video card upgrade help

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 10:06 am

I won't lie, I'm way behind knowing about video cards, because I don't usually PC game, but consoles are getting expensive and I've come into some money (canxed my trip to rockycon) so I'm looking at the $100 price range.

the system I'm looking at upgrading is a athelon 64 x2 (2ghz) with 2gb ram and some fast storage in raid0. it's a pci-e slot I'm filling.

I'm looking at the x1650xt or the x1950gt but can't find them compared and I'm hearing mixed reviews of the 1950gt. I'm willing to entertain the idea of nvidia, but they don't seem to hold up in benchmarks, unless I'm missing something.

If you were me, where would your $100 go?

I don't FPS, and I don't RTS, so the x3: reunion benchmark is most what I care about. I mainly fly, drive and turnbase/strategy, but I should probably get off of onboard video. currently my old celeron games better, and the video card seems to be all that's holding me back.

...that, and the copy of x3 I bought gets about one frame every couple seconds on my current setups.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 10:26 am

Buy this if you have 169 bucks

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 10:35 am

Harshboy wrote:Buy this if you have 169 bucks

I have money, but I wouldn't use the card enough. Actually I'd rather not spend anything over $100, but if I can get a lot more card for $109 (after rebate) with something like the x1950gt, I will go for it.

really it shouldn't take that much card to get my clunk into gaming.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 9:28 pm

from what i heard the 8600GT sucked, getting its ass kicked by the 7600GT in a lot of in-game tests.

heres the review
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=637

also, nvidia is having huge driver problems right now, especially with vista

so why did you recommend it (just curious)?

id personally say get the 1650XT . they (edit: the xt series of cards) tend to kick the ass of even the higher-numbered parts. 1950 is top of the line, so if the 'GT' model (which I havent even heard of) is going for $100 then its probably pretty crapularized.

or

wait until ATI releases R600 in a few weeks. they are simultaneously releasing the whole line, from budget (2100 or something) to top of the line (HD 2900XT or something). you might get better bang for your $100 with one of those that something old. (edit: in response to comments below me, these will also be DX10 cards if thats what you want)

cowsgoquack101 · Post by **cowsgoquack101** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 9:31 pm

I'd say get the 8000 series if you can. Then you can have DX10 when you need it.

If not, then get the 7600GT, tis' good.

OAtH_OS · Post by **OAtH_OS** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 11:11 pm

Here is a pretty good one.

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:13 am

I looked at the 7600's but the ati cards outperform them for less on x3. even th 1650xt is a significant upgrade to a 7600s for about the same money. the 7600 I was looking at was this one, but again, the ATIs are faster/better/cheaper according to a lot of comparative testing.

my big question is if the uptuned midrange 1650xt outperforms the downtuned high end 1950gt. nobody online stacks them together even though they're at exactly the same pricepoint, they just see the '1950' and want to compare it to the nvidia 7900's (which it totally loses to) but it also costs half as much.

dx10 would be really nice, but the reason I can afford a card right now is that dx9 is going away--I don't think the low end dx10 card will hold up against the dx9's I'm looking at playing dx9 games.

last night I had myself sold on the 1950gt, so I popped open the case and it wasn't pretty. 300w power supply and no pci-e plug comming out of it. now it's looking expensive, but maybe I can find a nice, quiet power supply in the 400-450 watt range. if it's under $30 and quiet that's about all I can ask, but I haven't really started looking.

I've even been thinking a case/supply combo might keep things quieter and give me some more growing room for about the same money.

edit this should fix my little red wagon and still be somewhat low cost. I found a unit at work with my pci-e cable, but it was only a 300w, and I think it's time to move up a little. those inexpensive case/psu combos get scary at newegg.

OAtH_OS · Post by **OAtH_OS** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:56 am

Depends on your chipset. The computer I was looking to build had a Nforce 680i SLI, so you gotta go with the GeForce.

Jongamer · Post by **Jongamer** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 12:04 pm

On my 500mhz machine, I got the best video card of its day (Year)

Nvidia Riva TNT 16mb AGP

Best Card of 1998 I beleive I read.

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:39 pm

well, I'm $180 poorer ($40 will come back in rebates)
but I got the 1950gt which magically dropped $5 overnight, and a beefy 500w power supply so I can survive plugging it in.

really this review was what finally answered my question of 1650xt vs 1950gt. $5 more, and a whole lot more card, not that the other one is bad, but this is in a different league.

I'm a PC gamer again. Time to pwn some n00bs.
I haven't pc gamed much since dos 6.