Graphics card - Please help!

[norris99]

Hi,

Not really knowing much about graphics cards, I'd likea bit of advice, please. I'm building a system for a friend, and he gave me the specification "needs to last me a long time and be capable of playing the new total war game".

So, looking at graphics cards, there's 2 which seem ok at around the 40 GBP mark (sticking to this budget please!), and don't require PCI-E 2.0 (as the motherboard we've built on doesn't support it!).

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140301
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149064

I don't know whether it'd be better to go for the 9-series with less memory or the 8-series with more memory.

Also, if it says "built for Vista", will it still run on XP or won't it have the right drivers?


Thanks for any help you can give,
Rob xx

[Big_Daddy]

It will run on XP

I don't know that either card will play the new total war game at high settings.

[pullmyfoot]

If you are looking to play games with both those cards then dont bother.. They will struggle to even play the current generation games. You want at least a 9600GT to keep up with the current games

[Big_Daddy]

And the PCI 2.0 requirement is irrelevant. You can run a 2.0 card in a 1.0 socket

[norris99]

Ok, thanks for that. Making it totally obvious how much of a noob I am to computer graphics...

Cheap Nvidia Graphics Cards From Ebuyer

If anyone has a minute, is there anything up to about page 5 on there that might do the job? Like, would a 9500GT scrape through, or is there something fairly major which makes a 9600 the minimum?

[pullmyfoot]

Yes, you will hardly expect the 9500GT to play even today's games.

Can a sub-$100 graphics card get the job done? - The Tech Report - Page 6

Check that out. Look at the benchmarks from page 6 onwards. For some background, 30fps is about the minimum you want to go for smooth gameplay. Also, take into consideration that they have stuffed the best of everything else so that the GPU is definately the limiting factor. In the real world, you will probably not have such high end parts for the rest of your system

Anyways, even at low resolutions in COD4, one of the less demanding modern games out there, the 9500GT struggles to hit 30fps. It just loses it at higher settings.

The minimum you will want is a 9600GSO or an ATI HD4670, a little cheaper than the 9600GT. Both are alright for lower resolutions and settings, but start to struggle when you tuen the setting up. However, if you get one (9600GSO or 4670), expect them to struggle in the next wave of games even at low resolutions.

If you want to play anything graphically intensive like Crysis however, dont bother unless you at least have a 9600GT. Anything less simply cant take it.

[norris99]

Okie kokie. I'll ask my mate what he wants to do.

I think the response might be "see what the built in 7-series graphics can do, and save up for a 9600GT".

How do the 8600 and 8800 compare? I've seen some pretty alright reviews for them.

[#43 fan]

The 8800 is a much better card then the 8600. 8800GTS, IIRC, is a really good card.

[norris99]

So how does it compare against the 9400, 9500 and 9600?

[ShyguyXPC]

9400's are junk for gaming, better than most onboard, 9500's are good budget cards (they replace the 8600 series), the 9600's are much closer to the 8800/9800 series cards, only behind the 8800/9800GT by a small bit.

the 9600GSO & GT cards are so similar in performance its hard to tell which is better, the GSO has 50% more stream processors & relatively same clocks, but about only 75% of the GT's Memory bus bandwidth, so what it gains in Stream processors, it might lose in memory bandwidth...

its hard to say, but for normal to lower resolutions (1280x1024 or 1366x768 or 1440x900 type resolutions, ones higher than that like 1600x1200 or 1680x 1050 you might start noticing a drop in performance, but honestly I don't think it would/should be much), even for newer games to come out, my money is on the GSO, with its extra stream processors, but for higher resolutions, the GT might be a bit better... basically the GSO's (like the 8800GS before it, basically all GSO's are is rebadged 8800GS's), are much more like the old G80 core 8800GTS 320MB/640MB cards, half their memory bandwidth, but same amount of stream processors & similar if not faster clock speeds.

depending on how much you have to spend, in performance it basically goes from 8800GS/9600GSO to 9600GT to 8800/9800GT for the $100-150 range of cards (used to be able to get the 8800GS for around $75 or so, might be able to find some 9600GSO's for close to that now too).


could even grab recertified eVGA cards like the old 8800GTS's or even the "newer" 512MB 8800GTS cards for the near or under $100 mark.