Need advice on best GPU2 card for $75 or under

[Audioaficionado]

Ok my daughter is peeved because her brand new Sims3 game won't play on her C2D machine with an ATI 1950 and Windoze 7. The damn OS overwrites the installed ATI 9.2 with some Microsoft derived driver every time I reboot after installing the official ATI Vista/Win7 driver. ATI won't write an official Win7 driver for legacy cards like the 1950, so I had to try using a Vista x64 driver. The game glitches badly under the lackluster M$ driver. BTW my Win7 installation has done similar crap to me when I tried to manually install my advanced Asus BlackHawk sound card driver. It just refuses to let me do what I want to do. Even Vista wasn't that stubborn :mad:

So.... She is peeved at ATI but loves Win7 and wants me to get her an nVidia card.

I might as well get her something that will fold :beer: :clap: :beer:

So what card can I get her for around $50 ($75 absolutely tops)?

[dark bishop]

pick one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201305520548%204026&name=%2450%20-%20%2475), the 94/95's do about the same ppd last i checked.

[ChasR]

If you can find one, the 9600GSO 384 MB should be under your budget. Newegg had them for $40 after rebate 2 days ago. THe 9600 GSO 384 MB is the same card as an 8800GS. It has 96 stream processors and will make almost 3000 ppd on the worst WUs. Avoid the 512MB and 1GB models as they only have 48 stream processors. The 9400 and 9500 series have only 32 stream processors and will really suck at folding.

List is 54.99 for the ASUS 9600GSO at the egg. ETA 6/15

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121319

Google: ASUS EN9600GSO/HTDP/384M ....

And you'll find at least three vendors with them for under $70.

[Audioaficionado]

Thanx ChasR

I'm working on a deal for two of the PNY 768MB versions for $100+shipping.

I'm tired of treading the waters @700+/40+ and would like to move up a bit more without busting my piggy bank.

[GeneralMac]

Ok my daughter is peeved because her brand new Sims3 game won't play on her C2D machine with an ATI 1950 and Windoze 7. The damn OS overwrites the installed ATI 9.2 with some Microsoft derived driver every time I reboot after installing the official ATI Vista/Win7 driver. ATI won't write an official Win7 driver for legacy cards like the 1950, so I had to try using a Vista x64 driver. The game glitches badly under the lackluster M$ driver. BTW my Win7 installation has done similar crap to me when I tried to manually install my advanced Asus BlackHawk sound card driver. It just refuses to let me do what I want to do. Even Vista wasn't that stubborn :mad:

So.... She is peeved at ATI but loves Win7 and wants me to get her an nVidia card.

I might as well get her something that will fold :beer: :clap: :beer:

So what card can I get her for around $50 ($75 absolutely tops)?

Becareful of win 7 and games, same thing happened to me w/nvida drivers. even tried it in safe mode and it still installed the drivers it wanted. Some games just plain wont run/ or run like crap, or wont install. win 7 is a very nice OS if you dont play games
just my $.02 worth.

ps I went out and bought vista 64 bit ultimate after my experience with win 7 32 and 64

[dfonda]

Audio I would check to see if you could turn off the signed driver in Win 7.

http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/06/disable-driver-signing-in-windows-7-using-group-policy-editor/

[Audioaficionado]

I did the F8 disable signed driver thing and it still wouldn't let me do what I wanted. I'm gonna install the PhysX CUDA drivers from nVidia. My main workstation with Win7 allowed that as there was no equivalent driver from M$ to muck up the installation.

I've got 3 legal licenses of Vista and only using one of them. I've got 2 to spare ;)

The time is fast approaching that I'll just quit windoze altogether and fully embrace nix (at least on my rig).

BTW I use ReadyDriver Plus V1.1 to do the F8 thing automagically for me when I boot.
http://www.citadelindustries.net/readydriverplus/index.php

[Jolly-Swagman]

Most games I have tried on Win7 I used the 181.17 64bit driver and worked ok,

Just make sure that if you get windows update that it doesnt reinstall the drivers from there, that happened once so have to put back to the ones I,m using.

[Audioaficionado]

No auto updates for me :-/

I always hide the crap I don't want to download or install.

[ihrsetrdr]

I just added a 4th 8800gt to a P6N running Win 7; of course the existing drivers got dumped by Win 7 so I had to reinstall the drivers I was using. :screwy:

[dfonda]

Interestingly enough I thought that automatic driver install was the best thing about 7
I was about to install the 185's after installing the OS and found to my suprise they had already been installed!

[zizux]

Thanx ChasR

I'm working on a deal for two of the PNY 768MB versions for $100+shipping.

I'm tired of treading the waters @700+/40+ and would like to move up a bit more without busting my piggy bank.

Is that somewhere online? Or used?

If online post details I'll snag a couple.

[Jolly-Swagman]

Is that somewhere online? Or used?

If online post details I'll snag a couple.

They have both gone to Audioaficionado and were here on our Classified section.