Video card upgrade advice

cemetery man

So I'm hoping to upgrade my video card so I can run most things on Age of Conan on max. I currently have a Radeon x1950 pro card. AMD Athlon x64 X2 4200+ 2.2ghz. 2gb of ram.

What card upgrade would work best for me? Looking at Newegg they have a lot of 8800 gt and gts type cards highly rated. Are these cards still considered higher end as of current? Would a card like this be much of an upgrade from my x1950pro? Or if you have other suggestions please let me know.

UberEv

I'm in a similar spot what with building a new PC the month after next. Anyone have any great card recommendations for around $220-$250ish?

cliffski

I have an 8800 GTS and am yet to find anything I can't run on everything. Although I havent tried crysis or age of conan tbh.
Drivers for it seem pretty stable too, even under vista.

Khavall

I have an 8800GT that runs everything beautifully. With the exception of Crysis, which I turned down to high because it had some frame rate stutters, I've turned everything else up all the way, including Gears PC, and it's run beautifully in 1600x1050 with everything other than AA turned all the way up.

Though the 8800GTS 512 seems to be only a little more expensive and is at least comparable from what I understand.

Jedoc

Tom's Hardware does a monthly round-up of the graphics card market. It's a pretty good way to see what cards are in your price range, and what they're likely to be capable of.

Flippy_D

I have the 8800GTX and its astonishing.

I'd go for an nvidia over a radeon atm.

cemetery man

Cool I'll check some of these out. I have Vista btw and I run at 1440x900 res. I would think crysis is more crazy than AoC so these cards would probably be a litle future proof I'm guessing.

cemetery man

looking at Newegg and Tom's Hardware It looks like the best bet is a 8800GTS, Newegg has a lot of different ones though as listed here http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048&Description=8800GTS&bop=And&Order=RATING
Would I just want the one with highest core clock, stream processors and memory clock?

achelus

I agree with the 8800GTS, the value for the performance is hard to beat. Just got one myself, and I'm running Age of Conan full tilt.

As for the specs, it's all built off the same basic card, so the individual companies have overclocked the cards (and hopefully added better heatsinks/etc).

I've been a big fan of BFGTech and eVGA, so those 512mb cards on top both look attractive to me. I went with an eVGA myself.

Teth

8800GT 512MB OC from anyone, MSI, whatever. It's a smoking card - check where it ranks with its GeForce peers (not OC): http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

Cheap as hell to.

CmdPrompt

(This probably belongs in Moe's Tech Forum, but anyway)

You want the 512 GTS, the 320MB and 640MB are older GTS versions that are less powerful than the GT. I bought this card personally, not a large brand like XFX or eVGA, but cheaper. The MSI version might be a good choice as well, $10 more and includes The Witcher. If you want to pay the $30 extra for brand comfort, that is always an option as well.

Jeice

I say the 8800 GT. It's in the price range you mentioned, and if you look for a decent deal, you can get it for like $150. Also, no matter which card you're getting, make sure you get the video card memory at 512MB. And, I usually buy cards from XFX or EVGA, I'm not sure about the other companies.

Daedalus

In that price range the HD3870 is also a pretty nice deal. ATi can't match nVidia's crazy high end stuff, but their midrange stuff isn't bad at all.

Dixon

You'll want to look at a few things when checking out cards...I would currently go with and 8800gt or an 8800gts but you'll want to make sure you get one of the newer 8800gts if your going to that route. The 8800gt outperforms any of the older models of 8800gts, which are either the 384MB or 648MB versions. If you go with a newer 8800gts I believe they are 512mb and are a lot better. Also you will want to check your PSU out and see what sort of card it can handle. Your not really looking for the total wattage but the amount of power that the 12v rail can handle. If you get back with this info we can give you a better idea on what sort of card you should get

IceBurner

Cemetery Man:
The 8800 "species" achieves full potential at resolutions 1600xwhatever and up. If your monitor's max resolution is lower and you have no plans to upgrade 'til it dies, a GeForce 9600GT may be more affordable and suitable for your goal.

If you want to talk maxing out the latest games you need to consider a broader upgrade or lowering expectation. Sticking a 8800GT, GTS, or GTX in your current box simply won't be a "magic bullet" and send your entire system's performance through the roof alone; for example that CPU is underpowered for gaming at max settings.

Without knowing your specific needs (RAID, on-board wireless, how many PCI slots, overclocking, etc), the best generic suggestion I can make would be an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, an ASUS P5K SE EPU, and eVGA/XFX 8800GT. This offers the best performance for cost with fluid gaming performance at maximum settings.

You can almost assuredly re-use your current RAM but may want to consider 2-4GB of DDR2-800 of faster if you currently have less/slower and can afford it.

Spoit

I'd say wait a month or two for the new cards to come out and decide then, even if you aren't going bleeding edge, the prices will probably fall a bit by then

gneGne

Spoit wrote: »

I'd say wait a month or two for the new cards to come out and decide then, even if you aren't going bleeding edge, the prices will probably fall a bit by then

I'm guessing he wants to play Age of Conan now... and not in 2 months. Anyway, get a 8800gt or the 9600gt a safe bet. Unless your PSU is not capable of powering these bad boys. Find out the wattage on your PSU, since GPUs require more power these days.

Regicid3

I have an EVGA NVIDIA 8800 GTS 512 G92 and it's amazing.

TychoCelchuuu

8800 GTS 512 or a 9600GT are what you want.

Regicid3

Except the GTS is better, the 9600 is only smaller.