats important to you. This would be the card to buy imo.

Also the Club3D Radeon X1900RX, has the same specs as a standard X1900GT, so i cant see why its listed any differently. If this card is cheap it would be a good buy still.
 
So SLi is betetr @ higher reso
Hmmm, I'm still not sure about the 7900gt series as also heard myself they have a higher failure rate as the average nvidia card or someting, I can't afford to throw away money on a card that'll break l8er,and is impossible to RMA after, also one of my mates recommended the x1900 cards becourse of the big ammount of processing pipelines...
Also wont 2 7600Gt's be faster as a 7900GT I mean i dont know how Vram dependant games are but 512 mb and 2 gpu's sounds betetr to me as 1 gpu and 256 mb, may be mistaking tho.
Sry to question stuff i just want to be 100% sure about whats best and how long it will last (want it to last for 18 months or a bit longer, untill the dx10 cards become a must)...
So far im leaning towards getting one of the x1900 cards but i dont like the idea of losing sli capability as (as stated below) I may want a 2nd card and perhaps it'll be mroe attractive to get a small performancew boost from it too...

Also one more question: is it possible to hook up a cheap nvidia card next to the ati to be able to plug in more screens, as i have plans l8er (if i get some spare money) to plug in 4 screens and a tv so 5 screens in total... and to let all 5 work w/o any performance loss for games etc...? ( want 2 mon's for work, highy annoying switchign between sites and screens i think when workign for school, 2 in a different room and my tv for watching dvd's...)
So lets say the x1900gt and then the cheapest pci-x card possible (6200 or sone low end ati card) , will both have screen output and will the x1900gt still do all the processing?? And in sli mode, will I be able to plug in a screen in both cards??]

Thanks for all the responces appriciate it :p read through all of it but still unsure ...
 
Last edited:
x1900gt or whatever, are good cards. Fast and will run owt and usually ati antialising doesnt incure performance hits much as nvidia cards.

7600 sli cards setup is good for in the long run. But with money u get mate u might be better off buying either a 7800gt now and another later for sli.
 
snowdog said:
So SLi is betetr @ higher reso
Hmmm, I'm still not sure about the 7900gt series as also heard myself they have a higher failure rate as the average nvidia card or someting, I can't afford to throw away money on a card that'll break l8er,and is impossible to RMA after, also one of my mates recommended the x1900 cards becourse of the big ammount of processing pipelines...
Also wont 2 7600Gt's be faster as a 7900GT I mean i dont know how Vram dependant games are but 512 mb and 2 gpu's sounds betetr to me as 1 gpu and 256 mb, may be mistaking tho.
Sry to question stuff i just want to be 100% sure about whats best and how long it will last (want it to last for 18 months or a bit longer, untill the dx10 cards become a must)...
So far im leaning towards getting one of the x1900 cards but i dont like the idea of losing sli capability as (as stated below) I may want a 2nd card and perhaps it'll be mroe attractive to get a small performancew boost from it too...

Also one more question: is it possible to hook up a cheap nvidia card next to the ati to be able to plug in more screens, as i have plans l8er (if i get some spare money) to plug in 4 screens and a tv so 5 screens in total... and to let all 5 work w/o any performance loss for games etc...? ( want 2 mon's for work, highy annoying switchign between sites and screens i think when workign for school, 2 in a different room and my tv for watching dvd's...)
So lets say the x1900gt and then the cheapest pci-x card possible (6200 or sone low end ati card) , will both have screen output and will the x1900gt still do all the processing?? And in sli mode, will I be able to plug in a screen in both cards??]

Thanks for all the responces appriciate it :p read through all of it but still unsure ...
Click to expand...


It doesnt matter how many GPU's you have but how powerfull.
One powerfull GPU like the X1900 GPU is better than 2 less powerfull GPU's.
Bersides SLI usually doesnt double performance because there is overhead. Sometimes the increase in a game is 60% (2 same cards over the performance of a single card) other times it may only be a 10% increase over only the single card.
Also with SLI if you have 2x 256Mb cards you still only have 256Mb of processing memory (ie each card & memory works indipendantly & then the information is joined later, it is NOT the same as a single 512MB card).
You can have a X1900 card & get another (PCI card say, preferably same make) & have extra monitors plugged in.
In sli mode you cannot plug in a screen to both cards.
 
If you wait a bit snowdog the top cards out today will be cheaper soon enough due to nvidia and ati bringing out new and better cards soon. Due to what i read over at megagames site.
 
I would personally get the X1900 XT


and that RX Card is basically an XT which the company renames, don't be scared of it, i remember someone on here buying one and saying the box says RX but the card has X1900 XT ( There is a sticker with serial number ) On it.


EDIT : Nice to see you back Loadsamoney :)
 
ACESHIGH said:
It doesnt matter how many GPU's you have but how powerfull.
One powerfull GPU like the X1900 GPU is better than 2 less powerfull GPU's.
Bersides SLI usually doesnt double performance because there is overhead. Sometimes the increase in a game is 60% (2 same cards over the performance of a single card) other times it may only be a 10% increase over only the single card.
Also with SLI if you have 2x 256Mb cards you still only have 256Mb of processing memory (ie each card & memory works indipendantly & then the information is joined later, it is NOT the same as a single 512MB card).
You can have a X1900 card & get another (PCI card say, preferably same make) & have extra monitors plugged in.
In sli mode you cannot plug in a screen to both cards.
Click to expand...

Thx, you explained a lot to me but one mroe thing I want to be sure off, cos I wont buy a pci card, onyl a pci-x card for the 2nd pci-x16 slot, is it possible to use 2 different cards in both the pci-x slots (non sli) ??
I just dont have normall pci free , one will be used by soundcard and one by tv tuner card, leaving only 2 pciexpress x1 and one x4 and finally one x16 free

TaKeN said:
I would personally get the X1900 XT


and that RX Card is basically an XT which the company renames, don't be scared of it, i remember someone on here buying one and saying the box says RX but the card has X1900 XT ( There is a sticker with serial number ) On it.
Click to expand...

hmm so thats a XT, also a nice card, lol I still dont knwo what to get, ah well time will tell atm I have a spare x600 card wich ill use till i get my new gfx card. Dont know how good a x600 card is as was usually on nvidia cards, so dont knwo much about the x series... (6600GT last pc...)
 
Last edited:
Yes, you can also use any 2x PCIE cards, not in SLI, to run four monitors.
Again its preferred to have the same make of cards when you do this (ie, 2x ATI cards, rather than mixed, as you have less driver conflicts to worry about).

The X600 is about the same as a 9600 pro i believe.
These are getting old now, but should be fine for running extra monitors.
If thats the card you will be using then thats even more reason to get one of the two ATI X1900 series cards you listed above.




FYI, its PCIE (for graphics cards). PCI-X is a different slot altogether.
Another FYI, HIS will be making PCIE x1 graphics cards soon to.
 
right sold my cpu have 290€ (more will be added by sale of old ram and gfx card) to buy a cooler for new cpu, (atm on stock, so hope can push even more oc with a freezer/typhoon, or one of the tunic/scytche towers.) all in all ill have 300ish for new gfx card ill check wheres best pricing for 7900GT's and x1900rx (XT) and buy one of those 2 probably...
Also hope i can plug in my old hdd's onto my new mobo w/o need to reinstall windows, i know intell to nforce 2 went ok unsure about intell 875p to nforce 4 x16 sli, ill just remove chipset drivers and hope for the best, once i move all my hdd's from old to current pc ill just have the task buying a gfx card and cooler.
I just hope if I decide to get the ati card to be able to wipe out the nvidia drivers...
(ps. bit pointless all this but i thought i'd make it clear, im putting away my old pc and tryign to move all to the new one im on atm wich is just prepared (mobo flashed, bit oc messing and internet) for makign space for my 3 old hdd's , reason to upgrade: too expensive good ocable ddr-1, so need cheap fast ddr-2 and cheaper pci-x cards... (moved from 478 to 775) )

EDIT : Once i get my pc set up(comletly with gfx cards and all) i suppose ill report oc results and bechmarks :)
 
Last edited:
lay-z-boy said:
just so you know, your sig breaks the rules, get rid of a line quick. :)
Click to expand...
got rid of it, duno if affects previous posts only think it affects new ones
EDIT: nvm :p tx for telling me
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom