New Graphics Card!!

[Grunty313]

[Yawgm0th]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

For that much, the best you can get is a 9800 Pro. The 9800 Pro is much better than that, but it's still hardly an upgrade. I'd suggest you throw some more money into the budget and make up for it by selling the FX5700. With the extra money, get a GeForce 6800.

Your motherboard will take another 512MB stick of RAM, no problem, and that's all you'll want. Get another stick of what you have now and you can run them in dual-channel.

[Grunty313]

[wayout44]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

Forget the FX5900XT as its a newted card (all nVIDIA XT's are newted and LE's are extra low speed versions of the basic models) so definately go with the FX6800.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

The LE on the site is much worse has it only has 8 pixel pipelines while a regular will have 12 and a GT/Ultra will have 16. It's worth it to get the regular 6800. I'd say to get the XFX 6800 they have listed.

Like Wayout said, forget the FX5900XT.

[Grunty313]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

k guys thanx for the advice i will definatly consider the xfx 6800 now but also will it give me a significant improvement in my benchmark results and gameing etc

[Yawgm0th]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

Yes. Even on an Athlon XP, it will mean a huge difference. Benchmarks will more than double in the 3DMark series, and you'll be able to play a games such as Doom 3 at a much higher resolution with higher quality settings and still get great framerates.

[Grunty313]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

so i will then be marking at over 6000 with just that xfx card installed but what about the ram will the extra ram make much of difference aswel or is it all graphics card when doin the benchmark

[Yawgm0th]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

For benchmarks, the RAM might make 5% difference at the most. Probably not even that much. In actual gaming, which matters more, it will make a huge difference in load times and the smoothness of the gameplay. It will even mean higher frames per second in some games.

[matm347]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

They did a columb on the RAM subject(I think on this site). They found that 1gig was the sweet spot for Doom 3 as far as framerates go. You'll be OK with 512, but for as cheap as RAM is, it would be worth getting another 512 of the same type.(Ultra mode in Doom3 takes up about 500 megs in textures alone)

I run 1.5 gigs now, up from 512. When I would play BF1942 I did notice it ran more smoothly when running/driving/flying.

One other route to consider is going with SLI.

All Nvidia 6 series boards will support SLI, but will require a dual 16x PCIX motherboard(Nforce4).
Depending on the price of the motherboard, you may spend the same amount now(if you went with a lesser 6 series card), but have the ability to double your graphics performance when you want with SLI.

The 6600 is on par with the 9800 XT/FX5950 GPUs

[Yawgm0th]

Re: New Graphics Card!!

If he were getting a new motherboard, waiting for a socket 939 boad with SLI capabilities would be smartest. But I don't see a new board and CPU as being feasible in this situation just yet.

[sr4470]