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Which graphics card to run 1920*1200?

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

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Joined
23 Apr 2007
Posts
1,785
Location
Cardiff-ish, Wales
Hi guys,

I've just upgraded from a 19" 4:3 CRT to a Dell 2408 running at 1920*1200 and most of my games have slowed to a crawl with the bells and whistles turned on.

I'm running an Athlon 4400 X2, 2Gb RAM, 2x sli'd 7800GTXs. I'm going to be changing the mobo, cpu and RAM soon, but I think I need to get a graphics card asap.

I'm not convinced about waiting for the 9800 series as I don't think they're going to be a massive leap forward, although I'm sure the price will be.

To run things like COD4 at 1920*1200 with as many bells and whistles, what would you suggest I should buy?

Is this upgrade worth it or will my CPU be a major bottleneck and I may as well upgrade everything together?
 
Jed Shields said:
Hi guys,

I've just upgraded from a 19" 4:3 CRT to a Dell 2408 running at 1920*1200 and most of my games have slowed to a crawl with the bells and whistles turned on.

I'm running an Athlon 4400 X2, 2Gb RAM, 2x sli'd 7800GTXs. I'm going to be changing the mobo, cpu and RAM soon, but I think I need to get a graphics card asap.

I'm not convinced about waiting for the 9800 series as I don't think they're going to be a massive leap forward, although I'm sure the price will be.

To run things like COD4 at 1920*1200 with as many bells and whistles, what would you suggest I should buy?

Is this upgrade worth it or will my CPU be a major bottleneck and I may as well upgrade everything together?
Click to expand...



edit: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/12/geforce_8800_gts_512_mb/page12.html - there took me 10 seconds.

As for rest of pc, your choice if you game more splash your budget on the g-card, if you like to show off your e-peen spend it on the cpu and clock it.

p.s
take a look here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17850938
 
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I think its your CPU thats slowing you down more than those 7800s, tho they won't be helping...

Recently spent £350 on the following...

Q6600 clocked to 3.55Ghz
P5K Premium mobo
4GB OCZ memory....

This is with an 8800GTX I already owned...

Anyways, I was using a single core 4000+ clocked at 3.2Ghz before and running a res of 1680x1050 most games would often dip to low 20s fps quite often...

With that upgrade I can now run me 8800GTX at 1920x1200 with 4x aa and 8x af for all my games (apart from crysis ;)) smooth as butter...(bought a 24 inch ocuk value monitor for £210 the other day)...

I'd say an 8800GTX is more than capable of doing 1920x1200 with aa and af enabled for most new games

But you will prolly need a new cpu too as that one will defo be limiting it...
 
Seeing as you have SLI already, then 2 x 9600GTs would rip through most stuff at 1920*1200 - all for about £200ish.
 
They will still work on your board, but rember that if you play games that dont make use of SLI a 8800 will be faster.
Your rig is a fast enought to make good use of 8800gxt's in sli.
 
hernaldo said:
I think its your CPU thats slowing you down more than those 7800s, tho they won't be helping...
Click to expand...


Went from a 7950GT ocd to above GTX speeds to present 8800GTS 512 MB and it was a huge upgrade. Sure my cpu is not as good as a C2D but able to play new games at max settings now. :)

I would get new card now then save for rest later. Only major diff is the "game" of 3d Mark 06...but i dont play that much :)
 
SGCWill said:
Don't forget that the 9600GT's are PCI-E 2.0.
Click to expand...

Which means nothing as PCI-E 2.0 is backwards Compatible. :)

Id get a GTX for that res, doesn't matter about the CPU, as its lower res's like 1280x1024 that are more CPU dependant, that res is more GPU.
 
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not really, theres various scaling involved, some games offer very little benefit, some offer a very good benefit. Either way AFAIK, i haven't looked at a 9600gt in a while and then on briefly, they might have similar raw power but lack of shaders, less rops?(not sure if it has less actually there) and less bandwidth means under high quality conditions with AA/AF things like the 8800gtx should pull ahead, sometimes very noticeably. Depends on if you hit a game that shows it.

meh, either way mem and cpu aren't really a concern at all. yes you "might" have had trouble with a single core, infact probably would have, but a dual core is well, literally 100% more power available. You could overclock it a bit to most likely, an extra 200-300Mhz on each core won't harm you anyway.

The only slight issue i would mention is that if you wanted 4gigs of mem it would be fairly pointless to buy normal DDR right now, as everything is DDR2 at the moment. So if you did want more memory an upgrade all around might be the way to go. But from what i can see there aren't exactly loads of games that 4gigs is better than 2, i think its more just a nicer/faster system overall, especially if you're running vista.

But having 4 gigs lets me leave open firefox, IE, and a bunch of other stuff without worries. I wouldn't rush to upgrade everything right now, always ALWAYS start with gpu for gaming. Thankfully is the most compatible thing around in general so buying something now won't limit what you can upgrade the rest too. Then upgrade the rest as and when you can and again only if you really noticed the 2gb memory thing being an issue, it might not be at all. When you do upgrade you don't have to go mad, a £50 newer dual core that will clock to 3-3.5Ghz, a £60 mobo, and £60 buys you 4gigs of excellent DDR2 these days. it will perform within 3-4% of a system made up of a £250 chip, £200 of mem and a £150 mobo. absolute waste to spend that much unless you use cpu for heavy duty stuff for work.
 
Thanks Drunkenmaster. It sounds like a single card solution has more potential across the board than 2 cheaper SLI'd boards, as the SLI might be better on some, but worse on others.

My gut is telling me that an 8800GTX is the way to go. I think they're around £250 now, which is within budget, but I'm sure that would plummet when the 9800GTX comes out - any idea when this is? Are we talking weeks, months? And how long before the next "proper" generation of cards?

The problem with PC components are that there's always something better coming out just over the horizon, but we never know exactly when :/
 
Okay ... how does this plan sound?

Sell off my 2x 7800GTXs (not sure what I'd get) and buy 2x 9600GTs for £200ish

When I come to upgrade my CPU, Mobo and RAM (maybe 6 months) I can move my current Mobo, CPU and RAM to my wifes ageing PC. I'll then sell one of the 9600GTs (it should hold it's value reasonably well for 6 months or so), give my wife the other then blow another £200 or so on the next "best" graphics card option.
 
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Little bump.

The reason for the 2x 9600GTs over the 8800GTX is that I think they'll hold their value a little better and also when I come to offloading my old gear to my wife the 8800GTX is overkill, so I'd have to sell that and still buy something to replace that, whereas with the 2x 9600GTs I'd sell one and keep one.

Does that sound like the best solution?
 
Jed Shields said:
Little bump.

The reason for the 2x 9600GTs over the 8800GTX is that I think they'll hold their value a little better and also when I come to offloading my old gear to my wife the 8800GTX is overkill, so I'd have to sell that and still buy something to replace that, whereas with the 2x 9600GTs I'd sell one and keep one.

Does that sound like the best solution?
Click to expand...

Cheapest 8800gt will hold value much better, and is only a little slower than 8800gtx... Course your gonna struggle on crysis, but twin 9600gts arn't exactly gonna fly...
 
How does the 8800GT compare to SLI'd 9600Gts? I read that the SLI'd 9600GTs were really good ...

Of course, the single card solution means that I either keep a relatively epensive card for my wife when I upgrade, or sell it on and buy a new cheap card for her. That's why I'm more tempted with 2x cheaper cards, so long as they give me a decent performance at 1920*1200 for the time being.
 
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