Need a new video card

[voy74656]

I've always likes going to tomshardware.com - great place for reviews and comparisons on the latest hardware

[mickq]

I have a Gigabyte GeForce 6800GT/256MB

It is a serious, serious card. Just the look of it when you unpack it makes you go "whoooaaa". Then you feel the weight of it and the result is always a 4 letter word. It has serious heat sinks on both sides and a cool fan lit by blue LED's. (Rice anyone?)

I upgraded from an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro/128MB.

I have always been into cards with nVidia chipsets except for the Voodoo2 when that came out. Then the last generation of nVidia didnt do so well and ATI was clearly ahead.

The ATI I just removed did a very good job. A powerful card. Runs just about anything well.

The GeForce 6800GT I just put in is easily TWICE as fast. It spits out graphics at an awesome rate. Has high quality memory too, and mine came with an app allowing easy overclocking, so you can boost it as much as you can cope with. (Came with Doom 3 too!).

Its a much better solution than the current ATI X800 cards. Unfortunately these arent a whole lot more than faster versions of their last generation of card, whilst the GeForce 6800 is very much a whole new generation of card.

To give you some idea of the speed, go download Future Mark 2005 graphics benchtest suite from here:

http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/

(Left hand bottom of page, click on Future Mark 2005 Pro download. You can download and use it as the free version with some things disabled).

I run it at 1024x768 resolution. Run it on your machine.

My results/score is getting close to 5000.

That aint exactly slow!

[KrasH]

As far as graphics cards go, I'm an Nvidia man myself. But IMO, both ati and nvidia have brillient cards. The only thing I'll suggest is that you go for at least a 256MB video card. Also try and get the best card you can afford. The idea is to future proof it for as long as possible. As far as that goes, my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, is about 8 or so months old, has 256MB, and I recon it'll be able to handle games for atleast the next couple years.

[mickq]

  KrasH said:

As far as graphics cards go, I'm an Nvidia man myself. But IMO, both ati and nvidia have brillient cards. The only thing I'll suggest is that you go for at least a 256MB video card. Also try and get the best card you can afford. The idea is to future proof it for as long as possible. As far as that goes, my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, is about 8 or so months old, has 256MB, and I recon it'll be able to handle games for atleast the next couple years.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One of the main problems at the moment is that none of the top cards are available on the latest bus - ie PCIExpress. Everything is on AGP and only a few "normal" cards are on PCIE. (As of when I checked last weekend anyway).

Its frustrating because if you were to go out now, you literally could not build a state of the art computer.

If you want the best and latest graphics cards, you MUST have an AGP motherboard. If you want the best and latest motherboard and CPU, then you MUST NOT have the best graphics card. Its very annoying.

Unlike AGP it seems PCIE is coming in relatively slowly, meaning at the moment you can be in limbo!

Ideally I would have liked to have bought a kick-ass motherboard, a latest generation CPU (775 pin) and 6800GT video card, but you literally cant do that!

[turb06]

  KrasH said:

As far as graphics cards go, I'm an Nvidia man myself. But IMO, both ati and nvidia have brillient cards. The only thing I'll suggest is that you go for at least a 256MB video card. Also try and get the best card you can afford. The idea is to future proof it for as long as possible. As far as that goes, my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, is about 8 or so months old, has 256MB, and I recon it'll be able to handle games for atleast the next couple years.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

that's exactly what I had in mind, some people are telling me its overkill and buy something around the $350 mark, but I say why not spend it all now instead of twice later.

Dazza.

[tab]

  mickq said:

  KrasH said:

As far as graphics cards go, I'm an Nvidia man myself. But IMO, both ati and nvidia have brillient cards. The only thing I'll suggest is that you go for at least a 256MB video card. Also try and get the best card you can afford. The idea is to future proof it for as long as possible. As far as that goes, my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, is about 8 or so months old, has 256MB, and I recon it'll be able to handle games for atleast the next couple years.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One of the main problems at the moment is that none of the top cards are available on the latest bus - ie PCIExpress. Everything is on AGP and only a few "normal" cards are on PCIE. (As of when I checked last weekend anyway).

Its frustrating because if you were to go out now, you literally could not build a state of the art computer.

If you want the best and latest graphics cards, you MUST have an AGP motherboard. If you want the best and latest motherboard and CPU, then you MUST NOT have the best graphics card. Its very annoying.

Unlike AGP it seems PCIE is coming in relatively slowly, meaning at the moment you can be in limbo!

Ideally I would have liked to have bought a kick-ass motherboard, a latest generation CPU (775 pin) and 6800GT video card, but you literally cant do that!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Or you could always go and buy a Dell or similar fully compiled system. As unfortunate is it is, this is the only way you can obtain the absolute latest as there is obviously a great lead time on the new products filtering down to the local retail stores.

But then on the other hand you are usually financially better of sitting just behind the technology wave rather than on top of it.

OK, I'll shut up now, enough of the tail chasing.

Trent.

[Guest hxa01]

Go the Nvidia or ATI you can't wrong with either of them