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.
Proud owner of a B.S. in Economics from Purdue University Class of 2007 w00t
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Wait a bit for the new generation of cards to come out.
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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.
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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.
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
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
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
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.
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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.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
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*
Proud owner of a B.S. in Economics from Purdue University Class of 2007 w00t
"Sometimes, I just feel bad for the poor souls on this board"
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.
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
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
Proud owner of a B.S. in Economics from Purdue University Class of 2007 w00t
"Sometimes, I just feel bad for the poor souls on this board"
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.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
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.
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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?
Proud owner of a B.S. in Economics from Purdue University Class of 2007 w00t
"Sometimes, I just feel bad for the poor souls on this board"
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?
Children of the Ancients
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) 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. 
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