Vid card to play BF2 1280X1024

[MooMasster716]

Well I'm going to a lan party in two weeks and was wanting to upgrade my Vid card to be able to play BF2 at 1280X1024 at med or high, meaning can you recommend one for each setting. I dont really care much for aa or af so please make suggestions and rig is in sig.

Thanks

[kbtat2]

I had a BFG 6800 GT OC that ran BF2 on mostly high settings with 2x AA and got very good frame rate.
I think for you to run high settings smoothly you're going to need to get another Gb of ram though.

[jivetrky]

I think the best way to approach this would be to tell us how much you can spend on a card and we go from there.

[Dan0512]

My x800gt runs the demo @ high, 1024x768 (or a step higher I think) and 2xAA, with 60+fps 90% of the time.

dan

[nvidiaOCmaster]

The "Hot" card currently is the 7600GT. It will last for about 2 weeks before it gets outdated jk jk.. maybe about 1 year. It will eat BF2 up and s**t out FEAR

[chevro1et]

agp card? My 6800gs did BF2 very well (combo of med/ high settings @ 1280x1024)...

[jivetrky]

Well I'm going to a lan party in two weeks and was wanting to upgrade my Vid card to be able to play BF2 at 1280X1024 at med or high, meaning can you recommend one for each setting. I dont really care much for aa or af so please make suggestions and rig is in sig.

Thanks


How much can you spend?

[MooMasster716]

I top out at about $500, but like I said I just want BF2 to run at 12X10 at like 50 fps or whateever looks smooth. Also, I thought the 2gb of ram thing only made the loading screen not studder? I was thinking about 2gb in the future but maybe if I get this Circut City computer trouble shooting job ill get the ram sooner a little sooner that I thought. So fire away on suggestions please and always...

Thanks

[jivetrky]

Well if you can spend $500, then you can get any card you want. You can get a used 7900GTX for less than 400. You can get a new 7900GT for $260-290. I'd recommend going for a new or used 7900GT and get yourself 2x1GB of G.Skill HZ's for ~$170 or so. ...or if you aren't overclocking your CPU/RAM then maybe go for a set of RAM that has lower timings like

$259.99 -$30 MIR -- XFX PV-T71G-UDF7 GeForce 7900 GT (470MHz) 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150144)
Then spend the difference that this and a more expensive card would cost and get yourself a:
ZALMAN VF900 – CU 2 Ball VGA Cooling Fan/Heatsink - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118001)
It'll let you overclock this card quite a bit. And if you're slightly skilled, you can voltmod it and get 7900GTX speeds (it's a VERY easy volt mod. No soldering required, only conductive pen)

if you aren't overclocking, these sticks have way low timings for 2x1GB:
G.SKILL Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231032)
Or, if you plan to overclock, or do overclock:
G.SKILL Extreme Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 500 (PC 4000) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231021)

OR...if those are too pricey for you, (You'd still be under $500) you could just do a 2x512 kit and add it to what you have (if your board has 4 slots)

[Kurz]

Yea... recommend a PCI express card to a guy who has an AGP motherboard. Really smart.
x800XL should do the job just fine and wont brake the bank either.

I recommend this card for one reason. For the Future.
You dont want the top of the line AGP, for one thing they are too expensive and what happens when you want to get an PCI Express motherboard?
That investment goes to waste.

Have at least a gig of RAM which you already have, though more wont hurt.

[kyleboy77]

You can get at used 6800ultra on ebay for like $200 max ... i did that recently. very very happy

[Niku-Sama]

Yea... recommend a PCI express card to a guy who has an AGP motherboard. Really smart.


well ok i dont know whats smarter, getting on some ones case about suggesting an agp card or doing so when theres no real proof so lets do this, lets ask moo master which he has on his mobo because it doesent say in his sig.

so moo master since it doesent say in your sig and in your posts do you have a PCI Express mobo or an AGP mobo?

[Kurz]

Wow I guess I was wrong... I the lowest verison of PCI-Express I've seen was a 6600. They also make 6200 way too interesting.

Though frankly anyone making a new build would be crazy to put a 6200 there. If it is indeed a PCI express board.

Which still backs up my earlier assumption.

[MooMasster716]

Crap, I updated my sig but forgot the mobo. Yeah it does have PCI Express, But I was wondering if any of you have used the AVIO Converter on say a 1800gto? I mean i do a lot of "home video encoding..." and the conversion times look drastically faster. Also does a 1800gto come close to that xfx 7900gt? The price is soo close.

[jivetrky]

Wow I guess I was wrong... I the lowest verison of PCI-Express I've seen was a 6600. They also make 6200 way too interesting.

Though frankly anyone making a new build would be crazy to put a 6200 there. If it is indeed a PCI express board.

Which still backs up my earlier assumption.

yeah dude, no need to be a prick, the Asus A8V-e Deluxe is a PCIe board.


MooMasster716: No the x1800GTo is more comparable to a 7600GT (and actually slower than the 7600GT in most cases), the 7900GT will be quite a bit more powerful. But, on Newegg the x1800GTO's are cheaper than the 7900GT By $40-$50 or so. I'd personally go for the 7900GT, being a game-minded individual.
As for the AVIVO, I've never used it, so I can't say for sure. Looks like it'd be good for decoding HD video and also hardware MPEG2 encoding.


EDIT: BTW, that x1800GTO WILL play BF2 @ 1280x1024 on high settings with playable framerates.

[Jotolicious]

my 7600gt runs bf2 flawlessly.

but you want a 7900GT or a x1900xt :)

[Elif Tymes]

I, personally, think the best bang for the buck right now is the 7900GT, it's pretty darn serious.

[MadOnion]

my 6600gt plays bf2 decently at max res @ max settings

[jivetrky]

What's max res and max settings?

according to Anandtech, (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2466&p=3) a 6600GT will do about 20FPS in BF2 at 1600x1200 with 4x AA and high settings.

But at 1280x1024 max settings it'll do just under 30fps

[[SaS]hornet]

i just upgraded to an xfx 7900gt and i love it. its sooooo much faster than my old 6800gt, i can play bf2 at 1280x1024 max graphics and get very good framerates with no graphics lag at all. quality card, and i cant think of another that comes close for the price :) you really do need ATLEAST another 512 ram, or just get 2x1gb as someone else suggested.

[ziggo0]

I play BF2 with my x850PRO (12 Pipes, haven't tried 16 yet), 1280x1024, all high settings, 4xfsaa & 8xaf with very good frames. Although, for high texture settings you'll need 2gb of RAM.

[MooMasster716]

The 7900gt seems to be the sweet spot and ill be moving to dual core soon so the AVIO dosent matter.
Thanks alot for your help guys

[jivetrky]

yeah, my friend plays BF2 with 512MB (Or used to until i told him he needed to upgrade)...but he plays at 1024x768 and it's still slow and chuggy even with a 6600GT

I had the same card with 1GB or RAM and it made all the difference in that game....pretty much I'd say BF2 is a 1GB minimum type of game. Especially if you want full settings for graphics and stuff.

I'd definitely recommend 2x1GB

[kwongnewman]

My 7800GTX runs BF2 great with max everything at 1280*1024.
But as someone mentioned above, go with a 7900GT or similar.

[Zx2Slow]

7600GT, an overclocked one. I like the XFX XXX 7600GT, save the change from that $500 and put it twards a DX10 card. There is absolutely no good reason to drop a wad of cash on a card that will be obsolete in a few months.

[jivetrky]

7600GT, an overclocked one. I like the XFX XXX 7600GT, save the change from that $500 and put it twards a DX10 card. There is absolutely no good reason to drop a wad of cash on a card that will be obsolete in a few months.

$500 ? everyone's recommending a 7900GT not a 7950GX2 ....you can get them for just over $200

[Niku-Sama]

yea a 7600 should be good for now though new cards be commin out soon

[FastRedPonyCar]

my BFG 6800GT OC runs it really well and at 1280X1024 with everything maxed out. The single biggest help though, I noticed was adding a 3rd 512mb stick of ram. 1 gig just didn't cut it. Load times sped up and there wasn't nearly as much choppy play at the beginning of battles as the PC loaded all the textures.

for $500 you can get any vid card you want and an extra stick of ram. The 7900's are going pretty cheap, plus you could always slap a 2nd one in the system later on.

The X1900's are really good cards as well so don't forget about the ATI's. They seem to be performing really closely with the Nvidias so it's really a win win situation regardless of which card you get.

If you want to overclock the card, I also second the Zalman cooler. I've got one on my card and it works very well. Mine's clocked a little higher than the 6800 ultra speeds and under stress tests, the temp never goes above the temp that the card would idle at with the stock bfg cooler.

As for my upgrade plans, I'm waiting for some DX10 cards to come out and see how they stack up.