Little help picking a new video card.

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Riusaldregan

Junior Member
Dec 22, 2006
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Apologies! I always let my knowledge of what's out there slack after buying a new card, and it's been especially long since I bought my last one (November of 2005... and it was only a Geforce 6800, 128 megs... sigh, I was poor.)


In any event! I'm looking to buy a new card in the next couple of days and i'm looking for opinions. I don't need top of the line; looking for something mainstream. Basically all I play nowadays is WoW, but I do a lot of PvE raiding and I have to dumb down all the graphics and resolution just to eek out 15 FPS, barely, during boss fights. Obviously I'd like for that to be 35-45 sustained with settings maxed, and being able to run Fraps during that would also be nice.

As far as other games, I wouldn't mind a little room to grow. Honestly between work and raiding I haven't much time for anything else, and what other free time I have is spent playing on my new Wii.

The rest of the equipment in there is as follows:

Geforce 6800 128, AGP 8X
AsRock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard
Athlon XP 3000+
2x512 Corsair XMS DDR400 running in Dual Channel

I'm planning on getting the AM2CPU board (or a new mobo entirely) and a new processor and some DDR2 memory, so I want a pretty good pci-e card that I can use just for now, in the next month or so before I upgrade the rest of my parts.

So, to summarize! I need a new video card, ati or nvidia doesn't matter much to me, the best I can get for 175ish dollars. Doesn't have to be killer extreme, doesn't need to run F.E.A.R. at max settings with a billion x AA, etc etc. Just needs to play WoW extremely awesome and any newer games decently well.

Thanks in advance!
 
Captante

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,353
10,876
136
Is the Asrock board you have one of the models with both AGP & PCIe slots?
 
W

wanderer27

Platinum Member
Aug 6, 2005
2,173
15
81
Depending on how much you want to spend, the XTX1950 (?) is a fair buy on the PCIex side (as long as you're not looking for top line).

I think there's a GT7x00 something on the AGP side that's pretty decent, can't remember the exact model right off.

If you don't mind waiting and want something capable of doing DX10 in the future there should be some mid range cards coming out from Nvidia based of the G80 architecture in the next couple of months.

 
Captante

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,353
10,876
136
Depends on your budget... heres a few PCIe good options for you:


Cheapest decent card: EVGA 7600GT


Best bet Mid-range: Asus X1950 Pro


Best Overall Bang for $'s: Sapphire X1950XT



If you can afford $250 for the XT, thats by far the best bet ... nothing close to that price can touch its performance, but bear in mind its a two-slot
card & the HS/fan can be a bit noisy.

The Asus X1950 Pro is also a two-slot HS/fan but without noise issues.... if you need a single-slot card, the Sapphire model is about the same price
& uses the reference cooler.

The 7600GT is about the same performance as a 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler & draws a lot less power... although the slowest here it will still give a
nice performance boost over a plain vanilla 6800.
 
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