please advise ATI card

[Mittens]

hi everyone !

im gonna buy a new video card to replace my 9800 pro.
i have narrowed it down to either :-

PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP)


OR

PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP)


now a few things ... first off, is the x850 worth the extra £50? i know its gonna be faster but how much ?

im not sure how stuff works anymore, i thought you needed a pretty good cpu to process the raw 'scene' then the graphics card put the textures and effects onto it, so if you had a slow cpu but a top end graphics card it wouldnt help much ... but my friend has just bought oblivion.. initially he only had about 7 fps on it using a sempron (2 gig i think) and a 9500.

he bought the x800 gto and now it plays pretty smoothly with a lot of effects on ?

anyway im digressing, these are my pc components so you guys can give me an informed opinion


P4 3gig with HT -northwood
1 gig of pc3200 memory
tagan 430w psu
asus p4p800 motherboard.

 

[gt_junkie]

Hi there,

I have an 850xt and can say that it's an impressive piece of kit. Runs oblivion at decent frame rates with all eye candy on (with the exception of HDR of course).

Decent performance for the money!

Mine has an arctic cooling silencer on board which really is impressive. Original cooler running at 520/540 reached 70 degrees C under load - now it's at 619/596 at 50 degrees.

Plus, because of the cooler it's nearly silent!

Never experienced an x800 but feel that the x850's always been a great overclocker and happily plays all the new titles to a high level at the price!

Doom 3, Half Life 2 (and lost coast!), oblivion (As mentioned), far cry and X3 all play very well indeed!

gt_junkie

Incidentally, my rig is specced as follows:

A64 3700+ @2.4ghz (Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro)
4gb DDR
Sapphire Pure Advantage Crossfire Mobo
2x 120gb Seagate Barracuda's in Raid 0
Antec P180 with 2x 120 Akasa silent orange fans

 

[Darkwave]

The rest of your spec is fine, so either of those will do. I am assuming you want to stay on AGP instead of buying a PCI-E motherboard (which unfortunately might be cheaper at the moment, considering AGP prices have been continually rising for a while now), so what's your budget?

 

[no_1_dave]

If staying AGP i'd go Nvidia & get the 7800 because it's the quickest AGP cart out at the moment, also supporting Shader Model 3, so you'll be able to use HDR etc...

 

[Mittens]

The rest of your spec is fine, so either of those will do. I am assuming you want to stay on AGP instead of buying a PCI-E motherboard (which unfortunately might be cheaper at the moment, considering AGP prices have been continually rising for a while now), so what's your budget?

thanks for the replies ! my budget is hard capped <g> at £200.

im not gonna get into the whole nvidia/ati thing, but .. doesnt an x850 do sm3/ hdr ??

 

[Darkwave]

thanks for the replies ! my budget is hard capped <g> at £200.

im not gonna get into the whole nvidia/ati thing, but .. doesnt an x850 do sm3/ hdr ??

Nope.

 

[Mittens]

hmm well thats that then lol.

ok im gonna have to meditate on this a bit. thanks for the replies everybody.

 

[Mekrel]

The X850 can do HDR, just not the FP24 or was it FP32 cant remember now way of doing it, has nothing to do with SM3.0.

However I would still get the 7800GT AGP card as if your going to be updating the rig which is using a phased out bus i.e AGP you might aswell get the best one as possible.