7900 GT good enough for Unreal Tournament 3?

[WhipperSnapper]

A friend is offering to sell me his 7900 GT for a reasonable price. It seems like it would be a worthwhile upgrade over my current x800xt. Would a 7900 GT be good enough for Unreal Tournament 3? I only need to play at 1024 x 768 and medium settings.

 

[Arkaign]

Should be fine, might not have a lot of AA or max detail, but AFAIK, the engine scales pretty well.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I sure hope so. If the 7900 GT, which is a relatively powerful card that's only really surpassed by the 8800 GTS/GTX and 2900XT, then a whole lotta people are going to be forced to buy new video cards. (Could Epic be receiving kickbacks from the GPU companies and cardmakers? Maybe they should get a little something from them.)

Am I wrong, or do I remember reading at some point that the engine was optimized for the 7800 GT (which isn't as powerful as the 7900 GT)?

 

[JPB]

which is a relatively powerful card that's only really surpassed by the 8800 GTS/GTX and 2900XT

There are quite a few cards that are more powerful than the 7900GT ( 7900GT is a nice card though ) which are not 8800 or 2900 series. Imo, that list is...(of course not in the order specified)

X1950XTX
X1950XT
X1950Pro
X1900XT
X1900XTX
7900GTX
7950GT
X1950GT ( some games )
X1900GT ( some games )
7800GTX 512 ( some games )

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Yeah, that's true, but those cards are all more or less in about the same class as the 7900 GT.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Is it true that some 7900 GT's have had problems with bad voltage regulators? Any brands of card in particular that should be looked out for?

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Is it true that some 7900 GT's have had problems with bad voltage regulators? Any brands of card in particular that should be looked out for?

There were problems with chips and memory that could not hit rated speeds. The voltage regulation problems were mostly from people who found they could overvolt the GPU (as it was essentially an undervolted GTX part originally spec'd for higher voltage at much higher clock speeds). However, many people forgot to provide additional cooling for the GT's voltage regulators when overvolting, and this severely shortened the life of their cards.

EDIT: EVGA and BFG were the most well-known for manufacturing defects. I myself had one replaced. I highly recommend doing some stress-testing with 3DMark or some other program before you buy the card. As we found out some months ago, many warranties provided by GPU manufacturers are do not transfer to a second (or in some cases, a third) owner of the card.

 

[Piuc2020]

I think the minimum requirements will still be a GeForce 6 card, Epic even said they had it running on a 9800 Pro so yeah, I think a 7900GT will be more than good enough for UT3.

 

[Munky]

Even a 7600gt would be able to run UT3. I'm sure the 6800 cards would run it too. The only question is at what settings and how many fps.

 

[Modelworks]

Its not a 7900GT but I use a 7900GTX 512MB card with UT3 games just fine.
Currently its working well with bioshock, medal of honor:airborne, frontline.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The card was actually an eBay auction item and it had had a very low bid price up until about 20 minutes before the end of the auction (perhaps because the seller has little eBay history), so I thought I might do a local pickup on it, but of course eBidiots came in and bid the price up far beyond its value.

It also turns out that upon further investigation (before I decided not to bid on it) that the card is really a 7900 GS. It's actually an older 7900 GT clocked at 7900 GS speeds. Perhaps it could be overclocked to newer 7900 GT speeds and beyond, but who wants to chance that it couldn't. The card ended up selling for $86 + $12 shipping. I would have been willing to pay $40 for it and was hoping that the eBidiots would be scared away by the lack of the seller's track record, but oh well.

I've seen a total of zero video card auctions that ended at prices that I thought were good values, so I guess I'll be waiting until a great retail value comes along before I upgrade.

 

[alcoholbob]

The only time I really find electronics on ebay a good deal is for discontinued items (the prices are usually actual value given their age rather than overinflated low stock value). Even then, it's only about 20% better than the crappy retail prices.

I recently picked up an OCZ platinum 2GB of DDR for my aging 939 system. DDR(1) is obscenely expensive because of low stock, a 2GB pair with decent timings is over $200 online. That would be like getting high quality 4 gigs of DDR2. Pretty sad stuff. But I managed to get mine for $110 shipped. Even on ebay the average going for 2 gigs of good DDR1 ram is ~$150.

 

[CP5670]

I have gotten many good deals over there even on brand new items (for example, the X1900XTX I'm using was $420 shipped, at a time when they were about $550 on retail websites), but you do need to have some patience and go through several lost auctions before you win something at a good price.

 

[hans007]

UT3 is a pretty old game, you can probably even play that with integrated video honestly.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: hans007
UT3 is a pretty old game, you can probably even play that with integrated video honestly.

....
UT3 isn't out yet.

 

[neothe0ne]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
The card ended up selling for $86 + $12 shipping. I would have been willing to pay $40 for it and was hoping that the eBidiots would be scared away by the lack of the seller's track record, but oh well.

I've seen a total of zero video card auctions that ended at prices that I thought were good values, so I guess I'll be waiting until a great retail value comes along before I upgrade.

How exactly is $98 for a 7900GT running at 7900GS clocks a bad deal? A brand new BFG 7900GS goes for $100 at Fry's, and if your friend advertised the card as a 7900GT, I'd say it was more than a fair deal and not a typical case of eBidiots. (Don't forget cards like the 8600GT and 7600GT also go for around $100 right now, and both are much less powerful than a 7900GS)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

It's a bad deal because at that price, you might as well spend another $32-37 and get a brand new x1950 Pro from Newegg with a manufacturer's warranty.

Also, remember, we're talking about a purchase made off of eBay (not Newegg) from a seller who's never sold anything on eBay before and who only has two feedbacks. Will the item even ship? Will it arrive as described? Who knows. That uncertainty is one of the reasons why people need to substantially discount used eBay items.

 

[firewolfsm]

Look at Bioshock benchmarks, that'll give you a nice indication of UT3 performance.

My 7900GT (closer to a GTX after OCing) can run Bioshock with max settings at 1680x1050, 16xAF, 2xAA. It stutters occasionally, but not much. It could be all the help from my quad, but I'm still not sure why my card runs this game so well.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That sounds encouraging. I have read that Epic tried to optimize the engine or at least UT3 for 7800 GT's, but that was months ago and who knows what's changed since then. Also, I wonder if "optimized" means "it will get 30 fps minimum and low-medium settings and a low resolution".

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: neothe0ne

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
The card ended up selling for $86 + $12 shipping. I would have been willing to pay $40 for it and was hoping that the eBidiots would be scared away by the lack of the seller's track record, but oh well.

I've seen a total of zero video card auctions that ended at prices that I thought were good values, so I guess I'll be waiting until a great retail value comes along before I upgrade.

How exactly is $98 for a 7900GT running at 7900GS clocks a bad deal? A brand new BFG 7900GS goes for $100 at Fry's, and if your friend advertised the card as a 7900GT, I'd say it was more than a fair deal and not a typical case of eBidiots. (Don't forget cards like the 8600GT and 7600GT also go for around $100 right now, and both are much less powerful than a 7900GS)

Currently you can get the X1900GT for $100 new from newegg so paying that much for a 7900 is not good, especially since you can often get the GT up to XT speeds.

Currently I am able to play bioshock, WiC, and MoH airborne at 1680x1050 with my settings on low/med/high depending on the setting. The games look great and are playable though I would not try any online as I'm sure it would be too slow. I finally updated to the latest drivers and saw a big increase in performance from that.

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
Look at Bioshock benchmarks, that'll give you a nice indication of UT3 performance.

My 7900GT (closer to a GTX after OCing) can run Bioshock with max settings at 1680x1050, 16xAF, 2xAA. It stutters occasionally, but not much. It could be all the help from my quad, but I'm still not sure why my card runs this game so well.

You must be happy with a slide show. My o/c 7900GTO can't manage that. I can just about get it around 30fps at midish settings with no AA (which as it happens is typical for most performance reviews).

 

[firewolfsm]

As I said, I think the quad is helping a lot, I'll run fraps when I get home and tell you the frames.

Also, I don't notice low frame rates as much as most people so that's probably why I'm fine with high settings.