Beat Video Cards

[Tyguy]

Best Video Cards

Its that time again, I just got a good amount of money and want to blow it on a video card. I have a Geforce 7900 GT right now, but I want better performance. Now....the Geforce 8800's are out, but I know nothing about them. In your opinion, would this be a good move, or a waste of money?

 

[The Brick]

Waste. Your 7900GT is plenty to play any game right now. If you're experience performance issues, it's probably something else.

What performance do you want to achieve?

 

[Tyguy]

Well, I got vista, and I finally got it to run like it did with XP, I just had to find a driver. But Im usually around 70 FPS in DOD:S, which is good. But i have some sort of and OCD'ish thing that I just have to have the best performance possible. Im thinking about getting another 2 gigs of ram

 

[CookieCuttah]

I have a 7800Gt myself and it runs everything very well, even Oblivion ran at like 30-50 fps outside which was great. The only thing id recommend is to go SLI, that's what I want to do. Otherwise I would have suggested to just stick with XP, games using DX10 wont be out for a while and Vista is filled with bugs and security gaps.

 

[Tyguy]

Its already installed and it would be a bitch to reinstall XP. Anyway, i was reading that installing another 2 gigs of memory wouldn't do anything, unless I changed my pagefile......anyone know how exactly this would work?

 

[The Brick]

Bagh the performance issues under vista are caused by bad drivers. Just wait till there are better ones and you'll have performance that's close to what it was on XP.


And 4gb ram? Are you a professional graphics designer? Because that's the only thing it would be useful for.

 

[Tyguy]

no, im not, i just hate low fps...

So a newer video card is useless?

 

[The Brick]

Well it will be a little better, but (IMO) it's not worth the money. And I don't see how you get 70fps with that machine, unless you're playing with 1600x1200 with HDR and 4xAA 16xAF.

 

[Tyguy]

i do actually....what did you expect id get on lower settings?

 

[Stigmata]

You're not going to notice any performance gain versus what you've already got. The human eye cannot detect any speed higher than about 70-80fps, and anything above 85fps will not even be displayed by 99% of all monitors (since said monitors operate at 60-85Hz a.k.a. fps).

 

[[RnL]Stefan]

Its already installed and it would be a bitch to reinstall XP. Anyway, i was reading that installing another 2 gigs of memory wouldn't do anything, unless I changed my pagefile......anyone know how exactly this would work?

unless you got vista 64bit you'll be missing a good 600mb of ram then. although they're not gone away, 32bit windows cannot address them (because it's using the address space for vid card ram and other hardware already). though vista 64bit isn't the best choice still because its lacking good drivers worse than 32bit vista.

SLI would be the best choice to gain more performance atm, though i am not sure if it works on vista already (at least it doesnt on the 8800).

in the long run you'll need to replace that amd 4400+ because that's what will bottleneck your system once you get a 8800 or a R600.

 

[Tyguy]

i have the 32 bit vista....Would getting another 7900 GT be practical and give a noticeable performance gain?

 

[TCfromBN]

With vista, I would assume the extra ram would be better. Sure the recommended specs are one thing, but come on windows always runs better with more than the recommended amount, specially if you have all the fancy features on. Besides, 32 bit Windows can address up to 4gb of ram.

 

[Qonfused]

You're not going to notice any performance gain versus what you've already got. The human eye cannot detect any speed higher than about 70-80fps, and anything above 85fps will not even be displayed by 99% of all monitors (since said monitors operate at 60-85Hz a.k.a. fps).

Yep. The average human eye can only sense 60FPS.

And, honestly, 1600x1200 with AA and AF full is a waste. You're tricking yourself into thinking it looks better.

 

[TCfromBN]

And, honestly, 1600x1200 with AA and AF full is a waste. You're tricking yourself into thinking it looks better.

The AA and AF are very noticeable to me. I could pick out different settings. Not necessarily by name but I can certainly tell the difference. FPS I could care less about as long as its around 60, but the more the merrier. When you start moving fast, you can notice that the screen seems to sideshow the movements if the FPS is much lower than 40.

 

[ktimekiller]

hate getting low fps? you getting 70ish fps is low? im ****in excited when i get 20 fps in games -_-

 

[Stigmata]

Anti-aliasing is very noticeable. AF, not so much once you go beyond 2x, but it's a big jump from trilinear to any AF level.

 

[CyberPitz]

hate getting low fps? you getting 70ish fps is low? im ****in excited when i get 20 fps in games -_-

I remember those days. Poeple saying, "GOD I ONLY GET 60 FRAMES!" When I couldn't get 10.

 

[Tyguy]

70 frames is the new 30

 

[TCfromBN]

Anti-aliasing is very noticeable. AF, not so much once you go beyond 2x, but it's a big jump from trilinear to any AF level.

Agreed.

 

[3ssence]

I find that the level of AF is noticeable up until 8x, the real difference is in the textures further away. 4x may appear as sharp when concerning the textures close to you, however the textures in the distance begin to blur progressively the further away they are. I find that 8x all but eliminates this.

 

[Asus]

Yea I'd keep your Video card. Maybe upgrade to a DX10 card when there are DX10 games.
Unless you are multitasking while running the game and in Vista...I'd stick with 2GB of memory.

And what you see will be ultimately limited by your monitor's refresh rate (CRT) or response time (LCD). But please don't put a number on what the human eye can see.

 

[Stigmata]

:O

I thought I was the only one who would understand that concept! I didn't want to start going off on the theory of light sensitivity and have everyone call me a dumbass

 

[Alan00000]

I have a nvidia 8800 gtx and its Insane! I had a x800 pro in my old system and was ok but i wanted this for future games like crysis ,stalker ect. I wanted to play with max everything and dx10

 

[ehudyoda]

Hold it a little longer

I just brought a 8800gtx but I made a jump from 6800gt AGP.
Wait a little longer, see whats going on with the R600 and maybe
a major price cut.

More then 2Gb of mem is a waist of your money.