• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Recommend a PCI-E x16 Video Card

Kadratis

Kadratis

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
I only have a budget of about $150 (USD). What video card would give me the most bang for my buck? ;) I currently have an nVidia 7600 GS (512 MB VRAM) and the newer games that I've recently bought games (ie Assasin's Creed) are extremely lacking in a decent frame rate, even with some of the settings on low/medium.
 
I feel ya man, I've got pretty much the same card (7800 though, pretty much the end of the line for AGP cards since my mobo doesn't have PCIe.).

I would hold out for another 50-100 bucks or so though, since then you can get a real solid card and not have to worry about upgrading for at least another year or two.
 
Nvidia 8800GT or, if you can stretch to USD $200, Radeon 4850. Either will demolish your 7600GS and suffice for Assassin's Creed, or indeed any game on the market. I'd go for the 4850 as the more future-proof solution, though.

If $150 is pushing the budget as it is, consider Nvidia's 9600GT at around USD $100-125.

Radeon 4850 vs Nvidia 8800GT - Assassin's Creed
 
Last edited:
So the ATI HD 4850 is the way to go? I can scrap up some funds especially if it'll give me some insurance for a year or so from buying another card (heh, I was saying this a year ago about my 7600GS :lol:). Or, better explained, is there a card offering more "future game insurance" than the HD 4850 with a decent price (at most $200) whether it be from ATI or nVidia (no preference)? I looked into the ATI HD 4870, but I really can't afford to go into the upper $200's.
 
The Radeon 4850 offers arguably the best price/performance ratio of any video card presently on the market. Both the 4850 and 4870 are excellent products, offering Nvidia the sort of competition that we've sorely missed from AMD these last couple generations, but if you're on a limited budget the 4850 is the better choice. Its performance is such that it can run any game on the market at high details and resolution with a reasonable framerate, and should also suffice for all games released over the next couple years, including Rage if that's your thing.

Nvidia's equivalent products in the mid-range space are certainly respectable, or at least they are now following recent price cuts in reaction to AMD's new cards, and would also suffice for your needs, but they're based on an older architecture. It's not unusual in the PC graphics world for video cards to gain significant performance improvements through maturing driver releases, and AMD's 4850 simply has far more room to mature and improve in that respect than Nvidia's 8/9-series cards, whose basic architecture first debuted in 2006. Nvidia's new architecture is presently limited to the high-end market in the form of their GTX 260 and 280 cards.

The high-end market these days is cluttered with all kinds of Tri-SLI/Crossfire setups and Dual-GPU cards that nobody actually needs, but which make the setups most gamers are running look around five years behind the times. The reality is that the mid-range is still the best place for gamers on any sort of budget to look.

If I were looking to buy a video card tomorrow, I'd pick up a 512MB Radeon 4850, that's about the strongest recommendation I can give. Incidentally I'm not presently in the market for a video card as I expect my 9600GT will continue to serve quite well over the next two years or so.
 
Last edited:
If you're looking for a PCIe card in the $100-150 range, I would also recommend the GeForce 9600GT.
 
Well, I finally broke down and got the 4850 for a great deal at the local Electronics store for about $150 (with a $20 mail-in rebate even!), so I spent the other $50 I was expecting to have use on a new sound card (anything beats integrated audio any day, especially if it has S/PDIF :D). I'm planning on putting them in tonight, so I will report in when I've given it a whirl! Thanks for all of your help, guys! I appreciate it! Wish me luck on my first ATI card! :)
 
Both Nvidia and Ati cards are just fine.
Granted, personally for some reason I just lean more towards Nvidia ... but even I have been contemplating on choosing ATI cards lately due to the performance/price/quality ratio.
:-)
 
Deks said:
Both Nvidia and Ati cards are just fine.
Granted, personally for some reason I just lean more towards Nvidia ... but even I have been contemplating on choosing ATI cards lately due to the performance/price/quality ratio.
:-)
Click to expand...

I've gotten great mileage out of an old X700 and will probably stick with ATI for my next card. You should check out the Wikis on ATI cards though, it has become a tangled, confusing mess as to which cards are on which performance tier.
I'm also finding that power supply will be an issue on my next card - make sure you've got the juice as well as sufficient connections.
 
The main reason I'm personally looking into ATI cards more is because NVIDIA has issues with their own cards using low quality parts and overheating.
Primarily in notebooks.

I found a great deal for a notebook in London actually that costs £688.
But it has a GeForce 8600M GT 512 MB (performance wise though, it's great).
Taking into consideration Nvidia's problem with those graphic cards along with others, I was leaning more towards a same notebook solution with HD 3650 ... but of course, there is no other company in UK which allows for online notebook customizations and provides HD 3650 along with it in the same price range.

Dell has their 17" Studio laptops selling with them, but the price is higher and I would have to choose 3GB of RAM instead of 4 along with 250Gb HDD (5400 rpm) instead of an 200GB 7200 rpm HDD, so the price would be about £720.
If I wanted the 4gb RAM, it would cost in total £750 (which is much more than what I want to spend).

I don't have intentions of buying the laptop just yet, but I like to keep my options open.
It's fairly surprising that UK is extremely limited when it comes to purchasing customizable laptops.
 
Last edited:
^ So far as I'm aware those issues exist only with the 8-series mobile GPUs. Nvidia doesn't produce video cards for the retail market, they merely supply GPUs to manufacturers.
 
Rii said:
^ So far as I'm aware those issues exist only with the 8-series mobile GPUs. Nvidia doesn't produce video cards for the retail market, they merely supply GPUs to manufacturers.
Click to expand...

I'm fully aware of all those facts.
Problem is that a decent laptop with 4 gb of RAM, T8100, and a dedicated GPU costs ... and I'd prefer to chose HD 3650 because it's comparable if not better in comparison to 8600M GT, plus it doesn't suffer from the bad parts the Nvidia 8-series mobile GPU's do, and I wouldn't have to worry it's gonna suffer a meltdown within a year or two.
:D
But as I state again ... the offer is extremely limiting, and all major companies overprice their laptops in UK, not to mention that the country has a practically non-existent offer of customizable laptops.
 
Last edited:
^ Works for me, I only meant that Nvidia's issues with their 8-series mobile GPUs aren't reflective of a systemic problem. :)
 
CaptainStoner said:
I'm also finding that power supply will be an issue on my next card - make sure you've got the juice as well as sufficient connections.
Click to expand...
I agree. I just barely managed to get enough juice to this behemoth. Did the fan fix and I'm set. It runs just absolutely beautiful. And that on top of the optical sound my soundcard came with, I feel like my ears and eyes are having orgasms (crude, but so true)! :p
 
Last edited:
Kadratis said:
Well, I finally broke down and got the 4850 for a great deal at the local Electronics store for about $150 (with a $20 mail-in rebate even!), so I spent the other $50 I was expecting to have use on a new sound card (anything beats integrated audio any day, especially if it has S/PDIF :D). I'm planning on putting them in tonight, so I will report in when I've given it a whirl! Thanks for all of your help, guys! I appreciate it! Wish me luck on my first ATI card! :)
Click to expand...

Great choice. I paid $192 for mine including tax at a Best Buy the week after it came out and have no regrets even at that price. It is an awesome card and runs cool with the fan fix. Miles head of my old 8600GTS in performance. :) It'll probably be the best value for a high end graphics card for at least another year or so.
 
Now the only problem with the card I'm having gamewise is the FakeFactory 8 mod for Half-Life 2 and the Orange Box. I meet the requirements (obviously with a high-card, x64 Processor, and 3.5 GB of memory), but the game keeps kicking me out to Vista telling me I'm out of memory for the program to run after running it for about a few minutes. I'd contact the creator, but I'm sure he/she has their hands full as it is.
 
Kadratis said:
Now the only problem with the card I'm having gamewise is the FakeFactory 8 mod for Half-Life 2 and the Orange Box. I meet the requirements (obviously with a high-card, x64 Processor, and 3.5 GB of memory), but the game keeps kicking me out to Vista telling me I'm out of memory for the program to run after running it for about a few minutes. I'd contact the creator, but I'm sure he/she has their hands full as it is.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that mods aren't stable/reliable enough at all times to work flawlessly.
So you being kicked out to desktop isn't exactly surprising.
I had similar problems after installing the Bridge Commander Kobayashi Maru mod.
It simply wasn't built for Single Player properly, while in Quick battle it worked for the most part.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top