Can anyone recommend a new graphics card? About £150 / $250 to spend

[Chris_R]

Hi all,

New here and just after some advice. I'm looking to buy a graphics card to replace my old 6800 PCI-E. I've got about a max of £150 to spend (Whilst that's probably equivalent to nearly $300 to anyone in the US, we pay more for stuff in the UK so I guess I'd be looking more at the $220-$250 price range) and I am after some advice.

I've been looking at the Radeon X1950 Pro as a possibility for about £135, would this be a decent purchase or is there anything better out there for that kind of money?

Also, are there any mid-price cards out there that can be unlocked? (like the old AGP 6800 could be to open up the extra pipelines)

The card I eventually buy will be primarily used for games, for example I'm currently playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and Company of Heroes. I'd plan to keep the card for about 12-18 months.

My PC is a self-built job running an Athlon 64 3200+ and 1GB of RAM

I'd greatly appreciate any help or advice as I'm a bit behind the times at the moment when it comes to what's what with graphics cards.

Thanks,

Chris.

[Shinobi13]

Do research on different sites to see what will work for you, as well as shopping around. 7900 series cards will do ya fine for a year I would say. May not get 100% of the eye candy on the newest games at huge resolutions, but it will be good till it is time to upgrade to something better overall as in your whole rig.

What kind of MB, PSU and RAM are you running, this will have a factor in what to get as well.

[Chris_R]

Thanks Shinobi,

My motherboard is a Microstar ATI RS48X. Memory is 2 lots of 512mb 3200 DDR.

With the 7900 series, looking round I think I can only stretch to a GS model. Will this be a better card than the Radeon x1950 Pro?

[Shinobi13]

To tell you the truth, I do not like ATI at all. I have been Nvidia all the way.

The Radeon cards are good (and even better in some ways), no doubt and the 1950pro is good, it is up to you and your preferance on what you want. Are you planning on OC`ing at all?

Go to tomshardware and compare the vid cards that you are thinking about buying, they have a decent VGA comparision chart that will give you and idea of what to expect from it and various settings.

I bet that 6800 series card plays games decently still? I know my old NF2 system with XP 3200+ and a 6800GS AGP unlocked and OC`d could still play BF2and look good.

I just decided to upgrade the whole damn system this time to what I have in my sig.

[Shinobi13]

Welcome to the forums by the way!

[Chris_R]

Welcome to the forums by the way!

Thanks.

You're right, the 6800 still plays games pretty well - NWN2 and Company of Heroes have some slowdown but the framerates are still quite decent. I'm only really upgrading because the Mrs is stuck for what to get me for Christmas otherwise I'd probably stick it out for another 6 months!

Personally I've got no bias myself between Nvidia and ATI - I've had cards from both before and never had any problems. Is there a reason you don't like ATI?

I've never really thought about overclocking until recently but it's a fair consideration for the future - If I can squeeze more out of the card then that's great, it's that idea that brought me to this forum in the first place.

[Shinobi13]

I guess the reason is because they are some hot cards. Heatwise that is, plus I have been using Nvidia cards since my first build back in 97`. I have a laptop now that has an ATI mobility X1400, and I do not like the drivers. Guess I am just used to Nvidia.

If you do get the 8800, your CPU will likely be the bottle neck.

With that mobo, wait to start to OC, make sure you have a decent PSU, and cooling and a mobo that OC friendly. The PSU is big part, cause you can fry your whole rig possibly if you use a cheap PSU. I had one go out on me when I was OC`ing the first time, luckliy it didn`t take anything with it.