Buying a new graphics card - please help!

[grumpygrim]

Hey all thanks for clicking.

Yesterday I bought the game Oblivion, but it plays much too slowly on my pc. So I posted on a forum asking for advice (http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/index.php?fn=view_thread&t=668245) and I've just been told that an ATI Radeon x1600 would do the job, or an 'n6800'.

So I searched the net to get an idea of price, etc. and now I'm very confused. Which is the best, the x1600 GT or Pro? And what's the difference?

Also, if anyone has tried either of these could you please tell me if you would recommend them? Thanks in advance

 

[infrared]

pci-express or AGP?

the x1600 gt/pro isn't particularly good. It gets beaten by miles by the x850xt(pe), the only good point it has is that it supports hdr/sm3.0. But if your more concerned about frames per second, at relatively high resolutions, and not so much about the shader 3.0 lighting, i'd go for an x8x0 series card.

A great deal you could consider is the Sapphire x800 gto2. These are basically an x850xt renamed, which have 4 pipes dissabled. It is very easy to enable the last pipelines, and overclock the card to x850xtpe speeds (provided you get the version with the r480 core)

If you wanted something with a little more grunt, and pixel shader 3.0 support, go with the sapphire x1800gto.

This website will help you with comparisons

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

 

[SeeK]

I agree with infrared. Although, if you do want SM3.0 effects at not a too high price, the 7800GS is a good buy. That's for AGP, though.

 

[grumpygrim]

Thanks a lot both! The site is proving very useful too so thank you infrared.

I'm ringing the guy who built my pc now to find out about the board

Price is a bit of a problem, but x800GTO is looking quite good in that aspect.

 

[POGE]

Make sure you get the GTO2 not GTO... GTO's usually dont unlock. And even some of the newer GTO2's dont. :-\

 

[grumpygrim]

Sorry if I'm being completely thick, but what do you mean by unlock?

 

[infrared]

enabling the last 4 pipelines. The x800gto/gto2's have only 12 of their 16 pipes enabled. Enabling the extra four gives quite a big performace boost

And even some of the newer GTO2's dont. :-\

correction... All Sapphire gto2's unlock, even the ones using the r430 core.

 

[KennyT772]

but for this to be relivant what video interface do ytou have agp or pci-e??? that has a very large impact.

 

[Ketxxx]

A 6600\7600GT are very nice midrange cards, especially once their OC'd some. or if you havemore cash to splash a 6800GT\X850, the X850 is a bit limited now though due to no HDR or SM3.0 support. At the almost top flight level though theres the X1900XT or 7900GT, right now the 7900GT is THE card to own, clocks to GTX speeds and then some on the core, and vidram OCs pretty well too, overall its a full fledged GTX minus 256MB RAM really, the same can be said for the X1900XT vs the XT-X as well.

 

[POGE]

correction... All Sapphire gto2's unlock, even the ones using the r430 core.

I was talking about gto2's in general, not Sapphire ones.

 

[spectre440]

if you're still stuck on AGP (like me), and want to squeeze another year or two of gaming out of it before building a completley new system, get a 7800GS. i have. i love it. its awesome.
gives me 5500-6000 points in 3dmark 05, and 3500-4000 points in 06 (depending on what else i have running in the background), which is a very respectable result considering the rest of my system is somewhat dated. (socket 754 CPU, relativley high latency RAM, IDE drives, etc'...)

edit: any way you go though, just be sure your PSU can handle the load. newer cards are much more power-guzzling than previous generation ones.

 

[infrared]

I was talking about gto2's in general, not Sapphire ones.

sapphire are the only company to make the gto2... every other company just uses gto.

 

[SeeK]

As soon as we know how much you're willing to pay and what interface you have on your board, we can help out a lot more.

 

[grumpygrim]

Okay, thanks for the help everyone!

It turns out I have an AGP

Anyway, someone has told me they can get me a new Sapphire x800 gto pretty cheap. Is there any huge differences between the gto and the gto2?

Thanks again

 

[Satchmo]

the gto2 has a lot of modding capability making it worth more then its $150~ price tag from what i hear. and 4 more pipelines after its unlocked i think. but i dont think x800gto2 comes in AGP

 

[trog100]

"It turns out I have an AGP"

that completely changes the ball park.. shame u never mentioned it earlier.. u need to be looking at the latest nvidia GS agp series.. 6800s or 7800s i think..

trog

 

[SeeK]

What trog said. 7800GS is the best AGP card on the market (the X850XT has proved to be faster in some tests, but it lacks SM3.0), so it's a great buy... perhaps a bit expensive. But it's got pretty much everything.