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What card for under £150 ?

Bennah

Bennah

Bennah

Soldato
Joined
1 Jul 2004
Posts
7,223
Location
Sunny Manchester
Planning on building a new rig soon... Just want a decent enough PCI-E card to get me started, then its off to a X1800 XT / X1900 XT card when I got some money saved up.

Last time I got a PCI-E started, I bought a PCX5750, being cheap the performance was poor then I went to a X850 XT PE. Want something a little better this time around to start off with.

There is a wide range of cards that are available. Not sure which one would perform best though...


Powercolour X850 XT PE (520/1080, 16 Pipes, 256MB) £152.69
Sapphire X800 GTO2 (400/980, 16 Pipes, 256MB) £129.19
Sapphire X1600 XT (600/1400, 8 Pipes, 256MB) 129.19
HIS X1600 XT (600/1400, 8 Pipes, 256MB) £152.69

XFX 6600 GT EGE (500/1100, 8 Pipes ?, 256MB) £105.69
XFX 6600 GT (500/950, 8 Pipes ?, 512MB) £129.19
Gigabyte 6800 GS (425/1000, 12 Pipes, 256MB) £140.94
XFX 6800 GS EE (485/1100, 12 Pipes, 256MB) £146.82

Choices, Choices...
 
X850XT is the fastest there, no questions. If only for the short term until it's off to X1800/X1900 land, then get the X850XT...
 
Yea, talking about building the rig in the next month or so then about 4 weeks after that getting a X1800 XT / X1900 XT...
 
What kind of performance can you live with for a few weeks?

I ask as the X1800XT is a good price at the moment (£230 for the 256MB version, £260 for the 512MB version). I'd be tempted to get something like an X550 for £50 which will run games at 1024x768 med/low details and no AA but this will leave an extra £100 towards your new graphics card

If you want to be able to game at 1280x1024 with AA & AF then go for the X850XT :)
 
After some carefull thought, Im going to get a Sapphire X550 128MB :D :cool:

I havnt played games on a pc for atleast 8 months, so whats another couple of months going to do.

With a X550 card, it will be fun benching it... Cant wait :D
 
For £50 there is also the 7300GS.

But yes save the extra money and go for a X1800XT. (if you play below 1280x1024 then go for the 256mb version)
 
If you haven't bought it yet...

Why not get a PCI-E mobo with integrated graphics? Like the one in my sig, the 6150 chipset means games like Dawn Of War and City of Villians are perfectly playable at high res + med settings... then it means you aren't wasting £50 which could go towards an x1800!
 
That aint an option. Im getting a DFi mobo for overclocking purposes. Ultra-D would be fine as I dont plan to use SLI.

The 7300 GS 512MB might be an option too.
 
The 7300 is not as quick as the ATI X550 card.
So your better of getting the X550.
Besides the 7300 does not have 512MB ram, it uses turbocache, your systems ram (1GB System memory required for 512MB function)
 
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Yea, ok then. There is more competition with the X550 cards too on the ORB. There are only a few results with the 7300 series. I want some friendly competition lol.

X550 is it. Most probs the Sapphire 128MB version.
 
Dont really need a passive one as this card will get torture to the edge of its life. Going to get some ghetto air cooling on it :D
 
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