Help me choose my new video card

[oynaz]

Hi guys

My 6600GT is simply not good enough for Supreme Commander ;-)

My computer consists of quite old parts, but I figure I should be able to get by with a video card upgrade until I finish my education in a year, and thus never have to worry about money again ;-)

My current rig:

AMD 64 3200+
2 Gigs of RAM
MSI 6600GT
Enermax 520 watt PSU (forgot the exact name, should be good quality)
Samsung Syncmaster 950p CRT monitor
+ some powerful audio gear, but that is irrelevant in this case I guess.

I primarily use this computer for music production, but I enjoy a bit of gaming now and then. Thus, the card needs to be quiet.
This PC will not be running Vista for a long time, as most music software has big troubles with the way Vista handles audio. So DirectX 10 is not no important.
Gaming at 1280*1024 or 1024*720 is good enough for me.
Budget is about 1000 Dkr, or $150, but I would rather spend less.

I will probably get the card from my local dealer. Here is a link to the Video cards:

http://pc-netto.dk/asp/index.asp?maingruppe=grafikkort&goto=productsubgroupchoice

The site is in Danish, but you should be able to get by anyway.

So, please help me

 

[RussianSensation]

AGP or PCI Express?

 

[Cheex]

Well...

Here are my suggestions in keeping with your $150 maximum...

For each interface:
AGP 4x/8x - $147
PCIe 16x - $125

 

[MarcVenice]

on that site the 7900gs for 1086 looks to be the best deal. The saphire x1950xt is way out of his budget, so are the pro's.

 

[oynaz]

Oh, it's PCI-E.
Unfortunately, newegg will not do. They do not ship to Denmark, and the additional tariffs and sales taxes are too expensive anyway.

 

[rmed64]

I thought SC was hard on the CPU

 

[RussianSensation]

X1950GT/Pro, 7900GS/GT and 7950GT are good cards to look at. Also in US X1950XT sells for $150 which bests them all but not sure what the price for you is.

 

[CU]

I had a 144 running at 2.4ghz and a 6800nu and SupCom was slow for me to. I picked up a X2 3800 and have it running at 2.6ghz and that doubled my frame rates. So you may want to try that first.

 

[Rockhound1]

Looks like the x1950GT or 7900GS are about as much as your budget will take. If you want something less expensive, then I would look at the 7600GT. Before investing your money in a new video card, I would first try overclocking your CPU to see how much that helps as suggested by CU.

 

[oynaz]

What about X1650Pro. Is it any good, or are the 7600GT better?

X1950GT's runs very hot, I've heard. Noise is an important issue. Will that be a problem with an X1950?

 

[will889]

I would look at the X1950GT and the 7900GS.

 

[Rockhound1]

Originally posted by: oynaz
What about X1650Pro. Is it any good, or are the 7600GT better?

X1950GT's runs very hot, I've heard. Noise is an important issue. Will that be a problem with an X1950?

As far as speed goes, the 7600GT and the X1650Pro are about the same. The advantage of the 7600GT is that it runs cooler and uses less power than the X1650Pro.

Yes, the X1950GT does run a little warm, but not excessively hot. There is a pretty good speed advantage for the X1950GT over the 7600GT and the X1650Pro. If you decide to go with the X1950GT, you could buy it and use the stock cooler. Then later you could install a third-party cooler which would be more efficient and quieter.

 

[f4phantom2500]

try to get an nvidia 7900gs or better, or an ati x1900gt or x1950gt or better (the x1950gt overclocks to like x1950 pro levels without much, if any, trouble). if you don't want to overclock, the 7900gs or gt would still be good, but the x1950 pro would do well. if you can, try to get an x1950xt.

http://pc-netto.dk/asp/index1280.asp?maingruppe=grafikkort&goto=productsubgroupchoice&

that doesn't look too bad.

 

[superbooga]

You need a faster CPU for Supreme Commander, first and foremost.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Rockhound1

Originally posted by: oynaz
What about X1650Pro. Is it any good, or are the 7600GT better?

X1950GT's runs very hot, I've heard. Noise is an important issue. Will that be a problem with an X1950?

As far as speed goes, the 7600GT and the X1650Pro are about the same. The advantage of the 7600GT is that it runs cooler and uses less power than the X1650Pro.

Yes, the X1950GT does run a little warm, but not excessively hot. There is a pretty good speed advantage for the X1950GT over the 7600GT and the X1650Pro. If you decide to go with the X1950GT, you could buy it and use the stock cooler. Then later you could install a third-party cooler which would be more efficient and quieter.

No, you're close, but the X1650XT is equal or a little faster than the 7600GT. The X1650Pro is terrible, I installed one for a customer with a P4 3.4, and it was about as bad as a 7600GS.

There is a GIANT difference between 1650Pro/7600GS, and the 1650XT/7600GT.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: superbooga
You need a faster CPU for Supreme Commander, first and foremost.

A dual-core cpu will go a long way in this game - C2D 1.86ghz is destroying single core A64 2.8ghz

However, the cpu will still not solve the problem here. 6600GT averages only 8fps at 1280x1024 medium quality.

It seems your best compromise would be picking up something like X2 3600+/3800+ and X1650XT. X1650XT isnt priced low however, and is often close to X1900GT/7900GS which outperform it significantly.

If you dont have S939 or are unable to find dual core X2 for cheap, I suggest you think hard before investing all this $ for this 1 game alone. It might be a good idea to buy a stop-gap faster graphics card then and start saving to upgrade to C2D or AM2+ platform for this fall. I cant recommend dumping $200+ on a graphics card (unless yours is PCIe) when this game clearly benefits from dual core.

 

[oynaz]

I have a S939 board with PCI-E

Supreme Commander isn't the only use I will put this card to. It is just the most demanding game I play right now.