Video cards don't have anything to do with loading times of games or levels. That's 99% the CPU, HDD and RAM's job.

Oh well, I still feel stupid that I got the 8600 GT. But yet at the same time I'm satisfied because my budget was really low and it was a satisfactory card.

would the Powercolor Radeon 1950 PRO 512MB PCI Express card be good for Crysis?

Dude, you just have to write Radeon 1950 Pro, I already know what the bus type, vRAM and manufacturer label it has.

And the answer to your question is: Yes.

Good to hear Oblivion is running OK, glad we could help.

Of course we can keep talking, maybe now is a good time for anyone else looking for upgrade advice to chip in. We have a good set of tech heads in this thread who are happy to answer questions

Anyone looking for good performance for the buck; the new 8800 GT is an excellent choice.

Any good cards running in the lets say...100$ range?

Since my current 7800 GT is beginning to malfunction, I'm thinking of upgrading to the 8800 GT. It's an affordable card that runs better than most card configs out there.

I'm assuming they'll be in stock by Christmas. That'll be the perfect time to buy them.

Thank god it only takes up a single slot; the only reason I didn't get an 8800 GTS or GTX was because of their massive sizes.


PCI-E v2.0 sounds nice, but from what I've heard there are very few systems that utilize its full potential.

would it run crysis with everything maxed out?

would the SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 2900GT be a good graphics card? would it run crysis with everything maxed out?

If you want to buy a video card in that range, go with a Geforce 8800 GT or GTS instead.

my budget's only going to be $200 for christmas because my mother will NOT spend anymore than that....

Well, if you can get her to add an extra $100 somehow, then check this out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814122040

Otherwise, I don't see anything wrong with the Radeon 2900 GT. But do keep in mind that you are getting less performance for the price.

I don't think any current card can run Crysis at max settings with a playable framerate. Maybe dual 8800 GTX in SLI, but that would probably cost more than the rest of your entire machine.

Even then, SLI doesn't always scale up, so who knows?

It depends on what you consider max settings. Anyone that'd try to use 8x multisampling would need 2 x 8800 GTX in SLi, while max in-game settings is very possible (and affordable), that is when you have multisampling and anisotropic filtering disabled completely.

Multisampling might be possible with a single card, but you want to turn off HDR and/or bloom first.

she won't add the extra $100 bjossi because $200 will be the limit for Christmas.. i will settle with the Powercolor Radeon 1950 PRO.. I DON't plan on getting crysis anyway

Then why did you ask if it could run Crysis maxed out?

whoops... silly me... shouldnt have done that... oh well we all make mistakes

besides I have other games I can max out with the Powercolor Radeon 1950 PRO like AOE III, Quake 4, Guild Wars, Flight Simulator X, Rise of Nations 2: Rise of Legends

You can max out those games with cheaper cards, especially Quake 4, which can be maxed out with an overclocked 6800 GT.

I just bought an 8800 GT. I'd say it's great, but Vista won't recognize the damn thing.

It goes right for the onboard 6100.

Anybody experience this before? All the cables are in the right places and the card is receiving power.


The fan is almost silent, which is still pretty neat.

try the card using Windows XP and see if it resolves the problem... you have the LATEST drivers installed in Vista?

Maybe you should, ya know, disable the 6100? It's an onboard accelerator so that is done in the BIOS afaik.

It is and has been disabled. The computer has been loading from the PCI-E slot, which is the slot where the 8800GT is positioned.

Edit: The 6100/8800 cannot run even Deus Ex at decent framerates. I thought it was supposed to be able to handle Crysis.

does the card work in XP?

Yes.

Have you tried asking whatever tech support is available? I have a friend who bought one of these and has been running the UT3 demo at its highest settings with a good resolution with great framerates. Asshole.

Also, run dxdiag if you haven't done so already. It should tell you what hardware you have under the Display tab. Your computer probably just isn't detecting the card properly or something.

Ah, got it all figured out. While I had the card disabled, it was still plugged into my monitor.

All I had to do was remove the monitor cable, take out and then reinsert the card. I don't know if it's a bug in Vista, but a lot of people seem to get this same problem.

Thanks for the help though.

Vista probably handles hardware detection differently than XP.

thats really strange.... but hey at least you got it resolved though