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I've had my computer for two years now, and it's time to do some major upgrading. I already bought a new 19" CRT (I love it ) and am looking at video cards now. I want to be able to get a good enough graphics card to take me into the next 2 years sitting pretty.

With about $400 to spend, what's the best graphics card I can buy? The release of Battlefield 2 is prompting me to go ahead and get this now. I don't do any video editing or anything...it's all video gaming.

From looking around a little bit it seems as if the GeForce 6800 Overclocked looks pretty good.

Wait a bit for the new generation of cards to come out.

Nvidia's G70 will be hitting around the end of June. Wait til then. There might be a 24 pipe card within your price range.

Wait a bit for the new generation of cards to come out.

yup, wait for the 512MB cards to hit the budget range cards.

Ati is a good bet if you like overclocking or video app’s, the overall performance is great as well.

the .303 bookworm wrote:

Wait a bit for the new generation of cards to come out.

yup, wait for the 512MB cards to hit the budget range cards.

Ati is a good bet if you like overclocking or video app’s, the overall performance is great as well.

Note the 512s have already hit the "budget" range if $200 is your budget then Ati x800XL 512 meg card can be had.

That said test have shown even in Doom 3 on ultra high mode(Were textures are not compressed) the extra 256 megs does not help, much like when the 64 megs and the 128 megs were released there were not any games to take advantage of them and their don't look to be any 512 games due out anytime this year.

And since the next refresh is due this month I say sit on your money till the second week of July, either you can pick up the G70 midrange or get a Geforce6800 or Ati x850 for as much as a hundred fifty less

Mr Bean wrote:

the .303 bookworm wrote:

Wait a bit for the new generation of cards to come out.

yup, wait for the 512MB cards to hit the budget range cards.

Ati is a good bet if you like overclocking or video app’s, the overall performance is great as well.

Note the 512s have already hit the "budget" range if $200 is your budget then Ati x800XL 512 meg card can be had.

That said test have shown even in Doom 3 on ultra high mode(Were textures are not compressed) the extra 256 megs does not help, much like when the 64 megs and the 128 megs were released there were not any games to take advantage of them and their don't look to be any 512 games due out anytime this year.

And since the next refresh is due this month I say sit on your money till the second week of July, either you can pick up the G70 midrange or get a Geforce6800 or Ati x850 for as much as a hundred fifty less

You are mistaken. There is no X800XL 512mb out there for $200. Not even the 256mb version is going for $200.

The extra ram does help in certain situations, but I need to hunt down the hardware site that showed this.

Hamel wrote:
You are mistaken. There is no X800XL 512mb out there for $200. Not even the 256mb version is going for $200.

The extra ram does help in certain situations, but I need to hunt down the hardware site that showed this.

I am indeed, not even the ones falling of the back of trucks are going for $200, I should have said four hundred.

Sounds like a good idea then

One quick addition to my question...

Right now I'm on a P4 2.8 Ghz with a gig of RAM. I won't be able to upgrade any other components besides the video card this summer. Will the fact that I'll only have a gig of RAM and a 2.8 Ghz make a certain level of video cards worthless because of other bottlenecks in the system? For example, will anything above a GeForce 6800 OC (or equivelent) be wasted money because my computer wouldn't be able to use the added speed of the card due to other bottlenecks in the memory or processor?

Argh waiting until July...that's so long from now...but if it saves me a hundred bucks or more I guess I might as well do it *sigh*

Argh waiting until July...that’s so long from now...but if it saves me a hundred bucks or more I guess I might as well do it *sigh*

You can always wait a few month’s and save some cash while getting a better component .

512MB may be appraching the bottleneck but it should be fine.

What's your current video card anyways, Butterbean?

GeForce FX 5600 256 MB

I'm actually surprised that it runs the BF2 demo pretty well. All of the quality is set to low, but the resolution is 1024X768 and it goes without a hitch. Maybe I can turn the settings up even higher...? I always thought that I got gimmicked into paying extra money for the 256 MB version as opposed to the 128 MB version. I thought that the card's speed was too slow to utilize the extra memory (and so did people on this forum, actually). Whether or not that's true, it's running BF2 pretty well which is cool. Maybe I can hold off buying a card for a few more months

But still, give your feedback

Butterbean569 wrote:GeForce FX 5600 256 MB

I'm actually surprised that it runs the BF2 demo pretty well. All of the quality is set to low, but the resolution is 1024X768 and it goes without a hitch. Maybe I can turn the settings up even higher...? I always thought that I got gimmicked into paying extra money for the 256 MB version as opposed to the 128 MB version. I thought that the card's speed was too slow to utilize the extra memory (and so did people on this forum, actually). Whether or not that's true, it's running BF2 pretty well which is cool. Maybe I can hold off buying a card for a few more months

But still, give your feedback

Alright I'll tell you, the diffrence between Low and High in BF2 is alot, run it on high and WATCH YOUR COMPUTER SCREAM FOR MEARCY!


Seriously, the next refresh is the end of this month, while its always true that waiting a month can save you money, waiting this month(Less than two weeks now) will save you alot of money.

I wonder if it's true that the new cards will have 24 pipelines. If so, we can possibly expect more than double the performance.

The 7 series was released today...so I thought I would go ahead and bring this thread back up.

Basically, when will the 6 series cards (and their ATI equivelents) go down in price? Right away? Or should I expect to wait a month or so for them to drop the prices?

What would be the best card I could buy for $300? How about $400?

Mr Bean wrote:Alright I'll tell you, the diffrence between Low and High in BF2 is alot, run it on high and WATCH YOUR COMPUTER SCREAM FOR MEARCY!

Maybe your computer. My computer squeals and asks for more.

Speaking of video cards, what's the cheapest card that can run HL2 and Doom3 on highest settings and still have a frame rate of, oh... about 60-75 fps?

Define "highest".



Now, running at 1600x1200 is a much bigger strain than even 1280x960, let alone lower resolutions like 1152x864 or 1024x768.

What would be the best card I could buy for $300? How about $400?

If you're still using an AGP slot, then you want a 6800GT. The x800XL is only a better value in the PCIe variety.

Anybody know if the 7800GTX has an AGP variant, or has it finally exceeded AGP's bandwidth?

The 7800GTX does not currently have an AGP varient, though it might have, even if nVidia does announce an AGP version, don't expect aviability.

Update: there will not be a 7800GTX AGP verient.
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