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Help me choose

Yozz76

Yozz76

Yozz76

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Joined
13 Aug 2007
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Hi there,

I'm new on here and am looking to carry out my first ever upgrade. I am also hoping to learn how to overclock eventually but one thing at a time eh!

My firts question to the knowledgeable amongst you is which graphics cards i should purchase?

My current system spec is as follows:
CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Mainboard is Asus P5NSLI
2048 MBytes DDR2 ram
300 gig hard drive
x2 Nvidia GeForce 7300GS graphics cards (SLI)

I'm looking to get 2 new graphics cards for SLI config that will fit into the above spec. Can spend apprx £100. My main criteria is that i notice a fair improvement on my current cards and would like to play PES2008 and Tiger Woods 08 on full settings when they come out. I'm also looking to get into some of visually stunning combat games that are available these days.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to help me here.
 
X1950 Pro at that budget. SLI is a waste of money to be honest. You can get much more from a one card system at the same price.
 
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Darg said:
X1950 Pro at that budget. SLI is a waste of money to be honest. You can get much more from a one card system at the same price.
Click to expand...
Exactly!

SLI is a waste at the low end of gaming when a single card will be cheaper / offer better performance.
 
Thanks for the replies. However, i'm now confused! I had assumed that because my mainboard is SLI, it would not support ATI? Is this not case? I'm also struggling to comprehend how one 256mb card can out perform two providing a total of 512mb! :confused:

Evidently, i have a lot to learn!
 
Yozz76 said:
Thanks for the replies. However, i'm now confused! I had assumed that because my mainboard is SLI, it would not support ATI? Is this not case? I'm also struggling to comprehend how one 256mb card can out perform two providing a total of 512mb! :confused:

Evidently, i have a lot to learn!
Click to expand...
All motherboards, be they Nvidia, ATI [AMD] or Intel will work with all brands of graphics cards (ATI [AMD], Nvidia, Matrox) for single cards. So no problems running 1x ATI [AMD] card on your Nvidia SLI motherboard.

However for SLI (Nvidias dual card solution) or Crossfire (ATI's dual card solution) you generally need supporting motherboards.

SLI is generally only favourable when you get to the really topend graphics cards, as it does offer extra performance but for more money. SLI never offers double the performance btw, sometimes it offers only 5% increase other times it may be 30% increase, as it is driver dependant.
Also for SLI the ram is not doubled, so 2x 256MB cards does not equal 512MB of memory as each cards still only uses its own 256MB of memory for textures.

Also ram is not the be all and end all for grapahics cards it comes down more to speed (which is determined by pixel pipelines, core speed, memory speed & internal architecture). Thats why often cards like the 6200 with 512MB were frowned upon by those in the know yet purchased by others thinking the card must be good if it has 512MB of ram. Yet the card was too slow to utilize the large amount of memory properly & for the same price a 256M 6600 would have been a better choice.

The other big factor is how cheap the X1950pro is at present. It has seriously been cost cut to get sales & offers great perfromance at its price. No (one or) two Nvidia cards come near to its performance at the price.

And if you do want a 512MB card if you play at 1280x 1024 or above then getting a 512MB X1950Pro (in this case the extra ram can be utilized by the card) you can get the Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-141-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=404
 
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ACESHIGH said:
All motherboards, be they Nvidia, ATI [AMD] or Intel will work with all brands of graphics cards (ATI [AMD], Nvidia, Matrox) for single cards. So no problems running 1x ATI [AMD] card on your Nvidia SLI motherboard.

However for SLI (Nvidias dual card solution) or Crossfire (ATI's dual card solution) you generally need supporting motherboards.

SLI is generally only favourable when you get to the really topend graphics cards, as it does offer extra performance but for more money. SLI never offers double the performance btw, sometimes it offers only 5% increase other times it may be 30% increase, as it is driver dependant.
Also for SLI the ram is not doubled, so 2x 256MB cards does not equal 512MB of memory as each cards still only uses its own 256MB of memory for textures.

Also ram is not the be all and end all for grapahics cards it comes down more to speed (which is determined by pixel pipelines, core speed, memory speed & internal architecture). Thats why often cards like the 6200 with 512MB were frowned upon by those in the know yet purchased by others thinking the card must be good if it has 512MB of ram. Yet the card was too slow to utilize the large amount of memory properly & for the same price a 256M 6600 would have been a better choice.

The other big factor is how cheap the X1950pro is at present. It has seriously been cost cut to get sales & offers great perfromance at its price. No (one or) two Nvidia cards come near to its performance at the price.

And if you do want a 512MB card if you play at 1280x 1024 or above then getting a 512MB X1950Pro (in this case the extra ram can be utilized by the card) you can get the Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-141-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=404
Click to expand...

Thanks, that is a nice easy to understand explanation and i'm now wiser for it.

May i ask, would the 512 Saphire card offer significantly better performance than the OC 256 card that was previously recommended in this thread? Which ever way, i'm now viewing ATI as the way to go and will review this if i'm ever in the position to dabble at the very top end.

Many thanks.
 
The 512MB X1950 pro would be slightly faster at higher resolutions (say 1280x 1024 & above), but probably very simlar at lower resolutions. So if you want to save a bit get the OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB (its the best value card arround at present imo)....
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-063-OK


EDIT: with that res you should be prefectly fine with the 256MB card.

This is what the current batch of cards look like ...
http://www.jetway.com.tw/jetway/pic/big2/X1950PR-ED-256M.jpg
 
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