Video Cards, your suggestions?

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:04 am

My current set up:
2.2 GHZ
1 gig RAM
512 mb Nvidia 6800

I found these on sale at a local store and wanted to know which one would be better than the current video card I have installed now to tweak some better performance from Oblivion and such graphic whore games:
ATI Radeon 9250 256 MB
ATI Radeon 9550 256 MB
ATI Radeon 9600 128 MB
ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
ATI Radeon x700 Pro 256 MB
ATI Radeon x1300 Pro 256 MB
ATI Radeon x1600 Pro 512 MB
ATI All-in-Wonder 256 MB
Conquerer FX 5200 256 MB

Or is there a better one out there I can find? Or should I just plunk down the hard cash for a new computer with two on-board video cards helping each other out to run awesome games? And if so, which cards and system would you suggest? Any semi-detailed responses would be most helpful, thank you.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:28 am

A 6800 is going to make short work of that entire list I'm afraid to say, all of the 9xxx cards are almost guaranteed to be slower and the x700/x1300/x1600 won't be much of a challenge either. It isn't till you get into the serious x1800/x1900 series cards from ATI(AMD) till it would be worth your time to upgrade. But by then the price is pretty high, though the performance will also be tremendous compared to a vanilla 6800.

Also, dual card configurations (either SLI or crossfire) are only for people with WAY too much money and not enough social life. Either solution shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone with a budget or a life. My current system is fully able to support SLI video cards, my PSU has the wattage for it, my CPU is powerful enough to drive such a system. But will I ever get SLI for this? The answer is: Absolutely not! SLI/Crossfire is one of the most obvious money grabs by video card (and PC) makers that I have ever seen. And the pattern has stuck quite well, get the latest and greatest system with some insanely expensive quad SLI setup, and within 6 months there is a single GPU card out on the market that is faster...for one third the price.

If you want some of the best performance available today you would have to go with a Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX card, but odds are your current CPU would hold you back so it wouldn't be worth a beast like that unless you upgraded the whole computer.

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:39 pm

so Duel Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX cards? XD But seriously, so I guess my best option is probably upgrade and get a brand new computer. But unfortunately I'll have to wait for that option to be available to me probably late this year or early next year. But I know exactly who to go to to ask about current video cards on the market when I go to buy a new computer!

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 5:50 pm

x2 Krom's statement. that 6800 is going to out-perform all those cards in that list.

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 9:09 pm

good to know, but Oblivion still runs a bit choppy in places, so was looking to improve to 30 fps constant or higher.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 9:38 pm

My Nvidia Geforce 7950 GT should be able to pull that off most of the time. If you have the money, plug in any 8800 card and it should clean up Oblivion, the rest is up to your CPU and system memory. If The CPU and memory end up holding you back, just buy a new system with the CPU and memory you need, but a cheap pos placeholder video card then plug the 8800 into that.

DarkHorse · Post by **DarkHorse** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 2:20 am

At a guess, I'd say it's the memory. Oblivion seems to be a pig for that stuff. Your video card isn't that much worse than mine and my 7600 copes just fine.

If only all those shaders had been put to better use - it could look stunning with the amount of power in that engine, but it just doesn't seem finished. It irks me a little, given the amount of hardware that goes into running it.