Best PCI-Express Graphics Card for ~€300

Sean^DCT4

Hi all,

I'm upgrading my crappy P4 2.8Ghz, 6600GT to a nice Pentium D dual core 2.66(oc'd to 3.8GHz) in a couple of weeks.
Here is my question what is the best PCI-E Graphics card available for €300-350?

Would you recommend the Saphire Radeon X1900Xt 512 GDDR3
or one of the nVidia 7800GTX's or the 7900GT's

Also, as I am buying the PC from Dell which is not great for PSU or anything power related come to think of it.. what PSU and Wattage would you recommend from Komplett?

Thanks in advance people

Anti

the x1900xt is far superior then the other 2 cards you mention. get it and be happy with it as it is rather speedy. if you can spend more buy a 7950gx2

8T8

The cheapest 7950GX2 comes in at €552 on Komplett a bit off the price range methinks.

I'd go with the X1900XT as it simply has better image quality on top of performance. You should know that ATI are launching an X1950XT in September which is even faster so if you are waiting anyway hold off till those show up.

Obviously your going to need a good PSU I highly recommend Tagan PSU's very high quality but more expensive too.

conzy

Sean^DCT4 wrote:

Hi all,

I'm upgrading my crappy P4 2.8Ghz, 6600GT to a nice Pentium D dual core 2.66(oc'd to 3.8GHz) in a couple of weeks.
Here is my question what is the best PCI-E Graphics card available for €300-350?

Would you recommend the Saphire Radeon X1900Xt 512 GDDR3
or one of the nVidia 7800GTX's or the 7900GT's

Also, as I am buying the PC from Dell which is not great for PSU or anything power related come to think of it.. what PSU and Wattage would you recommend from Komplett?

Thanks in advance people

Get a X1900XT...

But about the Power supply Im not sure If DEll's can use standard ATX PSUs

If they can, the Enermax Liberty gets my vote, there is a 400watt for sale in the FS section...

Sean^DCT4

8T8 wrote:

The cheapest 7950GX2 comes in at €552 on Komplett a bit off the price range methinks.

I'd go with the X1900XT as it simply has better image quality on top of performance. You should now that ATI are launching an X1950XT in September which is even faster so if you are waiting anyway hold off till those show up.

Obviously your going to need a good PSU I highly recommend Tagan PSU's very high quality but more expensive too.

I might aswell at least wait until then, probably the prices will drop on the Radeon's..

conzymaher wrote:

Get a X1900XT...

But about the Power supply Im not sure If DEll's can use standard ATX PSUs

If they can, the Enermax Liberty gets my vote, there is a 400watt for sale in the FS section...

As far as I know there shouldn't be a problem as I currently have some crap 400w PSU in my current machine(Dell) that was given to me. There's no name on it, but the odd time I get "Insufficient Power" in a nVidia popup dialog.

I am just thinking maybe I should wait a while for DX10 cards as the prices will plummit on the DX9 cards when they come out.. Although I could be waiting a while?

Any idea what kind of price range they are likely to be in?

Anti

500-600+ i would say. Remember when directx9 cards came out ?

5800 anyone ?

i remember spending 600 punts on one of them useless ****ing things.

I wouldnt even recomend buying a gen 1 dx10 card. id wait a few months.

brav

ya they usually have most of the problems sorted on the second generation, like 6800 over 5800, so much better. So when dx10 does come out better wait till it's 2nd generation so it could be a long wait

8T8

It could be a little more tricky that that due to some changes with Direct-X 10 brings with it but one thing for sure is that the cards will have strong DX9 performance better than the current lot as DX9 will be the dominant API for some time to come so that alone still makes them a viable choice than waiting on a second spin of the GPU.

The GeForce 5 (FX) series was a major cock up for NVIDIA, in that they made bad design decisions mated with their philosophy of acceptable first generation Direct-X 9 SM 2.0 performance which of course didn't pan out and left with them egg on their face. With the GeForce 6 & 7 NVIDIA corrected their mistakes but tended to focus more on core performance of their GPU's than exploiting the full specification of the Direct-X 9 SM 3.0 feature set.

By comparison take a look at ATI's X1K parts they were heavily delayed in part because ATI went with a design that leveraged more of the SM 3.0 specification, the shader heavy TES:Oblivion is an example where they shine.

Things will be slightly different with Direct-X 10 the specification is much more restrictive with little wiggle room for ATI & NVIDIA so they both have to support a fair amount of the SM 4.0 feature set no ifs or buts. And here is where we stand with ATI effectively leveraging their second generation design (the X1K & Xbox 360 GPU both feature elements required for DX10) & are bound to put in a strong showing with their DX10 unified shader design.

NVIDIA on other hand are in a tricky place, they have said they are not convinced about the merits of going unified and are assumed to be using a traditional design. But in the back of their minds they must know that ATI will have them in their sights from a marketing point of view with unified vs non-unified so they will need to have good DX10 performance otherwise they will falter under ATI's marketing assault that unified = better.

Finally the rumour mill is churning that G80 NVIDIA's DX10 chip is very, very large over 500m transistors far bigger than anything NVIDIA has done to date what that means who knows but if I were to take a guess it's no slouch when it comes to DX10 (at least I hope not).

The first test will be with DX10 Halo 2 Vista and Crysis with who ever comes on top probably taking the crown.


Of course that's just me being "optimistic" they could very well repeat that pattern of old with strong DX9 cards with acceptable first generation DX10 performance but I would imagine MS would not be happy about that it badly wants the PC gamer market to switch to Vista to get the ball rolling.

oRlyYaRly

anti wrote:

500-600+ i would say. Remember when directx9 cards came out ?

5800 anyone ?

i remember spending 600 punts on one of them useless ****ing things.

I wouldnt even recomend buying a gen 1 dx10 card. id wait a few months.

Yeah, but remember the 9700pro? Wasn't that the first DX9 GFX card? And that still works well in todays games, 4 years on.

I guess waiting for Gen2 would be a safer bet, but the risk of buying right away could pay off well.

Anti

How can it pay off? When three months after the initial launch a faster and cheaper card will be available!!! 5800 > 5800u > 5900 > 5900u > 5950u ! see the patern ? and they were within about 6 months of each other.

If you want one straight away go for it. But just read a few reviews and look at benchmarks online.

Sean^DCT4

Does anyone know what price I should be looking for (at the very least) for my p
PC?

Intel Pentium4 2.8Ghz
1.2 GB Ram (512x2 DDR-3200 + 256)
160 GB Maxtor HD (ATA)
nVidia 6600GT Graphics Card (AGP)
17" LCD
7.1 Audigy2 sound-card
Logitech Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
4x DVD +/- Burner (CD's = 32x)
Windows XP Pro SP2

brav

Sean^DCT4 wrote:

Does anyone know what price I should be looking for (at the very least) for my p
PC?

wrong forum, head over to here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054853497