Considering an upgrade..

[lemonfridge]

I'm seriously considering a Sapphire Radeon X800 256MB GDDR3 8xAGP ViV256bit 12Pipe DVI 392MHz/350MHz.

It's gonna mainly be used for BF2 at the moment

The rest of my spec is as 1.5gig Ram, 3Ghz P4 Hyper Threaded.

What kind of performance should I be able to get out of it at 1280x1024x32? I'm upgrading from a 9600, so I'm hoping for quite a boost.

 

[duffers20]

You would get a fair boost! I'd say that you would be better getting the x800xl. Its a great card and has come down in price a fair bit recently. Worth checking out. Other than that, you could get a 6800GT, its also a good card. I mean either the x800xl or the 6800gt are going to give you a massive boost in bf2 at the resolution you stated.

EDIT: You would have gotten a better response on this if you posted it in the hardware/software support foum, but it doesn't matter.

 

[lemonfridge]

You would get a fair boost! I'd say that you would be better getting the x800xl. Its a great card and has come down in price a fair bit recently. Worth checking out. Other than that, you could get a 6800GT, its also a good card. I mean either the x800xl or the 6800gt are going to give you a massive boost in bf2 at the resolution you stated.

EDIT: You would have gotten a better response on this if you posted it in the hardware/software support foum, but it doesn't matter.

Good point. Think I'm likely to get my balls cut off for posting it there now?

I'm looking at £160 for the X800. I dont think I can stretch to a X800XL.

Any idea how much strain this will add to my powersupply?

 

[ailevation]

I think I have read somewhere, where a 2.8 was bottlenecking an x800 Pro. The x800 XL looks good, I don't think a 3.0 would bottleneck, but i'm not sure... I know for a fact that 3.2's and up will not bottleneck.

I think the recommended power supply was 350 or 400 WATTS?

 

[duffers20]

Good point. Think I'm likely to get my balls cut off for posting it there now?

Nah, I'm sure if the admins want this in the hardware/software support forum, then they will move it. I wouldn't worry about it.

I'm looking at £160 for the X800. I dont think I can stretch to a X800XL.

I would recommend that you save another 40-50 quid for the x800xl but if you can't spend that amount for what ever reason, then the x800 is fine, just not as good as the x800xl for performance and value for money.

Any idea how much strain this will add to my powersupply?

A good 400w PSU would be fine I would have thought for either card, unless you have loads of other stuff in your case like 4 Hard drives, and neon lights etc.

 

[lemonfridge]

I opened up my case lastnight. I appear to have a 300w (295w according to the sticker) PSU. 1 HDD, 2 DVD drives, Wireless card, Graphics card.

I'm considering replacing one of the DVD drives with a DVD+DL writer, and adding a 2nd HDD. But not for a while.

Its a Sony Vaio. Normally they arnt made to be upgraded, but it has extra connectors for a HDD right above an empty bay for one. So it looks like they expect people to want to upgrade which is really nice.

But the powersupply im not sure is standard sized. it doesnt look it, but I'll check at work today.

 

[Sui]

That would be one mighty fine, beast of a machine. I can run BF2 perfectly on high with a gig of RAM and an X700 though, I don't see why you need to upgrade yet. I'd wait till the UE3 games are released before you upgrade.

 

[CyberPitz]

That would be one mighty fine, beast of a machine. I can run BF2 perfectly on high with a gig of RAM and an X700 though, I don't see why you need to upgrade yet. I'd wait till the UE3 games are released before you upgrade.

I'd wait for UE3 games, but....I don't like many new games comming out. Other than FEAR..that's one sexy game. But yeah, I've got a 9600XT and I'd like for an upgrade. I just can't figure out why I get as bad of performance as my roomates 2.2 ghz Celeron Sapphire 9200SE 1gig 2100 ram....

and my friends exact same spec computer *he has an extga 200 mhz on his processor* can play on medium/high settings, when everything I'm on low, and any visibility above 90% gives me massive frame loss

 

[ailevation]

I opened up my case lastnight. I appear to have a 300w (295w according to the sticker) PSU. 1 HDD, 2 DVD drives, Wireless card, Graphics card.

I'm considering replacing one of the DVD drives with a DVD+DL writer, and adding a 2nd HDD. But not for a while.

Its a Sony Vaio. Normally they arnt made to be upgraded, but it has extra connectors for a HDD right above an empty bay for one. So it looks like they expect people to want to upgrade which is really nice.

But the powersupply im not sure is standard sized. it doesnt look it, but I'll check at work today.

Yeah those VAIO's have weird Powersupplies. You're in shit if you're looking to upgrade man... I had one too, a VAIO... it's shit, I had to upgrade my case in order to get a better powersupply, all because I had a 9800 Pro. Why? Because the power supplies suck ass and the dimensions of the power supplies are real different, mini ATX or something.

Since the power supply was shit it couldnt supply power to everything in the system, thus it would reboot during gaming. Because gaming uses up harddrive power, CPU power, and graphics power and sound card like to the uberness.

 

[Garfield_]

Id save the money and wait few monts then go for a second generation pc.
PCI-E, DDR2 etc

 

[AmishSlayer]

My upgrade will finally finish this Friday.

3200+ AMD 64
1gb pc3200 ddr ram
Leadtek 6800 GT pci-e

I'll probably upgrade my mobo and cpu with ddr2 eventually and slowly..