Graphic cards
 

I'm looking for a graphic card to buy, price range $150-$250.

If anyone could help me, it'd be greatly appreciated.

I'm looking to run some newer games, not as powerful as Crysis. More toward something like Prototype or those F2P games that are downloadable.

I don't want it to be a graphic card at lower than $150, because i have a feeling that it's a standard graphic card that comes with a pc, and mine came with a standard piece of junk.

Any suggestions?

It'd be better, to recommend something from This link, so I have a clear view of which one you're talking about and stuff.

I'd go for the GTX 275 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346900,00.asp
Competitive prices likely at newegg.com

You have to be aware that higher end graphics card tend to let off more heat and use more power. Most of the time, you will probably need to plug in a cable from your PSU so that the graphics card will have enough power. Another thing is that most OEMs computers don't come with powerful enough PSUs that can handle such a powerful card like that. As a result, you find yourself needing to upgrade your PSU that supports a higher wattage the graphics card needs.

Another thing to keep in mind... some cheaper computers may not come with a PCI Express X16 slot, so you will be out of luck if you don't have one and you are stuck with the slower PCI graphics cards. In that case, you need to replace your motherboard or computer just so that you can upgrade your graphics card.

Certainly know your system and the cards' requirements before you buy anything.

What's the resolution of your monitor and what kind of power supply do you have?

At 1680X1050, I imagine you could get away with a $120 HD4850 even for games like Crysis. It's insane how much GPUs have outpaced games the past year or so.

http://www.directron.com/expressguide.html

and for gods name don't cut to fit!
I've seen pictures (Or at least photoshoped ones)

I wouldn't count on Crysis as a good benchmark, its way too messed up.
at 1680x1050 and futureproofing, I wouldn't go for a 4850, notice its place on this
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...R.-2,1451.html
(75.10) compared to the others it may last for a while but not as long as something that gets more frames. I'd say the 4890 (107.3) is a better bet if you're willing to shell out, more bucks, more frames, more future proofing.

I would go for a 4870 if you are worried about the budget.
Its 150~ and you get almost 4890 performance for 50-100 bucks less.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...card,2404.html

Here is a good article if you want to see which card to get.

I'm not getting any upgrades for at least another year or years and when I do it will be a whole new system so it's not an issue for me atm; but if I was thinking about it now I'd wait for a whole nother 2 gens, not just the HD58XX or what nvidia will counter that with, but at least another gen of the DX 11 cards (since first gens are teh_suxxors on hindsight). Of course technology is always move but I do believe there are optimal times to get certain parts. I'd be most likely (if I was buying) wait for another 2 gens and get the best bang for the buck after a few reviews come out for the cards, the down side is probably the prices, but when building a new system I don't want to hold back. Of course the OP's position is different so he should get it whenever he wants (as I do with general upgrades if desperate enough).

I tend to treat games like Crysis, Stalker: Clear Skies, GTAIV, etc. as the most important benchmarks because they're worst case scenarios. And I'm not sure what you mean by messed up, it seems to scale pretty well with processing power from what I've seen, at least on single GPU setups.

I like the 4850 because it will handle those worst case scenarios at 1680X1050 for like $110. And if it doesn't in two years, well... just throw in another $110 card and run that for another two years. I doubt you'll get four years out of a 4890.

Besides, if he wants to future proof, he should be waiting a few weeks for the 5850 to come in stock. $260 and much faster than any 4000 series Radeon.
If he wants to future proof though, I would say he should wait a few weeks for HD 5850 cards to start shipping for around $260 - the performance increase over the 4890 should be well worth the extra.

Edit:
Uh, the Radeon 9700 Pro was the first Direct X9 card and the 8800GTX was the first DX10 one... and both of those first gen parts held up pretty well. Hell, the 8800GTX is still a pretty decent card and it came out in 2006!

Crysis sucks as a bench because of how low the frames are from even the highest end of cards, when even they can't hit 30 it's not a good indication of an ideal bench model, the game itself was made in a way that's bad for getting frames. I'd much prefer Clear Sky over it. And from what I heard the other Crysis game did a much better job on benches, an indication that it was indeed the coding itself of the first game and not the general engine or w/e.

I basically pretend that DX10 doesn't exist. That being said the 8800s were pretty freakin good later gen DX9 cards.

Imo the frames per second benchmarks are not quite suited to give a good advice on future proofedness (at least not them alone). Because this proofedness also comes with the support of future calculation technologies that are to be implemented in future DirectX versions. For example the support of more advanced geometry shaders. Often these shaders are not tested sufficiently with todays games (and many graphic cards simply do not support them). Since todays games - for the sake of backward compatibility and market relevance - do not realy use the most advanced features of the latest graphics cards (utilizing them requires costly development) it is hard to predict future proofedness based on FPS tests on these games. So any FPS test actually just shows what the graphics card can perform using the older calculation methods.
It says next to nothing about the capabilites of future calculation needs in games.
One of the major future improvements will be in-GPU surface subdivision/tesselation and massive texture based vertex-displacement technologies. The calculation process will then be something like this:

1st) Use a low polygon base mesh to do the boned animation.
2nd) Tesselate the transformed low poly mesh using surface subdivision. Good algorithms will smooth out all the edges in this step. This step does add lots of additional vertices and thus makes the low poly base mesh a high polygon mesh.
3rd) Since this smoothing process will make the mesh look very undefined in certain places, the texture based vertex-displacement will give it the coarse contours back where it is needed (think of this like bump mapping but on vertex level). This vertex displacement is only usefull on very high polygon meshes.
4th) For the very fine details bump mapping and all those old fashioned image manipulation techniques will be used.

Today there is no game doing this. Most games rely on the 1st and 4th step but do not use the 2nd and 3rd. They do other stuff instead, that somewhat makes use of the calculation principles used in the 2nd and 3rd step. But not enough to actually give a good picture of the performance-relevancy in the future.

I think we'll have to wait for another gen of consoles before more devs jump on more techs.

There are other factors that can affect FPS depending on how fast your CPU is. You can still have a fast card, but if your CPU is too slow, it can bottleneck the GPU so that it won't be able to perform as fast. This isn't the case if you have a fast Core2 Duo or Athlon/Phenom processor, but if you have a lower end CPU like the Pentium Dual Core, don't expect it to run as fast.

Most older games aren't really much a problem with the newer cards, and graphics card go obsolete when the newer cards come in, so it's best just to get the highest model, but not the latest since it will be cost effective since the newer generation will eventually go down in price. You can still play the latest game with the previous generation, but it won't be as fast, but it will still be playable.

I have a Geforce 9600m on my Macbook Pro laptop which I use for gaming and still can handle all my games with good framerates although it can't handle Crysis with high settings and full resolution since mobile graphics card are only half the power of what the desktop cards are. I don't build or use desktop computers since I go to college and I don't spend that much time at home to have and use a powerful desktop computer.

Is a "4400+ AMD Athlon 64X2 processor" capable of playing newer games? Or would i have to change it?

I'm kind of new to the computer stuff =/

Tl;dr

Can you summarize for me?

That is a fairly old processor since the AMD you have is made in 2006. It should handle the older games, but it's not going to handle the very intensive ones.

Your CPU barely meets the minimum requirement for running GTA4 which requires a 2.4 GHz Athlon X2 and yours is 2.2 GHz, but the game should still run fine, but a little slower and you may not be able to upgrade your CPU since the newer CPUs won't support your motherboard.

However, you may not be able to play CPU intensive games like Crysis that well since your CPU is a little outdated and Crysis is very demanding on the CPU, but most games should work fine, especially the non-demanding games.

Your 4400 may be overclockable, but you have to keep in mind that overclocking will produce extra heat and can damage your hardware if you don't have proper cooling, so it's not recommended.

To be frank most games are GPU limited.
CPU is becoming less important.

There are exceptions like Supreme Commander (God that game is Epic).

Though you should really consider overclocking the CPU if you aren't able to play games with the new card.
Unless your motherboard doesn't have those options.

If you have a AGP motherboard don't even bother. Just save up and get a new computer.

You're going to want to look up more facts before you buy anything.
Your Power supply wattage and amps on the 12V line, existence of a pci-express slot, cables for the 6-pin to connect to the power supply, and other stuff too.

Hmmm... my guess is your X2 4400+ can handle a great many current games, but it's pretty borderline on others. For example, Tom's Hardware benched a 2.4ghz Intel dual core at 38.5FPS in Resident Evil 5, and the 4400+ will actually be a bit slower than that. And while Grand Theft Auto IV will run on a dual core CPU, I've heard it runs much better on a quad.

A inexpensive graphics upgrade might be worthwhile if you have a really weak graphics chip just so you can handle some current games on your rig, but your CPU will hold anything high end back.

Also, as mentioned, we really need to know what kind of power supply you have... a lot of the higher end graphics boards will pull more power than a low level power supply can handle.

for my 3800+ X2, a 7950gt is about the max I'm willing to do. With a 4400 I wouldn't think much higher before bottlenecks make their presense felt. I'd say 8800gt max for optimum performance.

Personally, I'm thinking either an XFX Geforce 9800GT or Radeon HD4770, depending on whether the OP prefers ATI or Nvidia. They're $97 and $110 on Newegg respectively. Performance between the two chips seems pretty similar - sometimes one leads, sometimes the other.

The big question that needs to get resolved, however, is whether the OP's power supply can handle these sorts of boards. I suspect anything with a six pin PCI-E power connector can handle a 4770 since the power draw on those cards is quite low. The 9800GT's not exactly power hungry either but draws about 20 watts more under load according to an Anandtech review I read.

Edit: also, I'm kind of assuming you're running at a resolution or 1680X1050 or lower... please specify if this is not the case.

Of'course :uhoh:

1) read this:

http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...chapter07.html

2) the technology used in the paper is future. Current games do not use these techniques. However, film makers use it (e.g. Gollum in Lord of the Rings... everything Pixar does...) but they use so called render farms that calculate the single images that are combined to film sequences and finally made into a movie on hundreds of PCs using the CPU (not GPU).

3) Therefore the following conclusion: Since games today use techniques that are less important in the future, the game-FPS is not a good argument for future provedness.

(at least the post itself is shorter :D)

x2 4400 is still ok but getting a bit on. Wouldn't buy anything more than a 4770/4830. There comes a point where a videocard is too fast and the CPU can't keep up. So no matter how good your videocard is it gets wasted because the cpu can't handle the data. I doubt you'll be able to overclock as it sounds like a pre assembled pc from somewhere like dell. And they cripple the BIOS so you won't be able to. Your best bet maybe splitting your budget and updating both your CPU and gfx card. If you can overclock look into it - I've had that processor before and have gotten it to 3ghz without too much fuss and on standard cooling. But do your research-understand the risks and understand what you need to do and how to test. But even then I wouldn't go any higher than a 4870. This isn't the place to go into too much detail but dedicated forums like tomshardware will be able to get you off to a good start. What I'd personally like to know is the rest of your system specs and what gfx is in there right now

GTAIV and Crysis suck as a benchmarks. GTAIV can barely crack 60fps avg on most overclocked quadcores with a high end single card config @1920x1200 (enthusiast level pc's), and Crysis is horrid compared to the newer Crysis Warhead which uses the same engine but is significantly better performing on the same hardware. Bad code is bad code. They simply can't be run without major graphical compromises.

Also Dell/off the shelf PC pricing for videocards is BS so their $150 videocard is pretty much a $50 everywhere else. Also here, use this link
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...card,2362.html

I want a new computer for a cheap price. Under $800 cheap, I'm talking about (including OS).

How is the Radeon 3870? It released in 2007, but I looked up specs and it is a little better than a Geforce 8800 GTS. Would it need a better PSU than standard? What kind of PSU would I need, if so? Does it run hot? This card costs less than $100 and has pretty solid performance.

Should I go with a Radeon 4850 instead? Does that need a special PSU? Does that run hot?

I'm gonna get 2 GB of RAM with it. I'll upgrade to 4 GB of RAM or 6 GB of RAM in the future.

Will the newest games run good on 2 GB of RAM, or should I go with 4 GB of RAM?

Should I just spend the extra money and go for a Radeon 4850, or just upgrade to a card that is much better down the road? How much better is a Radeon 4850 compared to a Radeon 3870, anyway?

Newegg actually sells a prebuilt desktop with a Core 2 Quad, 4GB of RAM, HD 4850, and Windows 7 for $700 US, so if you're building your own for $800 there should be no need to constrain yourself to 2GB of RAM or anything less than a 4850 unless you also want a new monitor included in the price.

(I will note that upgrading from a 17 inch CRT to my 22 inch LCD is one of my single favourite computer purchases...)

Radeon 3870 is 2 generations old and will probably not handle all the newer games at full quality. I suggest going for a Radeon 4850, but it shouldn't require a special PSU unless the PSU doesn't provide enough wattage. With higher end cards, you need to hook a special cord to the graphics card to provide extra power to the card.

The 4850 actually does need a direct connection to the power supply, but so does pretty much any other card I'd consider recommending to a gamer. The high end stuff often requires two connections to the PSU rather than one. For a 4850 he'll need to make sure to get a decent power supply, but that's good practice when building a PC anyway.

The reason I'd say go with the 4850 or maybe even the new 5750 is because the 4850 is like $115 now anyway. It's not just a matter of not skimping on GPU for a gaming rig... it's that there's not much point to doing so anyway.

n'thing 4850.

It's just a damn good GPU for a damn good price.

Because game graphics are now determined by the current generation of game consoles as opposed to PCs, PC owners get the benefit of not having to constantly be on the bleeding edge anymore.

It's a really refreshing feeling. Pricey gaming rigs actually last a lot longer now. I remember the bad old days when PCs drove the high end of gaming and you had to upgrade like mad. Nowadays, you only have to make really big expensive upgrades every time a new console generation comes out.

Dual Core processors pretty much retain their performance considering that most programs have yet take full advantage of dual core or even quad core CPUs yet... and most games won't run well with a quad core compared to a dual score since most games are only optimized for dual core unless you are playing games like Crysis. Quad Core processors are really designed for multitasking and encoding files... If you can get a quad core for cheaper, well go for it... but the only worthwhile quad core processors are the Intel i5 and i7, but they cost slightly more than the regular Core2 Quad, but is alot faster and will last a bit longer.

True... technically, even the Radeon 3850 is like twice as fast as the graphics chip in the PS3 (very similar to the 7950GT) and the 4850 is probably twice again as fast as that. More than enough to make up for the fact that 1680X1050 (the res of a 22 inch PC monitor) is nearly twice the pixel count of the 720P console standard...

I'm actually getting kind of worried about what's going to drive new hardware sales in the future seeing as someone needs to pay R&D bills for ATI, nVidia, etc... I guess there still are a few PC exclusives or consoles with extra graphical features though.

Actually, from what I've heard Crysis is pretty much GPU limited as opposed to CPU limited, and you don't get much benefit from more than two cores. That said, I tend to recommend quads for future proofing just because the price premium isn't too bad nowadays.

I think I will get dual core processor. I can always upgrade to a quad core processor down the road. From the sounds of it, Quad core gaming isn't popular right now.

If I was to go quad core, though (still not totally decided on this as you can tell), are there any good AMD quad core processors? What is a good AMD quad core processor that is at a good price?

I'm thinking about getting a PC from www.ibuypower.com. Unless some people here know that it has a bad reputation or something, I really think I'll go with them. I can find the kind of system I want with the parts I want, Window 7, and cheap productivity software (including Word) for $850, and I'm about to look at AMD systems, which should be cheaper than the Intel system I configured.

So, what are some good quad core processors from AMD, and what are some good dual core processors from AMD?

And on the matter of HD widescreen panels...what brand is recommended by those with such monitors and like them?

I've only heard good things about ibuypower from pals

^^^

Well, that is good to hear. I like what I see from the site so far.


PSU...should I get a standard PSU...or a better one? The card I'm looking to get is the Radeon 4850.

I know this is probably a bit of work, but it would be helpful if you could give us a part by part listing of what you're thinking of.

The HD4850 isn't a power guzzler but you'll probably want something better than the base model. The one issue here is that iBuypower seems to charge a fairly sizeable premium for name brand power supplies...

I'm hoping this change in the hardware market changes the way games are made. I don't know about you, but I'm constantly tired of games that are all about pretty shiny pictures and have no depth of storytelling, memorable characters or gameplay that isn't boring as all hell.

I'm hoping that this insane graphics arms-race dies out. I'm hoping the netbook revolution will make enough people realize that they don't need super-powerful computers to do everyday tasks. I'm hoping that this forces game developers to focus more on story, gameplay and writing than the newest 3D rendering fuckery.

Planned obsolescence is no fun. Wouldn't it be nice to have a PC last a few years before it's obsolete? =P

I dislike spending money but I'm also a PC enthusiast who enjoys getting benefit from my gear. So while I'm glad you can actually get three years of solid performance out of a $800-$1000 gaming PC now - as opposed to how it used to be that you'd get 18-24 months of good performance before suffering through 12-18 months where you really felt the computer's age - I'm not especially inclined to see it slow much more than that. And I also happen to like games with very large environments, which seems to be one of those things that consistantly raises the bar.

tl;dr: I prefer a steady (not breakneck pace) advance in graphics to console style generational leaps.

(I'll also admit that I tend to prefer "designed for PC" games to "designed for console" ones, which perhaps makes me leery of too much cross platforming even if it is a necessary evil these days.)

Edit: I would also argue that the graphics arms race has slowed signficantly the last few years... however, the boom in LCD monitor sales pushed the common resolutions from like 800X600/1024X768/1280X1024 to 1280X1024/1680X1050/1920X1200. That ate up quite a bit of graphics power, and I get the impression that even some of the system crushers of recent years wouldn't have pushed the envelope that far if not for the fact they were launched during this changeover.

And one other point I'll grant you: I don't like the fact single player FPSes have gotten so much shorter over the years, which I often attribute to rising production costs. Five years ago even some of the technically impressive FPSes like Far Cry gave meaty campaigns, nowadays not so much.

I'm not going to agree with this purely because I'm a cheap bitch. I'd like my stuff to last as long as possible; it's not cool to have to spend $1k or more every year or two on a new computer.

Mostly I avoided this by being more an RPG gamer, which means I avoid the bleeding-edge titles (they tend to be FPS games). My last gaming computer was over 3 years old when it died, and it did most everything I wanted it to do, at least right up until the end when the video card fried.

Well there's not much we can do about it. There's more money in consoles, the companies follow the money.

I agree with this and it is somewhat troublesome, though 16:10 widescreen is win now and I'd never go back to a 4:3 aspect ratio. I love having such an enormous workspace. Plus small/no black bars is also win.

Half-Life 2 was the last great FPS. =/

I never said I wanted to be replacing my gear every one or two years. Games should run on a three year old PC - maybe with a $100-$200 GPU if you want to push the envelope a bit. But I don't want technical progress to stop completely.

As to RPGs... I guess Oblivion's ability to crush systems was a bit unusual. Although I do hear that it's become quite difficult to make big RPGs these days due to people having high standards for production values - compare the number of voiced lines in old Bioware games to the current ones.

True, but I'm glad that some developers still do exclusives - mainly central and eastern European devs since those are still PC oriented markets. Stalker and The Witcher are both examples of this.

(Interestingly, I believe the next Stalker is supposed to have separate code paths for Direct X 8 through 11... will be interesting to see how that scales.)

I love my 22 inch LCD.

I would actual classify the original Far Cry as one of the great FPSes as well, but I guess that predates Half Life 2 by a few months. I will admit I'm having trouble thinking of a more recent game that really had the same "generational leap forward" feel that those two did.
I take it we're talking great in the sense that it felt like a generational leap over prior games? I guess there's some merit to that position. I will say, however

I could do that. I just don't know what processor to get yet. I guess I'll go with quad core. I've read some where on this board that Intel i5s and i7s are good. What are good AMD quad core processors? Anyone know?


When I figure out what processor I want, I'll post what parts I want in my PC.

The i7 might be a little expensive - think $280, $290 range. The i5-750 sells for $200 and is probably worse a look. On the AMD side, you have the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition for $175-ish. Also bank on i5 mainboards being at least $25 more than Phenom II boards.

If you leave your computer on a lot, the i5 might earn back it's cost in the long run since it draws about 35 watts less at idle than a Phenom II 955/790GX combo according to Anandtech. Although it's possible 790GX mainboards draw more power than 770 based ones too.

On the low end, there's the Athlon X4 620 for $100. Tends to get some flak around here since only a few games take advantage of quads and it's a bit light on the MHZs and L2 cache compared to similar priced dual cores. I personally think it's the more future resistant (never say "future proof" when it comes to PCs...) bet though.