As you know, I have said that my graphics card has been behaving weirdly (I had to do a Destructive Recovery because my computer mysteriously when crazy and kept restarting upon loading Windows), and now I know that my Radeon X800 GTO is pretty much dead. Videos have squares of purple/blue covering them, and some of the video is warped (like the mesh problems in my games.).

What I'm asking is this: UT3 is coming out Nov. 12, and my GPU is dead, so I'm looking for a new one. Is there any Graphics Card that is under the $500 and up price range but can still run many high-tech games smoothly? I know that X800 GTO is only $100, but it didn't help Oblivion much. I know that there are nerfed ones like the GeForce 8600 GTS (Correct me if it's really good), but I'm not sure if they can run new games smoothly, or even are compatible with Windows XP.

So can anyone give me a small list of GPUs that I can consider? Again, this is what I want:

1. Affordable (Nothing higher than $450 or around that price range)
2. Still compatible and can run New games (i.e. UT3) smoothly to a certain extent (not smooth on Ultra-High settings, but it can run smooth on High/Medium settings.)
3. It should be very reliable.

Either way you can still give me names of Graphics Cards that are over $450 but I won't really consider buying them. I just want to replace my damaged Graphics Card with something.

I checked out the X800 and noticed it is an AGP card. Is this true?

If you prefure Radeon cards, im not sure what the best picks are. The next best AGP I can find is the X850 which could be out of your budget. I think I will leave that topic for an ATI fanboy but a not-to-expensive Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB could work for you, if you have PCI-e

As for the Geforce cards there is the 7800 GS and the 7900 GS cards, both may work ok for the latest games, are AGP and cost under 300 bucks in NZ, meaning it is cheaper everywhere else in the world.

But if you have PCI-e I would recommend the 8800 GTS 320MB card, it is a popular choice among many UT3 enthusiasts so far, they think it could run that game. It also costs about $475 here in NZ

The low end 8000 series Geforces are already obsolete according to the PC tech magazines I have been reading. If it doesnt have two 8's then dont bother.


[edit] Check out the UT3 forums at Epic Games, hardware threads are everywhere and theres plenty of advice to go around. Just scroll around two or three forums pages and you will find 8 or 9 "will my PC run UT3" threads.

Just dont start a new hardware thread there yourself. The UT3 regulars are getting sick of them all!

7900 GS seems to be a good deal. By okay what would you guess the FPS rate would be? Around 25 or 30 is good for me. I'll have to check the card specs to see if it supports HDR. If it does then it's all-out-Oblivion for me!

Edit: There's also a certain X1950 Pro card. Is that any good?

Why are you even considering the X800 above if you want the card to run UT3 at all? That card doesn't even support shader model 3.0.

Take a look at the 640 MB Geforce 8800 GTS.

I'm not considering it, or maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot. My card that's dead IS the X800 GTO. I'm trying to find a GPU that's suitable to run UT3 but still is within my budget.

And I'll take a look at the 640 MB 8800 GTS.

The 8800 GTS is well below the $450 - $500 mark as far as I know, nVidia are even going to do further price drops in the near future. Buying the X800 GTO as a replacement would be shooting you in more areas than just the foot, that card is a piece of crap for old games like Doom 3, just imagine the performance in a game like UT3 with that in mind.

The X1950 Pro would be a good thing to consider as well as the 8800 GTS, although it isn't quite as powerful.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. So the biggest candidates for me now are these 3:

8800 GTS
X1950 Pro
7900 GS

It's probably going to be the 8800 GTS, but it'll have to be a matter of time.

By the way, do graphic cards need fast computers? I have a 1GB Memory and a 3200+ AmD Athlon 64 Processor. If the computer speed or memory does not matter, I'll be a lot more satisfied.

And the X1950 pro is only $150-$200, while the 8800 GTS varies from $200-$600. Is there a significant difference in performance?

You'll need to check out benchmarks to be sure of that. The main advantage of the 8800 GTS is the DX10 support, it does go somewhat faster than the X1950 too, but it's not black & white difference.

And yes, a slow computer bottlenecks a fast card.

Let's just hope my computer won't bottleneck the card, or at least not as much.

And I know its off-topic, but does anyone know how to change from 1-2-3-4 to 1-2-3 measures in FL Studio 7?

define 1-2-3-4 measures? i'm familiar with app, but i'm not sure of that..

graphics card depends on your budget!
the NVidia 8800's are good, but expensive....if you're limited on budget take a look at the NVidia 8500's and 8400's. They support most of the same features as the 8800's, but their performance is lower, so you trade $'s for performance

On the up side, the new NVidia 9000 series are due out before xmas (I think they said November), which means hopefully the price of the 8800's will drop then...

I wouldn't really look at an ATI at the momement...on paper they look like they can perform, but I've seen a lot of reviews with various problems...ATI used to be good, but it looks like NVidia is making better cards at the momement..it will probably shift again sometime, like it has over the years...

Don't forget, CPU and RAM has a lot to do with games these days...in the "older" days it used to be just about the graphics card....but these days you need decent CPU and RAM...but there's no harm in buying a fancy graphics card...you can keep it (if you plan properly) when you upgrade your m/b to support your new CPU and RAM

Cyberax, you are talking about a particular era when the GPU intensive games were everywhere. Before graphics processors existed it was all about CPU and RAM, at a time it was mostly about the GPU (1997 - 2002?) and ever since games like Doom 3, CPU and RAM are playing a bigger and bigger role.

And the 8800 GTS does fit his budget, by the way. It is expensive yes, but remember that you want a card that lasts. Which do you think is more expensive? Buying a card every year for $150 or buying a $500 one that will last for 4 - 6 years?

This might be useful:

VGA Charts 2007, Toms Hardware

Tom knows all, you can pick the cards you are looking for and see how each card fares while playing oblivion (not to mention other titles)

Oh and to avoid bottlenecking, I think a 2.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor might be enough for a 8800*

*Speculation only

x800 Wont even gather 25 FPS on UT3....Anything below 60 FPS is a waste of time, Go for the 8800 GTS XXX 640 Mb Card.

Dang, so much of them are PCi Express. Does 8800 GTS fall into the AGP category or do I just have to find another GPU to look at?

Well, then maybe I'm giving my age away...
I'm talking about even before then!
Things work in cycles....if you draw yourself a timeline with what games required over the years (CPU/RAM vs GPU) you will understand what I'm talking about!


Well then he's got a large budget!
I'm sorry for being in Africa where the 8800GTS and GTX are the highest priced cards (they are actualy almost more expensive than my salary) !
Yes, I agree buy a $500 card would be better....but is it really????
You're going to replace it within 2 years, not matter how long it lasts...I promise there's better cards comming out within the next year, and the games comming out will need them...oh, we're back to a cycle thing again!!


They're all PCi Expres...if you want AGP you're gonna have to look around a bit...

oh, BTW, there are better engines around than UE3, UE3 is a resource hog....there are other engines that games are using that are very scalable, so you won't be too stuck with not the biggest card...depends again on what you want to play and do....

What about the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS?

The main engines I want them to run smoothly on are these:
Source Engine (My X800 runs this really well)
Oblivion's Engine (SpeedTree? Havok? I forgot...)
TQ's Engine (Don't know what the hell that one is...)
BF2's Engine (I know my X800 runs this okay...)

Optional Engine I want the cards to run okay on:
UE 3.0

If it runs poorly on UE 3.0, I hope I'm okay with that.

So is the 7800 GS good for the engines I play the most? And what about 7900 GS?

Its a decent card But your gonna feel it on Ut3....I got my 8800gts xxx for $389 At Tiger Direct.

Well then he's got a large budget!
I'm sorry for being in Africa where the 8800GTS and GTX are the highest priced cards (they are actualy almost more expensive than my salary) !
Yes, I agree buy a $500 card would be better....but is it really????
You're going to replace it within 2 years, not matter how long it lasts...I promise there's better cards comming out within the next year, and the games comming out will need them...oh, we're back to a cycle thing again!!
[/quote]

Better cards don't necessarily equal practicality. I don't think anyone would replace a perfectly good card just because there is a better one around, unless the people in question are rich & spoiled. My 7900 GTX will soon be 2 years old and I'm still maxing out games with no problems, it did cost me quite a bit but if we assume it won't die on me, it may last 5 - 6 more years before it starts struggling on the lowest settings.

That is something better than my old FX 5700 that was starting to struggle after 1 year inside my computer, it only costed $150 at the time though.

Those were the days.... (in case anyone is wondering, I come from the days of XT's with a yellow screen and two floppy drives, no hard drive...my first hard drive cost about 3 months salary and was a massive 20Mb)...now days my cellphone has more ram...
The command line ruled, and so did GPU's !
I'm glad to see the command line is making a comeback in the form of PowerShell...



Well, that's kinda my point
If you don't have the budget...then an older/cheaper card can be a very good buy if you do your homework.

20 MB hard drives? I thought I was old because I had a first computer with a 800 MB drive.

On the topic of cards on AGP you're out of luck, nvidia doesnt support AGP anymore for 8*00 and newer cards, at most you can get a 7950 AGP which IIRC is around performance of a 8600 but without all new stuff, pricing of this card could be found for less than 200EUR or 284USD, on ATI X1950PRO for less than 150EUR or 213USD. Dont know performance of NV vs ATI

I might have to play it on Ultra-Low Quality or something then...
I just want a decent enough card.

Ultra low quality with a 7800 GS?
Check out the results of the Steam hardware survey. If a 7800 GS would hardly run UT3 at all, Epic would lose money faster than the speed of light. I would guess medium settings myself, you'd easily max out with a 8800 GTX/Ultra, very high settings with a 8800 GTS.

Well a 7800xx will run the source engine pretty well...
And you get them in AGP if you hunt around...
It should run UE3 ok'ish...if you turn a lot of stuff off I guess...

I'm currently looking at that range, and the 7600xx mainly due to costs...as I also have to buy m/b, ram and cpu, although those I've already pretty much decided on...
I'm also only really interested in the source engine games running well...UE3 is a bonus if it runs it ok'ish..
I'm also not too interested in the directX 10 stuff, as I would need a mucher bigger PC anyway, and my favourite game engine is not doing too much with DX10 in the near future, and I know they're gonna support the older stuff for a long time anyway (hell, I can still run Half-Life 2 nicely on my GeForce4 MX 200, with Half-Life 2 forced to DX 7 level!!)....

You got that right. DX9 support won't be dropped for many many years. We might be talking about a decade.

Well (I hear an argurment about to start...I can already hear people leaping off their chairs), some of the big names in games development have had quite a bit to say about DX10 and not much of it was nice...and I kinda agree with them...the only one pushing DX10 is Microsoft...and even they contradict themselves...I mean, why release DX10 when the XBox360 is doing so well, but it can't support it...at the end it's all about the money!!

Hell, even UE3 still has to support DX9 (otherwise all these wonderfull games like Gears of War and BioShock wouldn't run on the XBox360 and PS3) !!

I think it's going to be a while before most games move to DX10, although at the rate graphics are made, I have a feeling we are going to be flooded with all sorts of new cards boasting DX10, but none of them really improving anything...except your top end cards of course...

for me personally, I have settled on a nice NVidia 7600GT, which comes within my budget and performs very well when stacked up against other cards...so it's on the list for xmas, and I'll do a quick review nearer the time, to see if my second and third choices have dropped their prices (cause I can't afford them now!!).
It also supports my favourite game engine very well

*Leaps of chair and attacks keyboard*

Isn't that how all new things go? First, it is an interesting novelty that holds much promise, but isn't very practical. Marketers always want money, so they develop hype. After a while, it gets refined and becomes more practical and affordable.

This seems true with the early stages of Win XP, Vista, and physics cards...

Same with the Geforce FX line-up. The DX9 support wasn't very good, actually it was shit. But the next generation, the 6000 series, were amazing in terms of DX9 performance. If nVidia did it once, they can do it again, so I expect great DX10 support in the 9000 series.

Yeah, its the way the wheel turns

The only one that seems to fall of the bus (so to speak), is the physics cards...they've been around a while, but they don't seem to be gaining popularity ...

But yeah, I'm sure the new series of graphics crads will improve and so life goes on...

To sum up this whole debate (I think poor KylinRage's question got overun somewhere along the line), buy the best you can afford, but be carefull, as some of the lower models in the newer series do not perform as well as high end cards in older series. You also need to decide what features you want, so you need to balance performance with cost and features