Gaming at 1360x768?

HopJokey

Platinum Member
May 6, 2005
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Folks,

I am planning on building a new rig in the near future and wanted to know which video card would be sufficient for my gaming needs at the 1360x768 resolution (the native res. of my LCD TV)? The rig will probably have 2GB of RAM, an Intel E8400 (w/ P35 chipset), and run WinXP (so no DX10).

Ideally I would want the system to not drop below 30fps at any given time and run at 60+fps most of the time for the games I play with many eye candy features turned up (AA,AF, etc.). Basically any type of game that has been released or will be released soon I will be playing ( i.e. TF2, COD4, CoH, HG:L, Oblivion, The Witcher, CS:S, SC2 [LOL, near future] ). One notable exception is Crysis.

Money isn't really an issue, but I'm a value oriented person and would like to see some difference if I am paying the extra $$$. Also, no need to consider future proofing for games 6+ months away. Here are the cards I'm thinking about:

9600GT - Good price/perf., good power, don't like NV chipset shenanigans
8800GT 512 - Not too much more than 9600GT, is it overkill?
3870 - Was looking real good until 9600GT came out.
8800GTS G92 - Overkill? Diminishing returns?

3870x2 - Overkill/dim. returns x2? Some games don't like multi-GPU solutions.
9800GTX - Should be out soon right???
HD4xxx - LOL June-July timeframe?
NV GT200 - Paging TulipGTX...

So there you have it, I would love to hear everyone's opinion on what card I should get. Most benchmarks don't show numbers at low resolutions so it is hard to get a gauge of what is overkill or not. Thanks in advance!
 

imported_wired247

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2008
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8800gt will serve your needs at that resolution, as it serves more demanding needs just fine on my 22" 1680x1050 lcd.

however the exception you noted, crysis, even if you aren't playing it you might want to know.

I actually turned down the resolution on crysis a bit to get a huge boost in framerate. It actually runs really great at 1440x900 with the 8800gt.
 

HopJokey

Platinum Member
May 6, 2005
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Cool thanks wired! I think the extra few bucks of the 8800Gt over the 9600GT probably won't hurt. Would it be worth it to get the extra SP's in the 8800GTS?
 

recoiledsnake

Member
Nov 21, 2007
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For that resolution, the GTS is a overkill. Get a 8800GT with a dual slot cooler or 9600GT or the Radeon 3870
 

AzN

Banned
Nov 26, 2001
4,112
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8800gs might be good at that resolution. $130 AR at newegg. You might want to pickup PNY 9600gt @ microcenter 4 $150