New graphics card.... how new?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-11-02 04:23pm

Here's the question. Should I buy a DX10 card with a good price really soon, or should I buy an older, 7-series-ish card now, and wait maybe a year or a year and a half down the road to get a slightly later DX10 card?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-11-02 04:36pm

Unless there's games you're playing that you can feel staggering right now, I'd suggest waiting for a year or so before getting a DX10 card.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-11-02 04:43pm

I have a GF 4 Ti4800 which cannot play Oblivion, the SupCom Beta, and I'm guessing definetly won't be able to play most of the games that are coming out soon. They're all DX9 or above, and my card doesn't have the hardware features to even load up those games.

So, with that clarification, should I go for a 7-series ish card now and wait longer for a more mature DX10 card, or buy the 8-series cards that are coming out soon?

Jaepheth · Post by **Jaepheth** » 2006-11-02 04:45pm

I hear a lot of people are buying a 7950gt and plan on using NVidia's step-up program to upgrade the card in 90 days (may not be NVidia, but vendor specific)

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-11-02 04:47pm

I still have an AGP motherboard so that would mean I'd have to buy a whole new comp.

There is still one 7-series card that can still operate on AGP. And apparently it's not shabby either. So I was wondering if I should just get that and wait much later for a new comp upgrade, or do the comp upgrade now.

The rest of my comp actually isn't that shabby. 1 gig DDR333 ram, 3 GHz P4.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-11-02 05:13pm

The step up program is vendor specific.

I bought myself a 7950GT a short while ago. I'm quite happy with it, and it's unlikely that the DX10 cards will be cheap enough for a while to be really worth the bother, unless you like the idea of spending $450 on a video card.

The 7600GT AGP card should be quite good. Apparently roughly equal to a 6800 GT in performance.

On the other hand, the 8800 GTS is supposed to be much better in performance that any existing card. *shrug*

On the gripping hand, there's always something better coming just around the corner. You keep waiting for the next great thing, and pretty soon your existing computer has died of old age.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-11-02 05:38pm

Just wait to till next week. If you can afford a 8800GTX or GTS, great, they'll be the best perform cards on the market. If not, then the prices for the current Nvidia cards (probably ATI's, by default) will probably drop as vendors try to get rid of existing stock.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-11-02 05:45pm

Affording a 8800 GTX or GTS means that I have to buy a whole new comp anyway, since my motherboard is AGP only.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-11-02 07:02pm

Shinova wrote:Affording a 8800 GTX or GTS means that I have to buy a whole new comp anyway, since my motherboard is AGP only.

Maybe not. Do you know what socket your CPU is?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-11-02 07:04pm

Shinova wrote:Affording a 8800 GTX or GTS means that I have to buy a whole new comp anyway, since my motherboard is AGP only.

I missed that. In that case, I'd just save up and buy a new system.

ThatGuyFromThatPlace · Post by **ThatGuyFromThatPlace** » 2006-11-02 07:19pm

Definitely go with buying a new system. any upgrade you're going to do with an AGP motherboard is going to put you back where you are now in less than a year.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-11-02 07:26pm

ThatGuyFromThatPlace wrote:Definitely go with buying a new system. any upgrade you're going to do with an AGP motherboard is going to put you back where you are now in less than a year.

He might not even need a whole new system. A $40 motherboard would probably be sufficent.

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2006-11-02 07:41pm

What's the CPU? Could that be a bottleneck for the system?

Edit - 3Ghz, not bad at all. Spoke too soon; will reconsider.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-02 08:55pm

The best advice hinges on what socket your CPU is. Do you know that information, or can you find out?

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-11-02 09:57pm

I would recommend waiting for a while. The latest cards have a humongous power requirement. SLI requires 700W at least.. ugh.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-02 10:54pm

Here's the skinny:

If you're on LGA Socket 775, get an ASrock Dual. It's the perfect mobo for someone in your situation: inexpensive and supports Pentium 4 and Core 2 Duo, DDR1 and DDR2, AGP and PCI-E.

If you're on an earlier socket, try to find a cheap but good motherboard that supports PCI-E and then pick up something like an X1950 Pro or 7900 GS. If you're on a really old socket, then get a new AGP card. Your best bets here are either a 7600 GT (if you can find one in stock) or waiting for the AGP version of the X1950 Pro. The latter will be much faster than anything else AGP, but is likely to be expensive and isn't out yet.

I wouldn't recommend a whole new system at this point, seeing as how you have a perfectly good CPU and RAM. Doing a cheap mobo + GPU upgrade (say, $40 for the MB and $200 for the vid card) should give you good settings on modern games for the next 12-18 months, which will give you a lot of time to save up for a totally new system whose components will be much cheaper and much better than what you could build today thanks to advancing technology. In the meantime, you shouldn't experience any significant bottlenecking with your CPU and a 7900 GS or especially X1950 Pro will be plenty good enough.

I also wouldn't recommend waiting for prices to drop from the new cards. I've followed a lot of video card releases and prices on current cards never drop when the new ones come out. Instead they gradually drop in the weeks leading up to the release as more people decide to wait for the new ones, dropping demand. By the time the new cards are a week away, prices on current stuff has dropped as much as it's going to.

Jaepheth · Post by **Jaepheth** » 2006-11-02 11:22pm

I'm in the same boat. my current PC has a Radeon 9800, an Athlon XP 2400+

I just bought a new hard drive since my old one died (got a Seagate Barracuda and a SATA/IDE card so that I'll have some extra IDE slots once I get my C2D board)

Right now I'm planning on a full system upgrade in February once quad cores and DX10 cards lower the prices on the stuff I want (hopefully)