Advice request for new video card

[jethroqwalrustitty]

Hey all, looking to purchase a new video card. Restrictions/thoughts:
- PSU is 350W
- Price point: $200-250, "future-resistance" would be great... i.e., good overclocking a plus.
- CPU is a little slower, I think an AMD 3400+, so I'd like the vid card to be above this level of performance... making room for an incremental cpu/mobo upgrade later on, and not having to scrap and rebuild the whole rig.

Thanks!

EDIT: Sorry, couple more thoughts.

Primary games I intend to try: Oblivion, BF2, NWN2

 

[Maximilian]

Does the PSU have a PCI-E connector? Or two spare molex connectors? Is it a quality PSU?

If the answer is yes to the above, i would recommend a 7900GTO, its lighter on the PSU than the ATI equivilent the x1900xt 256mb. It also supposedly overclocks to GTX speeds easily. Although i wouldnt reccommend overclocking it since its only a bit slower than a GTX to begin with (300mhz slower memory or somthing) the core is the same speed as a GTX.

If not that then a 7600GT. It would definately work with a 350w PSU. Whereas with the 7900GTO even though it uses less power than an X1900 i would still be wary of running it on a 350w. Might work, might not, i dont know. Maybe somone will chime in and say theyre running one on a 300w psu and its great.

 

[jethroqwalrustitty]

*cough*...

Just started looking at more budget-oriented cards, i.e. in the $125-175 range (7600GT or similar). Will those run the above-mentioned games all right at 1280x1024?

 

[jethroqwalrustitty]

Soviet, thanks for the response! The PSU I believe is an Antec branded, just the default that came with a case I picked up on sale at Fry's. I gather that nVidia GPUs generally suck less juice than ATI cards, so I think your recommendations are probably about spot-on... if anyone can confirm/deny that would be great, ehhehe.

Oh, yeah... if you guys think there will be enough wattage left over, I'm hoping to stick in a couple 7200rpm drives and RAID them. Optical drive will be an AC-powered external.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: jethroqwalrustitty
Soviet, thanks for the response! The PSU I believe is an Antec branded, just the default that came with a case I picked up on sale at Fry's. I gather that nVidia GPUs generally suck less juice than ATI cards, so I think your recommendations are probably about spot-on... if anyone can confirm/deny that would be great, ehhehe.

Oh, yeah... if you guys think there will be enough wattage left over, I'm hoping to stick in a couple 7200rpm drives and RAID them. Optical drive will be an AC-powered external.

For the last generation that has been true. The 7600GT would be a good card from the reviews I've seen on it ($125-175 range). The X1800GTO would be another good choice. There is only a 13W power draw difference between the two, which is negligible. The 7600GT is louder by about 4db, again, fairly negligible. Here is a good review between the two that tries to even up quality settings as best as they can. Cards are very close in performance.

Here are the advantages as I see it:

7600GT-

Advantage: Lower price ($115 AR at Newegg)

X1800GTO-

Advantage: Better AF

With the X1800GTO being ~$50 more at this point I'd say the 7600GT is the easy choice. That is if you stay in the $125-175 range.

 

[jethroqwalrustitty]

Whew... you guys rock. I think the card of choice at this point will be the eVGA 7600gt at newegg... might not be that future-proof, but being limited by my PSU, I may as well go for that mid-range budget border, and $113 looks like a pretty darn good deal.