april day!

[TalHex]

i really need to get a new graphics/video card (i nearly fired it yesterday, by over loading it with a 3d program... the screen turned all these trippy colors) any recommendations?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dhylec on 2008-04-10 20:24 ]</font>

[cel]

i was doing a lot of research into this about a month ago because ive been meaning to update my old rig.

best bet for the money is ATI HD 3870. Benchmarks show that the 3850 is only slightly slower than the 3870, but i'd still get the 3870. It beats the similarly priced 9600gt from NVIDIA. You get a mid to high end card for about 150 bucks which is a steal, since you probably wouldnt want to replace that anytime soon.

However, for a a couple more 20's. you could get an NVIDIA 8800GTX which has shown to be a bit faster than the ATI 3870. On average, it pulls ahead by 10 frames per second with today's games.

When I was about to buy one however, I was going to go with the 3870 because supposedly ATI's have overall better image quality than NVIDIA's, and I witnessed this firsthand, but that was many graphics card generations ago.

I'd be happy to answer any questions or provide further advice should you want it. The stuff is still fresh in my head from spending countless hours deciding wheter to get an 8800GTX or an HD 3870.

[Sord]

frankly i hate ATI now, this card has given me so many damn problems. The hardware itself is fine, it's the freaking software. Each driver seems to be progressively worse, I had to find a july 2006 one just to get it to run without errors.

[TalHex]

the current one i have is an ATI Radeon 9250 and as you can probably tell by now i hate its guts...

[cel]

eh well if you are hating it, then you should probably spring for the NVIDIA 8800GTX... but if you do, be sure to get the 512MB model and not the 640MB. The 640MB is older and much, much slower than the updated core that the 512MB model (just ask or look for G92 revision and the guy should know. G92 = good, G80=bad)

If that is too much for ya, then try the Nvidia 9600GT for about 40 to 80 bucks less. Both are great cards, but the 8800GTX is mostly better if you play DX10 games or if you want a card that will last you for a while. The lowend of the 8000 series, the 8600 (i think) is overpriced junk for its price and I strongly recommend you keep as far away from it as possible.

Keep in mind that all cards mentioned above are PCI-e slot only, and as far as I know... only the ATI's 3850 or 3870 have an AGP derivative.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cel on 2008-04-10 16:39 ]</font>

[Nitro Vordex]

I need to do some research on my card, so I can get an idea of what my machine can handle, as well as what can be installed.

[Nitro Vordex]

I wish I knew what that was. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

[TalHex]

shouldn't be a problem, this wonderful hunk of twisted metal that i'm using has a PCI-e slot i think

[Nitro Vordex]

Is there something that can tell me what I have installed on my computer, and what kind of slots and stuff there is?

[TalHex]

its like a RAM slot but for video cards... they are starting to phase it out i think and use a newer version of it

[cel]

yeah sorry... i just spewed the tech jargon without consideration for people. PCI-e is, yeah as the man said, a slot for upgrade cards like gfx, sound, etc. You'll want to make absolute sure your motherboard (the big colored rectangle inside your comp that is connected to all your stuff) has either PCI-e or AGP slots. You cannot stick a PCI-e card in an AGP slot, and you can't stick an AGP card in a PCI-e slot. Also, PCI =/= PCI-e. PCI is similar to, but older than and therefore different than PCI-express.

You can make sure of what type you have easily with a handy little free program called GPU-Z. It'll tell you what interface your card is using (be it PCIe or AGP) under "Bus Interface" near the top half of the window. It also gives you a bit of detail on your card so you can have a specific idea of how much you would be upgrading to.

Its counterpart CPU-Z is also a handy little program telling you what kinda processor, motherboard, and RAM you currently have running in your computer.


A much more comprehensive program which would tell you almost everything you'd want to know about the innards of your electronic friend is either Aida32 or SiSoft Sandra. Older versions of Sandra you can get for free I think, and are good enough for this purpose.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cel on 2008-04-10 17:03 ]</font>

[Nitro Vordex]

Oh sweet. I'll google it then.

[TalHex]

crap i forgot which one i have PCI or PCI-e (video cards are on of the few things about computers that i know nothing about... i ended up with this one cuz i asked for advice from the sales rep, stupid move but nobody else knew anything about them either, should have asked here the first time round)

[Nitro Vordex]

That program tells you everything you need. here's a link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1031/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.1.9.html

Apparently I have capabilites for both PCI and PCI-e.
Do they always mix them like that?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nitro_Vordex on 2008-04-10 17:45 ]</font>