Deciding which card to get

[Chacranajxy]

I'm putting together a new comptuer soon and I've gotta decide on a video card. I narrowed it down to four candidates and I'm looking for something that'll get me the best performance (image quality is nice too of course) in games like FEAR, Quake IV, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (so HDR performance is a must.)

I'm looking at:

EVGA's vanilla 256MB card

BFG's 7800GTX 256MB Overclocked model

XFX's overclocked 256 MB model

and to make things confusing:

Sapphire's ATI X1800XT 512MB Card

The ATI card is $550 and is thus, the most expensive, but it seems like (especially with the new ATI drivers) it could be the fastest one out there. Anyway, lemme know your opinions on what to do (the 512 GTX is out of the question given the price now.)

 

[Chacranajxy]

eh, or if it's easier, go with a 7800GTX or a 1800XT

 

[Hacp]

Either EVGA GTX or Sapphire XT. I would personally go with the XT as for around 80 dollars more, you are getting a really big performance increase and alot of OC potential. But the GTX is also a next geneartion card, and wll def perform wELL in all the games. It losses to the XT in many benchmarks, bu the GTX wins its fair share also. Put it this way. When the GTX is outdated, the XT will also be outdated.

 

[nombrecinq]

Since there are now some cards out now that whoop the 256MB card's ass, when will there be a price drop?

 

[Chacranajxy]

Originally posted by: Hacp
Either EVGA GTX or Sapphire XT. I would personally go with the XT as for around 80 dollars more, you are getting a really big performance increase and alot of OC potential. But the GTX is also a next geneartion card, and wll def perform wELL in all the games. It losses to the XT in many benchmarks, bu the GTX wins its fair share also. Put it this way. When the GTX is outdated, the XT will also be outdated.

That's true... at stock speeds though, would it be wiser to go with the XT or the BFG 7800GTX OC? The EVGA just doesn't seem as fast since we're not talking about the KO version.

 

[xtknight]

BFG OC GTX. I don't think X1800XTs are even in stock anywhere... it is at ZipZoomFly but it's $699. Way overpriced. You could get the 7800 GTX 512 for that price and that's a lot faster than the X1800 XT.

 

[nombrecinq]

There MUST be some price drops coming soon, anybody?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: nombrecinq
There MUST be some price drops coming soon, anybody?

The 7800 512s are lowering the 7800 GT/GTX 256 as we speak, but that's all I know. Their new 90nm isn't available until early-mid next year I believe but that's not to say there won't be price drops between now and then.

 

[nombrecinq]

I don't think I've noticed any GTX price drops.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: nombrecinq
I don't think I've noticed any GTX price drops.

Well, "supposedly" they are being lowered. My guess is in 2 weeks you can find them $50 cheaper.

There is no info or even rumors about price drops in the future.

 

[Chacranajxy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
BFG OC GTX. I don't think X1800XTs are even in stock anywhere... it is at ZipZoomFly but it's $699. Way overpriced. You could get the 7800 GTX 512 for that price and that's a lot faster than the X1800 XT.

This is where it gets sorta interesting though: It's $500 for the BFG OC card, but it's $550, not $700, for the X1800XT from Sapphire. True the card isn't out, but I can wait a week or two... zipzoomfly's got it listed which usually means that it's gonna come out relatively soon.

 

[nombrecinq]

I'm thinking more like $400 or a little bit more for a GTX.

 

[xtknight]

Keep an eye out for Catalyst 5.11 driver benchmarks as well. They're supposed to increase performance on X1800 cards drastically. I found some on TweakTown but they don't have the 7800GTX for comparison (wtf?)

You'll have to wait a week and see. What is your price range? $350-550 it sounds like? You can consistently find 7800 GTs (not GTXs) for under $350. One day I saw one for $289 (BFG 3D Fuzion).

 

[nombrecinq]

I bought an x800xl months ago and haven't used it! I finally ordered the rest of my computer stuff so I'm thinking of selling that card and getting one that's a bit faster.

 

[Chacranajxy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Keep an eye out for Catalyst 5.11 driver benchmarks as well. They're supposed to increase performance on X1800 cards drastically. I found some on TweakTown but they don't have the 7800GTX for comparison (wtf?)

You'll have to wait a week and see. What is your price range? $350-550 it sounds like? You can consistently find 7800 GTs (not GTXs) for under $350. One day I saw one for $289 (BFG 3D Fuzion).

The most that I want to spend is $550 or so.

I'll wait for the updated benchmarks which should be out this week or at least very soon... I find the X1800XT's performance in FEAR kinda disappointing though... I assume that was with everything maxed though... gotta see how the 7800GTX compares now... and I'll have to assume the GTX OC does a little better.

Still, I'm intrigued by the ATI card's ability to do AA and AF really, really well.

 

[xtknight]

Rumors have it that NVIDIA won't introduce the 'good' AA/AF until their 90nm chip which will be early-mid next year. I don't think the R520's ended up being that superior vs. the NVIDIA cards though. Not sure of the performance differences either. You'll have to find a review that compares that stuff. Either way I'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference unless I had side-by-side comparison images. Well, in HQ mode, the improvement is quite noticeable actually.

 

[xtknight]

Here is the R520 AA/AF vs. 7800's. You be the judge: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIyLDg=

You can check just about any other X1000-series review for more IQ comparisons.

 

[Chacranajxy]

Hmmm... well is this accurate at all? linkage

If that's right, I'm just going to go with the BFG OC since in most cases, it seems to be faster and not have glitches in games like Quake 4.

I'm upgrading at the end of next year anyway (or whenever DX10 cards start coming out) so if these tables are accurate, I'm definitely going with the BFG OC.