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Advice on buying new video card

andkoreandkore Registered User regular
edited February 2009 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
OK, well first of all, I don't know if this is the right place for this or if this is supposed to be in the computer build thread, but I have a question about getting a new video card.
My current system specs are: Athlon 64 3800+, 2.something GB DDR-400 RAM, 7600GT
I want to build a new computer pretty soon, and I saw this deal on a 9600GSO. The really good part about this deal is that it comes with Call of Duty World at War, which I could then sell (not interested in game), and bring the price down to around $20. So my question is, would this card improve my current gaming performance (say in Team Fortress 2), or is it mainly my CPU that's holding me back at this stage?
(This is the first thread I've made, so sorry if I did something wrong...)

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-Groucho Marx
andkore on

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    archonwarparchonwarp Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    TF2 is probably not going to improve at all, as I think it's optimized as to use mostly processor. Otherwise, sick deal on that card.

    archonwarp on
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    andkoreandkore Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    Ah, thanks for the feedback. In any case, it will be a good start to my super budget partial computer build (by that I mean CPU, RAM, video card, case, power supply, no drives or anything else). I'll report back on results in case anyone's curious...

    andkore on
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
    -Groucho Marx
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    shadydentistshadydentist Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    TF2 will probably benefit significantly. Source is a CPU-heavy engine, but "use mostly processor" is something of an exaggeration.

    That being said, I would actually advise against buying a 9600. Its cheap, but you can get much better performance for not much more money, and if you were thinking of building a new computer pretty soon, I'd spring for a better card.

    shadydentist on
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    andkoreandkore Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    Yeah, I fully understand shady, but there's something too alluring for me to buy a video card that can play current games relatively well for $20-30 (once I sell CoD WaW) for me to pass this up.

    andkore on
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
    -Groucho Marx
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    Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    You could get two of them and run them in SLI...

    Lucky Cynic on
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    andkoreandkore Registered User regular
    edited February 2009
    Umm, Lucky Cynic, I'm pretty sure that you're almost always better off buying a more expensive single video card than putting two cheaper cards in SLI. In fact the only time when it really makes sense to use SLI is if you're really rich and want to have the best of the best. It's just not efficient at any lower levels than that.

    andkore on
    Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
    -Groucho Marx
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