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HELP Best Value Mid Range Card (if such a thing exists anymore!)

Greebo said:
I think I might be pushing my luck though. My system has 2 raptors, 2 big hard drives, fan controller, water cooler, wireless pci card, audigy card, 2 dvd writers................a GTX might just kill it all! :eek:

But on a serious note does a GTS require less power than a GTX?
Yes but neither are power hungry
 
Thanks for all your help but job sorted now. Managed to grab an EVGA 8800GTS 320MB KO ACS3 last night on an auction site for £147. Seemed too good an offer not to miss since the 1950xtx are sold out at that price (my fault for hesitating so long :( )

2 weeks old and pre overclocked to 588 Mhz on the core, 1450Mhz on the shader and 1840Mhz on the ram :D

I have read in reviews that with this card and cooler you can get the core to 621 and the memory to 2Ghz :eek: :D

I look forward to trying this weekend.

One thing is for sure, that even at stock speeds I ought to be able to notice the difference to my X800XT!

Now all I have to hope for is that after 7 years been an ATI man is that Nvidia doesn't let me down on the driver front.
 
Nothing to be ashamed of there. I'm still not sure it's the right choice since the x1950xt beats it still in a lot of games but i'd rather go forward a generation than buy the last generation plus the added bonus of being able to run dx10 games if and when I ever reload vista which is sitting in a box on my shelf - good money spent there :o
 
What brand is that X1950 XTX 512Mb ? at £105 it seems to good to be ture. but if it is a proper make it's the bargain of the year, buy it PDQ.
 
This thread throws up the question of what a midrange card is. Personally I think there are two definitions of midrange:

Genuine-midrange: Typically cards costing around the £90 mark give or take. Often with crippled memory bandwidth and/or reduced number of pipelines... quite different architecturally compared to the top cards. Stuff like the gf4mx, 6600 etc.

Enthusiast-midrange: Cards which are basically stripped down versions of the top cards - less memory, slower clocks and maybe a few disabled pipelines etc. Tend to cost around the £140-£180 mark and example would include the GTS320, 6800, ti4200 etc.

These are two quite different markets; you've got 'normal people' who start getting concerned when the price escalates up above £120, and then you've got enthusiasts on the lookout for a bargain who who rather not pay over £200 if they can help it.
 
HangTime said:
This thread throws up the question of what a midrange card is.
I think midrange is in the £100 - £150 bracket. I rarely spend more than this if at all possible. I think the only two card I bought that cost more were the nVidia Geforce 256 DDR for £190 (first card to have hardware T&L, 1999) and a Radeon 9800 for £213 (2003).
 
Got my EVGA GTS ACS3 KO card and got it installed with the latest drivers.

Results as follows:

X800Xt

3dmark03 12992
3dmark05 6265
3dmark06 2204

8800 GTS

3dmark03 33137 :eek:
3dmark05 14214 :eek:
3dmark06 9397 :eek:

To say that it's a step up is an understatement! 300% + increase on 3dmark06 has impressed me.

Time to up my IQ settings and play some games :D
 
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