Hi-end card dilemma

pushpop

Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a new graphics card at the moment, and I'm looking towards the higher spec ones. Two that caught my fancy are the GeForce 7900GTX or the ATI X1800XT.

The GTX is more powerful, but far more expensive and the performance gain is not reflected in the difference. I'm thinking about going with the ATI... does that sound like a resonable course of action?

projectmayhem

personally i don't think the performance of the 7900 overshadows the 1800 so much that it becomes worthwhile spending the extra bucks, do i'd go with the ati.

however, if i were you i'd stick with whatever you have now and wait until the DX10 cards come along early next year, unless you don't mind upgrading again in a years time

pushpop

Music to my ears my man! Like the card seems to fare quite well against the GTX in Tom's hardware benchmarks, just I have a 7300GS now, and I can't play any heavy games with it! I usually play BF2, Far Cry, awaiting Crysis and Cell Factor

8T8

If your going to buy now then hold off a little bit as the ATI X1950XT is launching next month that will be slightly faster but come with a new more quiet cooler.

Some info links
HKEPC
DailyTech

A cheaper X1950Pro to compete against the 7900GT is also mentioned in the HKEPC link but whether those claims that it's faster from ATI hold up is another matter.


To address your original question a 7900GT(X) is faster than an X1800XT but the X1800 has the edge in terms of image quality better AA & AF options but has a noisier cooler.

If your looking to wait till DX10 hardware shows up at the end of this year [estimated November for NVIDIA] try a mid-range card to tide you over like the 7600GT or the forth-coming X1650XT which is ATI's answer to the former & aggressively priced against it. They should be coming in at the €190 range or there-abouts maybe even lower.

BadCharlie

8T8 wrote:

If your looking to wait till DX10 hardware shows up at the end of this year [estimated November for NVIDIA] try a mid-range card to tide you over like the 7600GT or the forth-coming X1650XT which is ATI's answer to the former & aggressively priced against it. They should be coming in at the €190 range or there-abouts maybe even lower.

But do we need Vista for DX10 ? Or at least run DX10 properly.

8T8

Yes you need Vista for DX10 but a DX10 card will essentially act as an even faster DX9.0c card under XP.

pushpop

Well to be honest, DX10 isn't even in the back of my mind. I'm not planning to upgrade to Vista until SP1 at the very least, as XP does me fine, and I have the Vista Beta on my machine, which is pretty, but doesn't extend XP's functionality to any great extent IMHO. I think I'll go for the X1800XT, as it has great performance at a good price. I'm suffering withdrawal from not being able to play BF2 or Far Cry or Q4.

turbot

PushPop,

How soon are you looking to buy / how much do you want to spend.

There is a good chance that by 10 August, I'll have an as-new 512meg ATI x1900xt-x available, that I might remove from a system.

These retail at 530+ on Komplett.

Once I have confirmation, I'd probably sell the card for 400ish euros, which would be as far as I know, the fastest single gpu card on the market.

interested?

pushpop

Very! I could wait till then, I get paid on the 25th of August, could you wait that long? Whereabouts are you from, I'm a dub