Card for 3Ds Max, Photoshop, Flight Sim X

Danbo!

I'm in the process of customizing a dell studio XPS and am a little clueless on graphics cards. The spec is Intel i7 920 (2.66Ghz), 8Gb Ram, vista 64bit, 500Gb HD, and I need to choose a gfx card.

This machine will be used for 3ds max (high poly modeling), vray, photoshop and Flight Sim X. I would like to run FSX with the highest FPS possible with high settings.

The default card is the GT220. I can upgrade this to a GTS240 (extra €70), or a 1.8Gb GTX 260 (extra €190). I cant find much info online about the 1.8Gb 260, Im assuming its OEM and new? Also, I may be able to call and customise it beyond the options online, and get a 1Gb ATI 4870 HD.

Any advice on this would be appreciated! Thanks

dpaulod

Hi there,
you might take a look here

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19269320.aspx

Flight X is about the only game left on the market that is still
very dependant on the cpu speed as opposed to the gpu. I have a similar set up as your dell xps with the GeForce 220 card (entry level) flight X runs great with all the settings on full on a 24" monitor. The xps does get a little noisy as cpu fans rev up and stay on for the duration of the game. However wolfenstein 2009 with resolution up full is unplayable. Also you are a little limited in your choice of video card given the dell 435mt has a 380 watt psu most high end gaming cards need over 500 watts psu to run, and
that is not taking heat/cooling into consideration in the small 435mt box.

I decided to go for the Radeon HD 4670 - 1 GB GDDR3 as its power needs are within the range for the PSU and the graphic output is sufficent for a casual gamer like myself.

Hope this Helps

Paul

Messerschmitt

From what I've heard ATI cards don't run FSX as well as NVidia.