Nvidia 8800GT upgrade to....?

[linktoinsanity]

Hi all, I'm planning to upgrade from Nvidia 8800GT to a newer more modern card. Essentially what I want is a reasonably quiet, but powerful card that doesn't sound like a rocket when idle, but equally doesn't sound annoyingly loud when gaming (a wind noise rather then a scream). I'm not biased either way between Nvidia and ATI (thought I've been Nvidia since my ATI 9700 Pro 128mb died, the drivers for that were also terrible). I can't really afford a GTX280, but I was looking at an ATI 4870, 4850, 4650 (slient) or Nvidia GTX260/Nvidia 9800GT(+) I play games mostly at 1280*1024 (except CSS=1024*768) so the card needs to be able to take that with High settings. I'm torn between the cards mentioned above, any advice?

Also, I currently have a Zalman Modular 500W PSU, that is running well, so I really don't want to upgrade it, so the new graphics card needs to be capable of being powered by that (used a calculator, the 4870 should be fine on 100% load according to that, so lower cards should be too, only one I'm not sure of is the GTX 260)

 

[Kelt]

Hi all, I'm planning to upgrade from Nvidia 8800GT to a newer more modern card. Essentially what I want is a reasonably quiet, but powerful card that doesn't sound like a rocket when idle, but equally doesn't sound annoyingly loud when gaming (a wind noise rather then a scream). I'm not biased either way between Nvidia and ATI (thought I've been Nvidia since my ATI 9700 Pro 128mb died, the drivers for that were also terrible). I can't really afford a GTX280, but I was looking at an ATI 4870, 4850, 4650 (slient) or Nvidia GTX260/Nvidia 9800GT(+) I play games mostly at 1280*1024 (except CSS=1024*768) so the card needs to be able to take that with High settings. I'm torn between the cards mentioned above, any advice?

Also, I currently have a Zalman Modular 500W PSU, that is running well, so I really don't want to upgrade it, so the new graphics card needs to be capable of being powered by that (used a calculator, the 4870 should be fine on 100% load according to that, so lower cards should be too, only one I'm not sure of is the GTX 260)

You sure you need to upgrade?

I'm running an 8800GT as in sig., it'll do me until the DX11 cards come out.
Runs games smooth at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Only game (yes, you guessed it) I run it struggles with is Crysis...like most other cards!

 

[linktoinsanity]

One reason that I'd like to change my graphics card is the dodgy support for VM graphics card drivers (that work fine with an agp 7800GS that I have) aswell as other old games refusing to work properly such as GTA1. I've heard that the Geforce 8 series GPUs are to blame there (could be wrong?) and would like to change. My laptop has a Mobile ATI X1400 and runs the same apps fine so is it just the Nvidia 8 series gpus? all future Nvidia GPUs (from 8 series up)? or all modern video cards in ati? Thanks. Other performance wise, yeh the 8800GT seems to perform quite well, if everything worked perfectly I'd probably not be thinking about upgrades.

 

[Matmulder]

Gonna bump this, as I was about to ask something similar - I've got a 8800GTS (512mb) and I'm looking for a reasonably priced upgrade.
Its to do my mate a favour - he's got a crappy graphics card, so I told him he could have mine for cheapish (£50? Its 12months old) and I'd use that to chip toward another card.

Suggestions would be great

Edit: Actually - screw it. I need to get a 260/280 to get any reasonable performance increase, and I don't think its worth £150 for now. He's just gonna have to fork out and buy his own

 

[aslco]

Just whop in a 4850 for £110 and be done.

 

[Winnter]

IMO that card you have is great!I have that,And i think it would be a waste of money to upgrade it yet,Unless it struggles in games,Which i doubt,Cos i have one,and i game at 1680X1050.