Graphics card rocommendations

[Serith]

Hey nerds.

I think its about time to upgrade from my Geforce2 this year, for all the games coming out that I imagine will tax my system.

And since you have nothing to do but sit around and think about nerd things, I was hoping you could enlighten me with your nerd wisdom and recommend a kick ass card for gaming.

I DONT CARE ABOUT INPUTS OR OUTPUTS

it will be solely for gaming, no outputs needed.... so I dont want to spend like 550 bucks for something I dont need.

ANd since Ive seen both big companies have released relatively new cards... which to go for?

Thanks!

[Myrdden]

Well it depends on what you're looking at spending and what games you're looking at. There is a lot of give and take. Nvidia has Doom3 pretty whipped with their new 6800 series but you're going to pay a pretty penny for the new tech. The X800 series from ATI is rumored to kick some real butt with games like Half Life 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but those two haven't actually seen the light-of-day yet (soon, very soon)

If you're looking for economy you could eek out with the Radeon 9600 or GeForce 5200 chipsets. If you're looking for the most bang for your buck the standard Radeon 9800 Pro or Geforce 5900XT chipset cards can be found for a reasonable price. If money is no object, well... you could go with the ATI X800 XT or the nVIDIA 6800 Ultra...

Manufacturers do make a difference.. I'm just mainly speaking on chipset guidelines here.

I've heard that the SLI that nVIDIA has reintroduced into the market is pretty sweet but it requires that you have a motherboard with two PCIe slots and you might be looking at replacing most of your core compnents by the time you're finished.

I hope this helps.

Any more its a matter of personal preference... I, personally have a mixture of cards in my systems though my personal system uses a 9800 PRo 256 that I modded to run as an XT. I like ATI chipsets. They've always behaved well for me and I've had very few problems with them.

Asus and Sapphire make excellent Radeon cards while Gigabyte and MSI seem to make some awesome nVIDIA cards.

[Lodin]

It boils down to what you can afford.

If you dont have a limit, get either a ATI X800, or a nVidia GeForce 6xxx series.

I have an ATI X800XT card, because it's simply faster then any nVidia card but it's really personal perference.

If your budget doesnt cover this area, then simple get a ATI 9xxx, or a nVidia GeForce FX 5xxxx series card.


In all perspectives your really looking at price which will determine your range in card. (Talking Canadian Dollars) 100-200$ is your low ender, 201-400$ is your middle of the liner, and 401-1000$ is your high ender.

[Aristotle]

I keep reading about ATI having crappy, buggy drivers, in addition to knowing people that have actually bought the latest cards and had problems.

I am totally psyched that ATI has kicked so much ass and that they have really put NVIDIA's feet to the fire.

But for my money, having solid, bug free driver support is more important than (at best) a few frames per second on SOME games (with less frames on other games).

ATI needs to demonstrate a long track record of top notch, NVIDIA level support before I'm willing to experiment with one of their cards.

[Zyth]

I've ordered a X800 pro (vivo) purely to softmod it into a X800XT-PE

It amazes me of what you can do with hardware if you have some guts (not to fear to lose it) and some free time.

I'm following a tutorial found here, and am looking forward to it.


I'll let you know if I break it or succeed.