What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

KarlHemmings · Post by **KarlHemmings** » Fri, 21. Oct 05, 17:43

I have an Antec TrueBlue 350 in my machine;
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Geforce 6800GT (256Mb)
1024 MB KB RAM
2 x 160GB HD
1 x CD-RW
1 x DVDROM

Works brilliantly.
Oh - I upgraded from a 5700 256MB to the 6800 and did the power supply at the same time. Makes a huge difference.

Edit - I seem to remember reading that case cooling can help reduce the power consumption. My case is quite large and "airy" has at least 4 fans that I can think of - typing this on the laptop away from home. Plus the Antec has two fans of its own. (The case came with all those fans as default.)

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Fri, 21. Oct 05, 20:27

Took the plung and got:

BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail (BFGR68256GTOC) (GX-001-BG)

Antec TruePower 2.0 550W PSU (CA-028-AN)

Now...Does anybody have a decent guide as to how I plug this all in without killing myself or the machine!!!

NeverSnake · Post by **NeverSnake** » Fri, 21. Oct 05, 20:48

Delta are a great cooling fan manufacturer. I don't know what thier power supplies are like.

My Antec went bang (literally) after seven months so I won't be buying from them again. Not to worry you or anything

. (It didn't fry anything else though which was good).

I think power supplies are meant to be pretty fool proof unless you take the lid off, I seem to remember my antec coming with a thick manual if your worried though.

The_Hypo · Post by **The_Hypo** » Fri, 21. Oct 05, 21:40

Ok time to hop on the bandwagon then*hop*

Ok people I’m in a bit of a dilemma here as there are three Graphics cards that are on the board here
MSI GeForce 6600LE 256MB PCI-E
256MB PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6800XT DDR SLI DVI TV-out and
256MB PCI-Express HIS Excalibur Radeon X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256bit DDR DVI TVout
Now the last one, with the really long name:
256MB PCI-Express HIS Excalibur Radeon X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256bit DDR DVI TVout
and this one: 256MB PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6800XT DDR SLI DVI TV-out

Are around the same price (in the £120's) but then threes the MSI GeForce 6600LE 256MB PCI-E at only £61.29 with VAT no less!

I looking for any advice about which one to get as X3 is coming soon and I want to be able to play it in all (well most of) its glory
But at the moment I can only afford the £61.29 one and X3 where as if I get the others I’ll have to wait 3 weeks before I can get both the card and X3.

Ok I've rambled on enough here now I NEED YOU*points*

Bye

Ps. You'd never guessed I got E in English huh?

Edit: also forgot to ask would the 6600Le be a good upgrade from a ATI x300se?

muppetts · Post by **muppetts** » Sat, 22. Oct 05, 11:47

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1053033598/1

For all of you with ASUS mother boards this is a great little utility with many functions checking Power and temp as well as the usual breakdown of info on your system.

no good for me of course and I continue my search to find one I can use!

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Sat, 22. Oct 05, 13:46

I know this post is about graphics cards, but its also about upgrading. For my new system, Im kind of in a build vs. buy dillemma, however, what would you recommend out of a athlon 64 3500+ and a pentium 4 650, 3.4ghz.

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Sat, 22. Oct 05, 14:25

Ok, this is what I'm thinkin:

athlon 64 3700+
1gig ram
250gb 7200+ hdd
19" monitor
dual layer dvd re-writer
a 7800gt

any thoughts please?

Post by **Cycrow** » Sat, 22. Oct 05, 14:32

dogma911 wrote:I know this post is about graphics cards, but its also about upgrading. For my new system, Im kind of in a build vs. buy dillemma, however, what would you recommend out of a athlon 64 3500+ and a pentium 4 650, 3.4ghz.

personally i would definatly go athlon 64

The_Hypo wrote:Ok people I’m in a bit of a dilemma here as there are three Graphics cards that are on the board here
MSI GeForce 6600LE 256MB PCI-E
256MB PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6800XT DDR SLI DVI TV-out and
256MB PCI-Express HIS Excalibur Radeon X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256bit DDR DVI TVout
Now the last one, with the really long name:
256MB PCI-Express HIS Excalibur Radeon X800GT IceQ II Turbo 256bit DDR DVI TVout
and this one: 256MB PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6800XT DDR SLI DVI TV-out

Personally i wouldn't go for the 6600LE, as its a pretty much budget card and would go for a 6600GT at the minimum
im not sure about the 6800XT but it seems like a slightly higher clocked 6800LE its not the best cards but with 256mb and a 256bit memory bandwidth, it should work ok and will be good for the price. If u have the money i would personally go for a 7800GT at just over £200, as they are great value for the power you get form them and should last alot longer

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Sat, 22. Oct 05, 16:17

Ha, I have posted in this thread way too many times, I've changed my mind.

This is the system Im thinking of now:

(edited, changed my mind again)

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Socket 939
Asus A8N-E nForce 4 Ultra PCIe
GeForce 6600GT 128MB DDR PCI-Express
1024MB DDR PC3200 Memory
160GB 7200RPM SATA II 8MB Hard Drive
16x DVD±RW ReWriter (Dual Layer)

I'll add a 17 or 19" monitor, and probably upgrade to a 7800gt eventually, it depends how the 6600 handles, it might be enough for me just now.
Does that system look ok?

Post by **Cycrow** » Sun, 23. Oct 05, 00:12

if i was u i would go straight for the 7800GT it will only cost you an extra £100 and will be cheaper than upgrading to one later on
althou the rest of the system looks fine, but u seem to have missed out a case ?
and i would also suggest getting a decent psu, u dont wanna trust any decent compants on a generic low powered psu

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Sun, 23. Oct 05, 19:44

Ok, final time I change my mind...

AMD Athlon 64 4200+ X2 Dual Core Processor with 2000MHz HyperTransport Technology
2x512MB (1GB) Dual DDR 400 (PC3200) Branded Memory
256MB NVIDIA Geforce 6800 PCI Express Graphics
2x200GB (400GB) Ultra-Fast SATA (150Mbps) Hard Disk Drive
16X Dual Layer Mutli-Format DVD +/- Rewriter
19'' TFT Analogue Flat Panel Multimedia Monitor

I think I'll just go with a vanilla 6800 just now, budget reasons. I think its a 380w psu thats in the case, that doesn't seem enough to me though. Now I just need to decide if I can afford it...does £1000 ($1750) seem like an ok price, do you think thats too much?

Post by **Cycrow** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 17:19

i would say the price is fine, and should be a pretty powerful computer
not sure about the psu, a decent 380W psu should have the power, but if its a cheap generic one it might not have the power, so it might be worth getting a 400W+ decent psu, especially if your putting £1000 worth of equipment thru a cheap psu

some cases do come with pretty decent psu's but not many, mainly the antec cases but there usually not very cheap

Firebird · Post by **Firebird** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 22:25

Hi Guys

I want to get a new Video card an AGPx8 for my ABIT mobo, I have GFX5900XT, its was the db's a while back..

Anyway, its seems now from what I can make out and I haven't been paying that much attention, that Nvidia and ATI have had a competition again and swapped placed with the 800 and 6800 ranges..

Correct me if I'm wrong (looking at Toms tests thingies) that ATI have the deal with the X850XT now with 800 XT and XL following very closely behind. with the Nvidia cards looking a bit pathetic.

So at £200 squids or there abouts (my budget) the X800XL seems to be the baby to go for.

Is this a reasonable assumption and are they really that good and will it drive X3 for me nicely?

Thanks Guys
Jerry

Post by **Cycrow** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 22:46

i dont really know how well the ATI ones will do, but the 6800GT was the card used for the screenshots you c with full graphics on.

althou the prices are starting to increase for the agp version as there becoming more rare due to the pci express replacements

simonnance · Post by **simonnance** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 23:20

Firebird wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong (looking at Toms tests thingies) that ATI have the deal with the X850XT now with 800 XT and XL following very closely behind. with the Nvidia cards looking a bit pathetic.

So at £200 squids or there abouts (my budget) the X800XL seems to be the baby to go for.

Is this a reasonable assumption and are they really that good and will it drive X3 for me nicely?

Thanks Guys
Jerry

I have a nice X800XT PE that cost about 200 inc vat, but i got that on offer at Overclockers and they arent holding the offer anymore.

Keep an eye open for offers i suggest. If you can find a cheap 6800GT then its prob a good bbet, a 800XL is a nice card too.

dabs have a cheap X800XT here (though i wonder why its so low when it isnt an offer)

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 23:21

Firebird wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong (looking at Toms tests thingies) that ATI have the deal with the X850XT now with 800 XT and XL following very closely behind. with the Nvidia cards looking a bit pathetic.

Not so much wrong as slightly out of date. That is indeed pretty much how it pans out between the X800 and 6800 cards, but things have moved on.

The nVidia camp now have the 7800 cards, the fastest of which are faster than anything ATI has in the shops. However, ATI has announced the X1800 series which will probably put them in the lead again for performance. Currently only the X1800XL is available, which isn't the fastest in the range.

In the £200 range, you'll be looking at an X800XL 256Mb or a 6800GT 256Mb. Both are good, quick cards and well worth looking into.

simonnance wrote:dabs have a cheap X800XT here (though i wonder why its so low when it isnt an offer)

That was the card I bought originally. It came without a PCI-E power lead and I ended up having to return it and replace it with a similar card under a different brand name.

simonnance · Post by **simonnance** » Mon, 24. Oct 05, 23:35

looks lik eyou are right on the X1800s CBJ, you know the X1800XT is comming out in a 512MB flavour? And it requires a cooling fan that takes up the adjacent PCI slot! Looks awesome!

alex hall · Post by **alex hall** » Tue, 25. Oct 05, 09:32

dogma911 wrote:Ok, final time I change my mind...

AMD Athlon 64 4200+ X2 Dual Core Processor with 2000MHz HyperTransport Technology
2x512MB (1GB) Dual DDR 400 (PC3200) Branded Memory
256MB NVIDIA Geforce 6800 PCI Express Graphics
2x200GB (400GB) Ultra-Fast SATA (150Mbps) Hard Disk Drive
16X Dual Layer Mutli-Format DVD +/- Rewriter
19'' TFT Analogue Flat Panel Multimedia Monitor

I think I'll just go with a vanilla 6800 just now, budget reasons. I think its a 380w psu thats in the case, that doesn't seem enough to me though. Now I just need to decide if I can afford it...does £1000 ($1750) seem like an ok price, do you think thats too much?

Personally if you are into playing games then I would not go for the Dual Core CPU, I'd go for a plain old 3500 or above single core. I would also just go for a single HDD.

The money you save from those changing to these would pay for getting a 7800GT which would provide an overall faster system for playing games.

As few/no games make use of Multi Threading you are paying a premium or a feature that isn't required, so you may as well wait for multi threading to become common and then move to a dual core cpu. You'll probably find that the dual core cpu will actually give lower performance in games then the equivalent single core.

As for dual HDD, once again it isn't likely to provide as much of a performance improvement as moving to the 7800GT, which will also be able to play future games for longer.

regards

Alex

The_Abyss · Post by **The_Abyss** » Tue, 25. Oct 05, 09:40

I can only agree with that.

Also, you're building a huge uber fast system and then squeezing the gaming display into 1280 x 1024 in that monitor which would be a pity.

Apollo911 · Post by **Apollo911** » Tue, 25. Oct 05, 13:16

Ok, how does this look then:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor with 2000MHz HyperTransport Technology
2x512MB (1GB) Dual DDR 400 (PC3200) Branded Memory
256MB 7800GT
2x200GB (400GB) RAID Ultra-Fast SATA (150Mbps) Hard Disk Drive
16X Dual Layer Mutli-Format DVD +/- Rewriter
Carrera Coolermaster Centurion 320 with 380W PSU
19'' TFT Analogue Flat Panel Multimedia Monitor
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2

I would probably use this 15" as a second monitor too. I have been using a website to configure these specs, these aren't with me building myself. I couldn't upgrade the psu or swap to a single hdd and still have the 7800gt, was quite annoying.
Do you think that psu will be enough?
Do you think having a second monitor will compensate for the limited resolution?
Will the 3500+ be enough?
I'm currently trying to find out what mobo it comes with. Thanks for your replies, much appreciated.

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What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

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