New g.card for new PC

[Astaroth]

I have decided it is time to retire my old Dual PIII desktop in favour of a new more up to date model....

Currently decided on the E6600 for the CPU (probably with a little overclocking), 2gig PC6400 ram etc.

The problem is I dont have a clue where to start with the graphics card other than I prefer ATI based cards to nVidia. I have £200 (plus a small contingency) to spend.... I was looking at getting the X1900XT 512mb by Sapphire which I have seen for £211 but then have gotten confused by the X1950pro (though havent seen any 512mb versions of this and talk of a new "much better" ATI card to be released shortly... lots of places mentioning it but none giving any form of timescales or pre-release reviews.

I was intending to put the PC together in Dec but I guess I could beg/ borrow/ steal a cheapo g.card until jan/ feb if thats when a new all singing all dancing thing is about to be released.....

[booyaka]

back to the old - wait for DX10 cards or buy now arguement.

My personal opinion is that the first release of DX10 cards are likely to be £400 plus and really won't have an initial advantage due to lack of potential software support (i.e not many games coded to take DX10 into account).

If i was you i would get the X1900XT at present. Very overclockable card will run everything you through at it and will last you a fair bit yet.

Others will probably say wait but what's the point. If you wait till Jan/Feb there will be something else on the horizon to WAIT for!

[james.miller]

yes, definately wait. even if you dont get a new card it'll push the pricese of the existing range down. If you have to get a card now, get a 256mb card - the differenc isnt enough to warrent the price. the 256mb x1800xt's are still selling for ~£140 which is an utter bargain. The x1950pro is slower than an 1800xt, not by a whole lot in games mind, but it is slower and well release at around the ~£165 mark. However, it is on a new, smaller 80nm process which means the card draws less power and runs cooler.

Id choose one of them, i wouldnt be paying any premium for a card that will be obsolete in a month or so:)

[drskhaled]

I would concur with booyaka. waiting for dx10 is pointless unless your made of money. the initial cards are likely to be expensive and possibly glitchy. there'll be a midrange option but your'e unlikely to be satisfied with that as a current gen x1900xt will outperform it (most likely).

Since you prefer ATI i would definitely go for an x1900xt as it is a cracking card for the price, if you can manage £250 you should be able to find an xtx which is even faster. The x1950 range is fairly new, the x1950pro is the cheaper at around £170 and seems pretty decent but havent seen any benchmarks yet, but apparently can be clocked high too.

[booyaka]

just get the X1900XT and clock it to XT-X speeds.

mine (X1900XT) runs up to 680/1490 easy if i need it.

Will run anything you chuck at it! BF2 @ 1280 x 1024 max settings and 6xAA & 8xAF never drops under 60 FPS.

Great card - will do you proud!!:grin:

[Tigerblade]

Considering the first games, and I mean a handful of DX10 games aren't being released till march/april time next year, plus the fact that I'd wait till the refresh of a new tech in cards as there are bound to be problems with the first batch that will be corrected in said refresh, I'd go for the x1900. The mystery card you've heard about is the x1950XTX I think and should be announced very very soon if all is to be beleived, but it probably won't be that big a jump over the x1950xt.

Go for the x1900 and don't look back, you can always look at the refresh of ATi's R600 DX10 beast that won't be around probably till this time next yr anyway :thumbsup:

[Astaroth]

Thanks for all the suggestions.... it is very much a case of not wanting to spend more on the g.card than anything else. At the moment I dont play games at all (and havent for many years) but this has mainly been due to having an out of date PC which was still very servicable for running MySQL and IIS etc which is, along with photoshop my main use for a home PC.

Want to play games again but dont want to spend £600 on a crossfire/SLI setup only to decide that I dont actually like playing games anymore (plus my TFT isnt that great anyway)

May consider waiting a little while to see the price point of the new cards and to get the impact on prices of existing cards... will have to see how much i can get a cheapo card that doesnt result in me getting frustrated with how slow it is within a few weeks.

Thanks again

[booyaka]

I always say - buy the best you can at the time you buy.
Don;t worry about whats coming up/next best thing etc - you'd never buy anything if that was the case!!!:grin:

[R1PLEY]

I know you prefer ATI but I have ordered a Geforce 7900GTO from Ebuyer for £170.00. Looks to be an excellent card for the price.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g65/steadman1/3dm06.gif

[motile rod]

I know you prefer ATI but I have ordered a Geforce 7900GTO from Ebuyer for £170.00. Looks to be an excellent card for the price.



I was on the verge of buying the gto until they jacked up the price by 10 quid.:mad:

Anyway to the OP, please wait for directx10 cards to come out, it's less than 3 weeks for christ's sake. If not for the directx10 cards themselves, wait for the price drop of directx9 cards, there could be a few bargains around.

[booyaka]

I don't see that there will be any price drops. Very slightly maybe (£5-£10).

Look at the X2 AMD cpu's - just becuase conroe launch everyone was expecting the 1MB cache chips to plummet in cost - not really budged at all.

ATI will not drop the price of the top end DX9 cards (£250 ish and below) just becuase there is a new £400/£500 DX10 card about.

They are completely different production lines and different hardware all together.

I think as per previous post - Top end DX9 cards will last you a good 12 months at least!

Crysis is about the only game that has confirmed DX10 support so far - it will also however run perfectly fine on a DX9 card (all the videos about of the game are run on crossfire DX9 systems)

[motile rod]

I don't see that there will be any price drops. Very slightly maybe (£5-£10).

Look at the X2 AMD cpu's - just becuase conroe launch everyone was expecting the 1MB cache chips to plummet in cost - not really budged at all.



But all the other chips were practically halved in price. The 1mb chip prices stayed the same only cus they weren't in produaction anymore.

Also remember the 8800gts should be around 300 pounds which will no doubt be the main factor pushing down the prices.

[Astaroth]

I intend to put the PC together at the start of Dec so if the new cards come out in 3 weeks it seems that there isnt any real hold off time anyway.

I know the idea of buying the best you can afford but at the end of the day there does have to be some element of fit for purpose too as there really isnt any benefit in me spending £6,000+ on a PC simply to browse the net and editing photos. I think £200 is enough to spend on a card to get a good enough game play if I decide to play games but will not be an absolute overkill for more basic applications if that ends up being the main use.