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Advice on video upgrade

H

hoo00

Junior Member
Question: When to upgrade? Which one to buy?

My current graphic card is geforce 2gts. I bought it at the time it was released at around $350. Anyway, things have changed a lot and I now want a new card to play final fantasy 11 on next Tuesday. My cpu is a so-so Athlon xp1700+ with half gig of ram. I thought I just pick then one at the top, but 600 bucks for a video card???

Anyway, my budget is about $300. Considering that the ff11 demo works at low res. but a bit choppy, I can still live with that until next year unless it doesn't make sense to wait. So, any recommendation? Thanks a lot.


Lost my forum account to inactivity.
 
If you absolutely need one now, 9800 Pro for that price. Or 9800 np for $50 cheaper if you can find.

If you can wait for a few months, the 9900 series should be released, then you can maybe get a 9800 XT for $300 or so.

ATM, ATI is the better buy of the 2. But the newer NVIDIAs may change that.

I reccomend waiting unless you absolutely need a card right now.
 
You can get a Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb on sale for $305.00 U.S. at Newegg right now. I've got the Sapphire 9800non pro 128mb and it's great. I upgraded from a Geforce 3 Ti500 to the 9800np and it's a big improvement, especially with FSAA and AF, so you'll see a big difference from your Geforce 2. I've got a 1.8ghz P4 system so I'm pretty close to you so I can tell you that even without the fastest processor you get alot out of these new cards. If you want to save a few clams try out a 9800 non-pro. They're not much slower than the pro and are alot cheaper. I got mine for $340 Can. and Newegg has them for around $240 U.S. though they're not in stock. I'm not trying to schill for Newegg, that's just where I lifted those prices so you can check out pricewatch.com too.

If you can make yourself wait for the next gen stuff next year it'll be alot faster. There probably wouldn't be much sense in paying alot putting one of those cards in your current rig though unless you got a faster cpu. I figured the 9800 np already would be bottlenecked by my system so why wait?
 
if yur not afraid of nvidia the 5600 ultra might drop in price a good amount over the next few weeks with all these releases
 
Thanks for the replies. I just checked on the radeon 9800 and they are quite confusing. You have the pro and np, some retail, some oem, sapphire, 256mb and 128mb, dvi, tv-out. What is the difference? Also, it seems 9700 pro is a about the same price. Is it better than 9800 np?

I read some that nvidia fx is very noisy. So, yes, I am kind of afraid of that.
 
Originally posted by: shady06
9800 pro will be bottle necked by the cpu, i would go for a 9600 pro.
Click to expand...

yeah

maybe a 2500+ barton and a 9600 pro. should set you back about 250 and will be quite a noticeable upgrade

or maybe a barton 2500, and a 9700non-pro/pro from for sale/trade here for around 200 bucks (300 total)
personaly im waiting to buy a card for when i buy a game...namely hl2 or doom3

i wonder what a 9800 will go for in 6 months, be nice to find out....ill DEFINITELY want to get rid of the gf3 by then, but for now itll do me i guess
 
Originally posted by: hoo00
Thanks for the replies. I just checked on the radeon 9800 and they are quite confusing. You have the pro and np, some retail, some oem, sapphire, 256mb and 128mb, dvi, tv-out. What is the difference? Also, it seems 9700 pro is a about the same price. Is it better than 9800 np?

I read some that nvidia fx is very noisy. So, yes, I am kind of afraid of that.
Click to expand...

pro - slightly faster than non pro, exactly the same architecture, costs more
XT - slightly faster than the Pro with a few cool new features like built in overclocking
oem - comes in smaller box, includes less stuff, warranty is less, costs less, than retail
Sapphire - in the past has made cards that were sold branded as Ati so people say they are pretty close to what ATI sells.
256MB - not really necessary, yet. More is always better though.
DVI - digital output for LCD
TV-OUT - hook a s-video cable from the TV-out on the card to your T.V. and watch stuff. I watch DVD's played on my computer to my T.V. this way.
9700Pro - the 9800 family has minor enhancements and bug fixes to the 9700 family but they perform very similarly. The 9800np is almost exactly as fast as the 9700 Pro but the 9800 Pro/XT are faster.


 
Originally posted by: xSauronx

maybe a 2500+ barton and a 9600 pro. should set you back about 250 and will be quite a noticeable upgrade

or maybe a barton 2500, and a 9700non-pro/pro from for sale/trade here for around 200 bucks (300 total)
personaly im waiting to buy a card for when i buy a game...namely hl2 or doom3
Click to expand...

I don't think my kt266a system can chew the barton. It needs better teeth, may be an nforce 2. With Athlon64 around the corner, I don't want to upgrade just yet. Anyway, I just like to play the high res FFIX bench, which is giving me a blank screen right now. It seems that 9600 pro should be good enough? Now where can I get a deal...

I am hungry and tired. May be I think about this tomorrow.

Well, I came back and bought a Sapphire 9600 pro ultimate from newegg. I am curious about the passive cooling and heat pipe it has..

Thank you everyone for your advice. Really appreciate them.
 
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