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What card should I buy??


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I have a Pentium IV with 1024 DDR Ram and a Gforce FX 5200 128mb, planning to update my card to one of this:

 

Radeon 9250 256Mb

Radeon 9550 256Mb

GforceFx 5500 256Mb

GforceFx 5700 256Mb

 

I'm not in a good echonomical moment, you know I have to pay for my soldiers in Irak, the last Ferrari that I bought...

So what will be the better, and If you have more ideas, tell me please!!

I don't understand anything in russian except Davai Davai!

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I use a Radeon x700 w 256M.

 

I run the game at 1152x864. 2xAA and 2xAF, game settings on high and heat blur enabled. Using the preset in Loman that most closely matches my system I get 50-60 fps above 10000 ft and at the lowest maybe 17-20 flying low over a city.

 

Rest of system:

 

athlon 3000+

1024 pc400

audigy (turning off sound acceleration gave big boost in fps)

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does your mother board support pci express, if yes get the pci express version that i have....., at the end off the day its how much money you can spend......x700pro fitted my needs, performance and budget ..........

 

also i just like ati cards......over invidia

 

 

go for what you like.....and can afford

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Sounds relatively modern. Check to see which graphics interface you have. It will be AGP or PCI-E. Performance wise, it doesn't matter. (It may someday, but not yet.) Both Nvidia cards mentioned below come in either interface.

 

That CPU will be able to fully utilize the Nvidia 6800GT. This card is now in the $250-$300 price range.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=6800gt&Category=0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

 

The next step down is the Nvidia 6600GT in the $150-$200 price range.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=6600gt&Category=0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

 

Either of these will work for LOMAC.

 

With your CPU, the 6800GT will give better performance with all games. If you can afford it, get it. But the 6600GT will work just fine. Make sure you get the "GT" version of either card. The non-GTs are NOT the same. Don't go any less than these. For LOMAC, it's just asking for trouble!

 

Also, you MUST have enough Powersupply for the new card. These new cards need more power than what you are using now. When you get your card, get Mother Board Monitor (google it, it's free) and record a voltage log as you play LOMAC. Play for a couple of minutes and come out. Check the log and make sure nothing dramatic is happening to your voltage during game play. Anything above a 5% drop means your PS is not big enough. This can cause real trouble too. . . and I mean trouble: Spontaneous re-boots, lockups, fragged graphics. It can be a real mess, mainly because you'd never guess it was your PS.

 

You can shop around for price here.

http://www.pricewatch.com/

 

Good Luck.

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Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN

you name any game that takes the full bandwidth of agp x8 ? so if not 1 game on the face of the planet uses all the bandwidth of agpx8 then it sure as f00k not gonna take all the bandwidth of pcie 16....

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True enough. One day we'll see Vcards that need all that PCI-E "room to run", but not yet.

 

They are doing the same things with hard drive busses these days. A Western Digital (P)ATA 100 has a buss that can handle up to 100 mb/sec, but a 7200 RPM drive will only output about 50 mb/sec. This means the 100 mg/sec buss has plenty of capacity to handle the drives's output. Maxtor came out with a (P)ATA 133 buss drive. This meant that the (P)ATA 133 bus could handle 133 mg/sec output from a drive. . . . but the maxtor drive was just the same 7200 RPM machine that could output the at same 'ol rate. There was absolutely no need for a buss that could handle 133 mg/sec. The (consumer) drive that even came close to needing this much buss capaciety did not exist!

 

But who knows how many drives Maxtor sold to folks that just obviously thought that since 133 was bigger than 100, the drive had to be faster. That's what Maxtor was counting on. Shame on them.

 

So, PCI-E 16X has to be faster than AGP 8X? Not so. They are only referring to the data buss's capabilty . . . They are not referring to what the machine that will be using the buss is capable of. That reference is 6800, or 6800GT or 800XL, etc.

 

They are carrying on this "tradition" with the Serial ATA hard drive buss reference now. These busses (SATA 1) can handle 150 mg/sec. . . but they are still using the same old 7200 RPM drives.

 

The only clearly faster drive is the WD raptor at 10,000 rpm. It is using the new SATA buss . . . but even the Raptor doesn't need the the 150 mg/sec SATA buss! It's around 70 mg/sec now? So actually, it would work fine just with the old PATA 100 technology . . . (until you raid 'em!)

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is the card on my shoping list:

Asus N7800GT DUAL Review - 7800 SLI on a Single Card

Thermaltake Kandalf LCS | Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R | Etasis ET750 (850W Max) | i7-920 OC to 4.0 GHz | Gigabyte HD5850 | OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 2000 | 2 X 30GB OCZ Vertex SSD in RAID 0 | ASUS VW266H 25.5" | LG Blue Ray 10X burner | TIR 5 | Saitek X-52 Pro | Logitech G930 | Saitek Pro flight rudder pedals | Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

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