Graphics Cards Choice

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

Hi Folks,

I've received a few PC games as christmas presents and need to upgrade my
graphics in order to play them (@ a decent rate anyway).

My Budget is max. of £200 (UK).

There are so many cards to choose from so maybe someone out there can help
me decide.

1) Appart from the obvious, is there a big difference in choosing a 128Mb
card over 256Mb card? Which one would you recommend.
2) What would you say is better, ATI card or NVIDIA card?

The kind of games I have to play are Half-Life2, Rome: Total War and Doom3.
Does anyone recommend a decent card that will let me keep playing up to date
games until at least 2006?

My machine spec is Athlon 2.8Ghz with 512Mb RAM. Should I also buy more
RAM - I read somewhere that you can reach a point where adding RAM makes
little or no difference, is this true?

Thanks for any help you may provide.

Regards,

John.
 
Nvidia 6600gt. Better yet 6800gt. The 6800 ultra maybe over your budget
Better open gl performance with nvidia.
 
John said:
My Budget is max. of £200 (UK).
Click to expand...
If you not in any hurry you may wish to postpone your vid card purchase
until sometime after the release of the ATI x800xl. This card is scheduled
for debut in January at a SRP of $299 US. Preliminary testing indicates the
card will compete well against the Nvidia 6800gt. This may put some pressure
on the current $400+ US vid card market All of this is speculative, but I
have customers putting off new build orders for this and for more PCIe
boards to become available. Right now the best value is probably the 6600gt
for those playing Doom 3.
 
John:
My Budget is max. of £200 (UK). ...
1) Appart from the obvious, is there a big difference in choosing a
128Mb card over 256Mb card? Which one would you recommend.
Click to expand...

Doom3 benefits from a 256MB card, but I don't believe any other games do
yet. IMO, the extra memory isn't cost efficient.
2) What would you say is better, ATI card or NVIDIA card?
Click to expand...

I still hear rumblings about ATI drivers but I don't know if they are
true. It isn't uncommon for people to complain about things they don't
know anything about, so when you read complaints, be sure they are from
that person's own experiences. I have owned a couple of Nvidia cards now
and the only complaint I have is that using the TV out is the most
awkward out of my experience; otherwise they are dependable and fast.
The kind of games I have to play are Half-Life2, Rome: Total War and
Doom3. Does anyone recommend a decent card that will let me keep
playing up to date games until at least 2006?
Click to expand...

The best card today in your budget is the Geforce 6800.
My machine spec is Athlon 2.8Ghz with 512Mb RAM. Should I also buy
more RAM
Click to expand...

I have a similiar system and I recently increased my memory from 512MB
to 768MB and it made a noticable improvement. I have no doubt that a
full Gig would be even better.
I read somewhere that you can reach a point where adding
RAM makes little or no difference, is this true?
Click to expand...

Probably, depends on your tasks. Most users probably start to see less
benefit above 1GB.
 
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