A good card for around £200

[jack2]

Hi all, I'm going to upgrade to PCIe next week and was wondering what would be a good card. This will just be a single card and my resolutions wont exceed 1024x768 by much (if at all).

I'll check the rest of the forum when i have more time, but thx for your responses.

 

[mkaibear]

You can pick up an X1900XT for around that price, that's a damn good card for the money. Bit loud, though - for a quiet or silent one either buy an X1900XT and stick an aftermarket fan on, or go for a 7900GT and stick an aftermarket fan on.

 

[jack2]

Ive seen this one here: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=335772

Is this the same as the other makes? And thank you for your respose.

 

[georgebeee]

yeah, that's a good one. sapphire makes more ati cards than any other brand

 

[jack2]

Thanks or your help so far.

At this point im looking at buying:

Mobo: Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA, VIA PT880, S775, AGP / PCI-Express, DDR/DDR2 400/667, SATA I, SATA RAID, ATX

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 775, 1.86 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail

Plus the gfx card above. All i need now is RAM. Will my my 2 X CMX512 3200 XLP be ok, or what will work in it?

 

[mkaibear]

That RAM should be fine.

 

[sprite]

Hi all, I'm going to upgrade to PCIe next week and was wondering what would be a good card. This will just be a single card and my resolutions wont exceed 1024x768 by much (if at all).

I'll check the rest of the forum when i have more time, but thx for your responses.

7600GT £90
7900GS £120
X1800XT £130
7900GTO (Nearly a GTX) £160
X1900XT 256MB £170
X1900XT 512MB £210

Just some comparisons 😉

 

[Wobbly_englishman]

On Dabs they have - MSI 7900GTO 512mb at £165. (inc VAT & p+p). Which is a 7900GTX with slightly slower memory. It's hard to find benchmarks as they are only available in the EU.

With DX10 coming in soon it might be a good idea to wait 6 months if you can.

Nice system build

 

[sprite]

On Dabs they have - MSI 7900GTO 512mb at £165. (inc VAT & p+p). Which is a 7900GTX with slightly slower memory. It's hard to find benchmarks as they are only available in the EU.

With DX10 coming in soon it might be a good idea to wait 6 months if you can.

Nice system build

Thats what i meant by the 7900GTO for £160 😛 I do think waiting for DX10 to come out is a good idea though, you could just buy a 7600GT for £90 which is a pretty good card and can run most modern games at 1024x768 at med-high settings

Why the AsRock board btw ? You could get an MSI P965 Chipset motherboard for £70 that supports DDR800MHz and has a better chipset for overclocking

 

[Wobbly_englishman]

Thats what i meant by the 7900GTO for £160 😛 I do think waiting for DX10 to come out is a good idea though, you could just buy a 7600GT for £90 which is a pretty good card and can run most modern games at 1024x768 at med-high settings

Sorry Sprite, Your response wasn't on screen when I started typing. I've already bought the 7900GTO though because I melted my previous card and couldn't wait myself.

 

[sprite]

Thats what i meant by the 7900GTO for £160 😛 I do think waiting for DX10 to come out is a good idea though, you could just buy a 7600GT for £90 which is a pretty good card and can run most modern games at 1024x768 at med-high settings

Sorry Sprite, Your response wasn't on screen when I started typing. I've already bought the 7900GTO though because I melted my previous card and couldn't wait myself.

lol how did you melt your other card ? BTW whats the 7900GTO like ? was thinking of getting one for myself

 

[Wobbly_englishman]

lol how did you melt your other card ? BTW whats the 7900GTO like ? was thinking of getting one for myself [/quote]

I had a X850pro and it was on the blink since my little brother yanked it out of my pc......... One of the capicitors was nice and black. Although it was a good excuse to get rid of it. Damn the X850pro.

7900GTO arrives tomorrow. However, interestingly there is someone on another forum who has flashed the bios to GTX and got it clocked to 740/1800.

Will keep you posted for when it arrives

 

[jack2]

A friend has offered me 2Gb of CMX1024 -3200Pro (paired) for £100. Which is better, the RAM he offered or 1Gb of DDRII 667 for 70 odd quid?

 

[sprite]

A friend has offered me 2Gb of CMX1024 -3200Pro (paired) for £100. Which is better, the RAM he offered or 1Gb of DDRII 667 for 70 odd quid?

I have no idea how Conroe performs with DDR memory instead of DDR2 but 2GB of slower RAM is usually better than 1GB faster RAM. But as i said ive never seen performance of Conroe with DDR memory so i cant honestly say.

EDIT: Just found this on a site...

"What's even amazing is the fact that the low Latency of the DDR 400 RAM combined with the Core 2 Duo yeiled good results. So good that the DDR 400 thanks to it's low latency surpassed DDR2 667 in half of the games that were being memory benchmarked. But overall it was a tie in the end in preformance between these 2 ram types."

 

[13thmonkey]

A friend has offered me 2Gb of CMX1024 -3200Pro (paired) for £100. Which is better, the RAM he offered or 1Gb of DDRII 667 for 70 odd quid?

I have no idea how Conroe performs with DDR memory instead of DDR2 but 2GB of slower RAM is usually better than 1GB faster RAM. But as i said ive never seen performance of Conroe with DDR memory so i cant honestly say.

EDIT: Just found this on a site...

"What's even amazing is the fact that the low Latency of the DDR 400 RAM combined with the Core 2 Duo yeiled good results. So good that the DDR 400 thanks to it's low latency surpassed DDR2 667 in half of the games that were being memory benchmarked. But overall it was a tie in the end in preformance between these 2 ram types."

I'm running one of those systems, and according to sisoft (the only real measure I can use), its as good as a E6600 with DDR2. I'm quite happy with it, just unsure about PCI-E compatbilities, they can't tell me if any cards are not compatible, only those that are compatible.

 

[ZimboBEAR]

The only reason to buy the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA is keep your existing AGP card and DDR Ram modules,

keep your existing 2x512mb ram modules. It will save you from spending £100 pounds or so on new RAM.

What graphics card do you have at the moment? If its a 6800GT or 6800 ultra AGP, then i would just keep hold of that until DX10 cards come out, which are probably only 3-6 months away.

Thats what I have done.

To be honest if you are just going to be using 1024x768 and you have one of those cards i mentioned then just wait for ATI R600 or Nvidia G80, save up for one of those as both of them will probably make current high end cards look slow.

 

[jack2]

Thanks for the advice, it's quite interesting about the lower spec ram, thanks for going to the trouble of posting it.

I will be using my old AGP for a couple of weeks, but as the board is only priced about 37 quid, I dont see it as a loss, even if I upgrade the board again i the next 8 months.

I'll probably wait for until most games take advantage of DirectX 10 before I upgrade the card, as I dont chase technology like I used to