Which card to use?

[GunRunner]

I am building a basic system for one of the family as follows:

Asus P5PL2E + E4500 core duo and 2 GB Ram.
DVD Writer.
250GB HD.
3.5 floppy.
Card reader.
Midi case + 600 watt power supply.
Using the old Samsung 17" LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse.

It is just going to be a household PC that they say they will not play games on, but you know how it goes.

Now, I have 2 Graphics cards at my disposal. One is a plain vanilla nVidia 8600 GT (256mb), the other one is a Palit 7950GT (512 mb). My question is which one do I fit to the system and why?

I will be selling on the other card via fleabay.

Thanks in anticipation.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Buy a Radeon HD3850 for around £100 and sell both those cards at auction.

 

[GunRunner]

Buy a Radeon HD3850 for around £100 and sell both those cards at auction.

No thanks. It is one or the other. I have too many bad experiences with ATI cards, so I am not going there again.

Any suggestions anyone?

 

[redballoon]

Keep the 8600GT because of the better HD video acceleration, lower power consumption and sell the 7950GT while it's still worth a little more.

 

[rolypolyman]

Buy a Radeon HD3850 for around £100 and sell both those cards at auction.

I agree these cards are great bang for buck and have all the latest features.
Way way ahead of the 8600gt.

 

[J.D]

Sell the 8600GT and use the 7950....

....Although, the advice of using the HD3850 was the best advice given to you . The 7950 is faster than the 8600 but with bad image quality as well as not being able to do HDR and AA together. You could easily get the money for the HD3850 from the sale of the 2 cards you've mentioned and then you'd end up with a better product all round. I wouldn't skip out on ATI when they can provide you the best gaming experience at that price range as that would just be crazy. The majority of the cards I have owned in the last few years have been ATI and I've not had one fail yet. 9800Pro is in a friends system as well as my X800XT PE and my X1900XT. All still working happily today in friends systems. My next card will be Nvidia/Intel which will be getting ordered as soon as I know what's happening with deliveries with OCUK. Reason I've put Nvidia and Intel in bold because it seems I'm all for AMD but to be truthful, Nvidia doesn't have a GPU that matches ATI's 3850 in the £100 range.