Future Build (hopefully this by early spring)

[gvblake22]

You guys bring up a good point about video cards. A lot of people spend several hundred dollars on a high end video card and don't even know what Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering are.

A 9600 might be able to run the games, but there are a lot of people (including myself) who don't feel it is "playable". By playable, I mean that you have to turn the details and textures down so far that you loose half the reason for playing the new games, the graphics! I am the type of person who if I'm doing something, I really want to do it right. So if I'm playing games, I get really frustrated when I can't take advantage of all the image enhancement techniques offered by my video card that I payed good money for, and I get just as frustrated when I can't take advantage of all the extra in-game detail that I paid good money for. It's a delicate balancing act trying to weigh performance, image quality, and cost. Unfortuntely, no one person can tell you what you need, you really have to decide for yourself.

I think the best way to approach this is by first looking at what resolution you will be gaming at (or what resolution you might be gaming at during the lifespan of the video card). If it is anything over 1280x1024, then I think you can immediately rule out all low-end budget range cards. From there, you should look at the level of detail you care about. If you have never used AA or AF and could care less about it as you think games look fine the way they are, then you shouldn't worry about scraping together the funds for a $300+ video card and settle on a card with 7600GT range performance. But if you are like me and want to take advantage of some of those extra image enhancement techniques with newer games at a medium to high resolution, then something in the mid to high range would better suit your needs. Finally, if you want to run any current and future game available during the life of your card at 1600x1200 resolution or higher with full AA with transparency AA or Adaptive AA, high quality 16x AF, full in game details and textures, full HDR lighting effects, and still get a minimum of 30 frames per second, then a high end card of some flavor might be worth considering.

[fps justin]

If your thinking of upgrading your videocard again later, i think the 7600GT is the card for you, for now. However, if you want to buy a card and not have to worry about upgrading for awhile, the X1900xt 512mb would be a very good card. You may also concider the 7900gs. Its quite cheap and its a very good card as well.

[Tyreal]

Just to add on... the X1900GT is a good card too, and I'm sure Blake can vouch for it.

[Mithosphere]

Well my 9600 runs most games at medium quality, it sorta sucks, but i cant really help it. What i really need is a graphics card that recognizes 1440x900, as this is my lcd's optimal screen size. It was the first step into better gaming, but it doesnt work as well with the 9600. And yes i do need oustanding graphics,but not way expensive, one of my friends bought a 7900 GT KO for 270something, but im an ATI fan. Plus i need that high qualitiness of stuff and feeling, i like to be immersed inside the game

[Marvin The Martian]

Originally Posted by Mithosphere

First of all im am not overclocking anything, if that was my intention i would have gone for something cheaper and easier to replace, im not going to be persuaded in any way to OC. And i find your comment about being shot rather appalling, im not sure why you would say such a thing, even in jest, its really quite rude.

I am really sorry it wasn't ment to hurt, maybe I should use more smileys? It is however a statement I still stand by in the sence that the diffrence between a e6300 and e6400 can be so easily made up with a small overclock that the price diffrence between them is enough to turn me off unless you would need the extra multi.

Originally Posted by Mithosphere

Secondly the cheapest x1900xt 512mb on newegg is at 374.99 and with the lowered cost of an e6300 i still end up using 81 dollars more. And yet you even say that the x1900xt will be sufficient for gaming with the C2D. As for the DX10 cards, i never purchase anything that immeadiately comes out, since it much to high of a price and hasnt quite been fully prepared for most games. I usually wait a few months, maybe a year, that is if i attain the funds.

Ok well it depends on location as far as the price diffrence. I said 512 would be better, as seeing future cards getting more and more ram this will have developers use what's offerd. Also if funds are a concern, and you're not that much an ati fanboy to look at the best bang for buck at the moment then have a look at nvidia's 7900gto, basicly rebatched gtx's with 512mb off ram which is downclocked. I seen some good overclocks on them but also reports they were rebadged because they have a bad batch off ram ic's. Anyway, EVGA offers a lifetime warranty afaik, so for around $250 getting a 512mb gtx with downclocked ram isn't to bad off a deal.

Originally Posted by Mithosphere

And like i posted earlier, well in the title atleast, im hoping to get this all sorted out by spring. So by that time DX10 cards may be out and prices on everything will have likely dropped.

From what i can tell, it shows something that a ATI 9600 can run most of today's games (Oblivion, HL2, FEAR, DoW, Civilization 4, CoD2, and numerous others) without a problem, and i bought that over 4 years ago. Besides the rig that i would like to build will actually be able to rework later on in the year if i feel so inclined to upgrade, where as my current POS is too ancient to support anything new. As for benchmarks and all that whoopla, i have seen them multiple times, i chose what i wanted because it fit my budget and idear.

I got a 9600pro but I wouldn't dare to run fear on it... my 6800le unlocked and oc'd far beyond ultra speeds on the core had it difficult. Max I could run was 800/600 with medium settings, don't tell me you can do that on a 9600pro?

Just to be sure, I am not trying to come down on you or something like that, I'm just offering you some advice.

Btw, oblivion on a 9600pro? Take a fraps ss for me in the open please :attention:

[Capper]

Marvin brings up a great point we really try to stress here. You can save a lot of money with simple tweaks, like overclocking a processor even slightly to make up the difference between a budget model and a mainstream or even enthusiast model. I've Oced the e6300 to almost E6600 speeds with simple BIOS manipulation of the FSB, and a little voltage increase. I don't think you offended anyone, I think Mitho has just seen people make expensive mistakes trying to get the most out of their systems....and being happy with the performance it achieves, doesn't feel the need "to push things".

[Jokerswild]

I like the idea of overclocking sice the parts your buy are not all the same. Each one is a individual and the companies that make them mark them at that speed but it doesn't mean that it's not capable of more. I overclocked my T4600 vid card when I got it in 2002 and it was still running overclocked until it was replaced last year so if it's lifespan was reduced by overclocking then it really didn't matter since it's usefullness for gaming was already done.

[Mithosphere]

Originally Posted by Marvin The Martian

Btw, oblivion on a 9600pro? Take a fraps ss for me in the open please :attention:

Not a 9600Pro, just a regular old 9600 at just below medium settings, of course now it doesnt seem to recognize any installation of it, but thats probably due to it not being a legit copy of oblivion. and fear runs at 1024x768 at around medium settings, loading times are horrendous though on both games.

As for getting a bit out of something, im just happy with the normal speeds, that way if anything does go wrong i can simply call up support and they can likely help me out, or post here.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Mithosphere

fear runs at 1024x768 at around medium settings

I think An is wondering exactly what you mean when you say it "runs"; how many frames per second...

[polobunny]

I would trade the X1900XT with a new generation video card, something with the new ATI cooler at least. You know, much silent. And with DX10 just there, it wouldn't really be worth it to take a DX9 card in Spring IMO.

Like Marvin pointed out, overclocking the Core 2 Duo is a kids game. It really isn't harder than hitting + on the numpad a few times. :P

512MB of onboard RAM is becoming the standard. Like I pointed out in another thread, playing at a 1280x1024 resolution will quickly get you over 256MB of needed RAM and because of this you would need to lower the quality settings even if your card chipset is able to run it perfectly.

There's someone that told me "You never let a friend buy a mATX motherboard" and well... yeah. Heat will quickly build up and today's video cards really are sensible to it. Your choice though.

Also, AVIVO totally owns Nvidia Pure Video. Seriously, you wouldn't know how much.

As for Capper comment on Nvidia getting more frames per second in games... hum I don't think so. I've been greatly deceived by all 7900GTX I installed up to now (Alot of Asus, 1 eVGA, 1 MSI). All 3DMark benches i've ran my OC'ed X1900XT (OC'ed to XTX speed) took over them with a rather big margin. You know when you run 3DMark05 and the first numbers you see in the first demo while they're in the car are ~70fps for the 7900GTX when theyre ~80fps on the X1900XT, I don't think that's worth the massive price difference. :P (Between an Asus 7900GTX and a Sapphire X1900XT there is a $200.00 difference)