Graphics Card Upgrade Help

[dzee]

Hey guys!

Its been a while since i bought my 6600gt and am now looking at a pc upgrade, new mb new cpu and of course a new graphics card!

I would consider myself a 'serious gamer' however ive got a budget of £125 unfortunatly. i was looking at the 7600 7800 and 7900 nvidia cards, i really dont know so much about ati cards.

What should i get?
Games will be bf2 mostly but even better and newer games as they come around.

I will probably be getting a dfi board i saw which has sli and pci-e

Oh and yes i have a decent psu already (hiper type r 480)

[JLK03F150]

If you can wait until Feb or so, the 8600GT should released by then. It will probably perform close to a 7800 or 7900 and have DX10 support.

[dzee]

is that likely to be expensive though?
is now a bad time to get a new graphics card due to the new generation of dx10 cards coming up?

[JLK03F150]

What did you have before your 6600GT? It depends on your personal upgrade cycle.

I had a Ti4400, then upgraded to 6800U - also replaced cpu, mobo & ram. I skipped the FX5000 series completely. I plan to get a 8000 series (or new ATI) on my next upgrade, skipping the 7000 series too. I will also do another cpu, mobo, & ram upgrade.

[dzee]

before the 6600gt i briefly had a 5500 something or other that was a complete load of rubbish! there wasnt a before that!
Upgrading is very rare for me.

when the directx 10 comes out will the 7series cards go down in price?

[him61]

I'd try to go with DX 10 and get a little more $$ into your budget. Yes, the prices should decline after the mid-range DX10 cards come out.

Another idea would to get an ATI card, saying that BF2 favors ATI cards and you'll see more performance out of an ATI card than an NVidia card.

I see that x1950Pros are pretty cheap (The x1xxx series cards are supposed to be DX10 compatible), and they will outperform a lot of NVidia cards in BF2, my suggestion:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=492010

I dont know good UK stores, so you may be able to get a better price with that.

[dzee]

are x1950 pros better then nvidia cards in the same price range then?

[dzee]

hmm anyone

[JLK03F150]

Yup, it seems to be faster than the 7900 & 7950 series in most of the 1600x1200 tests at THG.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=586&chart=199

[cbuddha42]

Yup, it seems to be faster than the 7900 & 7950 series in most of the 1600x1200 tests at THG.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...=586&chart=199

The test you linked shows the 7950 GT beating the x1950 Pro. Most of the other tests confirm this.

[dzee]

oh from the link i generally see that the 1950 cards outperform the 7900 cards. id imagine youd need a pretty good cpu to not bottleneck that gpu though?

do you think it would be worth it buying via newegg and getting a friend to ship it over to the uk price wise?

[cbuddha42]

oh from the link i generally see that the 1950 cards outperform the 7900 cards. id imagine youd need a pretty good cpu to not bottleneck that gpu though?

do you think it would be worth it buying via newegg and getting a friend to ship it over to the uk price wise?

1950xt and xtx cards will, but the cheaper 1950 pro loses out to the 7950 gt (~$250).

[JLK03F150]

The test rig at Tom's is running an FX-60 if that gives any indication of required cpu power. I don't know how the overseas shipping thing would work out. It would be nice to hear from someone who tried it.

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Dual mit 2.61 GHz
Motherboard: NVIDIA nForce4 - Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Memory: Mushkin 2x1024 MB HP 3200 2-3-2
Graphics Card: PCI Express Card
Hard Disk: 2 x Hitahi 120 GByte SATA, Cache 8 MByte
Network: Marvell
Audio: Realtek AC97

[dzee]

cheers for your replys
i did some searching on gogle and the cheapest results are

7900 gs can be had for £110 ($215)
and
x1950pro for £130 ($254)

is the difference worth that price difference? or should i wait for them to lower more?

[him61]

the x1950 pro is better, and (not 100% although I believe it is true) will support DX10 when it comes out. Weather or not you want to spend the extra 20 pounds is up to you, but for BF2 especially, I'd go for an ATI card over an Nvidia card.

[dzee]

hmm i see, its a tough decision. will they drop in price much do you think come dx10?